Murders that Made Headlines

Jane Simon Ammeson

Description

Even the most sensational and scandalous crimes can disappear into history, the spine-chilling tales forgotten by subsequent generations. Murders that Made Headlines reveals some of these extraordinary but forgotten true events that captured the public's attention in the course of the last 200 years. Jane Simon Ammeson recounts the astonishing and sometimes bizarre stories of arsenic murders, Ponzi schemes, prison escapes, perjury, and other shocking crimes that took place in the Hoosier state. When we think of bygone eras, we often imagine gentile women, respectable men, simpler times, mannerly interactions, and intimate acquaintances, but Murders that Made Headlines reveals the notorious true crimes lurking in our history.

Introduction
1. Catherine Schumaker: An Indiana Lucretia Borgia
2. An Unfortunate Indiana Family: Minnie May and Luella Mabbitt
3. Jane Dorsey and the Poison Powders
4. The Death of Susan Beaver
5. Miss Bryan's Last Cry
6. Rough on Rats: How Not to Win Your Man
7. The Disappearance of Carrie Selvage
8. No Way to Treat Your Lovers
9. Bootlegging, Missing Wills, Disappearing Jewels, Deadly Encounters: The Story Of Nettie and Harry Diamond
10. The Lady and The Dragon: How Madge Overholtzer Brought Down the KKK
11. Double Indemnity
Selected Bibliography

Sujets

• Midwest
• HISTORY
• Histoire
• Mensajería instantánea
• True Crime
• State
• General officer
• History of the Americas
• Murder
• General
• United States
• KS
• Local
• IL
• ND
• IN
• NE
• OH
• MN
• SD
• MO
• MI
• Indiana

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 01 août 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9780253031273
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 301 Mo

Extrait

MURDERS
THAT MADE HEADLINESCutler Funeral Home in La Porte, Indiana, is still in business m c eo nrte turhya n a
afer the Belle Gunness murders. Te remaw ionms o en af nd c hildren who would
be buried localw l ey re carried in hearses pulled by w hoh r istee s; blac h k orses pulled
the bodies of men, many of whom had expected to marry a b w eidaoutw aifndul
found Belle instead. Photo courtesy of the La Porte County Historical Society.JANE SIMON AMMESON
MURDERS
THAT MADE HEADLINES
Crimes of Indiana
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESSTis book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Ofce of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iup re s . s i n d i a n .ae du
© 2017 by Jane Simon Ammeson
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any
information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publisher. Te Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on
Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
∞ Te paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the
American National Standard for Information SP ceiernm c a ense—nce of Paper for
Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States o i cf Aa mer
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-253-03126-6 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-253-02983-6 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-253-03127-3 (ebook)
1 2 3 4 5 22 21 20 19 18 17CONTENTS
introduction vii
1 Catharine Schumaker: An Indiana Lucretia Bor 1 gia
2 An Unfortunate IndiF aan mia ly: Minnie May and
Luella Mabbit t18
3 Jane Dorsey and the Poison Pow de4r3s
4 Te Death of Susan Bea ve4r8
5 Miss Bryan’s Last C ry67
6 Rough on Rats: How Not to Win Your M 1a0n1
7 Te Disappearance of Carrie Selv a12g1e
8 No Way to Leave Your Lov er1s35
9 Bootlegging, Missin Wg ills, Disappearing Jewels, Dea dly
Encounters: Te Story of Nettie and Harry Di a1mond60
10 Te Lady and the Dragon: How Madge Oberholtzer B rought
Down the KKK 167
11 Double Indemnit y184
selected bibliography 191INTRODUCTION
When people asked what I was working on and I told of days
reading newspaper accounts, culling death certifcates and trial
transcripts of old murders, and learning about such products as the
wonderfully named Rough on Rats, they reacted in two distinct
ways. Some w ere rather appalled that I revel in news articles about
midnight exhumations, beheadingsr , a unnd ning a burial s viecre
for murderers who need a place to hide their bodies (a true niche
business)O . thers were just as fascinated as me.
Te settings for the murders I included in this book take us
from the late 1850s to the Jazz Age; from tr haovresl be a y nd buggy
and riverboats to Hudson sedans and Cadilla wcos; fmern wom ea-r
ing long dresses to fappers in short skirts; from gas la-mps to elec
tricity. But the passions that led to murder are similar to what we
read and hear abo tuot day: unwanted babies, fnancial gain, or an
impediment to marrying. Indiana was also the locale for one of the
largest mass murders in the country, commitw teod bmay a n no
less. Juriew s ere just as whimsical and unpredictable then as we
think of thet m oday.
But there w ere diferences too.
Lynching was still abided; authorities ofen looked the other
way and perpetrato wres re not punished. Although I had known
that the lynching of African Americans continued long into the
viitwentietc h entury in the South, I was amazed that lync-hing oc
curred with regularity in Indiana, mainly Southern I untnidl iana,
the early 1900T s. ere was even a double lynching as late as 1930 in
Marion. It wasn’t just blacks w wheo re given that swif injustice.
More whites than blaw cekre ls ynched in Indiana by about three to
one and it was ofen sanctioned by authorities. Even some of the
reporters of smaller town newspapers at the time watched on the
lynchings, along with crowds of townspeople. Some took a jocular
tone toward the lawlessness of the practice in their reporting.
Indiana had a governor who rescinded previous antilynching
laws and was himself one of the notorious White Caps, a group of
men who broke into jails to bring just ihcoe tse to hey though-t de
served it or maybe jut sht ose the d y idn’t like. Townspeople seemed
to enjoy t hese l ittle midnight soirees and descended on the bonfres
or hanging trees to watch, one assumes, ws ituh pre w lehaile som- e
one they knew killed another person they knew. Ofen, if justice
had been allowed to take its course, they would have learned the
person was innocent. But their philosophy was “why wait.”
Before the laws changed allowing medical students access to
cadavers t, here was a very lucrative underground (excuse my pun)
business for resurrectioni mstesn w—ho didn’t mind the dirty work
of digging up bodies to sell. When the pol dicee d dteo c cirack down
on body snatching back in the late 1800s, medical schools, needing
to dispose of their illegal cadavers, started dumping them on the
streets—n ot the sight you’d easily ima tgoidnae y in glittery and
trendy downtown Indianapolis, a place fll gered w at reith staurants,
sports complexes, storeh ost, els, and condos.
For Carrie Selvage, whose bodap y d piesared in Indianapolis in
1900, the crime was at frst blamed on one of the many rival groups
of remnant men. Body snatc d h ied rn s ’t care w hether their catch was
rich, poor, young, or old, it just had to be fresh. One of the men was
the f ather o f f uture president William Henry Harrison, at the time
an up and coming Indianapolis attorney, and the other his cousin.
Both were found intact in medical schools. Te Masons exhumed
(without a permit as far as I can determine) a fellow Mason who
viii MURDERS THAT MADE HEADLINESthey thought had been poisoned by his wife. His stomac-h was re
moved and shipped in a jar by boat to Louisville. And yes, they
found strychnine. Charles Koester cs’hs t ilwdo ren, wife, and p- ar
ents were all dug up, though by medical experts in this case, to see
if they had been poisonet dh— ey had. One fascinating ft ahce t—
autopsy of Charlm eso’s ther was done in an upstairs bedroom of her
home.
Which leads me to someth eiln sg e I learned while writing this
book—re co rd keeping. Marriage re ordcs in Indiana date back to
1788 when they w ere required ft ohr ose residing in the Northwest
Territories. Te recording of b wiarstnh’t ms andato ury ntil 1882.
Recording deaths began in a few Indiana cities as early as the 1870s,
but the frst law requiring county registration of death was passed
in 1882. It wasn’t until 1900 that all de w aetre ths o be registered with
the state. Compliance with the law v uanrtiiel 1d 920 when deaths
that occurre wed re always recorded. Imagine that. Tired of Harry
a fer meeting the n hew orse and buggy doctor in town? Slip him a
little arsenic and get him in the ground as fast as you can.
Poisoning, I also learned, must be add biecctaivu e se poisoners
seem never to have stopped at one (though that’s maybe why they
got caught).
People ofen pine for the good old days when l siifme wplae, s
but believe me i wt asn’t.
Minnie Mabbitt went to trial along with h breor tth weo rs for
the killing of her young babe. Years earlier on be orotf thehrse
and her father helped lynch her sister’s lov tehre. Nre’ow s a Jerry
Springer show for you.
As every one who dives deep into data in a time wheo re rerds c
were written in the o f aldsh- ioned Palmer style with big a littnld e
loops knows, documents can be difcult to decipher and names
seem to mysteriously change as does other pertinent information.
Take Catharine Reif, the Hoosier Lucretia Borgia. Her maiden
name is spelled in v oaurs i ways such as Shoemaker and Sc -hum
acher, her frst name always with an “a” where most of us would put
an “e.” But when I found her tombstone (thank yo Au-, F Grinadve-),
INTRODUCTION ixher name wae s tched on the stone as Rachel Katherine Schumaker.
Rachel? I had never seen that name on any of the nul em gearl ous
documents bearing her nama en —d believe mt e here w ere a lot.
Do you know how many variatit o hn es re are of the name H- er
skovitz? Nettie D. Sachs Zauderer Herskovitz Golden Diamond’s
husband, Dr. Samuel Herskovitz, spelled his name one way, and
his b rother, an attorney who lived in the same town, spelled his
as  Hershcovitz. Tet n here’s Herscovitz, Hershcowitz, He-rskov
itz, Hershkovitz, and on and on. I discovered Nettie’s frst husband
(or was it secon wd, e’re still not sure) when a genealogist at the
Allen County Public Library took Zander, the only spelling I had
at the time, and let Soundex spit out other alternatives. Suddenly
I had Zauder then Zauderer and bingo! But tm o mat a t kee rs more
confusing, Zanderer is the way it is spelled in her divorc- e proceed
ings. Sigh.
Ages vary as well. Nettie has one age listed on her tombstone
(thirt sye-ven), another on her death certifcate ( thtrehier)t, ay-n