Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]
Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Murder & Mayhem in Jefferson County
    Murder & Mayhem in Jefferson County
    Murder & Mayhem in Jefferson County
    Ebook162 pages3 hours

    Murder & Mayhem in Jefferson County

    By Cheri L. Farnsworth

    4.5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    The author of Wicked Northern New York delivers the most chilling historic true crime stories from the state’s northern tier.
     
    Jefferson County, located in New York’s beautiful North Country, has a dark and violent past. During the long winter months, it was not the cold that was feared, but the killers. In 1828, Henry Evans committed a crime so brutal that the location in Brownsville is still called Slaughter Hill. A real-life Little Red Riding Hood, eleven-year-old Sarah Conklin met someone far worse than a wolf on her way home from school in 1875. And in 1908, Mary Farmer, a beautiful young mother hacked her neighbor to death and was sent to the electric chair. Author Cheri L. Farnsworth has compiled the stories of the most notorious criminal minds of Jefferson County’s early history.
     
    Includes photos!
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateApr 29, 2011
    ISBN9781614234333
    Murder & Mayhem in Jefferson County
    Author

    Cheri L. Farnsworth

    Cheri Farnsworth has written the following regional titles (some under the name of Cheri Revai): Haunted Northern New York (vols. 1-4, 2002-10), Haunted Massachusetts (2005), Haunted New York (2005), Haunted Connecticut (2006), Haunted New York City (2008), The Big Book of New York Ghost Stories (2009), Haunted Hudson Valley (2010), Adirondack Enigma: The Depraved Intellect and Mysterious Life of North Country Wife Killer Henry Debosnys (2010), Murder & Mayhem in Jefferson County (2010), Murder & Mayhem in St. Lawrence County (2010), Alphabet Killer: The True Story of Rochester's "Double Initial" Murders (2010) and Wicked Northern New York (2011). She enjoys researching regional history, especially about crime and disaster, and finds the connection between history and the paranormal intriguing as well. Farnsworth is retired and lives in Massena, New York, with her husband, three peculiar cats and one crazy, cuddly Labradoodle.

    Read more from Cheri L. Farnsworth

    Related to Murder & Mayhem in Jefferson County

    Related ebooks

    Murder For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    Related categories

    Reviews for Murder & Mayhem in Jefferson County

    4.5/5

    2 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Murder & Mayhem in Jefferson County - Cheri L. Farnsworth

      INTRODUCTION

      I like to think that we’re a pretty tough lot up here in the North Country. We joke that when it drops to forty below and even hell freezes over, school might be delayed a measly two hours if we’re lucky. That’s how accustomed we are to extreme temperatures. But it’s not just the climate we have to worry about in the winter months. It’s the shorter days and decreased daylight of that time of year. An estimated one in ten people who live in northern climates like ours are plagued by serious mood changes each year between late fall and spring when the days are shorter. Its proper name is Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), but in its milder form, we might call it the winter blues. Severe cases of SAD, which is believed to manifest due to daylight and vitamin D deficiencies, exhibit symptoms such as depression, ranging from mild to suicidal; lethargy; lack of energy; hopelessness, anxiety, lack of tolerance, irritability; and social problems. Why am I telling you all of this? Because, besides the late summer murder-suicide of Jessie and Roy Burlingame in 1922 and the suspicious drowning deaths of Mary and William Ockwood in May 1897, all other cases in this book involved cold-weather murders. I can’t help but wonder about a correlation between SAD and suicidal or homicidal tendencies in those most severely afflicted by it. But there’s an expression northern New Yorkers have long been familiar with that mimics the symptoms of SAD and perhaps makes even more sense as a possible element in crimes of the past—cabin fever.

      Except for winter recreation, like skiing, sledding and skating, we pretty much hunker down for the winter and stay inside for several months of below-freezing temperatures each year. But houses today are larger than they were one or two hundred years ago. Everyone has their own space. We have television, the Internet, telephones, gaming systems, mp3 players and everything imaginable that one would need to keep oneself entertained for hours on end. And we have nice warm vehicles that we can climb into on a whim to go for a drive—even in a snowstorm—if we get tired of staying in. Our ancestors had none of these things. They were cooped up inside for extended periods in the winter months with nothing to do; and if one person wasn’t happy, I guarantee nobody was—they wanted out. That’s cabin fever. The expression is synonymous with winter blues, as is SAD, and it’s also analogous to going stir crazy. According to Wikipedia (the online encyclopedia), it occurs with symptoms of excessive sleep or restlessness, forgetfulness, irritability, irrational frustration with everyday objects and distrust of anyone they are with. That couldn’t be good for families crammed together in tiny, cold log cabins in the days long before electricity and the automobile. Does it justify killing each other off? Of course not. (If they thought they were going stir crazy stuck at home with their families, imagine what serving a life sentence in the state prison system felt like!) I only mention cabin fever and SAD here in reference to the coincidental timing of the vast majority of the county’s most sensational, historical murder cases. Eight of the ten murders described in these pages happened between late November and mid-April.

      Another coincidence that couldn’t be ignored was that half of the stories I wrote about involved women named Mary. Granted, Mary was the most popular girls’ name in those days, but the fact that the name found itself enmeshed in so many sensational murder cases in just one county warrants mention. First, there was Mary Ward, who was shot in the back as she fled a gun-wielding madman named Henry Miles in the town of LeRay in December 1873. Then there was Mary Crouch and Mary Daly of Sackets Harbor, two best friends who were shot and killed (and dragged and burned) by George Allen-Haynes in April 1897 on their return from a pleasant outing. Haynes’s motive for such an atrocity? He had asked Mary Daly to marry him, and they were to be wed that very weekend, but Haynes was already married to someone else and engaged to yet a third woman, and he had to think fast to eliminate at least one of his problems. So he killed the women and attempted to frame Mary Crouch’s ex-husband for the murders. Mary Ockwood met her untimely end under mysterious circumstances in May 1897 after departing by boat from Sackets Harbor with her husband. When her body washed up on shore, authorities were overly confident that she had been beaten to death, based on serious head wounds. So they blamed her husband, who was nowhere to be found—until his body, too, washed up on shore some time later. Last, but not least, was Mary Farmer. Mary Farmer was the epitome of a cold-blooded killer and was ultimately sent to the electric chair for her crime. She hacked her next-door neighbor, Sarah Brennan, to death in early April 1908 and stuffed her body into a trunk to conceal the deed. The next day, she moved into the victim’s Brownville home—trunk and all—kicked the victim’s bewildered husband out and attempted to convince him that Mrs. Brennan had left him and sold his house to the Farmers. You can’t make this stuff up.

      Brownville’s other notorious hack job, if you will, occurred in 1828, when Henry Evans took an axe to three men who had entered his home to evict him, mortally wounding two. Evans was subsequently hanged. The location of the murders has since been called Slaughter Hill. In 1873, there were two well-publicized crimes. A young woman named Emma Baritau died at the hands of a doctor and spinster after an illegal abortion they performed on her between Christmas and New Year’s Day; and Charles Wenham was beaten to death and thrown in the partially frozen Deerlick Creek following a well-orchestrated robbery. At least it seemed well-orchestrated, until the killers were caught. One snuck a lethal dosage of strychnine on the way to jail and successfully killed himself before the people could get to him; the other, Charles Sutherland, was sent to the gallows to pay the ultimate penalty. Thus, three men lost their lives in the fray—all over a lousy $125.

      Sarah Conklin met her fate in the town of Rockland on November 30, 1875, shortly after school got out. It was one of the rare occasions when her father didn’t come to school to pick her up, so the eleven-year-old was enjoying a rare taste of freedom as she made her way through the woods toward home that day. She was wearing a warm, red riding hood when she walked straight into the trap of killer, and it wasn’t the big bad wolf. Frank Ruttan, the accused, was a brute of a boy at fourteen. He allegedly waited for the victim after seeing her leave school alone from the upper level of the barn where he worked. Then he beat her, choked her and left her for dead. The little girl had rejected his advances and tattled on him several weeks earlier, and he was determined to get his revenge. But revenge is not so sweet when the price to pay is life imprisonment. Although Ruttan got what he deserved, George Powell never did. Powell was implicated in two well-publicized Sterlingville crimes. First, in March 1876, his young wife, according to Powell, walked down to the creek a short distance from their back door and proceeded to drown herself. Instead of diving in after her, even though she had just barely turned up missing, he went to find a neighbor to undertake that grim (and chilling) task, telling investigators that he wasn’t good with that kind of stuff, meaning dead bodies and such. Everyone, it seems—neighbors, investigators, and even the district attorney—felt he knew far more than he was saying, since his wife’s body was covered with fresh bruises, indicating foul play. Still, he insisted she had been unwell and despondent after having lost a baby two months before. Lucky for George Powell, the investigation was mishandled from the start, and he was never even asked to give a sworn statement for the coroner’s inquest, so he wasn’t charged with anything. That same year, just before Christmas, only six months after his wife’s suspicious death, Powell’s name made the news again. This time, he attempted to procure an abortion on a girl he had recently hired as a domestic servant. He sent Ella Allen away to a doctor in Philadelphia, New York, who performed the illegal procedure for which Powell had already paid. The ordeal nearly killed her and left her suicidal. Powell seemed to have that effect on women.

      Needless to say, Jefferson County—one of seven counties that make up the northern New York region—has had more than its share of historic true crime. Although settlement of the rugged terrain began in the 1790s, the county was officially born in 1805. That same year, its seat—the hub of activity for countywide criminal proceedings—became Watertown, the county’s only city. In August 1828, Henry Evans had the distinction of becoming the first man to be hanged in county history. Today, he has the distinction of being the first killer discussed in this book. In 1862, the third and current county courthouse was built at the intersection of Arsenal and Sherman Streets, just two blocks west of the Public Square historic district (or city center). It was there, in the red brick and limestone courthouse still standing, that every single murder case in this book, except that of Henry Evans, was tried. Think about that the next time you drive through Public Square toward the familiar County Courthouse Complex. Think about the killers taken by horse and buggy along that same route in shackles and handcuffs one or two hundred years ago (not to mention the killers driven by squad car in more recent times). The journey to the Jefferson County Courthouse—for those who have done wrong—has always been one filled with dread and uncertainty. It surely was for the people involved in the following stories, for it was there that justice was served, and it was there that they learned their fate, be it freedom, death by execution or incarceration.

      While most locals are familiar with the twentieth-century murders of Patsy Vineyard, Irene Izak, Cherie Dobbin, Christine Vaadi and Bonnie Hector—to name just a few—not many people are aware of the equally sensational murders of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. That’s where this book comes in. You already know the contemptible deviates, like Arthur Shawcross, Stuart Moss and Adrian Rusho. Now, let me introduce you to the worst killers of yesteryear.

      CHAPTER 1

      THE AXE MURDERS ON SLAUGHTER HILL

      BROWNVILLE, 1828

      On a late winter’s eve

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1