PANTHER ACROSS THE SKY

Did the Defeat of an American Indian Leader Bring About an American Curse?

On November 7, 1811, American forces led by Indiana Territory Governor William Henry Harrison defeated the great Indian confederacy led by Tecumseh in the Battle of Tippecanoe. Today, we know little about this story but oddly, Tecumseh was one of the most enigmatic figures in American history and one who may have predicted one of the most destructive events to ever occur in the Midwest.

Strange things began to happen in the Missouri Territory in 1811. Residents along the Mississippi River, near the settlement of New Madrid, began reporting all manner of weird happenings. First, it was the animals. Livestock began to act nervous and excited. Dogs began to bark and howl and even the most domesticated of animals turned vicious. Wild animals began to act tame. Deer wandered out of the woods and up to the doors of cabins. Flocks of ducks and geese landed near people. It was unlike anything the local residents had ever seen before. Soon, stories spread of eerie lights that were seen in the woods and in the hills. Strange, bluish white flashes and balls of light were seen floating in the trees and cresting the nearby ridges.

Perhaps strangest of all, especially to the more superstitious among the settlers, was the comet that had been seen in the sky for months. In the fall of 1811, it was at its brightest and in September of that year, this anomaly in the sky was joined by a solar eclipse that led some to believe that a dire event was coming soon. And they were right.

During the winter of 1811-1812, a series of devastating earthquakes shook the nation. They are known today as the New Madrid earthquakes due to their horrible effects on the small town of New Madrid, Missouri. They caused destruction like never seen, before or since, and gave rise to incredible accounts of bizarre events, including the fact that the Mississippi River actually ran backward for a time.

The New Madrid earthquakes had a major effect not only on the Mississippi Valley but on American history. They were also connected to an intriguing supernatural prediction allegedly made by the Shawnee Indian leader, Tecumseh.

Tecumseh, whose name mean "Shooting Star" or "Panther Across the Sky"

Tecumseh (whose name meant “Shooting Star” or “Panther Across the Sky”) was born in March 1768, just north of present-day Xenia, Ohio. It was a time of a growing America and as white settlers spread westward, violence and bloodshed began to occur as the Americans encroached on Indian territory. Violence continued after the American Revolution. The Wabash Confederacy formed and included all of the major tribes of the Ohio and Illinois country. They joined together in an attempt to keep American settlers out of the region. As the war between the confederacy and the Americans intensified, Tecumseh took an active role, fighting alongside his older brother, Cheeseekua. Tecumseh took part in several battles, including the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, which ended the war in favor of the Americans.

Tecumseh settled in what is now Greenville, Ohio, the home of his younger brother, Lowawluwaysica ("One With Open Mouth") who would later take the new name of Tenskwatawa ("The Open Door") and achieve widespread fame as "The Shawnee Prophet." Tenskwatawa began a religious revival among the Shawnee in 1805 when he rooted out the “cause” of a smallpox outbreak by hunting down a witch. His beliefs were based on the teachings of early tribal prophets, who had predicted a coming apocalypse that would destroy the European settlers. A revival of the prophecies became very popular at a time when it seemed the flood of white settlers was going to engulf the Indian lands. Tenskwatawa urged his people to reject the ways of the Europeans, give up firearms, liquor and European- style clothing. He called on them to only pay traders half the value of their debts, and to refrain from giving over any more land to the United States. These teachings created great tension between the settlers and Tenskwatawa’s followers and were openly opposed by Shawnee leader Black Hoof, who was trying to maintain peace with the Americans.

The first record of Tecumseh’s peacetime interactions with Americans was in 1807, when Indian agent William Wells met with Blue Jacket and other Shawnee leaders to determine their intentions after the murder of a settler. Wells was highly respected by the Indians on the frontier Tecumseh was among those who spoke with Wells and assured him that his band of Shawnee intended to remain at peace. He explained to Wells that his people intended to follow the will of the Great Spirit and the teachings of his prophet, Tenskwatawa. They planned to move to a new village, deeper in the frontier and farther away from the newly arriving settlers.

But Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh did not leave the region. In fact, Tenskwatawa continued to attract new followers. By 1808, tensions between the settlers and the Shawnee escalated to the point that Black Hoof demanded that Tenskwatawa and his people leave the area. Tecumseh was among the leaders of the group and he helped to decide to move them farther northwest and establish the village of Prophets Town near the confluence of the Wabash and Tippecanoe rivers. The site was in territory that belonged to the Miami Indians and Chief Little Turtle of that tribe warned them not to settle there. Despite the threat, they moved into the region. The Miami did not take action against them and it is believed that Tecumseh may have already been holding council with them to build a large tribal confederacy to counter the American expansion into Indian lands.

Within a short time, Tenskwatawa’s religious teachings became more widely known, as did his predictions of coming doom for the Americans. He attracted numerous members of other tribes to Prophets Town and this formed the basis for the confederacy of southwestern Great Lakes tribes that Tecumseh envisioned. He eventually emerged as the leader of this confederation, although it was largely built on the religious appeal of his younger brother.

In September 1809, William Henry Harrison, at that time governor of the newly formed Indiana Territory, negotiated the Treaty of Fort Wayne in which a delegation of Indians ceded three million acres of Native American lands to the United States. The treaty is largely regarded as a farce. It was not authorized by President Thomas Jefferson and the Indians were not only bribed with large subsidies but were given liberal doses of alcohol before the negotiations began.

Tecumseh’s strong opposition to the treaty marked his emergence as a prominent leader. Although Tecumseh and the Shawnee did not lay claim to any of the land that was sold, he was shocked by the sale since many of the followers at Prophets Town, including the Piankeshaw, Kickapoo, and Wea, were the primary inhabitants of the lands in question. Tecumseh reminded the Native Americans of an idea first advanced by the Shawnee leader Blue Jacket years before: that Indian land was owned in common by all tribes and could not be sold without agreement by all.

Tecumseh was not ready to confront the United States directly, so he instead spoke out against the Indian leaders who had signed the treaty. He began to travel widely, making impassioned speeches in which he urged warriors to abandon the chiefs who had betrayed them and join him in a resistance to the treaty. It was illegal, he insisted, and asked Governor Harrison to nullify it. He warned him that whites should not attempt to settle on the lands that were stolen by the treaty.

In August of 1810, Tecumseh led 400 warriors from Prophets Town to confront Harrison at his home in Vincennes. Their appearance terrified the townspeople and the situation turned heated when Harrison rejected Tecumseh’s demand. The governor argued that individual tribes could have relations with the United States and added that Tecumseh’s interference had angered the tribes who had sold the land.

Tecumseh’s anger boiled over and he ordered his men to kill Harrison on the spot. The governor bravely drew his sword, determined to go down fighting. The small garrison that defended the town quickly moved to protect Harrison. Before fighting began, Pottawatomi chief Winnemac stepped forward and urged the warriors to leave in peace. He explained to Tecumseh that violence was not the way to handle the situation and Tecumseh reluctantly agreed. Before he left, however, he told Harrison that unless he rescinded the treaty, he would seek an alliance with the British, who were already at work on the frontier trying to incite the Indians to rise up against the American settlers. As early as 1810, British agents had sought to secure an alliance with the Native Americans tribes to assist in the defense of Canada should war with the United States break out. The Indians had been reluctant to accept, fearing there was no benefit to the alliance. Following the confrontation with Harrison, Tecumseh secretly accepted the offer of alliance and the British began to supply his confederacy with firearms and ammunition.

Tecumseh had already attracted a great following but he and his brother, Tenskwatawa, were soon able to rally even more. It was said that Tecumseh claimed that the Great Spirit would send a “sign” to the Native Americans to show that he had been chosen to lead them and in March 1811, a great comet began to appear in the night sky. Tecumseh, whose name meant “Shooting Star,” told his people that the comet signaled his rise to power. The confederacy accepted it as the sign they had been waiting for.

A short time later, Tecumseh again met with William Henry Harrison after being summoned following the murder of settlers on the frontier. Tecumseh told Harrison that the Shawnee and their Native American brothers wanted to remain at peace with the United States but the differences between them had to be resolved. The meeting was likely a ploy to buy time while he built a stronger confederacy. Harrison was not fooled by Tecumseh’s claim of wanting peace. He was more convinced than ever that hostilities were imminent.

After the meeting with Harrison, Tecumseh traveled south on a mission to recruit allies among the Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw and Seminole. Most of the southern nations rejected his appeals, but a faction of the Creeks, who became known as the Red Sticks, answered his call to arms against the white men, leading to the Creek War. They were eventually defeated by General Andrew Jackson in 1814.

While Tecumseh was away in the south, another “miraculous” event occurred that convinced his followers that a war with the Americans was the right course of action. On September 17, 1811, a solar eclipse occurred – a “Black Sun” that was allegedly predicted by the prophet Tenskwatawa. A “Black Sun” was said to predict a future war and Tenskwatawa was believed to have prophesied the coming of the eclipse many weeks before. It is widely believed today that he consulted with an astronomer about the eclipse, but no one knew this at the time. The prediction seemed to be a supernatural one – but it was nothing compared to the one that Tecumseh would make a short time later.

Harrison left the territory for business in Kentucky shortly after the meeting with Tecumseh, leaving John Gibson as acting-governor. Gibson, who had lived among the Miami tribe for many years, was given word about Tecumseh’s plans for war. He immediately called out the militia and sent an emergency letter to Harrison, asking him to return. The militia soon formed and Harrison returned with a small force of army regulars. He had received word from Washington, which authorized him to march up the Wabash River from Vincennes on a preemptive expedition to intimidate Tenskwatawa and his followers and force them to make peace. Tecumseh was still in the south, lobbying tribes to join his confederation.

Harrison gathered the militia companies near a settlement north of Vincennes and was joined by a 60-man company from Croydon, Indiana, called the Yellow Jackets, so named for their bright yellow coats, and two companies of Indiana Rangers. His entire force of about 1,000 set out toward Prophets Town. The army reached the site of present-day Terre Haute on October 3. They camped and built Fort Harrison while they waited for supplies to be delivered. On October 10, Indians ambushed a scouting party of Yellow Jackets and prevented the soldiers from hunting in the nearby woods. Supplies began to run low and on October 19, rations were cut. Finally, nine days later, a shipment of food and ammunition arrived and an encampment was set up near the confluence of the Wabash and Tippecanoe rivers.

During the early morning hours of November 7, the Native Americans attacked.
Many years later, Tenskwatawa denied that he ordered his warriors to attack Harrison. He blamed the Winnebagos in his camp for launching the attack, or at least encouraging it. Without Tecumseh’s military leadership, his brother was unable to control his followers. The people of Prophets Town were worried by the nearby army and feared being overwhelmed by the white soldiers. They had begun to fortify the town, but the defenses had not been completed. During the evening, Tenskwatawa consulted with the spirits and decided that sending a party to murder Harrison in his tent was the best way to avoid a battle. He assured the warriors that he would cast spells that would prevent them from being harmed and confuse the Americans so they would not resist. The warriors began looking for a way to sneak into the camp but the attack on Harrison failed.

Around 4:30 a.m., Harrison’s sentinels were shocked to find warriors advancing on them from the early morning fog. Soldiers awoke to scattered gunshots and discovered themselves almost encircled by Tenskwatawa's forces. First contact was made on the north side of the camp, but this was likely a diversion since fierce fighting broke out moments later as Indians charged the southern corner of the line. The attack took the army by surprise as the warriors shouted and rushed at the defenders. Yellow Jacket commander Captain Speir Spencer was among the first to be killed. 
Lieutenants McMahan and Berry, the other two Yellow Jacket commanding officers, were also soon wounded and killed. Without leadership, the Yellow Jackets began to fall back from the main line, retreating with scores of militia soldiers. The warriors rushed after them and entered the camp. The soldiers regrouped under the command of Ensign John Tipton, a future U.S. Senator, and with the help of two reserve companies under the command of Captain Rodd, repulsed the warriors and sealed the breach in the line.

The second charge by the Native Americans hit both the north and south ends of the camp, with the southern end being attacked the hardest. The regulars were able to reinforce the line and hold their position as the assaults continued. On the northern end of the camp, Major Joseph Daviess led his men in a counter charge that punched through the Indian lines before being repulsed. Most of the men made it back to Harrison’s line but Daviess was killed. Throughout the next hour, the troops fought off several more brutal charges. When the Indians began to run low on ammunition and the sun rose, revealing the small size of Tenskwatawa's army, they finally began to withdraw. A rallying charge by the regulars forced the remaining Native Americans to flee. The Battle of Tippecanoe had lasted just over two hours.

The Indians retreated to Prophets Town where, according to one chief's account, the warriors confronted Tenskwatawa and accused him of deceit because of the many deaths, which his spells were supposed to have prevented. He blamed his wife for desecrating his magic medicine and offered to cast a new spell. He insisted that the warriors launch a second attack, but they refused.

Fearing that Tecumseh was on his way with reinforcements, Harrison ordered his men to fortify the camp with earthworks. As the sentries moved back into position, they discovered – and scalped – the bodies of 36 warriors. The following day, November 8, Harrison sent men to inspect the town and found that it was deserted, except for one elderly woman who was too sick to leave. The rest of the defeated Indian forces had left during the night. Harrison ordered the troops to spare the old woman but to burn down Prophets Town and to destroy the Indians’ cooking implements, which would make it hard for the confederacy to survive the winter. Everything of value was taken, including 5,000 bushels of corn and beans. Some of the soldiers dug up bodies from the burial grounds and scalped them. Harrison’s troops buried their own dead on the site of their camp and then built large fires over the mass grave in an attempt to conceal it. However, after Harrison’s troops had departed, the Indians dug up the corpses and scattered the remains in retaliation.

After the battle, the wounded soldiers were loaded into wagons and taken to Fort Harrison to recuperate. Most of the militia was released from duty and returned home. In his initial report to Washington, Harrison told of the battle at Tippecanoe and stated that he feared reprisals from the Indians. The first dispatch did not make it clear who had won the engagement and Secretary of War William Eustis at first interpreted it as a defeat. The next dispatch made the American victory clear and spoke of the defeat of Tecumseh’s confederation since no second attack materialized. Eustis replied with a lengthy note demanding to know why Harrison had not taken adequate precautions in fortifying his camp. Harrison responded that he considered the position strong enough to not require fortification. The dispute was the start of a disagreement between Harrison and the Department of War that later caused him to resign from the army in 1814. But the battle certainly did not damage his reputation. When he ran for President of the United States during the election of 1840, he used the slogan "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too" to remind people of his heroism during the battle.

Accounts vary as to the immediate effect the loss had on Tenskwatawa. Some reports claimed that he lost much of his prestige after the battle because his claims that the warriors could not be hurt proved to be untrue. During meetings with Harrison after the battle, several tribal leaders claimed that his influence was destroyed. However, some historians believe that this was likely an attempt to mislead Harrison and calm the situation and that Tenskwatawa actually continued to play an important role in the confederacy.

Massacres of settlers became commonplace in the aftermath of the battle. Numerous homes and settlements in the Indiana and Illinois territories were attacked, leading to the deaths of many residents. Prophets Town was partially rebuilt over the next year, but was again destroyed in another campaign against the Indians in 1812. The Battle of Tippecanoe was a serious blow to Tecumseh's dream of a confederacy. When he returned from his travels, Tecumseh was angry with his brother, whom he had instructed to keep peace.

Tecumseh continued to play a major role in military operations on the frontier, however, and by 1812 the confederacy and Tecumseh had regained some of their former strength. Many believe that this resurgence in power was in large part thanks to the events that occurred along the Mississippi River in the winter of 1811-1812.
In the spring and summer of 1811, Tecumseh began traveling to villages in the Midwest and the South, urging the tribes to join his confederacy. Many warriors joined him, although others ignored his pleas, doubting that he would succeed. One Alabama tribe, whose camp along the Mississippi River Tecumseh visited in November, even treated him with contempt. This angered Tecumseh so much that he told them that when he returned to his home, he would stomp on the ground and cause their village to fall down. They laughed at him – but it seemed that Tecumseh’s threat was fulfilled a few weeks later.

On December 16, the devastating New Madrid Earthquake shook the South and the Midwest. Some of the Alabama tribe believed that Tecumseh’s supernatural power actually caused the earth to shake while others believed he prophesied that the event would occur. While the interpretation of this event varied from tribe to tribe, one consensus was universally accepted: the powerful earthquake had to have meant something. For many tribes it meant that Tecumseh was a powerful leader and must be supported.

When the earthquakes began, Tecumseh was at the Shawnee and Delaware Indian villages near Cape Girardeau, Missouri, fifty miles north of the epicenter at New Madrid. The earthquakes continued as he traveled back to Prophets Town. He arrived there in February 1812 and by that time, word of his mysterious prediction had spread and more allies had flocked to his cause. Despite the setback of the battle, Tecumseh began to rebuild the confederacy.

He soon led his forces to join the British army as they invaded northwest from Canada. Tecumseh joined British Major-General Sir Isaac Brock in the siege of Detroit and forced its surrender in August 1812. This victory was reversed a little over a year later, as Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry's victory on Lake Erie, late in the summer of 1813, cut British supply lines and forced them to withdraw. The British burned all public buildings in Detroit and retreated into Upper Canada along the Thames Valley. Tecumseh and his men followed fighting rearguard actions to slow the American advance.

A second British commander, Major-General Henry Proctor, did not fare as well with Tecumseh as his predecessor did and the two disagreed over tactics. Proctor favored withdrawing into Canada when the Americans faced a harsh winter. Tecumseh, however, was eager to launch an offensive that would ravage the American army and allow his warriors to return home to the northwest regions. Proctor failed to appear at Chatham, Ontario, though he promised Tecumseh that he would attack the Americans there. Tecumseh moved his men to meet Proctor and told him that he would withdraw no further. If the British continued to want his help, then fighting needed to be carried out. William Henry Harrison crossed into upper Canada on October 5, 1813 and won a victory against the British and their Native American allies at the Battle of Thames. Tecumseh was killed, and shortly after the battle the tribes of his confederacy surrendered to Harrison at Detroit.

Tecumseh remains an enigmatic figure today. He is seen as a hero to many, refusing to give in to the overwhelming wave of white settlement. But in his time, he was greatly feared as a killer of innocents and a hindrance to the development of the country. What he actually was remains in the eye of the beholder.

But one question still baffles us: did Tecumseh predict the New Madrid Earthquake or did he cause it? Or was it merely a coincidence that he threatened to “shake the earth” and it actually happened a short time later? Or was the story of his eerie prophecy invented after the fact to add credence to his claim that the Great Spirit wanted him to lead the Native American confederacy in its fight against white expansion?

We may never really know.

THE "HEX HOUSE" MURDER

Strange Tales of Pennsylvania Folk Magic & Murder

Strange things were afoot in Pennsylvania in the early twentieth century. A brutal murder in 1928 began a “hex scare” in the region, turning the authorities and the general public against what had always been seen as a common custom – the folk magic practice of “powwowing.” Prior to the bloody crime, the belief in and practice of folk magic was seen as nothing more than a quaint holdover from less sophisticated times. After the murder, though, it became a threat. Practitioners were no longer seen as backward or ignorant; now they were dangerous. The folk medicine that had been used for centuries was now a false treatment that kept people from getting the real medical care they needed. There was little room for superstition and hex doctors in the modern world. To city folk, it seemed impossible to believe that anyone still believed in magic in the modern world of the 1920s, but among the back roads, farms, and hollows of rural Pennsylvania, magic was alive and well.

Pennsylvania hex magic dated back to the earliest days of the colony, linked largely to the Pennsylvania German (or Dutch, as they are often called) immigrants and their descendants. The German settlers held strongly to elements of their culture, and blended customs of the Old and the New World to form a distinct identity. Even their language became a unique dialect. Though there were a great many different religious denominations among the German settlers, there was a common tradition of folk magic that was practiced by all, with the exception of the “Plain Dutch,” such as the Amish, who rejected the practice. For large numbers of these Germans, the belief in folk magic was entwined with their Christian beliefs.

At one end of the folk magic scale was “powwowing,” which had nothing to do with the Native American ceremonial practice of the same name. Powwowers performed magical-religious folk healing and drew their healing power from God. Generally, Powwowers provided cures and relief from illnesses, protection from evil, and the removal of hexes and curses. They also located lost objects, animals and people, foretold the future, and provided good luck charms. To carry out their practices, they used charms, amulets, incantations, prayers, and rituals. It was generally believed that anyone could powwow, but members of certain families were especially adept at it. These families passed the traditions down from generation to generation.

At the other end of the scale was “hexerei” or witchcraft. Practitioners of black magic drew their power from the Devil or other ungodly sources. The witch harassed neighbors and committed criminal acts with supernatural powers. Sometimes witches were called hex doctors. The term “hex doctor” can be confusing because it can imply many things. At times, the term was applied to powwowers who were also knowledgeable in the ways of hexerei and were skilled at battling witches and removing curses. These hex doctors fell into a sort of gray area between a witch and a powwower. Sometimes they cast hexes for a price or out of revenge. It was not uncommon for someone to seek out one hex doctor to remove the curse of another. For many Pennsylvania Dutch, and certainly for outsiders, powwowers and witches could not easily be placed into categories. There were many who labeled the use of any folk magic as witchcraft that was strictly forbidden by their religious beliefs.

Powwowers and hex doctors often worked against one another, with the common person caught in the middle. It was in this setting that folk magic flourished for more than two centuries.

Witches targeted their victims in many ways. Since hexerei was based around a farming society, many of the witch’s attacks were directed at animals and crops. They were often blamed when cows did not produce milk, when seemingly healthy animals mysteriously died, or when crops failed. When witches went after humans, they used a variety of torments. They were commonly suspected of causing illnesses, especially conditions that lingered and caused a person to waste away over time. A witch could also use spells to launch invisible attacks, causing seizures or fits, the sensation of being pricked or stabbed, or the feeling of being choked or strangled. Witches could also cause a run of bad luck for any individual that they attacked. The witch could even appear in the form of an animal, like a black cat, so that they could move about undetected and harass their victims. Needless to say, just about any type of misfortune could be blamed on a witch.

In addition to spoken words, the written word was also used for magic. Written amulets and charms were common, and many Pennsylvania Germans carried them on their person. Amulets usually included a written version of a protective charm and perhaps verses from the Bible. The paper they were written on was usually folded into triangles. If not carried personally, such amulets might be hung in a house or barn.

Ritualized objects were also used. These objects were actually mundane items, but they often acquired a special purpose. Sometimes the objects would be used as a surrogate for the afflicted or for the disease itself. Much of German folk magic depends on the principles of contagion and transference. Basically, the idea is that the evil or the disease is contagious, and can be transferred away from the afflicted person and into an object. The object could then be disposed of in a prescribed manner to keep the contagion from spreading. Traditionally, this kind of magic is known as sympathetic magic – and it often worked, as long as the person afflicted truly believed that it would.

Since the powwowers and hex doctors depended on charms, formulas, and incantations that were passed down through their families, they often collected them into “recipe” books, which contained the collective knowledge of a family line of powwowers. By the middle 1800s, these homemade volumes were joined by published volumes that came into common usage. Folk healers had always invoked and used the Bible in their magic, but they increasingly supplemented their knowledge with sources published by other powwowers.

The most famous and widely read of these books was compiled by a powwower named John George Hohman in 1819. Hohman was a German immigrant who settled on a farm in Berks County, Pennsylvania. As a side business, he published broadsides and books about the occult and medicine aimed at the local German population. In time, he published the most widely read grimoire (book of magic) in America. The compilation of spells, charms, prayers, remedies and folk medicine was called Der lang verborgene Freund, or The Long Lost Friend. It was the first book of powwow magic to achieve wide circulation. It has been in print in either German or English continuously since 1820.

Aside from being a collection of charms and recipes, the book itself became a talisman. In what was an example of a resoundingly successful early marketing ploy, buyers of the book were told they would be protected from harm merely by carrying it. In the front of each edition was an inscription that read: “Whoever carries this book with him, is safe from all enemies, visible and invisible; and whoever has this book with him cannot die without the holy corpse of Jesus Christ, nor drown in any water, nor burn up in any fire, not can any unjust sentence be passed upon him. So help me. +++”

The bulk of the book consisted of remedies and charms to cure common illnesses, fevers, burns, toothaches and other ailments. It also contained recipes for beer and molasses and even had a charm for catching fish. Many of the charms in the book were meant to provide protection from physical harm from weapons, fire, witches, and thieves. It also provided instructions on how to keep animals in a certain location, heal livestock and cattle, and even cure rabid animals. The Long Lost Friend soon became the primary reference for anyone attempting to understand the practice of powwow, and it gained a place of honor on almost every powwower’s and hex doctor’s shelf.

As an opposite number to the helpful charms of The Long Lost Friend was the far more dangerous book of witchcraft, The Sixth & Seventh Book of Moses. Drawn from the tradition of European grimoires and ceremonial magic, The Sixth & Seventh Book of Moses were purported to have been written by Moses himself, and allegedly contain secret knowledge that could not be included in the Bible. Described as two separate books, they are almost always published together in one volume, first appearing in Pennsylvania in 1849. The book soon gained an evil reputation among the German population and those who were familiar with its lore. It was associated with hexing because the text provided instructions on how to conjure and control spirits and demons. It also contained spells and incantations that were beneficial to the user, as well as spells that would duplicate some of the biblical plagues of Egypt, turn a staff into a serpent, and other miraculous happenings. Much of the volume is made up of reproduced symbols that were allegedly copied from old woodcuts. Some copies were printed, at least partially, with red ink. A few hand-copied editions were alleged to exist that had been written in blood.

Though hex doctors frequently acquired the book to enhance their reputations, merely owning the volume was believed to be dangerous, and if a hex doctor actually read it – that could be fatal. Reading the book was believed to attract the attention of the Devil or at the very least, cause the reader to become so obsessed with the book that they could do nothing but read it. The only way to break the obsession – should such a thing occur – was to read the entire book in reverse, starting at the end and working back to the beginning.

To modern readers, all of the stories and claims of spells, hexes, magic books, and incantations may sound rather silly, but rest assured, they were all common traditions of the Pennsylvania Dutch Country of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It might sound hard for us to believe today, but people at that time and place readily accepted such ideas. And that turned out to be the most crucial point of the “Rehmeyer” Hex Murder -- those involved truly believed in magic. They believed that it worked and could ruin their lives.

And they would do anything to try and stop that from happening.

The “Hex Murder,” the strange killing of Nelson Rehmeyer, captivated the people of the region and sold newspapers across the country. The story began with a young powwower named John Blymire, who was born in 1895 and learned the art of German folk magic at a young age. His family had been powwowers for at least three generations and probably longer. Although he did poorly in school, Blymire established a good reputation as a healer in York County. Starting at the age of seven, he began providing healing remedies and cures. Despite his early success, though, he began to believe that there was a shadow hanging over him.

One day, as he was leaving the cigar factory where he worked, an apparently rabid dog began running toward some of his fellow workers. Blymire approached the dog and spoke some words of a spell. The dog’s mouth allegedly stopped foaming and the animal became subdued. Blymire patted its head and the animal followed him excitedly for several blocks. The other workers were amazed at the dog’s apparent cure. But soon after, Blymire’s luck began to turn bad. He soon became ill and he started to believe that another practitioner of folk magic had placed a hex on him, possibly out of jealousy. He soon found himself unable to eat, sleep, or work his powwow magic. Blymire used several of his own magical charms to try and remove the hex, but he was unsuccessful. It was difficult to remove a hex if one did not know the identity of the witch who placed it.

John Blymire

Then one night, as he lay in his bed trying to sleep, the answer came to him. Just as the clock struck midnight, an owl outside hooted seven times. It was then that the idea came to Blymire that he had been hexed by the spirit of his great-grandfather Jacob, who had been a powwower and the seventh son of a seventh son. Since he could not fight back against a spirit, he decided that he would move away from his ancestral home and the cemetery where his great-grandfather was buried, hopefully breaking the spell. It seemed to work, and soon Blymire’s luck began to improve – at least for a time.

In addition to his work as a folk healer, Blymire performed a variety of odd jobs. He soon met a young woman named Lily and they married. The couple had two children, but both died in infancy. The youngest only lived for three days. These tragic occurrences led Blymire to once again believe that he had been hexed. Unable to determine the source of the new hex, he turned to other powwowers for help. One of them was a man named Andrew Lenhart, who convinced him that the source of the hex was someone that he knew well.

Blymire became suspicious of everyone around him, even his wife. Lily had reason to fear for her safety because, in 1922, one of Lenhart’s other clients murdered her husband after receiving similar information. The client, Sallie Jane Heagy, shot her husband, Irving, in bed after Lenhart was hired to “drive the witches” from her home. Sallie did not believe the treatment worked and was in terrible physical pain. She finally snapped one day, killed her husband, and later committed suicide in jail.

After consulting lawyers, Lily was able to obtain a judge’s order to have Blymire committed to an insane asylum. The doctors determined that he was obsessed with hexes and magic and needed to go to the asylum for treatment. Soon after, Lily filed for divorce and it was granted. Blymire didn’t remain locked up for long. Forty-eight days after he was committed, he simply walked out the door one day and vanished. No one even bothered to look for him.

Blymire went back to work at the cigar factory in 1928. While he was there, he met two other people who also believed that they were suffering because of someone who had hexed them. One of them, 14-year-old John Curry, was trapped in an abusive household and felt that a malevolent force was causing the trouble at home. Another man who believed he had been hexed was a farmer named Milton Hess. Hess and his wife, Alice, had been successful and prosperous until 1926, when a series of unfortunate events began at their farm. Crops failed, cows stopped producing milk, and they lost a large amount of money. The entire family believed that they had been hexed by someone, but they didn’t know who it could be. The talk of hexes reinforced Blymire’s own belief in spells and he became terrified by the idea that someone was out to get him. He began to consult other powwowers again, attempting to track down the source of the lingering hex.

Blymire turned to a well-known powwower in the region named Nellie Noll, the so-called “River Witch of Marietta.” The elderly woman identified the source of Blymire’s hex as a member of the Rehmeyer family. When Blymire asked which of them had cursed him, she told him to hold out his hand. She placed a dollar bill on his palm and then removed it. When Blymire looked at his hand, an image appeared. It was the face of Nelson Rehmeyer, an old powwower whom Noll referred to as the “Witch of Rehmeyer’s Hollow.” Blymire had known Rehmeyer, a distant relative, since he was a small child. When Blymire had been five years old, he became seriously ill. His father and grandfather, unable to cure him, took the child to Rehmeyer, who healed him.

Unable to understand why Rehmeyer wished him harm, Blymire went to see Noll again. She confirmed that it was Rehmeyer who had hexed him, and added that he was also responsible for the curses on John Curry and Milton and Alice Hess. Blymire told the other two men what he had learned, and also revealed a solution for ending all of the hexes. Noll had stated that the men needed to take Rehmeyer’s copy of The Long Lost Friend and a lock of his hair and bury them six feet underground.

Blymire and Curry decided to go together to Rehmeyer’s Hollow and obtain the needed items. On November 26, they were driven by Hess’ oldest son, Clayton, to the Hollow. They stopped at the home of Rehmeyer’s former wife, Alice, who said that Nelson could be found at his own home, which was about a mile down the road (see photo at top of the story). The men went to Rehmeyer’s door, and Blymire asked to speak with him for a few minutes. He later said that the older man was much larger and “meaner-looking” than Blymire remembered. They went into the parlor, and Blymire asked him questions about The Long Lost Friend and other elements of powwowing – never mentioning, of course, the true reason why he and Curry had come. After talking for a while, the men realized that it was late, and Rehmeyer offered to let them sleep downstairs. They agreed and while Rehmeyer slept, they looked for his copy of the spell book, but were unable to find it. They debated on whether or not to try and obtain a lock of his hair, but finally decided that Rehmeyer was too big for them to hold down while they cut his hair. The pair left in the morning after agreeing that they needed more help.

      

Nelson Rehmeyer, the man that Blymire believed had “hexed” him.

Blymire told Milton Hess that he needed a member of his family to help them subdue Rehmeyer. Hess and his wife offered their 18-year-old son, Wilbert, as an assistant. The next evening, November 27, the three of them arrived at Rehmeyer’s house. He let them in and they went into the front room. Rehmeyer never got the chance to wonder why they had come back for another visit. When his back was turned, the men tackled him to the floor and attempted to tie his legs with a rope they had brought with them. The exact details of what happened next varied slightly depending on which man told the story, but during the struggle, Rehmeyer was beaten and strangled to death. It’s possible that Blymire intended to kill Rehmeyer once he reached the house that evening, but if he did, he did not reveal his plans to the other two men.

When they realized that Rehmeyer was dead, they took all of the money in the house, hoping to make it look like a robbery. They left behind the book and the lock of the old man’s hair. He was dead – the hex had been lifted, they thought.

But if that was true, Blymire’s luck certainly didn’t improve.

The three men doused the body with kerosene and lit it on fire, hoping the flames would spread throughout the house and burn it down. When they left, Rehmeyer’s body was engulfed in flames, but somehow, the fire mysteriously went out. Some believe that perhaps the hex doctor was not yet dead when he was set on fire and that he might have moved enough to extinguish the flames, but had been burned too badly to survive. Regardless of what happened, evidence of the crime was left behind.

Two days later, a neighbor discovered Rehmeyer’s body. The shocking crime stunned the community, but the terror and excitement that followed was nothing compared to the story that soon emerged. Alice Rehmeyer informed the police of Blymire and Curry’s visit, and they were soon picked up as suspects. As details of the events emerged, newspapers across the country covered the story of the “York Witchcraft Murder” with great interest. Every bizarre detail of Blymire’s hex-obsessed life was described for the public. When the men went to trial, there were daily reports of the proceedings. Hess received 10 years in prison, but Blymire and Curry ended up receiving life sentences for the murder. Both were eventually paroled and lived uneventful lives. Curry, the youngest, served in the military during World War II and became a talented artist.

The “Hex Murder” in York County received wide coverage, and while the local authorities did not launch any official assault on folk magic in the area, the press and authorities in other parts of the state eventually would. The sensationalistic newspaper coverage of the case brought intense scrutiny to folk practices, and they were labeled a form of witchcraft. The press maligned all practitioners of powwowing, even if they only practiced the most benign healing services. Lurid descriptions of magic and strange beliefs filled the newspapers and shocked Americans who were unaware that such things were still taking place in the twentieth century.

Law enforcement officials, doctors, and educators began working together to put an end to what they considered superstitious and dangerous practices. Many of them began attributing supernatural motivations to any strange new cases that they encountered. During the Rehmeyer murder trial, York County Coroner L.V. Zach claimed that the deaths of five children in the previous two years had been caused by powwowers. He said that the children’s parents took them to folk healers when they were sick, instead of real doctors and, as a result, they died. He did admit there had been no formal investigations of these cases, but that they were a matter of common knowledge. The New York Times featured the coroner’s (questionable) claims in an article under a dramatic headline that read, “Death of 5 Babies Laid to Witch Cult.” The newspaper quoted unnamed officials of the York County Medical Society, who said that the coroner’s count of deaths attributed to witchcraft was much too low.

Soon, any death that was even vaguely connected to a powwower – or rumored to have a connection – was labeled a “hex murder.” In March 1929, the body of Verna Delp, 21, was discovered in the woods at Catasuqua, near Allentown. On her body were three pieces of paper with magical charms written on them, supposedly to protect from murder and theft. A coroner’s report identified three poisons in her body, and it appeared that she had taken them voluntarily. The young woman’s adoptive father, August Derhammer, revealed to the police that he had recently learned that Verna was taking treatments from a powwower and that she had been planning to visit him on the day that she died. The powwower was identified as a man named Charles T. Belles, and he was arrested thanks to the fact that the police were sure they had another hex murder on their hands. At first, Belles denied treating Verna, but later admitted that he was treating her for eczema. He claimed to only be a faith healer, not a hex doctor. The authorities didn’t believe him, and even though they could find no evidence to link him to the crime, continued to hold him in jail. As the investigation continued, it was discovered that Verna was pregnant and she had not seen her boyfriend, a truck driver named Masters, for several months. She had not yet told her family of the situation and was possibly looking for a way to end the pregnancy. Even after this new information came to light, the police still believed that Belles was partially responsible for her death. The obsession with hexes and powwow distracted the police from other possibilities in the case, including a botched abortion attempt, suicide or murder by someone other than Belles. By April, they still had no evidence that Belles was involved with the murder, but he was charged anyway. He finally received a hearing in mid-April after lawyers filed a writ of habeas corpus. He was released on $10,000 bail, and charges were eventually dropped. The murder of Verna Delp was never solved.

The press jumped on another case of “murder by powwow” in January 1930. Mrs. Harry McDonald, 34, a housewife from Reading, died after receiving severe burns in her home. She had apparently been given some sort of ointment from a hex doctor with instructions to rub it on her skin. At some point in the night, her body went up in flames when she got too close to her stove. She was seriously injured, and when her husband, who worked the night shift, found her in the morning, she was on the verge of death and could not be saved. The woman’s brother told reporters that he believed the lotion she was using was flammable and caught fire, killing his sister. He had no evidence of this, but the press latched onto this theory and kept the story alive with “occult” connections for weeks.

Another “hex panic” murder occurred on January 20, 1932, when the body of a Philadelphia man named Norman Bechtel, 31, was discovered in Germantown under a tree on a temporarily vacant estate. The accountant and Mennonite Church worker had nine stab wounds in and around his heart. Some of the wounds appeared to form the shape of a circle, and were delivered with such force that they not only penetrated his suit and overcoat, but his eyeglass case in his pocket, as well. A crescent-shaped cut was made on each side of his forehead and a vertical slash ran from his hairline to his nose. Two additional cuts ran off the vertical slash in the direction of the crescent cuts. All of Bechtel’s valuables had been taken and his car was later discovered six miles away. From the bloodstains in the automobile, it was clear that Bechtel had known his attacker well enough to let him or her into his car. The case gave all the appearances of a robbery gone bad – but then there were those pesky facial cuts, which detectives surmised might have special occult significance. When it was learned that Bechtel had grown up on a farm near Boyertown, where powwow was common, the police immediately started searching for evidence of another hex murder. Captain Harry Heanly, the chief investigator, had the victim’s apartment searched for any possible connection with folk magic, but all they found were Mennonite books and pamphlets. After following a few more leads, the police still had no answers, so the press began calling the “mystery” a “hex murder.”

Then in April 1937, William Jordan, 36, confessed that he and four others had killed Bechtel, who they had been attempting to blackmail. Most of the details of Jordan’s confession were not publicly released, as Bechtel had been involved in “several love affairs” and had a large life insurance policy. Needless to say, the case had nothing to do with magic.

If these cases had been the only ones tied to powwow, it’s likely that the hex scare would have died out sooner and the public would have lost interest. That was not mean to be, though, for another actual hex murder occurred in 1934, which sealed the fate of folk magic in the state for decades to come.

The last true hex murder in Pennsylvania occurred in Pottsville, in Schuylkill County, on Saturday, March 17, 1934. A shotgun blast ended the life of Mrs. Susan Mummey, 63, as it tore through her living room window while she was standing next to her adopted daughter. Mummey was attending to the injured foot of her boarder, Jacob Rice, who was seated in front of her. The oil lamp that her daughter was holding shattered as the shot tore through the window. Mummey was killed and the other two took cover, not knowing if more shots would follow. They waited all night in fear, thinking that an assassin was lurking outside. Finally, as morning approached, Rice decided to make the two-and-a-half-mile trip to Ringtown to report the crime.

Initially, the police thought the murder was the result of some backwoods feud that turned violent. But soon the case took a bizarre turn when Albert Shinsky, 24, confessed to the killing. He claimed that the killing had been self-defense, and that Mummey had placed a hex on him seven years earlier when he was working in a field across from the Mummey farm. There had been a dispute about the property lines and one day, Mrs. Mummey came over the fence and stared at him for a long time, he said. He claimed that he then felt cold perspiration come over him and his arms went limp. From that point on, he was unable to work – but that was just the beginning of the torture.

Shinsky claimed that whenever he saw a sharp object, it would change into the shape of a black cat with flaming eyes from which he could not look away. The cat also appeared to him sometimes when he was in bed at night. It would creep slowly across the room and jump onto the bed. The appearance of the cat made him so cold, he claimed, that he had to get up and run around the room in order to get warm again. He sought help from several powwowers, but nothing worked. His family thought that he was lying and was just too lazy to work, but Shinsky seemed to genuinely believe that he was hexed. Eventually, when he could take no more of the supernatural harassment, he killed Mummey. He told the police that the minute she died, he felt the curse lift from his shoulders.

Prosecutors wanted to give Shinsky the death penalty for the murder, and the press once again emphasized the danger of the strange beliefs and practice of folk magic. Over objections from the police and the prosecutor’s office, a commission of doctors ruled that Shinsky was insane, and he was sent to Fairview State Hospital. He remained in mental institutions for most of the rest of his life.

The case seemed to confirm in the public eye that the belief in witchcraft was some sort of threat to society. Practitioners of powwow still had a few defenders, though, and they retained plenty of clients, but the tide of public opinion had turned against them.

Thanks to the two murder cases – and the many suspected cases that were inflated by the newspapers – Pennsylvania’s school system declared war on the belief in hexes, especially in the rural areas where it seemed most prevalent. It was hoped that within several years, a new focus of modern medicine and science could erase the superstitions that seemed to plague the countryside. State authorities also launched a campaign against powwowers and hex doctors directly, arresting and prosecuting them for practicing medicine without a license. Combined with the sensational stories in the media, and the assault on folk magic in general, many of the remaining powwowers went underground. Except for the few who retained public storefronts, most of those who continued to practice avoided the public spotlight and downplayed their work to non-believers. They continued to provide services, however, to those who sought them out. As time went on, fewer members of the younger generations showed interest in learning about the old ways of healing and hexes, but the practice refused to die out completely. Many modern healers still exist today, and while they may not be linked to any kind of witchcraft, German folk magic remains alive and well – although believers in the craft today seem far less likely to be driven to murder.

THE "AMERICAN TRAGEDY" MURDER

Did Life Imitate Art in 1934?

It was the summer of 1906 and a young woman named Grace Brown – 20-years-old and a few months pregnant – was on her way to the Adirondacks region of New York to be married, or so she thought. She had spent the last several months living on her parents’ farm, writing desperate letters to her boyfriend, Chester Gillette, begging him to marry her and make an honest woman out of her.

Chester, who claimed that he loved the pretty young woman, had no urge to settle down. Although he came from a poor family, Chester was college educated and his uncle owned the factory where Grace had worked. He believed he was several social rungs above his lover, a young girl that he had seduced and then forgotten. He wanted to marry one of the daughters of a wealthy man in town, not a struggling factory worker and daughter of poor farmers. He pursued other women and when Grace learned of this, she threatened to expose her pregnancy and ruin his life – but all that would be forgotten if they married.

The threat seemed to have the desired effect and Chester invited Grace on vacation to the Adirondacks. It was a sort of pre-wedding honeymoon. On July 6, they checked into the Glenmore Inn on Big Moose Lake, using assumed names. After settling in, they rented a rowboat for a picnic on the lake. The boat was never returned and Grace was never seen alive again. Her drowned corpse was found floating in the lake the following morning. Chester was arrested three days later. Although he claimed to be innocent, he was tried for Grace’s murder, convicted, and died in the electric chair in March 1908.

The trial was a media sensation, but was soon forgotten. The sad tale would have likely faded into obscurity if not for author Theodore Dreiser. For years, the writer had been searching for a crime that embodied his own personal obsessions with sex and social ambitions in America. He found the perfect material in the life and crimes of Chester Gillette. In 1925, he published his bestselling work, An American Tragedy, based on the murder. The story of the trusting young woman and her murderous, social-climbing beau became a part of American culture.

But then a story of art imitating life was turned around in 1934 when An American Tragedy was brought to life.

On the evening of July 30, 1934, Robert Allen Edwards – a clean-cut, church-going, 21-year-old, with striking good looks that made him very popular with the opposite sex – took his girlfriend, a homely but outgoing 27-year-old named Freda McKechnie for a drive. The young couple stopped by to visit Freda’s seven-year-old niece, and then went on to Harveys Lake, a popular resort located about 12 miles west of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

Freda and Bobby – as everyone called him – both came from respectable families. They Lived around the corner from one another in Edwardsville, Pennsylvania, and attended the same church. The young couple spent a great deal of time together -- much more time, in fact, than their parents suspected. Besides the usual small town activities like church socials, picnics and movie dates, they passed many hours in various secluded romance spots, including the town cemetery. Despite the difference in their ages and the glaring disparity in their physical attractiveness, everyone assumed the two sweethearts would eventually get married.

Bobby, though, had other ideas. Three years earlier, he had gone off to Mansfield State Teachers College (now Mansfield University), where the popular, black-haired young man was elected president of the freshman class. While there, he met a talented singer and pianist, a senior named Margaret Crain. The bespectacled brunette came from a middle-class family from East Aurora, New York. Though Margaret was, by all accounts, even less attractive than Freda, Bobby was entranced with her. Margaret was flattered by his attention. No young men had been interested in her before, and she soon succumbed to her handsome lover’s charms. Before long, they had started a passionate affair.

With American still in the grip of the Depression, Bobby was forced to drop out of college in his junior year. He moved back home to live with his parents, and took a job with the Kingston Coal Co., where his father and Freda’s father both worked.  By then, Margaret had graduated and was working as a high school music teacher in Endicott, New York. Although separated by more than two hundred miles, they kept up a steady correspondence, sending fervent, heartsick letters back and forth. In his letters, Robert called her “my dear wife” and made pledges of future matrimony.

Bobby Edwards and Freda McKechnie

Eventually, Margaret gave Robert $100 to make a down payment on a used 1931 Chevrolet, which they nicknamed “The Bum.” The car would be jointly owned, and Bobby would use it to travel to see her. Sometimes, they would meet midway for trysts at the Plaza Hotel in Scranton. Over the next year, Robert made regular weekend trips to Margaret’s family’s home, where he impressed her parents as a fine young man who would be a worthwhile future son-in-law.

But what Margaret and her parents didn’t know was that during his time back home in Edwardsville, Bobby was still sleeping with Freda McKechnie. This affair would likely have remained a secret if not for the fact that, on July 23, 1934, Freda had gone to a doctor and learned that she was four months pregnant. When she broke the news to Bobby the following day, he agreed to do the right thing and marry her. They would elope to West Virginia. The date was set for August 1, just a week away, after Bobby received his next paycheck. Thrilled, Freda began assembling a trousseau. Many would recall later that they had never seen her so happy.

On Monday night, July 30, after a dinner at the McKechnie home, Bobby and Freda went out for a drive. Even though the sun had set and a hard rain was falling, Freda – giggling with excitement over the upcoming wedding – proposed that they go for a swim at Harveys Lake, one of their favorite trysting spots. They arrived there shortly after 9:00 p.m. and parked at a spot called Sandy Beach. They changed into swimsuits and waded out into the water.

An hour later, Bobby left the beach alone.

Early the next morning, a 15-year-old girl named Irene Cohen was canoeing on the lake with her younger brother and one of her friends when she spotted a woman’s body, wearing an orange bathing suit, floating face-down beneath the water. Terrified, she paddled over to Sandy Beach and got two lifeguards, who plunged into the water and pulled the lifeless body out onto the sand.

The police were summoned, along with a local physician, Dr. Harry Brown, who quickly determined that the woman had not drowned. She had died from a savage blow to the back of her head with a blunt instrument. When he removed her bathing cap, clotted blood came out, and he could see a laceration on the top of her head. The murder weapon was discovered a short time later when investigators, who scoured the beach, found a leather-covered blackjack in the sand. By then, the victim had been identified as Freda McKechnie, whose parents had spent a sleepless night wondering why their daughter had never returned home from her drive with Bobby Edwards.

Within hours, Edwards had been picked up by the police on suspicion of murder. At first, he denied that he and Freda had gone to the lake at all. He told the police that after driving around for a little while, he had dropped Freda off in town. Then had gone to meet some friends whose names he could not remember. When investigators revealed that the tire tracks found at the crime scene matched the tires on his car, he sheepishly admitted that he had been lying and offered to tell “what really happened.”

He admitted that he and Freda had, in fact, driven out to Sandy Beach. Even though it was raining and there were flashes of lightning in the sky, they decided to go swimming. After changing into their bathing suits, they “went into the water and waded to the float.” (This was a wooden platform floating on top of metal barrels that offered swimmers a place to relax in the sun.) Edwards went on, “I got a notion to dive. I dove. When I came back up, my hand struck her under the chin. She fell backward and hit her head against the float.”

Stunned but still conscious, she had swum out farther into the water. A moment later, according to his wildly implausible account, Edwards saw “her white bathing cap disappear. I went out for her but couldn’t find her. I went back, got in my car and drove away.”

On the morning after his arrest, police officers took him out to the crime scene to get his version of the events once more. He revised his story again. This time, Edwards admitted that he had hit Freda with the blackjack. But he insisted that she was already dead when he hit her.

In this version of events, he and Freda had taken a rowboat out to the float. After swimming for a little while, Freda complained of being cold. As she stepped back into the rowboat to return to shore, she suddenly collapsed. Edwards tried to revive her but was unable to find a heartbeat. Panicking, he swam back to shore and ran to his car. As he climbed in, he thought of the blackjack. It belonged to his father, and he had put it in his glove box -- for protection, he said. He told the investigators, “It occurred to me that if there was some mark on Freda’s body, it might look like her death was an accident and I would be left out of it. I knew Freda was pregnant. I knew she was not allowed to swim. When I returned to the boat, she was in the same position. She had not revived. I could do nothing. I put her head on my left arm and struck her on the back of the head with the blackjack. I didn’t even realize what I had done, and I carried the body out to the water up to my chest and let it drop.”

By this time, the investigators knew that Edwards was in a relationship with another woman and had a compelling motive to do away with Freda, who was secretly pregnant with his child. When they confronted him with all of the circumstantial evidence against him, he finally broke down. This time, he revealed the truth of the murder. He choked, “Freda didn’t faint. She didn’t fall and hurt herself. I had been thinking of doing this since she told me she was to become a mother – because I wanted to marry Margaret Crain. We swam for a while. We talked about her having a baby. The water was a little over four feet deep, and when she ducked down once, she came back up with her back to me. I pulled out the blackjack quick and hit her on the back of the head. I hit her with the blackjack and then I left her in the water.”

After tossing the murder weapon into the lake, Edwards got dressed and drove home. He even stopped along the way at an all-night drugstore to buy some chocolate bars for his mother. Before going to bed, he hung his swimsuit on the backyard clothesline to dry. He slept soundly that night and got up and went to work the next morning as if nothing had happened at all.

No one knows which reporter first dubbed the case the “American Tragedy Murder.” Newspapermen from two Philadelphia papers, the Record and the Bulletin, both claimed to have dreamed it up, as did a writer for the United Press syndicate, and a reporter from the New York Times. It’s not hard to imagine that all of them latched onto the idea independently, since the details of this latest tragedy were strikingly similar to the case that spawned Theodore Dreiser’s bestselling book and the recent film. Within days of Edwards’ arrest, newspapers all over the country were suggesting that the novel – or more likely the movie version of it – had provided the confessed killer with the blueprint for his crime.

As is the case with just about every work of literature or mass entertainment that has been blamed for inciting a murder, there turned out to be no truth to the accusation. By all accounts, Edwards had never read the book or seen the film that was based on it. Still, the startling resemblance between the murder of Freda McKechnie and Dreiser’s fictionalized version of the Chester Gillette-Grace Brown case turned the story into a national sensation.

Dreiser himself saw the Edwards case as “an exact duplicate of the story which I had written” and wondered whether “my book had produced the crime.” When the New York Post offered to pay him to travel to Pennsylvania and cover the trial, he eagerly accepted. On the opening day of the trial, October 1, 1934, he was one of 50 reporters who jammed into the Luzerne County Courthouse in Wilkes-Barre. The scene, he wrote, was “quite a spectacle.”

The hundreds of spectators who pushed and shoved their way into the courtroom, hoping for an exciting show, were not disappointed. The questionable high point came when the district attorney read a series of Bobby’s steamy love letters to Freda McKechnie. The contents were allegedly so salacious that, according to one observer, they made John Cleland’s pornographic classic Fanny Hill: or the Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure “look like a toned-down version of Little Women.”

By then, Edwards – whom the papers were gleefully calling “the Playboy of the Anthracite Fields” – had recanted his confession and gone back to his claim that Freda had died accidentally. His testimony failed to persuade the jury, and they took only 12 hours to convict him and sentence him to death.

Theodore Dreiser was unhappy with the verdict. He believed that Edwards, like his predecessor Chester Gillette, was a victim of tremendous American social pressures. Dating back to his days as a newspaper reporter in Chicago, Dreiser had “observed a certain type of crime in the United States.” It was one that “seemed to spring from the fact that almost every young person was possessed of an ingrowing ambition to be somebody financially and socially.” This distinctly American brand of crime, according to Dreiser, involved “the young ambitious lover of some poorer girl who had been attractive enough to satisfy him until a more attractive girl with more money or position appeared and he quickly discovered that he could no longer care for his first love. What produced this particular type of crime was the fact that it was not always possible to drop this first girl. What usually stood in the way was pregnancy.”

To support this claim, he pointed to a half-dozen such murders, including the Gillette-Brown case of 1906 that had served as the basis for An American Tragedy. It wasn’t a perfect fit, as Margaret Crain’s family was not rich; she was a high school music teacher and her brother was a Baptist minister, but still, the two cases had much in common. Dreiser blamed the crimes committed by these men on American society and its “craze for social and money success.” He believed that Edwards was just another in a long line of such killers. Dreiser was one of hundreds of people who wrote to Governor George H. Earle in a futile attempt to win a pardon for the condemned young man.

Just after midnight on May 6, 1935, after spending hours reading his family Bible, Edwards walked calmly to the electric chair at Rockview Penitentiary in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania. According to one reporter, he was murmuring a prayer as the black hood was placed over his head.

This American tragedy had finally come to an end. 

THE SAUSAGE VAT MURDER

The Tragic Tale of Louisa Luetgert


   The story of Adolph Luetgert has its beginnings in the heart of Chicago's Northwest Side, a place once filled with factories, middle-class homes, and with a large immigrant population. The murder of Luetgert's wife, Louisa, has an unusual place in the history of Chicago crime in that it was one of the only murders to ever drastically affect the sale of food for the better part of the summer of 1897.

Adolph Luetgert was born in Germany and came to America after the Civil War. He lived for a time in Quincy, Ill., and then came to Chicago in 1872, where he pursued several trades, including farming and leather tanning. Eventually, he started a wholesale liquor business near Dominick Street. He later turned to sausage making, where he found his greatest success. After finding out that his German-style sausages were quite popular in Chicago, he built a sausage plant in 1894 at the southwest corner of Hermitage and Diversey. It would be here where the massive German would achieve his greatest success - and his shocking infamy.

Herman Lutegert

Although the hard-working Luetgert soon began to put together a considerable fortune, he was an unhappy and restless man. Luetgert had married his first wife, Caroline Rabaker, in 1872. She gave birth to two boys, only one of whom survived childhood. Caroline died five years later, in November 1877. Luetgert sold his liquor business in 1879 and moved to the corner of North and Clybourn avenues, where he started his first sausage-packing plant in the same building where he lived. Two months after Caroline's death, Luetgert married an attractive younger woman. This did little to ease his restlessness, however, and he was rumored to be engaged in several extramarital affairs during the time when he built a three-story frame house next door to the sausage factory. He resided there with his son and new wife.

His wife, Louisa Bicknese Luetgert, was a beautiful young woman 10 years younger than her husband. She was a former servant from the Fox River Valley who met her new husband by chance. He was immediately taken with her, entranced by her diminutive stature and tiny frame. She was less than five feet tall and looked almost child-like next to her burly husband. As a wedding gift, he gave her a unique, heavy gold ring with her initials inscribed inside. He had no idea at the time that this ring would later be his undoing. 

Louisa Luetgert

After less than three years of business, Luetgert's finances began to fail. Even though his factory turned out large quantities of sausages, Luetgert found that he could not meet his supplier's costs. Instead of trying to reorganize his finances, though, he and his business advisor, William Charles, made plans to expand. They attempted to secure more capital to enlarge the factory but, by April 1897, it had all fallen apart. Luetgert, deep in depression, sought solace with his various mistresses and his excesses, and business losses began taking a terrible toll on his marriage. Neighbors frequently heard him and Louisa arguing and their disagreements became so heated that Luetgert eventually moved his bedroom from the house to a small chamber inside the factory. Soon after, Louisa found out that her husband was having an affair with the family's maid, Mary Simerling, who also happened to be Louisa's niece. She was enraged at this news and this new scandal got the attention of the people in the neighborhood, who were already gossiping about the couple's marital woes.
    
Luetgert soon gave the neighbors even more to gossip about. One night, during another shouting match with Louisa, he responded to her indignation over his affair with Mary by taking his wife by the throat and choking her. Before she collapsed, Luetgert saw neighbors peering in at him from the parlor window of their home, and he released her. A few days later, Luetgert was seen chasing his wife down the street. He was shouting at her and waving a revolver. After a couple of blocks, Luetgert broke off the chase and walked silently back to the factory. 
   
Then, on May 1, 1897, Louisa disappeared. When questioned about it, Luetgert stated that Louisa had gone out the previous evening to visit her sister. After several days, though, she did not come back. Soon after, Diedrich Bicknese, Louisa's brother, came to Chicago and called on his sister. He was informed that she was not at home. He came back later and, finding Luetgert at home, he demanded to know where Louisa was. Luetgert calmly told him that Louisa had disappeared on May 1 and had never returned. When Diedrich demanded to know why Luetgert had not informed the police about Louisa's disappearance, the sausage-maker simply told him that he was trying to "avoid a scandal" but that he had paid two detectives $5 to try and find her.

Diedrich immediately began searching for his sister. He went to Kankakee, thinking that perhaps she might be visiting friends there, but found no one who had seen her. He returned to Chicago and when he found that Louisa still had not come home, now having abandoned her children for days. Worried and suspicious, Diedrich went to the police and spoke with Captain Herman Schuettler. 

The detective and his men joined in the search for Louisa. They questioned neighbors and relatives and heard many recitations about the couple's violent arguments. Captain Schuettler was familiar with Luetger; he had dealings with him in the past. He summoned the sausage-maker to the precinct house on two occasions and each time, pressed him about his wife. Schuettler recalled a time when the Luetgerts had lost a family dog, an event that prompted several calls from Luetgert, but when his wife had gone missing, he noted that Luetgert had never contacted him. Luetgert again used the excuse that as a "prominent businessman," he could not afford the disgrace and scandal. 

The police began searching the alleyways and dragging the rivers. They also went to the sausage factory and began questioning the employees. One of them, Wilhelm Fulpeck, recalled seeing Louisa around the factory at about 10:30 p.m. on May 1. A young German girl named Emma Schiemicke, passed by the factory with her sister at about the same time on that evening and remembered seeing Luetgert leading his wife up the alleyway behind the factory. 

Frank Bialk, a night watchman at the plant, confirmed both stories. He had also seen Luetgert and Louisa at the sausage factory that night. He only got a glimpse of Louisa, but saw his employer several times. Shortly after the couple entered the factory, Luetgert had come back outside, gave Bialk a dollar and asked him to get him a bottle of celery compound from a nearby drugstore. When the watchman returned with the medicine, he was surprised to find the door leading into the main factory was locked. Luetgert appeared and took the medicine. He made no comment about the locked door and sent Bialk back to the engine room.

A little while later, Luetgert again approached the watchman and sent him back to the drugstore to buy a bottle of medicinal spring water. While the watchman had been away running errands, Luetgert had apparently been working alone in the factory basement. He had turned on the steam under the middle vat a little before 9:00 p.m. and it was still running when Bialk returned. The watchman reported that Luetgert had remained in the basement until about 2: 00 a.m.
Bialk found him fully dressed in his office the next day. He asked whether or not the fires under the vat should be put out and Luetgert told him to leave them burning, which was odd since the factory had been closed several weeks during Luetgert's financial re-organization. Bialk did as he was told, though, and went down to the basement. There, he saw a hose sending water into the middle vat and on the floor in front of it was a sticky, glue-like substance. Bialk noticed that it seemed to contain bits of bone, but he thought nothing of it. Luetgert used all sorts of waste meats to make his sausage and he assumed that this was all it was.

On May 3, another employee, Frank Odorowsky, known as "Smokehouse Frank," also noticed the slimy substance on the factory floor. He feared that someone had boiled something in the factory without Luetgert's knowledge, so he went to his employer to report it. Luetgert told him not to mention the brown slime. As long as he kept silent, Luetgert said, he would have a good job for the rest of his life. Frank went to work scraping the slime off the floor and poured it into a nearby drain that led to the sewer. The larger chunks of waste were placed in a barrel and Luetgert told him to take the barrel out to the railroad tracks and scatter the contents there. 

Following these interviews, Schuettler made another disturbing and suspicious discovery. A short time before Louisa's disappearance, even though the factory had been closed during the re-organization, Luetgert had ordered 325 pounds of crude potash and 50 pounds of arsenic from Lor Owen & Company, a wholesale drug firm. It was delivered to the factory the next day. Another interview with Frank Odorowsky revealed what had happened to the chemicals. On April 24, Luetgert had asked Smokehouse Frank to move the barrel of potash to the factory basement, where there were three huge vats that were used to boil down sausage material. The corrosive chemicals were all dumped into the middle vat and Luetgert turned on the steam beneath it, dissolving the material into liquid.

Combining this information with the eyewitness accounts, Captain Schuettler began to theorize about the crime. Circumstantial evidence seemed to show that Luetgert killed his wife and boiled her in the sausage vats to dispose of the body. The more that the policeman considered this scenario, the more convinced that he became that this is what had happened. Hoping to prove his theory, he and his men started another search of the sausage factory and he soon made a discovery that became one of the most gruesome in the annals of Chicago crime. 
   
On May 15, a search was conducted of the 12-foot-long, five-foot-deep middle vat that was two-thirds filled with a brownish, brackish liquid. The officers drained the greasy paste from the vat, using gunnysacks as filters, and began poking through the residue with sticks. It wasn't long before Officer Walter Dean found several pieces of bone and two gold rings. One of them was a badly tarnished friendship ring and the other was a heavy gold band that had been engraved with the initials "L.L.".
   
Louisa Luetgert had worn both of the rings.
   
After they were analyzed, the bones were found to be definitely human - a third rib; part of a humerus, or great bone in the arm; a bone from the palm of a human hand; a bone from the fourth toe of a right foot; fragments of bone from a human ear and a larger bone from a foot. 

Adolph Luetgert, proclaiming his innocence, was arrested for the murder of his wife. Louisa's body was never found and there were no witnesses to the crime, but police officers and prosecutors believed the evidence was overwhelming. Luetgert was indicted for the crime a month later and details of the murder shocked the city's residents, especially those on the Northwest Side. Even though Luetgert was charged with boiling his wife's body, local rumor had it that she had been ground into sausage instead! Needless to say, sausage sales declined substantially in 1897.
   
Luetgert's first trial ended with a hung jury on October 21 after the jurors failed to agree on a suitable punishment. Some argued for the death penalty, while others voted for life in prison. Only one of the jurors thought that Luetgert might be innocent. A second trial was held and, on February 9, 1898, Luetgert was convicted and sentenced to a life term at Joliet Prison. He was taken away, still maintaining his innocence and claiming that he would receive another trial. He was placed in charge of meats in the prison's cold-storage warehouse and officials described him as a model inmate. 
   
By 1899, though, Luetgert began to speak less and less and often quarreled with the other convicts. He soon became a shadow of his former, blustering persona, fighting for no reason and often babbling incoherently in his cell at night. His mind had been broken, either from guilt over his heinous crime, or from the brutal conditions of his imprisonment. 

Luetgert died in 1900, likely from heart trouble. The coroner who conducted the autopsy also reported that his liver was greatly enlarged and in such a condition of degeneration that "mental strain would have caused his death at any time."
The sausage factory stood empty for years, looming over the neighborhood as a grim reminder of the horrors that had visited there. The windows of the place became a target for rocks thrown from the nearby railroad embankment and it often invited forays by the curious and the homeless.

In the months that followed his death, Luetgert's business affairs were entangled in litigation. The courts finally sorted everything out in August 1900 and a public auction was held for the factory and its grounds. Portions of the property were divided between several buyers but the Library Bureau Company, which was founded by Dewey Decimal System creator Melvil Dewey, leased the factory itself. The company used it as a workshop and storehouse for its line of library furniture and office supplies. During the renovations, the infamous vats in the basement were discarded.

In June 1904, a devastating fire swept through the old sausage factory. It took more than three hours to put out the blaze and when it was over, the building was still standing, but everything inside had been destroyed. However, contrary to what many stories have reported, the building was still there. In fact, it's still there today!

Despite the damage done to the building's interior, the Library Bureau re-opened its facilities in the former sausage factory. It would go on to change owners many times in the decades that followed. In 1907, a contracting mason purchased the old Luetgert house and moved it from behind the factory to another lot in the neighborhood, hoping to dispel the grim memories attached to it. The part of Hermitage Avenue that intersected with Diversey was closed. By the 1990s, the factory stood empty and crumbling, facing a collection of empty lots that were only broken by the occasional ramshackle frame house. 

In 1999, though, around the 100th anniversary of the death of Adolph Luetgert, the former sausage factory was converted into loft condominiums and a brand new neighborhood sprang up to replace the aging homes that remained from the days of the Luetgerts. Fashionable brick homes and apartments appeared around the old factory, and rundown taverns were replaced with coffee shops. 
The old neighborhood was gone, but the stories of this infamous crime still lingered, providing a unique place in history as the only Chicago murder that ever kept people from eating sausages!

The former sausage factory where Louisa allegedly died was turned into condominiums in 1999.  

 And there there are the ghosts...
   
According to legend, Louisa Luetgert's ghost returned not only to haunt the old neighborhood where she died, but also to exact her revenge on the man who killed her. Stories claim that toward the end of Adolph Luetgert's life, he told stories about Louisa visiting his cell at night. His dead wife had returned to haunt him, intent on having revenge for her murder. Was she really haunting him or was the "ghost" really just the figment of a rapidly deteriorating mind? Based on the fact that residents of the neighborhood also began reporting seeing Louisa's ghost, one has to wonder if Luetgert was seeing her ghost because he was mentally ill ---- or if the ghost had driven him insane. Luetgert died under what the coroner called "great mental strain," so perhaps Louisa did manage to get her revenge after all.

And Louisa, whether she was murdered by her husband or not, reportedly did not rest in peace. Not long after her husband was sent to prison, her ghost began to be seen inside the Luetgert house. Neighbors claimed to see a woman in a white dress leaning against the fireplace mantel. Eventually, the house was rented out but none of the tenants stayed there long. The place became an object of fear, the yard overgrown with ragweed, and largely deserted.

Oddly, the fire that broke out in the former sausage factory in 1904 started in the basement -- at exactly the spot where Luetgert's middle vat was once located. Fire officials stated, "The source of the fire is a mystery and none has been able to offer any better explanation than the superstitious folk who have an idea that some supernatural intervention against any commercial enterprise operating at the scene of the murder has been invoked." No cause was ever determined for the fire, leading many to believe that perhaps Louisa's specter had returned once more.

Legend has it on the Northwest Side today that Louisa Luetgert still walks. If she does, she probably no longer recognizes the neighborhood where she once lived. They say though, that if you happened to be in this area on May 1, the anniversary of Louisa's death, there is a chance that you might see her lonely specter still roaming the area where she lived and died.