A sad, stupid, senseless crime.  Horrible.

Child is Slain by her Grandfather: Singing Kept him Awake

August 25, 1955, TEXAS CITY , United Press— A preliminary hearing was scheduled Thursday for Robert J. Wallace, 78, who is charged with beating his blonde, nine-year-old granddaughter to death with a ball-peen hammer because her singing kept him from taking a nap.

Wallace, charged with murder with malice aforethought, was being held in the Texas City jail.

The victim, Frances Jean Wallace, died in her home Wednesday from numerous blows on the head with the heavy hammer.

Her father, G. W. Wallace, was at work at a Texas City refinery and her mother was working at a supermarket when Frances was killed. Wallace, who had lived with his son and his family for 14 years, was calmly rocking in a chair three or four feet from the body when police arrived.

Child Was Coloring

Wallace told Assistant District Attorney Archie Alexander he was trying to take a nap but Frances’ singing kept him from going to sleep. Police said she was sitting at a table coloring a paint book when she was attacked. The book was open and her colors were scattered about it.

In a statement made to police, Wallace said he went into the kitchen, drank a glass of milk, and got the three-quarter pound hammer from a tool box. He said he returned to the living room and started hitting Frances on the head. She fell to the floor after several blows and Wallace said he dragged her body to the center of the room “so I could get a full swing.”

Sister Heard Noise

“I hit her in the head with a hammer about 20 times,” Wallace said.

Frances’ sister, Glenda Faye Wallace, 13, was outside the house playing when she heard the commotion and ran into the house. She saw her little sister lying on the floor, her head covered with blood.

Glenda Faye ran screaming from the house and across the street to the home of a neighbor. Mrs. Gay Archer, and told her: “Grandpa has hurt Frances.”

Mrs. Archer ran across to the house and found the grandfather rocking in his chair near the body. She asked him what happened and he replied:

“Nothing, I just killed her.”

The little girl’s mother had to be hospitalized for shock when she learned of the slaying.

The story below is the last one I could find about Wallace. A sanity hearing before a trial was his next step and if the story thread drops off here, he was either committed to a mental hospital, or, less likely, he accepted a plea deal.

Waives Hearing On Charge of Murder

TEXAS CITY, Aug. 30 (UP)

Robert J. Wallace, 78-year-old hammer-slayer of his nine-year-old granddaughter, has waived preliminary hearing on a charge of murder.

Examining trial for the aged man who has been kept in a padded cell in Galveston County jail since the slaying last week was to have been held before Justice of the Peace O. P. Redell Monday. Assistant Dist. Attorney Andrew Baker asked Wallace if he was willing to waive the hearing to send the case directly to the grand jury. Wallace agreed with a nod of his head.

District Attorney Marsene Johnson. Jr., said Wallace will be given a sanity hearing before October, in time for the murder easy to go to the October term grand jury if Wallace is found sane.

Wallace has admitted killing the child because her singing and childish pratter irritated him while he was trying to take a nap.

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Woodrow Wilson “Whitey” Clark

On the morning of Jan. 15, 1944, in a small shack at the back of the Dillon Sign Shop at E1806 Sprague, police inspected a gruesome murder scene.

Four people hacked and mutilated by a hatchet. Two victims, T.P. Dillon and Jane Staples, were dead. Flora Dillon died a few days later. Despite horrible head wounds, Frank Winnett survived, but could never recall what happened.

The Victims. Opens larger in new window. Photo Credit: The Spokane Chronicle, 1944

At first, authorities focused their attention on Staples’ husband, Charles. There was evidence she frequently had been unfaithful to him. He was identified by County Prosecuting Attorney Leslie Carroll as “the coldest-blooded man I have ever met in my years in the prosecutor’s office.”

Carroll also said Charles Staples was known to authorities as a communist. And when police picked up Staples to question him, the county attorney said he had blood on his shoes.

Carroll said it was the opinion of everyone investigating the case that “this was the crime of an outraged husband.”

But all other suspects were forgotten after Whitey Clark was arrested and signed a confession. Clark later said he had signed the confession only after a grueling all-night interrogation session in which the prosecutor and police threatened him.

The prosecution’s account was that Clark met the Dillons and Jane Staples at a tavern the evening before the murders. The Dillons and Staples had been drinking heavily, and T P. Dillion invited everyone in the place to his house for a party.

Clark was among the crowd who went along.

The party broke up a little before 4 a.m., with everyone leaving except the Dillons, Staples, Winnett, and Clark. Earlier in the evening, angered by advances made toward his wife, Dillon had threatened Clark with a pistol.

So, the prosecution said, Clark turned his attentions to Jane Staples who had passed out on a bed next to Mr. and Mrs. Dillon. When Dillon objected, the prosecution said Clark picked up a hatchet and attacked his four companions.

Death Scene of the Spokane Hatchet Slayer, Photo Credit: The Spokane Chronicle, 1944

Before the trial, Clark’s defense attorneys pointed out that even if the prosecution’s scenario was true, it was a crime of passion, not premeditation, and was not a capital offense.

But in 1944, the law prescribed that anyone who compiled murder during a rape could be sentenced to death. Although no medical evidence of rape was introduced, the prosecution sought the death penalty saying Clark a advances toward the unconscious Jane Staples constituted a rape attempt.

Clark’s story was that when he left the party at 9 30 a.m., everyone was sleeping. He said the assault must have taken place after he left.

Two newspaper boys testified they saw Clark near the Dillon home at about 4 30 a.m., and said he asked them directions downtown. They said Clark had blood on the white shirt he was wearing.

When police found Clark, there was only a small spot of blood on the pants he had been wearing that night and none on his shirt. His roommate said Clark had borrowed the pants from him, and the blood stain was caused by his own nosebleed {the roommate’s] days earlier.

Police found a bloody white shirt on a chair at the murder scene, and the prosecution said Clark, after seeing the news boys, must have realized he had to get rid of the bloody shirt, so he returned to the shack and left it there.

Jurors later admitted they had doubts about the prosecution’s case, but they said Clark’s own testimony and demeanor finally swayed them.

“It was the little things that convinced the jury of the guilt of the defendant. The members all agreed,” a newspaper account said. “Actions of the defendant in the courtroom, his demeanor and many meaningless denials upon the stand convinced the jurors of the verity of the state’s charge that Clark committed the murders in a rage because Dillon thwarted his attempt to rape Mrs. Staples, one juror said.

“The jury noticed Clark’s roving eye when a pretty woman entered the courtroom, (the juror) said.”

Above, Woodrow Clark is escorted to one of his trial appearances. Photo Credit: The Spokesman Review

Clark was sentenced to die on Oct. 5, 1945.

At 4 p.m. on Oct. 4, he was taken from his cell on death row and placed in the single cell in the execution chamber. There were guards present to “observe him constantly,” and a chaplain, who would remain throughout the night.

But seven hours before the hanging was scheduled. Lt. Gov. Victor A. Meyers, acting as governor, called the warden on the line which was kept open between the governor’s office and the prison in the eight hours prior to any execution. Whitey was granted a 90-day stay of execution.

Meyers said he granted the stay as the result of a “deluge” of petitions, letters and phone calls from Spokane objecting to the hanging and from his own review of the record, which left ‘”some question in his mind because the conviction was based on circumstantial evidence.”

While awaiting execution in Walla Walla in January 1946, Clark enjoys one of his last meals. Photo Credit: The Spokesman Review

Governor Monrad Wallgren appointed a man to look into the case, and a citizens’ committee in Spokane led by L. Lore Wartes, was formed to convince the governor to commute Clark’s sentence to life imprisonment.

But they could only prolong Clark’s life. They could not save him.

On Feb. 4, 1946, at 4 p.m., Clark, the chaplain and the guards reconvened.

He was fed a meal of his choice.

At 11:30 p m., the warden read the death warrant to Clark. At 12:05 a.m., Feb. 5, his arms were strapped to his sides, and he mounted the gallows. As he stood over the trap door, his legs were strapped tightly together. The noose was placed over his head and “adjusted by an individual expert in such matters who is kept on a retainer by the state for this purpose, and who has become thoroughly familiar with the physical attributes of the condemned to ensure a quick and painless death.”

There is no record of whether Whitey Clark requested a hood.

In an adjacent room, three volunteers pressed three buttons, one of which sprung the trap door.

About fifteen minutes later, a physician and a coroner pronounced Clark dead, and his body was cut down.

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Terror in Ypsilanti:John Norman Collins Unmasked (TIY) is a true crime account of the sex-slayings of seven young women in Washtenaw County, Michigan. Between the summers of 1967 through 1969, a predatory killer stalked the campuses of Eastern Michigan University and the University of Michigan looking for prey, until he made the arrogant mistake of killing his last victim in the basement of his uncle’s home—a Michigan State Police Trooper. All-American boy John Norman Collins was arrested, tried, and convicted of the strangulation murder of Karen Sue Beineman.

The media frenzy over the arrest of a prime suspect—a handsome, clean-cut Eastern Michigan University student—held the nation’s attention until a week into the trial. Over that weekend, the words Helter Skelter blazed across the headlines and drew the national and international press to California to report on Charles Manson and his Family. John Norman Collins and his victims were left to fall through the cracks of time.

Collins was convicted of only one of the murders he was widely suspected of committing. His trial was the most contentious, longest, and expensive in Washtenaw County history. The prosecutor decided to hold the other six cases in abeyance against the day Collins would attempt to circumvent his life sentence.

Collins’s lawyer Neil Fink exhausted every appeal leading to the United State Supreme Court refusing to hear the case. Every appeal was denied. After being implicated in several thwarted prison escapes, Collins took a different approach to shortening his life sentence without parole. He changed his last name back to Chapman—his Canadian birth father’s name.

Armed with a new identity, Collins [Chapman] tried to engineer an international Canadian prison exchange by claiming he had Canadian citizenship and was one signature away from transferring to Canada where the sentencing laws are more lenient. In Michigan, only a pardon signed by a sitting Michigan governor could free Collins. In Canada, Collins would qualify for a work release program only three years after time served. For the first time in print, TIY tells the story of the Marquette prison inmate who blew the whistle on Collins ruining his chances at freedom.

Part One of TIY tells the stories of the other victims as a stealthy, unknown sexual predator stalks the Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor countryside. As the body count rises, the interval between the sex slayings shortens. After four unsolved murders, the Ypsilanti community when into shock when one of their own—a thirteen-year-old eighth-grader—was found nude by the side of a country road strangled with a length of electrical cord. Two more local university women perished and another teenager in California was strangled to death before an arrest was made.

Part Two reconstitutes the infamous trial of The People of Washtenaw County vs. John Norman Collins. After Collins’s several appeals were exhausted and the Supreme Court returned the trial transcripts to the Washtenaw County Building, the court records for this case were “purged” from county records. Nobody in authority has any further information about these records. Invoking the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) produced no result.

Using hundreds of newspaper clippings from the era and some related government documents, I was able to piece together the details of a case that would otherwise be lost to history. With the benefit of fifty years of hindsight and many FOIA requests from government and police agencies, TIY compiles an array of facts and circumstantial evidence drawing an unmistakable portrait of the killer.

Part Three recounts Collins’s years in Michigan prisons and his adjustment to prison culture. For the first time, his words are expressed without the filter of a lawyer and his true personality takes shape. He challenges authority at every turn, fights a California extradition request from Governor Ronald Reagan, and does his best to manipulate public opinion through the media.

This section goes behind the scenes of Kelly & Company—a Detroit morning show that interviewed Collins in Marquette prison. Using television for his first and only time, Collins tries his best to rationalize away the evidence but fails miserably. Part Three also tells the story of the film company that came to town in 1978 to make Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep—a movie version of the Washtenaw County murders which was never completed.

The only previous book length treatment of this story is The Michigan Murders published in 1976. It is a cozy mystery that changed the names of the victims and their killer, serving to conceal their identities and confound the history. My true crime treatment uses real names and hews closely to the facts. The style is journalistic rather than narrative. The story is never lurid but nonetheless graphic. Included for the first time will be a map of the body drop sites, a photo gallery, a timeline, lists of people and places named in the book, and an index to aid readers.

Via Amazon

About Author Gregory A. Fournier

While attending Eastern Michigan, I lived one block up the street from John Norman Collins while these murders were going on and had several brushes with him. As with many other people in Ypsilanti, it was not until Collins was arrested and his photograph ran on the front pages that I recognized him and learned his name. After graduation, I became a high school English teacher in Ypsilanti where most of these tragedies occurred. I have firsthand knowledge of the area and interviewed many people connected with these cases.

Since April 2011, I have been writing my Fornology blog to build an audience for my writing. In May 2013—on the strength of my posts—I was asked to appear on the Investigation Discovery Channel as a guest expert on John Norman Collins in their series A Crime to Remember. The episode is entitled “A New Kind of Monster.” It is available On Demand and on YouTube.

I have a bachelor and master’s degree in English Language and Literature from Eastern Michigan University and have taught high school in Ypsilanti, Michigan and San Diego, California. For ten years, I also worked as an adjunct professor at Cuyamaca College in Rancho San Diego before retiring. My first writing effort was Zug Island: A Detroit Riot Novel published in 2011 by Wheatmark, Inc., now available in a newly revised 2nd edition.

Question & Answer with Terror in Ypsilanti author, Gregory A. Fournier

Tell us about John Norman Collins. JNC was the prime suspect in the murders of seven young women in the Ypsilanti/Ann Arbor, Michigan between the summers of 1967-1969. Washtenaw County prosecutors tried and convicted Collins of his last murder—the sex slaying of Karen Sue Beineman. The other murders became cold cases.

Why isn’t Collins better known? The week the Beineman case came to trial, the Helter Skelter [Tate/LaBianca] murders happened in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles. Overnight, Charles Manson and his family drew national attention to Southern California. The Collins trial became a war of attrition; the Manson trial became a three ring media circus.

What genre is your book and who is your target audience? It is true crime. Terror in Ypsilanti strives to restore the lost history of these cases. The trial transcripts were purged from the Washtenaw County files shortly after all of Collins’s appeals ran out in the mid-1970s. I initially wrote this book for the people of Ypsilanti to pay a debt to history, but young people going away to college will find the story instructive and cautionary.

Can you briefly summarize the content of Terror in Ypsilanti? Part one tells the story of the murders as the details unfolded before the police and the public. Much of this information has never been made public before. Part two reconstitutes the most infamous criminal trial in Michigan history from hundreds of vintage newspaper articles. Part three tells the story of Collins’s years in prison, his efforts to circumvent his life sentence, and his attempts to manipulate public opinion through the media.

What qualifies you to tell this story? While these murders were happening, I lived one block up the street from Collins and had several negative encounters with him. It wasn’t until I saw his face plastered across the front pages that I realized I recognized him. I knew people he knew, and I knew friends who knew some of the victims. Going to Eastern Michigan University and teaching at Ypsilanti High School gives me a detailed knowledge of the area and its people. The non-fiction story of what actually happened needed to be told before these events become lost in the fog of time. I’m uniquely positioned to do that.

Has this story ever been told before? Brief surveys of the Collins story have appeared in crime magazines and internet articles—usually with faulty information and without the benefit of hindsight. Five years after these events occurred in 1976, Edward Keyes published a cozy mystery called The Michigan Murders, which used pseudonyms for the victims, the witnesses, and the convicted murderer. Keyes wrote his book as a novel, but it did more to obscure the real history than add any insight. Terror in Ypsilanti is a very different treatment of the subject matter. I take a terse journalistic approach.

What was your biggest challenge writing Terror in Ypsilanti? Getting official information on the trial. The Washtenaw County Court files were purged in the mid-1970s, and nobody in authority would comment on that. I had to create a patchwork of facts from hundreds of local newspaper articles to tell the broad outline of the trial.

Does your book leave readers with a message? Yes, if something doesn’t feel right about a person, trust your instincts. Don’t place yourself in a compromised position and recognize danger before it’s too late.

What else have you written? My first writing effort after I retired from teaching was Zug Island: A Detroit Riot Novel. It tells a multicultural story of the clash between urban and suburban cultures. Main character Jake Malone gets a crash course in race relations and learns that the face of racism comes in every shade of color. I also write a weekly blog entitled Fornology about my news and views.

How can readers find out more about your books? Readers can go to my author website  for more information. Discounted bulk purchases of my books can be made through Wheatmark.com, and paperbacks are available through Amazon.com, as well as a Kindle edition.

—###—

During the summer of 1977, Elvira Guerrero, 36, and Mario Alvarado Garza, 28, were deeply in love with plans to soon get married. After attending services at the Second Mexican Baptist Church in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas–where Elvira played the piano, and Mario, a Mexican national, had just been baptized earlier that day– the two drove to a local park to discuss their upcoming nuptials.

As they sat talking in Elvira’s car that warm afternoon on June 26, two men spotted the pair and selected them as their victims that day. Michael Wayne Evans, 20, and Earl Stanley Smith, 23, walked to the park from Smith’s apartment with plans to mug someone. They had been planning all morning to rob and kill someone and their arrival at the small city park was no accident.

They were hunting.

Smith was the first to reach the car, where he shoved his pistol in the open window and ordered the pair to take him and Evans across town. The two climbed into the car, and directed Guerrero and Garza to drive to a remote area in South Dallas where they were robbed of $40 in church donations and $12 from Garza’s wallet.

Then, they shot Guerrero and Garza with a .22 caliber pistol. Garza was hit five times and Guerrero was shot twice in the head.

Somehow, Guerrero survived and prayed out loud to ask God to forgive the two men, Evans later confessed to police.

“She was holding my hand and looking into my eyes. Then she said, ‘God, help him, God help him,’” Evans’ stated in his confession. “I cut the lady (with a carpet knife) from the bottom of her chin to her hairline above her forehead. I also think I cut her eyes.

“I was trying to get her to quit talking.”

..think I cut her eyes?

That’s a watered-down way to describe how he had slashed and gouged them with a knife.

After a haul of just $52 and Guerrero’s watch, Evans and Smith dumped the bodies in a south Dallas hay field, covering them with bushes and leaves. Evans gave the watch to his girlfriend and kept Guerroro’s car for his personal use.

The bodies were discovered four days later. At the scene, investigators found a cylinder rod (used for ejecting bullets), to a .22 caliber revolver.

Eleven days after the victims were discovered, on July 11, Evans was spotted driving Guerroro’s car by one of one of her relatives who recognized the vehicle. He tailed the car which resulted in a high-speed chase. During the pursuit, the relative flagged down a police officer and the two followed it to an apartment complex in Dallas.

Evans was able to park the car, and enter his apartment before the officer arrived.

By questioning area tenants, police determined the car may have belonged to a woman named Belinda Key, whose apartment was fifteen feet from where the car was parked. With Key’s consent, officers entered the apartment but missed Evans, who fled through a back window.

Inside, a snub-nosed .22 caliber revolver, the type often referred to as a “Saturday Night Special,” was found inside a dresser drawer in a bedroom where Evans and his girlfriend, Juanita Ingram, slept. The ejector rod was missing.

Key, who was roommates with Evans, said it belonged to him. When police questioned her further, they learned that on the morning after the double homicide, Evans had returned with blood on his hands and clothing. Later that day, Key’s boyfriend helped Evans clean “blood and flesh” from inside Guerrero’s car.

Knowing he didn’t have money to buy a car, Key asked Evans where he got it. He replied that he and Smith “had jacked some people and hit them in the head and tied them up and covered them with bushes.”

Uniformed officers and marked police cruisers were ordered to leave the area, and plain-clothed officers moved in to stakeout Key’s apartment. Around 4:30 that afternoon, Evans returned to the area and was arrested.

Over the next few days, Evans readily gave several confessions, putting most of the blame on Smith. He also confessed to the June 15 robbery and murder of Daniel Potts, and said Smith participated with him in that crime as well.

Later, Evans recanted his confession claiming police beat him. At trial, Evans’ girlfriend, Juanita Ingram, testified that she was also at Key’s apartment when Evans returned covered in blood. She said that Evans told her that he had killed “some Mexicans,” and gave her a watch from “the Mexican lady that he had killed.”

Evans was found guilty and sentenced to death. His partner, Earl Stanley Smith, received three life sentences.

In 1980, the criminal court of appeals overturned Evans’ conviction, citing improper cross-representation of jurors. He was tried and convicted of capital murder a second time in October 1981, and again received the death sentence. In 1983, the appeals court upheld his conviction and the United States Supreme Court declined to review the case in March 1984.

With an execution date for set for December 4, 1986, Evans’ lawyer appealed to the US Supreme Court for of a stay of execution but was turned down in a 5-4 decision that came on December 2.

When told of the Supreme Court action, Evans said, “OK” and returned to his bunk in a holding cell adjacent to the Texas death chamber. Earlier that day, he had spoken with his mother by telephone.

The thirty-year-old former plumber and auto-mechanic spent most of his final day sleeping and rejected a last meal. Shortly after midnight, he was strapped to the gurney and was asked if he’d like to make a final statement. With tears in his eyes, Evans said: “I want to say I’m sorry for the things I’ve done and I hope I’m forgiven. I don’t hold nothing against no one. – Everyone has treated me well and I know it’s not easy for them. That’s all, I’m sorry.”

The lethal combination of chemicals was then injected into his body through an intravenous tube. He was pronounced dead at 12:21 a.m.

According to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Online Offender search page, Smith is sixty-two-years-old and is serving out his time at the O.B. Ellis Unit, in Huntsville, Texas. Oddly, his inmate file shows that on November 22, 1994, he received an additional ten-year sentence for the aggravated sexual assault of a child which occurred on September 27 of that year. I could not find any information related to the 1994 sexual assault case through my usual sources before today’s deadline.

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Not all crime books are about murder or serial killers. Some of the most intriguing ones are about other subjects like gambling, Ocean 11 type heists, bank robbers, con men, spies, and other non-violent crimes.

And there is also prostitution. Veteran historical true crime writer, Tobin Buhk, author of eight books including the popular, True Crime in the Civil War, has just written a new book about the world’s second oldest profession–with a twist. His new book is about prostitution in Memphis during the civil war and it’s fascinating look at guilty pleasure type subject matter from an era in which we know very little about the sex lives, purchased or otherwise, of the common man, as well as the higher-ups.

—Free with Kindle Unlimited, or $2.99 for Kindle.—

Here is a fascinating synopsis from the author.

A long time ago, in a place not so far away, a battle raged. This conflict didn’t make it into the history books, and your history teacher never told you about it (or he likely would have been sent to the principal’s office). It didn’t occur on a battlefield peopled with men in blue and gray.

It took place on the mean streets of Memphis during the turbulent, third year of the Civil War, when the city’s demimonde controlled the vice world’s commerce. They spread joy to the boys in blue who were headed to an uncertain future…and venereal disease, which posed a clear threat to the army. Billy Yank already had a hard time fighting the tenacious rebel army, but now he had to do it with a burning sensation between his legs.

Something had to be done, so the Memphis provost marshal declared war on the prostitutes by closing the brothels, threatening to exile them upriver.

But business was so good, many of them didn’t listen, which led to a clandestine game of pussycat and mouse between the prostitutes and the provost marshal detectives.

Enter William M. Cherry, a married father of four from Illinois. Left with a debilitating and painful injury following the battle of Shiloh, Cherry went back into action by going undercover in the brothels to gather evidence for the provost marshal. Except Cherry, who liked to tip the bottle, slipped a little too deep under the covers of Kate Stoner’s brothel, which made for an interesting scene when Cherry and his straight-laced partner raided the place.

The result was a highly unusual and embarrassing trial during which all of the key players appeared in front of a military commission who had the dubious task of figuring out who had been naughty and who had been nice.

If you have Kindle Unlimited, the book is free. If not, the Kindle version is only $2.99.

Unfortunately, there are no Nook or epub versions available. The author is currently working on the print version, which could be out later this year.

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 Azel D. Galbraith

Between the years of 1898 and 1904, Azel D. Galbraith was working his way up the ladder in Colorado’s mining industry as a bookkeeper and manager. He was held in high esteem and his name occasionally appeared in Colorado newspapers. Although he was married with a young son, his success went to his head and he began to think he was entitled to more. As the business manager of a mine in Russell Gulch in Gilpin County, he traveled often to Denver and on one occasion in 1902, he met Mrs. Lottie Russell, a single woman despite her prefix (honorific). The two began a wild love affair and to enhance his sexual pleasure, or to ease his guilt, Galbraith also began drinking heavily for the first time in his life.

Predictably, the affair turned into an expensive one as Galbraith spent his life savings to keep his lover happy with new dresses, jewelry, dining out in Denver’s best restaurants, tickets to the best shows in town, as well as expensive trips back east.

When his savings ran out, Galbraith began embezzling money from his company. In early March 1904, he was fired by his employer, AJ Richards, who owned the Topeka Mine in Russell Gulch, a now abandoned mining town with an ironic name. Before or immediately after he was fired, Galbraith stole a large number of blank company checks.

[Note: The house in which he murdered his wife and son is still standing and is said to be haunted by a local team of “paranormal investigators.”]

Jennie (Lamb) Galbraith seen here with her half-brother, James Casper Morger. Photo Courtesy of Sharon Morger Jones, great-grand niece of Jennie.

Rather than tell his wife, Galbraith pretended he was still employed at the mine for several days until he could figure out his next move. On the morning of March 9, he and his wife were lying in bed together discussing their future. With no knowledge her husband had been fired, Mrs. Jennie Galbraith chatted freely about various personal objectives she had for their son and the family. Around nine o’clock, Galbraith distracted his wife and when she turned away from him, he shot her in the head with a .32 caliber pistol.

Donald Galbraith as an infant. Photo courtesy of Sharon Morger Jones, great-grand niece of Jennie (Lamb) Galbraith.

Galbraith placed his wife back in the bed and covered her up as if she were sleeping. He then went outside and called for his eight-year-old son. Donald, who was playing nearby with some other children, obeyed his father and ran home. Galbraith then persuaded him to lie down between him and his mother on the bed so they could talk. While pointing at the window, Galbraith remarked “Look at that little bird.” When Donald turned to look, Galbraith shot him in the head.

Galbraith arranged the bodies of his dead wife and son by folding their arms across their chests and crossing their legs at the ankles. He then pulled the quilt over their heads and left for Denver.

For the next month, Galbraith stayed in Denver, visiting his lover as often as he could. He also began drinking heavily and whenever he was low on funds, he would cash one of the company checks. During his time there, he burned through $1,000, the 2016 equivalent of $24,000.

On April 8, he was apprehended by two Denver detectives who had a warrant for his arrest for theft from his former employer. The next day, authorities in Russell Gulch searched his home and found the bodies of his wife and son exactly where he had left them thirty-one days earlier.

Galbraith was interrogated and at first, denied any involvement. Eventually, he faltered and confessed, claiming he killed them because he had lost his job, and wanted to save them from a life of poverty. He said he was going to kill himself too, but lost the nerve, and hadn’t completed his task, yet.

After they grilled him some more, Galbraith told them the real reason he killed his family: he wanted to be with Lottie Russell.

Galbraith was taken to the county seat, Central City, and held in the local jail for trial. When he arrived, twenty armed deputies had to surround the building to prevent a lynch mob from killing him. Although he pled guilty, Galbraith was given a jury trial which began on June 15, and ended thirty-six hours later. After forty minutes of deliberation, the jury found him guilty of first degree murder and recommended the death penalty. On July 7, the judge pronounced sentence with a death date set for October 16, to be carried in the Colorado State Prison in Canon City.

However, two days before he was to be executed, he was granted a thirty day reprieve. Over the next six months, he received three more reprieves as the state considered its capital punishment laws. It had been eight years since the state had carried out an execution, and the laws needed to be dusted off and re-examined. After various legal considerations by the state supreme court, his final date was set for March 6, 1905, at 8:00 p.m.

In his final hours, Galbraith ate a light dinner, and then dressed himself in a new black suit, with white shirt and black tie. After the death warrant was read, he was asked if he would like a drink of whisky.

“No more of that for me,” he answered. “That is what put me where I am.”

Standing before Colorado’s hanging platform[1], with his ankles, knees and wrists bound, he stood quietly as a Presbyterian minister prayed for his soul. When the word, “Amen,” came, he responded with a simple “Good-bye,” and then the black hood was placed over his head. He was lifted on to the weight sensitive platform and ninety seconds later (see explanation below), he was jerked five feet into the air, and then fell back three feet, breaking his neck. His body twitched two times, and was then motionless as his body swayed back and forth, eventually coming to a stop. He remained there for ten minutes before they cut him down, placed him in a coffin and buried him on nearby Woodpecker Hill, which is the name for the prisoner section of Greenwood Pioneer Cemetery, a public cemetery for Canon City residents.

According to the proprietor of the Facebook page, Cemeteries of Colorado, the prisoner section is separate from the area for civilian graves. All prisoners executed by the state, whose bodies went unclaimed by family members, are buried in the prisoner section. As you can see from these photos shared by Cemeteries of Colorado, their graves are marked by an aluminum plate on a steel post. These are nothing more than license plates made in the prison factory. Most of the plates are covered in rust. Beneath that rust, most of them read only: “CSP Inmate.” A small number of them contain the prisoner’s name. Here is a story about the cemetery in the Denver Post website. In one of their photos, you can see the name Louis Monge. I’ll be posting about him later on.

Woodpecker Hill Photo Gallery, courtesy of Cemeteries of Colorado.

Rusted aluminum markers on steel posts identify the grave sites of prisoners executed long ago at the Colorado State Prison in Canon City.

"CSP Inmate" is how most of the markers are labeled. The man buried here is nameless and forgotten.

A barren landscape is the final resting place for executed prisoners, and those who died while serving out their sentences.

The prison can be seen from the cemetery.

A pitiful reminder of a life wasted.

P.S. If someone ever gets the chance, please search the April 1904 editions of the Rocky Mountain News or Denver Post to see if there is a sketch or image of Lottie Russell. I would really like to include her image with this story.

[1] It operated by counterweight (water filling a tank) that sent the body upward, dislocating the vertebrae, followed by a sharp drop which snapped the neck. It was dubbed “the automatic suicide machine.”

UPDATE TO THIS STORY: 

An important update to this story announced on August 5, 2020, is posted at the end of the article.

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Four Females Slaughtered to Protect Underage ‘Love’ Affair

A 1978 crime magazine article highlights the gravity of the crime with a bold headline.

On the morning of August 11, 1977, a Seaside, California, police officer kicked down the door to a small duplex and found four females spanning three generations of the Smith family dead from too many stab wounds to count.

Looking into the kitchen, he could see Josephine Smith, the white-haired grandmother, lying dead next to her twenty-seven-year-old daughter, Suzanne Harris, who was lying dead next to her six-year-old daughter, Rachel Harris. In the bedroom, Renee Ferguson, another fifteen-year-old Smith family granddaughter and niece to Suzanne, was found dead, lying across the bed with her hands tied behind her back.

All four females had not been seen since attending church on Tuesday night, August 9. After the service, Grandma Smith promised the Assembly of God Church pastor they would return the following evening for his evangelical seminar. They never came. It wasn’t like Grandma Smith not to appear when she said she would. He thought about checking on them, but his attention was directed elsewhere.

That Wednesday morning, both Suzanne Harris and Renee Ferguson were supposed to be at work; Suzanne at an electrical firm, and Renee to her summer job she had gotten through the youth job corp. Neither one of them showed-up and Suzanne’s car remained under the carport, exactly where it had been parked the night before.

Later that Wednesday night, a friend of Renee’s mother asked a neighbor acquainted with the family to check on them the following morning when he went to work. At 5:30 a.m. that Thursday, August 11, no one answered the front door, but as he was walking away, he noticed a light on in the bedroom, peered through the window, and saw Renee face down on a blood-soaked bed with her hands tied behind her back. Approximately ten minutes later, the officer was kicking down the door to the worst crime scene of his career.

Inside the home, detectives found a house of human slaughter that looked like something out a low-budget, teenage slasher film—the kind targeted for young people eager for an emotional thrill.

An autopsy later showed that each victim had been stabbed between nineteen and forty-five times. The wounds were made with a knife so long that almost all of them would have been fatal. Even with three victims lying clustered together on a linoleum kitchen floor, every surface inside the small residence seemed untouched by gore.

Grandmother
Josephine Smith

“I walked in and saw blood all over and the officer told me to get out,” the neighbor later told reporters. “I don’t ever want to see anything like that ever again. It about made me sick.”

They may have found a lot of blood, but it was what they didn’t find that would cause the investigation to last far longer than anyone in the community could stomach.

The windows and door were not broken.

There didn’t appear to be a struggle inside the home.

None of the victims were sexually assaulted.

Nothing valuable was taken from the home or from any of the victims.

In short, there were no clues, no suspects, and no motive.

But what they did have was a hell of a lot of blood. And down in that blood, they would later find foot prints that were only visible in a crime scene photograph. After careful study, they concluded there was one large shoe print, and another print, not as big, maybe a bare foot, but it was small. Who did that belong to? Rachel?

Although inexperienced with investigating a house full of dead women, murdered by some movie theater monster with an unseen-face, a long-knife, and a short-temper, the Seaside police force used every resource available to them. Their investigation was thorough and professional. They did what they were supposed to do. They interviewed everybody that knew the family. Twice. They interviewed 500 people before it was over. They searched for clues within a wide radius of the area. They investigated every tip and lead that came into a special hotline. They sent out bulletins and called in reinforcements from the state Bureau of Investigation.

But when the crime wasn’t solved fast enough, the fear of Seaside residents turned to anger and resentment against their own police force. Serving a community of just 23,000 people, they thought the force was too small for the kind of mass-murder that should have happened somewhere else.

After the bodies were discovered, they organized citizen brigades to patrol the streets on foot. Volunteers with CB radios cruised the back roads all-night in their vehicles, talking to each other in official sounding language about all clear this and suspicious looking that.

At the end of three weeks, they grew tired of playing cops and movie monster killers. Without a suspect in custody, the family members complained to the mayor and the media. Then, the media started asking loaded questions about the investigation being led by just three detectives on the Seaside police force.

The lack of trust by the public got so bad that the California Department of Justice had to investigate the investigation. Released on September 19, their evaluation asserted the performance of Seaside detectives “is complete and being conducted competently.” It further stated that no involvement by the state DOJ was necessary.

In short, the local police were doing their job and just needed a break in the case.

The break in the case came from an anonymous nineteen-year-old girl who called into a hotline to give them the name of the killer’s new girlfriend. The caller was the ex-girlfriend, and she was calling about getting her replacement arrested. Her name was Terrie Milligan, 14, and she was pregnant with the killer’s baby.

When they asked who he was, she scoffed out her surprise they weren’t hip to who the killer was.

She had to tell them: his name was Harold Arnold Bicknell. Except, she didn’t say it in a normal way, she spit it out of her mouth with sarcasm and ridicule wrapped around it.

“And who is Harold Bicknell?” the detective asked the caller.

“You don’t even know that?” she snapped. “I thought you said you were a detective investigating those murders.”

Harold Bicknell was the nineteen-year-old grandson of Josephine Smith; nephew to Suzanne; cousin to both Rachel and Renee; the Harold Arnold Bicknell who sang in the church choir and volunteered for the citizen patrol for one day; the same Harold Bicknell who joined the Navy two days after the murder. And the same Harold Bicknell who had a fourteen-year-old girlfriend that replaced her, the girl on the telephone, who was really calling to get her rival in trouble.

The movie that had ended as a teenager slasher film began as a teenage love-triangle for the plot.

The detective who took the call investigated Harold Arnold Bicknell by questioning his friends. Those who knew something, talked.

Bicknell is escorted off the plane that brought him back to Monterrey County.

On October 26, Bicknell was arrested at the San Diego Naval Training Center and brought back to Monterrey County. He later made a partial confession to the crime on tape. His fourteen-year-old girlfriend, Terri Marie Milligan, was also arrested and charged as a juvenile for her involvement in the murders. In late November, another young girl, fifteen-year-old Karen Kirby, was arrested and charged with murder. The district attorney’s office was hush-hush on Milligan and Kirby’s exact involvement. All that was known about Kirby was that she was a friend to victim Renee and her sister Rayleen. She was also an acquaintance of Bicknell and Milligan, but didn’t know them that well.

In February of 1978, investigators revealed they had a surprise witness who was in the duplex on the night of the murders. Not only were Milligan, and her friend, Karen Kirby, there during the slaughter, but so was victim Renee’s sister, Rayleen Ferguson.

The mind is a funny thing and Rayleen’s mind had blocked out the trauma it witnessed that night. It was too much to process in minutes or hours or days. Instead, it was like a dream in which all the elements of her memory of that night were elusive, their presence sensed just around the next corner in her mind. Over time, her memory solidified the horrific moments of that night she saw, and by November, Rayleen met with investigators and the district attorney to tell them what she remembered.

That’s when Karen Kirby was arrested.

During a court hearing in February 1978, Rayleen testified she was standing outside the kitchen when the attack started after Renee and Bicknell began arguing.

“I heard screaming,” she said, adding that she saw knives swinging and blood and was then struck on the back on the head and knocked unconscious. (She also may have passed out and hit her head.)

She said she woke up the next morning in Karen Kirby’s bedroom and told the fifteen-year-old girl she had had a bad dream.

“She said, ‘I don’t want to hear about it,’” Ferguson told the judge.

Ferguson also testified she once tried to tell Bicknell about the dream and he agreed and said, “Yes, it does seem like a dream.”

WITH RAYLEEN TESTIFYING AGAINST BICKNELL, and his confession on tape, it was a trial that should have ended in days, not three weeks. Harold, who had pleaded not guilty, said he could not recall killing anybody, and disavowed his taped confession.

Testifying on his own behalf, he said he went over there late that night to confront his cousin Renee. She was going to spill the beans to his long-time girlfriend (the girl who called the detective) about his groping and grunting with his underage girlfriend.

Bicknell is escorted back to the courtroom to hear the verdict.

From the witness stand, Bicknell, talking in the third-person because he had several personalities, stated that he killed for the noblest reason of all.

“When I look back, I see that he was fighting to protect love,” one of his personalities declared in court. Apparently, it was one of the good personalities because that one didn’t like the other one –the stab four members of his family over one-hundred times– personality.

“When I see how much damage I wrought, I abhor that man,” the high school dropout said with some dramatic flair.

Then, although he couldn’t recall killing anyone when he first began to testify, one of his personalities later confessed to jurors that he killed the three younger females. He thoroughly denied killing Grandma, and blamed Karen Kirby and Terrie Milligan. He would never have killed Grandma, it had to have been the other girls, he said repeatedly.

The jury also abhorred the short young man who had wrought so many lives. He was found guilty on April 21. One month later, he was ordered to serve four life sentences—to run concurrently: which really meant one life sentence; which didn’t really mean his entire life because life without parole wasn’t an option until the 1980s; and because it was the 1970s, when prison sentences were ridiculously lenient, his four consecutive life sentences meant that he would be eligible for parole in seven years.

Fortunately, the California Board of Parole Hearings didn’t believe in lenient sentences for lovesick mass-murderers. Harold Arnold Bicknell is still serving his life sentence at Salinas Valley State Prison in Soledad. He is fifty-eight-years-old.

In June 1975, Terri Milligan was convicted in juvenile court of three counts of first-degree murder, and one count of second degree murder. Karen Kirby was convicted of being an accessory, but found not guilty of murder. Just like their involvement in the murders that night, their sentences were not made public.

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UPDATES –  2020, and 2021. Bicknell’s Parole Ultimately Blocked Because of his Denial he was the Perpetrator.  

August 5, 2020: After serving forty-three years in California prisons, Harold Arnold Bicknell, inmate B94325, was “granted parole” by the California Parole Board during a July 30, 2020, weekly board meeting. After hearing the emotion-heavy objections to his release by the victims’ family, which is also his family, and reading letters from more family members opposed to the release, the two board panel of commissioners granted the sixty-two year-old a “suitable for parole” recommendation based on his clean record in state prison, his youth at the time, and an abusive childhood as part of the reasons for his release. 

Guidelines to the parole board’s process benefited Bicknell under their Youth, and Elderly, considerations. The youth guideline includes “most inmates who were under the age of twenty-six when they committed the offense, and the Elderly program which applies to inmates who are at least sixty-years-old and have served at least twenty-five years behind bars.

It’s important to note that in California, “granted suitable parole,” doesn’t necessarily mean, “granted parole.”  The July 30 “granted suitable for parole” is actually Bicknell’s second; the first came more than a year earlier in February, 2019. In June of that year, Governor Newsom over-turned the board’s decision after several family members wrote or called to protest his release.

August 21, 2021: According to a CBS-affiliated station in San Francisco, Harold Bicknell will not be leaving prison anytime soon “…after a state prison board rescinded its decision to issue him parole in the wake of public outrage and emotional pleas from the victims family members.”

In July 2020, the state parole board “granted” Bicknell “suitable for parole” but this decision was appealed to Governor Newsom by the district attorney for Monterrey County (where the murders occurred).

Newsom ordered a new parole board hearing that was held in July of 2021 and during that meeting, the state parole board rescinded it’s earlier decision. In a statement released by the district attorney’s office, the board determined “…that Mr. Bicknell is currently an unreasonable risk of danger to the public because he denied he was the perpetrator, which was implausible, and he failed to address factors leading up to or contributing to the crime.”

Article Link

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Warning: Gallery contains very graphic photos.

The New York City Department of Records has a great collection of photographs related to all things early 20th Century New York City.

Among their different categories are photographs related to crime, criminals, criminal identification, and most interesting of all, Murder—as in dead bodies. During the early 20th Century, it was standard procedure for a NYC police photographer to set up a tripod camera over the top of a murdered victim, with the lens pointing down. This had a strange effect rarely seen in homicide photographs and the viewer feels an uneasy connection to the victim’s last moment alive.

The photographs in this collection are from 1915 to 1920. There is little to no information to that accompanies each image and therefore, we have no context for understanding what happened in the photograph, other than what we see.

However, if you look to the left sidebar, you might find a date which you can then attempt to match with newspaper stories from digital archive collections of NYC  papers like the Library of Congress Chronicling America Archive.

For example, the photograph below is from a double homicide dated June 17, 1915. A story I found in the New York Evening World contains information that matches the photograph, but IT IS NOT a double homicide. What you’re looking at is a photograph that tells a bizarre story of murder and suicide between an admirer and a woman who recently married a man who knew nothing about his new wife’s friend.

A .pdf copy of the original newspaper story about this murder-suicide can be downloaded/read by clicking on the image below.

All of these photographs are graphic, many of them are disturbing, and some of them are just revolting.

Photo Gallery of NYC Murder Victims, 1915-1920

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Do You Recognize this Face as it Looked in the late 1970s?

Listen to the Killer’s Voice on Recording
(Audio Recording of Victim Statements at Bottom of Post).

Press Release: 06/15/16

Although four decades have passed since a prolific serial rapist and murderer terrorized California communities from Sacramento to Orange County, the FBI and local law enforcement announced a national publicity campaign today—and a significant reward—in the hopes of locating the suspect and finally bringing him to justice.

Between 1976 and 1986, the violent and elusive individual known as the East Area Rapist, and later as the Original Night Stalker and the Golden State Killer, committed 12 homicides, 45 rapes, and more than 120 residential burglaries in multiple California communities. His victims ranged in age from 13 to 41 and included women home alone, women at home with their children, and husbands and wives.

At a press conference today in Sacramento, the FBI and local law enforcement agencies announced a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killer along with a nationwide multimedia campaign to once again bring the case to the public’s attention.

“Regardless of the amount of time that has passed,” said Sgt. Paul Belli, the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department detective assigned to the case, “the sheriff’s department never gave up on the investigation. This person ruined a great number of lives, and he should be held accountable.”

Background Information

During the time he was operating in Sacramento, between 1976 and 1978, the East Area Rapist struck fear and anxiety into the community. “Everyone was afraid,” said Special Agent Marcus Knutson, who was born and raised in Sacramento and now heads the FBI’s portion of the investigation. “We had people sleeping with shotguns, we had people purchasing dogs. People were concerned, and they had a right to be. This guy was terrorizing the community. He did horrible things.”

If he is still alive, the killer would now be approximately 60 to 75 years old. He is described as a white male, close to six feet tall, with blond or light brown hair and an athletic build. He may have an interest or training in military or law enforcement techniques, and he was proficient with firearms.

Detectives have DNA from multiple crime scenes that can positively link—or eliminate—suspects. This will allow investigators to easily rule out innocent parties with a simple, non-invasive DNA test.

“Just like any homicide investigation,” Belli said, “our lifelines are people who give us information. It all boils down to people helping.” He added that the $50,000 reward could motivate someone to come forward. “It may push somebody over the edge who knows something. It could provide us with that one tip we need.”

Investigators are urging the public to provide law enforcement with any information, no matter how insignificant it may seem. If someone knows a person in the right age range who lived in the area at the time and who seemed suspicious or who may have had some involvement, “we can determine where they are living,” Belli said. For those who come forward, he added, “we are very discreet about privacy and confidentiality.”

It is known that the East Area Rapist took things from crime scenes—coins and jewelry in particular. The public is asked to be mindful of that. “We know that our guy took items,” Knutson said. “So if for some reason people—whether their family member is deceased or they’re cleaning out a storage unit—come across a weird collection of items such as women’s ID’s, rings, earrings—anything that’s out of the ordinary—it could be significant.”

In addition to supplying the reward money, the FBI is assisting local investigators by following leads all over the country, Knutson said, ruling out suspects based on DNA tests and other evidence. When the crimes were committed, DNA testing was not available, nor was other technology such as cell phones, neighborhood surveillance cameras, or, in many areas, the 911 emergency call system.

Burglaries and rapes began occurring in the eastern district of Sacramento County—hence the name East Area Rapist—in the summer of 1976. The subject ransacked homes and took coins, jewelry, and identification. Neighborhood burglaries were often followed by clusters of sexual assaults. Then, on February 2, 1978, Brian Maggiore and his wife, Katie, were on an evening walk with their dog in their Rancho Cordova neighborhood when they were chased down and murdered.

Ray Biondi, a retired Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department detective, investigated the double homicide, which was quickly linked to the East Area Rapist. “This threw a whole different light on the rape series,” said Biondi, who spent 17 years as a homicide detective and investigated hundreds of murders.

One of his few regrets about retirement, Biondi said recently, “was leaving the cases I didn’t solve.” What strikes him about the Maggiore murders and the East Area Rapist is how the subject has managed to elude capture. “It is mind-boggling that he committed so many crimes without a slip up,” the veteran detective said. And yet, one of Biondi’s first homicide cases decades ago was recently solved through DNA evidence. So it is entirely possible, he said, that the East Area Rapist can be brought to justice. “That would elate me.”

After his crimes in the Sacramento area, the subject continued primarily in the East Bay Area of Northern California, where his activity escalated into rapes and homicides along the California coast. He would attack couples, tie up both victims, rape the female, and then murder them. After July 1981, no associated incidents are known until 1986, when an 18-year-old woman was raped and murdered in Irvine, California—the last known crime associated with the subject.

Knutson, too, believes that capturing the East Area Rapist is still possible. “Sometimes it’s just one call that makes a difference,” he said. “If we get that one call and we are able to compare DNA and say, ‘Yes, it’s him,’ then we have him. But it starts with that one call, and that’s why we are seeking the public’s assistance.”

Being a Sacramento native makes this case even more meaningful for Knutson. “This is my home,” he said. “This is where I’m from. The fact that he did his crimes here I take personally, and I’m proud that I’m able to work with the local sheriffs’ offices to investigate this case and try to get this guy in custody.”

We need your help. Individuals with information are urged to call 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324). Information may also be submitted online at tips.fbi.gov.

Surviving the East Area Rapist

She went to sleep that night at home in her bed, and her world was normal. She woke up in the middle of the night with a man’s hand over her mouth. She tried to fight back and run, but he hit her, stuffed a sock in her mouth, blindfolded her, tied her hands and feet. “He put me back in bed and said, ‘If you move, I’m going to kill you.”

Although she feared for her life during that terrifying night decades ago, the woman survived the East Area Rapist’s sexual assault. She and another survivor have come forward to talk about the attacks, how it changed their lives, about revenge and forgiveness, and how they support law enforcement’s continuing efforts to capture this violent individual.

Listen to their stories:

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We need your help. Individuals with information are urged to call 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324). Information may also be submitted online at tips.fbi.gov.

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On November 1, 1903, Eli Feasel disappeared from his farm south west of Bostwick, Nebraska, about 15 miles east of Red Cloud. His housekeeper, Nannie Hutchinson, said he went to visit his son in Kansas City. Feasel’s brother, Thomas, grew suspicious when inquiries found no trace of Eli. Investigation led to the arrest of the housekeeper and her 21-year old son Charles. With little evidence that a crime had been committed, they were released after their hearing.

The following spring, a Mr. Stanley began farming Eli Feasel’s place. While working in a field, he found what appeared to be a newly opened grave. Upon close examination, authorities discovered a human hand, some hair from a man’s head, part of a coat with an empty whisky bottle in the pocket and other pieces of clothing.

Authorities believed Charles Hutchinson had seen Mr. Stanley plowing the field where the grave was later discovered. Charles began to act suspicious. On May 6, he rented a buggy. He said was going to assist in taking the rig to Starke Ranch at Amboy, about 5 miles east. The next morning, Charles returned the rig to the livery stable in Red Cloud and paid the usual fee to Amboy. The team of horses used by Charles appeared to have had a longer drive than a trip to Amboy. Stable workers also noticed a terrible stench emanating from the rented buggy and cushions. They paid little attention to it until Mr. Stanley discovered the open grave on the Eli Feasel’s place.

With the new evidence, authorities quickly rearrested Charles and his mother Nannie. Authorities believed that on the night Charles rented the buggy, he and his mother returned to the site where they had hidden Feasel’s body in order to move the remains. The Hutchinson’s had left tell-tale clues behind them; footprints of a man and woman corresponding to their shoe sizes.

At trial, mother and son were found guilty of second-degree murder.

Story: Nebraska State Historical Society

You can read more about the Hutchinson via a Google News Archive digital copy of The Superior Express, (Nebraska). Page One and Page Five.

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