Tag Archives: Murder

THE SUDDEN (SUSPICIOUS?) DEATH OF U.S. PRESIDENT WARREN G. HARDING

One hundred years ago, on August 2nd, 1923, Warren G. Harding, the 29th President of the United States, suddenly died in a San Francisco hotel room. He was 57 years old. Immediately—due to no autopsy insisted upon by the ironclad demand from his wife, Florence Harding, and the fact that his body was embalmed one hour after death—suspicious rumors of foul play circulated. Conspirators came in many forms. Corrupt politicians, scandal cover-ups, quack physicians, and foreign operatives. But the most sinister accusation of all was Harding being intentionally poisoned by his wife.

The official cause of death released in press statements by the attending doctors was a “probable cerebral apoplexy”. In other words, President Harding had a stroke, a fatal brain event. There was no mention of any toxicity through poison nor any suggestion of a chronic cardiac condition, a heart attack.

Harding’s body was returned by train to Washington, DC, lay in state for two days, then was transported again by train to his hometown of Marion, Ohio where he was entombed in a marble crypt. His wife, Florence, died the following year of kidney failure and came to rest beside him. As the years passed, the truth of the Harding Administration emerged. It became known as America’s most scandalous presidency.

Extramarital lovers, illegitimate children, political corruption, cronies, bribes, payoffs, and even suicides emerged that painted a black mark on Harding’s history. The persistent suspicion of cover-up in his death failed to go away. Today, there’s a consensus as to what really happened in Harding’s death. We’ll get to that conclusion but, first, let’s look at who Warren Harding was, how he got to the White House, and how he came to die in that San Francisco hotel room.

Warren Gamaliel Harding was born on November 3rd, 1865—the year the Civil War ended—on his grandfather’s farm near Blooming Grove, Ohio. His father was a small-town physician with a small practice that earned little money. His mother was a devoutly religious homemaker with eight children to care for, including Warren who was the oldest. Harding was an average student but a very strong boy with even stronger work ethic.

Following grade school, Harding attended Ohio Central College graduating in 1882 with a B.S. degree (which grounded him as a later politician). Here he  gained experience editing and publishing the college paper. After college, Harding worked at various jobs such as a barn painter, a railroad laborer, and a horse team driver. It was in Marion, Ohio where Warren Harding got his first business break.

Harding had saved enough money to purchase a failing newspaper in Marion. He parlayed it into a profitable venture in which he wore all hats—reporter, editor, and publisher. These roles allowed Harding to get well connected and form the “Marion Gang” whom he nepotistically took with him through his political career, including placing some of these friends and allies in high-ranking service jobs in the United States federal government. That was to come back and haunt him.

In the late 1880s, Warren Harding met Florence Kling at a community dance. He became smitten with Florence who was the daughter of a banker and Marion’s richest man. Amos Kling did not approve of Warren Harding and warned Florence that Harding “would never amount to anything”. He refused to speak to Harding.

Florence Harding went to work in their newspaper business. She also got active in his political ambitions. “The only things I know are publishing and politics,” Florence was quoted as saying. She was especially good at politics.

History—now one hundred years after Harding’s death—records Harding to be an excellent speaker, very personable with a great memory for people, a driven man, but not too bright. Florence was smart, and she used her intelligence to make connections and pave roads for Harding to travel as he moved up the Ohio political ladder.

Warren Harding served as an Ohio State Senator from 1900 to 1904. From then to 1906 he was the Lieutenant Governor of Ohio, and in 1910 he ran as Ohio’s Governor but was defeated. Harding went back to the paper industry but in 1915 he entered federal politics and won a seat as a Senator for the State of Ohio. This opened doors in Washington.

The Republican national convention was deadlocked in the 1920 presidential selection race. Ultimately, the delegates chose Warren Harding as a compromise candidate. He went on to represent the Republicans as a moderate in the November 1920 presidential election. Together with running mate Calvin Coolidge, they won a landslide victory over the Democrats.

Warren G. Harding was inaugurated as the 29th United States President on March 4th, 1921. He ran on the slogan “Return to Normalcy” which fit his leadership style. America was only two years past the end of WWI and the public longed for a return to pre-war normal. The country was in a financial recession with what many Americans thought was unnecessary ties still with foreign countries.

Harding focused on a protectionist America by lowering taxes, increasing foreign tariffs, and getting the country out of the League of Nations process that dynamited Woodrow Wilson’s presidency. In one year after taking off, the country rebounded and began prosperity never seen before. It was the Roaring Twenties.

Warren Harding was a hands-off president. He appointed people he thought he could trust into high office and let them loose to do their jobs. His error was not holding them accountable and, given human nature, even his closest friends began to abuse their positions for personal gain.

Harding’s other error—his vice and weakness—was womanizing, drinking, and gambling. Rumors put him having secret tunnels under the White House where he would smuggle his girls in and ply them with illegal alcohol. (Remember, this era was the start of Prohibition.) Harding’s poker games were legendary as well as a well-known fact that he supported mistresses and had at least one illegitimate daughter. Warren and Florence were childless.

Among the brewing political and criminal crises was what’s known as the Teapot Dome Scandal. This involved an oil-producing region in Wyoming that held reserves set apart for the U.S. Navy. Harding had appointed his close Marion Gang friend, Albert B. Fall, as Secretary of the Interior who oversaw the federal lands at Teapot Dome and had the power to award oil production contracts. Fall pocketed hundreds of thousands of payoff money for preferential treatment. This scandal (among others), which Harding knew about, had the potential to have President Harding impeached.

It was under this stressful black cloud that Warren Harding departed Washington on his “Voyage of Understanding” cross-country train and ship tour in June of 1923. Members of Harding’s staff observed his health rapidly deteriorating. A once vibrant man with the world’s best handshake was notably nervous and privately conferring with advisors about how to diffuse the runaway in the Marion Gang.

“I can take care of my enemies all right. But my damn friends… they’re the ones that keep me walking the floor at night,” Harding said to one aide. To another, “If you knew of a great scandal in our administration, would you for the good of the country and the party expose it publicly, or would you bury it?”

President Harding’s tour took him across the west and up to Alaska. He spoke before hundreds of thousands of common folks in places like St. Louis, Kansas City, Denver, Salt Lake City, Helena, and Spokane. He went to a small Alaskan village called Metlakatla, then did a by-stop in Vancouver, Canada before heading straight for San Francisco and checking into the Palace Hotel with an extensive entourage including the future president Herbert Hoover who was his Secretary of Commerce.

Harding’s health had been going downhill since leaving Washington. The stress of his job and unfolding issues gave him a malady then diagnosed as neurasthenia which is an overly nervous condition where the sufferer is unable to relax. Compounding this condition, including non-recognizing many presenting symptoms of bad physical health, was the president’s personal doctor.

Charles E. Sawyer was part of the Ohio Gang. Sawyer wasn’t a trained physician. He was an odd, self-taught homeopath who prescribed plants and birds and rocks and things (not sure about sand and hills and rings) as substitutes for accepted medical practices. But Sawyer was a likable, down-homey Oh-Hi-Yo officially forehead-stamp-approved by Mrs. Harding who saw Sawyer as a 1920s genuine guru teaching them a better way.

Harding also traveled with a real doctor—Joel T. Boone. Dr. Boone knew Harding was critically ill and telegrammed ahead from Alaska to San Francisco, having two of the country’s leading cardiology specialists standing by. These were Dr. Ray Lyman Wilbur, the president of the American Medical Society, and Dr. Charles Cooper, the leading cardiac surgeon in the USA.

Dr. Boone knew what was happening.  President Harding was presenting these symptoms:

  • Severe abdominal and thoracic pains as in a crushing weight on the chest
  • Pain radiating down both arms
  • Shortness of breath
  • Dyspnoea at night
  • Nausea
  • Severe bouts of indigestion
  • Off and on fever—chills & sweats
  • Exhaustion after little energetic effort
  • Foul acetonic breath

Dr. Boone knew President Harding was suffering congestive heart failure and likely experienced a series of myocardial infarctions where his enlarged heart muscles were quickly failing. Boone knew Harding’s heart was likely to stop, and that he would suddenly die.

That happened at 7:20 pm on August 2nd, 1923. President Harding was in his hotel suite with his wife and two nurse care aids. Florence was reading a favorable column in the Saturday Evening Post. Harding remarked, “That is good. Go on.”

Florence continued when, with only a shudder and not a sound, the President of the United States stiffened, laid back on the bed, and instantly died.

President Harding’s staff came into the room. That included Herbert Hoover and Doctors Sawyer, Boone, Wilbur, Cooper, and another cardiac expert, Hubert Work. These medical practitioners debated the primary cause of death.

They knew the American public would immediately want to know what happened to their Commander-in-Chief and be assured nothing illegal, conspirator, or dark was behind the president’s sudden and unexpected death—especially when the official reports released to the following press during the Voyage of Understanding assured that Warren Harding was a man fit to competently hold office and guide the nation.

The doctors knew, under the circumstances, that no conclusive cause of death could be established without a complete and thorough autopsy. To this, Florence Harding was fiercely opposed. As Doctor Wilbur put it in his notes written the next day, “We shall never know exactly the immediate cause of President Harding’s death since every effort that was made to secure an autopsy was met with complete and final refusal by Mrs. Harding.”

Knowing that the public must be notified of the president’s death as soon as possible and that they would demand to know what happened—what the true cause of death was—the team of five physicians signed this statement:

Realizing their rush to judgment without medical evidence (and strongly suspecting a myocardial infarction or a heart attack), they released this second statement twenty minutes later:

Stroke of Cerebral Apoplexy. Myocardial Infarction. Let’s look at what these medical terms mean.

So how did the 1923 American public and folks over the last one hundred years go from accepting that President Warren G. Harding died of natural causes to a conspirator suspicion that he was murdered—possibly by his wife?

I think a few reasons. One is the president’s staff poorly handled the president’s health information. One day the president was strong as an ox. The next day he died.

There was no autopsy. His body was embalmed an hour after death. And this was through an ironclad order from the wife, Florence Harding, who knew full well of her husband’s infidelity and unwinding scandals.

Note: I cannot find anything in historical notes to determine if there was a San Francisco coroner having jurisdiction and the authority to hold the body while an independent autopsy was done. Or if any other authorities like the SF police were notified.

The other factor was the collective doctors’ stick handling of the “probable cause of death.” They were aware of the public backlash for knowing how serious the president’s medical condition and the perception of them not being seen to do something about it and prevent his death, but they first wrote it off as an unpredictable and unpreventable stroke, not a preventable heart attack. From Dr. Wilbur’s notes:

“In the aftermath, we were belabored and attacked by the newspapers antagonistic to Harding, and by the cranks, quacks, antivisectionalists, nature healers, the Dr. Albert Abrams electronic-diagnostic group, and many others. We were accused of starving the president, overfeeding him to death, of assisting in slowly poisoning him, and plying him to death with pills and purgatives. We were accused of being abysmally ignorant, stupid and incompetent, and even of malpractice. We were said to have forced our way to Harding’s bedside “through political pull and for political reasons.”

But the craziest theory of them all came from a book written by Gaston B. Means in 1930 titled The Strange Death of President Harding. Means claimed that Florence Harding murdered her presidential husband with poison. Without a shred of evidence, Means suggested two motives. One was because of her husband’s cheating. The other was to save him the embarrassment of the scandals. Gaston Means, by the way, went to jail over a con job in scamming the Charles Lindberg baby homicide case.

One hundred years have passed since United States President Warren G. Harding passed. There’s no doubt Harding had a fatal heart attack. That’s life, but the fallout from living the presidential life sucks. Here are lines from Herbert Hoover while dedicating a memorial to President Harding:

We saw him gradually weaken not only from physical exhaustion but from mental anxiety. Warren Harding had a dim realization that he had been betrayed by a few of the men whom he trusted, by men whom he believed were his devoted friends. That was the tragedy of the life of Warren Harding.

NAHANNI — VALLEY OF THE HEADLESS HUMAN CADAVERS

Nahanni National Park Reserve in Canada’s Northwest Territories is an extremely remote, phenomenally pristine, and breathtakingly beautiful place. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site that’s visited by only those with the means and stamina to survive the ordeal. But despite being named the Holy Grail of whitewater bucket-list experiences, the Nahanni River holds a hostile history. It’s known as the valley of the headless human cadavers.

Since 1906 when the Nahanni River Valley was first explored by gold-seeking Europeans, 44 people have been reported as disappeared or found dead in the region. 6 of them were missing their heads and lying beside burned-out camps. There’s a local legend—some say supernatural suspicion—that explains this mystery. We’ll explore this phenomenon in a bit but, first, let’s look at the Nahanni itself.

To call the Nahanni remote is an understatement. The park covers 11,602 square miles and lies north of latitude 60 on the western side of Canada’s Arctic. Its boundary starts 300 miles from the nearest center of Yellowknife and, to put the distance in perspective, Nahanni is 3,570 crow-flying miles from downtown Manhattan.

Nahanni’s geology is utterly unique. It’s a blend of towering, icy-cold mountains and lush green river bottoms fueled by 250 smouldering hot-spring caverns creating mists of sulfuric air, giving the Nahanni valley an eerie, otherworld persona. From extreme winter cold dropping to fifty-plus below through to short, but warm and humid summers, the Nahanni is truly a place of extremes.

There are no human settlements in the Nahanni. The only access is regulated through permits issued by Parks Canada whose wardens act as oversight to the few who enter. Most visitors are wealthy adventurers who access the wilderness by floatplane and enjoy guided whitewater excursions along the 210-mile route that pounds through four canyons with 9,000-foot granite guardians. One stretch, at Virginia Falls, drops twice the height of Niagara with a nearly equal volume of water.

About 300 humans visit Nahanni per year but the park is teeming with life. According to Parks Canada, there are 42 mammal, 181 bird, 16 fish, 700 vascular plant, and 300 bryophyte lichen species recorded. Grizzly bears and wolf packs are the food chain’s apex… unless you consider the region’s winner of the most vicious creation award—the wolverine.

Speaking of humans, the Nahanni records 10,000 years of indigenous inhabitation. Human artifacts dating back to the age of the mastodon and the now-extinct bear dog have been excavated by archeologists. Clearly, the interaction between people and Nahanni’s nature has been ongoing for a long, long time.

Today, the Dene are the region’s First Nations people. They populate the southern and eastern areas outside the park but are the legal ancestorial owners of the land. However, according to Dene oral history, the Nahanni was once occupied by a small and separate tribe known as the Naha who mysteriously disappeared around the time of the white man’s arrival. Naha, in the Dene language, means “people from the Nahanni River Valley”.

European contact began in the late 1800s when Hudson’s Bay Company fur traders set up posts along the Mackenzie River which lies to the east of Nahanni and to which the Nahanni waters flow on their journey to the Arctic Ocean. The fur trade flourished, and native-white contact continued throughout the Yukon Gold Rush of 1898 and onward.

It was inevitable that gold fever would boil over from the Yukon into the Northwest Territories. The lure of gold does something to the human psyche where normal people will do abnormal things. This is where our story of the valley of the headless human cadavers begins, and I’ll outline the 6 specific cases.

Brothers Frank and Willie McLeod — In the summer of 1906, two Scottish brothers from Fort Liard ventured into the Nahanni valley in search of gold. They never returned. A 1908 search party found the pair deceased in a burned-out camp. The bodies were skeletonized and both their heads were gone. Today, the camp’s river tributary junction that runs into the Nahanni River is called Headless Creek, and the localized area is Deadman’s Valley.

Martin Jorgenson — He attempted to become a permanent Nahanni Valley resident. In 1917, Jorgenson, who was a Swiss prospector, relocated from the Yukon and built a small cabin in Nahanni. That same year Jorgenson’s cabin was burned, and his headless body lay nearby.

“Yukon” Fisher — This man lost his head in 1927 near the spot that claimed the McLeod brothers. “Yukon” Fisher was a part-time gold prospector and a part-time outlaw. He was wanted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in the Yukon and had fled to the Nahanni. Also like the McLeods, Fisher was found decapitated in a burned camp.

Phil Powers — In 1931, Phil Powers became the fifth poor soul to become beheaded in the Nahanni. His campsite, too, was consumed by fire.

The Unidentified Headless Man — Although this man (suspected to have come from Ontario) was never named, he joined the list of headless cadavers of the Nahanni Valley. It was in 1945. The body was wrapped in a sleeping bag lying beside a burned tent.

A list of names and suspected murder victims goes on through the Valley of the Nahanni. Angus Hall, Joe Mulholland, Bill Epier, and Annie Laferte disappeared without a trace. Hall and Laferte left nothing, but the cabin shared by Mulholland and Epier was—you guessed it—burned to the ground.

So, what was behind all this burning and beheading? If you search the legends, you’ll find these explanations:

The Nahanni Valley Monster — This creature is Bigfoot-like, and it likes to behead and burn white men.

The Evil Spirit — It’s a weather spirit that’s said to haunt the Nahanni, making its presence known with otherworldly shrieks on cold nights.

Giants — It’s also said that a race of Giants inhabit the Nahanni and cook their meals in Rabbitkettle Hotsprings.

Prehistoric Creatures — Native hunters and trappers speak of elders describing creatures that match known prehistoric animals like mastodons and bear dogs.

The Waheela — This is a huge, wolf-like being linked to deaths in Nahanni Valley.

The Nuk-Luk — Picture a short, bearded man who is half-naked and carrying a huge club.

Naha: The vanished tribe.

Dene oral history tells of a sub-tribe called the Naha (who were similar to the Dene and who spoke the same language) that lived in the Nahanni mountains, descending down to the valley floor to make war on trespassers. The Dene were fearful of the Naha and steered clear of the upper and central Nahanni region to avoid confrontation. The story goes that the Naha were a small band of maybe a dozen individuals that mysteriously disappeared in the mid-twentieth century.

Some Dene claim the Naha returned to the land where both tribes have connections, somewhere in the southwest United States. There may be some truth to this as Dene is an Athabaskan language and is linguistically similar to the Navajo and Apache dialects. To use the crow-fly measurement, the distance between the Nahanni and the Navajo/Apache lands is approximately 2400 miles—hardly a big deal by 1950 and an age of public transit.

But a more likely scenario is this. The Naha, a small group, occupied the upper and central regions of Nahanni. They were fiercely protective of their lands and not tolerant of invaders—not the Dene and certainly not the white gold seekers. It makes sense that these Naha warriors would eliminate threats to their land and their livelihood. Killing intruders, cutting off their heads, and burning their possessions would certainly send a “Keep Out” message. Eventually, a fight between intruding whites and the Naha wiped out the indigenous folks.

No, I can’t buy into the monster, the evil spirits, the giants, prehistoric creatures, the Waheela, the Nuk-Luk, or the weather theories. Supernatural entities and harsh climates cannot behead bodies and burn down cabins. In my opinion, it was the Naha who caused the headless human cadavers and, ultimately, it cost them their lives.

THE CIRCUS TRIAL OF THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY — THE HALL-MILLS MURDERS

On September 14, 1922, illicit lovers Edward Wheeler Hall and Eleanor Reinhardt Mills were murdered near New Brunswick, New Jersey. Hall, age 43, was a married Episcopalian minister. Mills, age 34 and married to a different man, was a soprano in his church choir. Three people—Hall’s legal wife and her two brothers—were charged with the crimes but acquitted. One hundred years later, few alive today have heard of the Hall-Mills murder trial but, back then, it was a media circus on par with the 1990s O.J. Simpson fiasco.

Normally, I write original material for the Dyingwords blog. Today, however, I’m going to plagiarize a bit because this description from The Yale Review says more about the sensational Hall-Mills side show than I can do justice to:

This steaming porridge of lust, murder, and scandal proved irresistible to the tabloids. As one eminent chronicler of the period outs it: “The Hall-Mills case had all the elements needed to satisfy an exacting public taste for the sensational. It was grisly, it was dramatic (the bodies being laid side to side as if to emphasize an unhallowed union), it involved wealth and respectability, it had just the right amount of sex interest–and in addition, it took place close to New York City, the great metropolitan nerve-center of the American press.”

The frenzied coverage turned the old Phillips farm, where the bodies were found, into a major tourist attraction. On weekends, the crime scene became a virtual carnival with vendors hawking popcorn, peanuts, soft drinks, and balloons to the hordes of the morbidly curious who arrived “at the rate of a thousand cars a day.” Within a few weeks, the crabapple tree, under which the bodies were lying, had been completely stripped of every branch and bit of bark by ghoulish souvenir hunters, while one enterprising individual peddled samples of the dirt surrounding the now-infamous tree for twenty-five cents a bag.

Back to the story of what happened, who probably did it, and why. Let’s start with the case facts.

The Reverend Ed Wheeler was born in Brooklyn and received his theology degree in Manhattan. He moved to New Jersey in 1909 and was tenured at the Evangelist Episcopal Church in New Brunswick. Here he met Frances Noel Stevens who was eight years his senior and filthy rich, being an heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune. They married in 1911 and had no children.

Eleanor Mills did have children. She was married to James E. Mills who was a sexton in Hall’s church and a rather n’er-do-well. Eleanor was an attractive and vivacious lady with an exceptional voice. She was a core member of the church and became Hall’s mistress.

It was no secret in New Brunswick’s society that Mills and Hall were having an affair. In fact, they were quite open about it. Many in the congregation gossiped and disapproved—not just of a clergy-parishioner relationship but the societal misalignment. Hall’s wife and family were upper class while Mills belonged with the working poor.

On September 16, 1922 (two days after Hall and Mills disappeared) a young couple walking through an orchard happened upon the bodies. Mills and Hall were lying side-by-side on their backs with their feet facing a crabapple tree. Hall was to Mill’s left with his arm touching hers while Mill’s arm was stretched, touching his. Hall’s Panama hat covered his face while Mills’ scarf wrapped her neck. Between the two were ripped-up love letters that Mills and Hall had previously passed back and forth. Notably, Reverend Hall’s calling card was set at his feet.

Autopsies showed both had been shot with a .32 caliber handgun. Hall received one gunshot wound to the head with the bullet entering above his right ear and travelling downward, exiting the left rear of his neck. Mills had three gunshot wounds. One was in the center of her forehead two inches above the nose. A second plowed through her right cheek. A third pierced her right temple.

There were minor bruises on Hall but couldn’t be conclusively linked to a struggle. Mills, on the other hand, had her throat slit from ear to ear, practically decapitating her. Her tongue had been extracted and was missing.

The initial investigation was How Not to Process a Crime Scene 101. The police failed to secure the area and a mass of onlookers had access not only to view the bodies but in handling evidence like the love letters and the calling card. The story quickly spread and became the frenzied craze described in the Yale Review excerpt.

From the onset, Hall’s wife—Frances Stevens Hall—was the prime suspect in setting up the murders. Not committing them, though, as that suspicion fell on her two brothers, Henry Hewgill Stevens and William “Willie” Carpender Stevens. The district attorney quickly took the case before a grand jury theorizing that Frances was the jealous mastermind while Henry and Willie were the obliging gunmen.

The grand jury didn’t buy it due to a lack of evidence. They rejected an indictment and the case went dormant for four years. In the legal system, that is.

In the news system, the Hall-Mills murder case was far from forgotten. The early 1920s was a vibrant time. Americans were recovering from a war and a pandemic. They wanted a release. The media gave it to them with the birth of American-style tabloids which rejected the stiff-collar, upper-crust reporting style of the New York Times.

William Randolph Hearst began publishing British-like papers targeting sensationalism. Hearst’s New York Daily Mirror competed with the already established tabloids New York Daily News and the New York Graphic. Hearst, being the cunning entrepreneur he was, looked to one-up the competition. He found one story that had it all—love & sex, money, and murder. Throw in a philandering clergyman and he had what Americans of the Roaring Twenties wanted to read.

The NY Daily Mirror resurrected the Hall-Mills murder case in 1925. Investigating reporters dug up “new evidence” which was so publicized that the New Jersey officials couldn’t ignore it. There were a few overlooked items from the 1922 investigation that showed up on the tabloid covers.

One was that Willie Stevens owned a .32 caliber pistol. Two was that Willie Stevens’s fingerprint was on the calling card found at the dead feet of Ed Hall. Three was the “Pig Woman” who claimed to have seen the murders go down.

This time, the New Brunswick grand jury indicted the three original suspects. The trial started on November 3, 1926 in neighboring Somerset, New Jersey. And if the original crime scene was a media gong show, that held nothing compared to the trial. At least three hundred news reporters covered the 33-day debacle.

The Pig Woman was the star prosecution witness. Now, there’s a story behind this pig lady. Her name was Jane Gibson or Jane Easton or Jane Upson, depending on what she wanted for the day. Jane got her pig woman name from being a farmer who kept hogs on the property next door to the orchard where the Hall and Hills bodies were found.

The Pig Woman never surfaced in the 1922 investigation, but she miraculously appeared when the tabloid coverage began. Jane stated that on the evening of September 14, 1922, her dog began barking and indicating toward the orchard. Being curious, Jane rode her mule over to the site and witnessed the three accused Stevens siblings there with the victims. As she was leaving, she heard gunshots, then went back to see Mrs. Frances Hall weeping over her dead husband’s body.

Now credibility is an important issue in witness testimony. It doesn’t help a jury’s impression when the witness’s mother (Jane’s own mom) kept yelling from the back of the courtroom while her daughter was testifying, “She’s a liar. A liar. A liar.” Nor does it create a reassuring picture when the star witness, who’s being called a liar, testifies from a hospital bed that had to be wheeled into the packed-to-over-capacity courtroom.

The three accused, Frances Stevens Hall, Henry Stevens, and Willie Stevens, all took the stand and testified on their own behalf. Frances, the stoic, denied any motivation, means, and opportunity. Henry’s defense was “Prove it. I have nothing to hide”. Willie was a special case. He was known as “Nutty Willie” in the community and probably had high-functioning autism. Apparently, he played the prosecutor like a hooked fish.

To use the cliché “in the end”, the jury acquitted Frances, Henry, and Willie. Their dream team defense counsel turned the trial into a class war where Ed Hall stooped to be with a common cheating wife like Eleanor Mills and they deserved what they got. Here’s a quote from a Rutgers pdf paper titled The Hall-Mills Murder Case: The Most Fascinating Unsolved Murder in America:

Frances Hall was presented as a paragon, along with her two brothers. “Have they been thugs?”, her lawyer asked the jury. ”Have they criminal records? Are they thieves? No. They are refined, genteel, law-abiding people, the very highest type of character, churchgoing Christians, who up to this time enjoyed the perfect admiration and respect of their friends and neighbors.”

When the jury acquitted Frances, Henry, and Willie the media manic trial was over, but the tabloids milked it until another sensational case came about. In 1932, famed aviator Charles Lindbergh’s baby was abducted and murdered. The tabloids finally closed the Hall-Mills case.

Over the last century, there’ve been numerous books written and articles submitted that looked at the Hall-Mills murders. There’s a guy named Julius Bolyog who came out 47 years after the murders stating he was a middle-man between the Frances and Willie connection and the hired killers. I seriously question his credibility. His account doesn’t pass the smell test, but you can listen to a 9-part recording produced in 1970 documenting Bolyog’s claim.

Then there’s the exhaustive work by Gerald Tomlinson titled Fatal Tryst: Who Killed the Minister and the Choir Singer? This author somehow concludes the Ku Klux Klan did it. Whatever.

So, what do I think? What an old murder cop thinks? Someone who’s been there, done that in murders?

The first thing to mind is the body positions. This was ritualistic. Hall and Mills were placed on their backs, touching each other, facing the crabapple tree with their torn love letters between them for a reason. These murders were all about infidelity.

I don’t think they were killed at this site. Rather, they were shot elsewhere and transported to the orchard knowing full well they’d be found, and the statement made. The killers wanted their victims publicly presented and a message sent.

I say killers (plural) because I don’t believe Hall and Mills were done at the dump site. It’d take two people to load, transport, and display the bodies. Handling a limp dead body by yourself is a tough go. Believe me. I was a coroner, and I know about the challenges in handling dead bodies.

I find the gunshot wounds telling. Ed Hall was shot from above and downward. From his upper right to his lower left. Eleanor Mills was shot three times, and it seems to me the shooter had to work on her. I’d say the first shot caught her struggling and zipped through her cheek. The second was more controlled and went through her temple. The third was a finish-off through the forehead after she was face-first controlled.

Control. This crime speaks to a planned control. The killers and plotter had to find the two—Ed Hall and Eleanor Mills—together and take control so they would initially cooperate. This might have been in a vehicle as it’s had to quickly get out of a vehicle when things go deadly fast.

I speculate the killers sucked Hall and Mills into the back seat of a car. Hall was on the rear driver’s side. Mills was on the rear passenger’s side.

By sucking in, I mean blackmailing. Somehow, the killers got Hall and Mills attention to get them controlled. Blackmailing will do that.

The gunshot patterns are telling. I speculate the shooter was in the passenger front position. The other killer was behind the wheel. The shooter first pulled the trigger on Hall which explains the downward, right-to-left trajectory.

I speculate Mills immediately turned left toward Hall when he was shot, exposing the right side of her face to the gunman. The shooter turned the pistol on her and got the first bullet through her cheek as she was moving to her left. The second shot to Mills got her in the right temple which would be a natural trajectory. The third shot was a fate-de-complete in her forehead. Probably this was post mortem in the orchard because the exhibit list records one .32 casing found at the death site.

The throat slit? I speculate this was also symbolic, but I don’t speculate this was done in the car. Too hard to do and too messy—too much blood. I’d say this was done post-mortem, in the orchard after the bodies were placed. The throat-slit and de-tonguing symbolism? Something about a message not to talk, I’d guess.

Who do I speculate were the mastermind, shooter, and wheelman?

I use two homicide investigation principles I’ve known for years. One is Occam’s razor—where when presented with two opposing hypotheses, the simplest answer is usually the correct answer. The Ku Klux Klan? Or within the family?

Two is the time-tested principle that the stranger the case, the closer the answer is to home. The Ku Klux Klan or the family?

So who, in my old murder cop opinion, planned it, carried it out, and why?

Frances Stevens Hall ordered it to send a message to New Brunswick’s society. She’d had enough of her cheating husband embarrassing her with a low-class floozie. She needed to send a strong social statement to maintain her wealth and power status.

I’d say Henry pulled the trigger while Willie was behind the wheel. It’s just a guess. But I’d say Willie, with his autistic creativity, staged the dump scene.

Then, again, who am I to speculate 100 years after the fact.