Category Archives: Murder

1885: August Reinsdorf and Emil Kuchler, Kaiser Wilhelm I bombers

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On this date in 1885, anarchists August Reinsdorf and Emil Küchler were guillotined for a failed attempt on the life of Kaiser Wilhelm I.

The King of Prussia turned Emperor of the newborn (in 1871) Deutsches Reich, Wilhelm was honored by assassins equal in enthusiasm to his distinctive whiskers.* The versions distinguished by this post had the cheek to contemplate exploding the Kartätschenprinz** just as he ceremonially inaugurated an important national monument.


The Niederwalddenkmal still stands to this day. (cc) image from Philipp35466

The day was wet, and the dynamite fizzled. Everybody departed none the wiser but police spies later caught wind of the attempt, apparently when the would-be bombers Emil Küchler and Franz Reinhold Rupsch asked reimbursement from leftist typesetter August Reinsdorf, the plot’s mastermind.

Eight were eventually rounded up, secretly at first but later publicized to the prejudice of leftist parties.

Reinsdorf, Küchler and Rupsch all received death sentences; Rupsch’s was commuted in consideration of his youth.

The workers build palaces and live in miserable huts; they produce everything and maintain the whole machinery of state, and yet nothing is done for them; they produce all industrial products, and yet they have little and bad to eat; they are always a despised, raw and superstitious mass of servile minds. Everything the state does tends toward perpetuating these conditions forever. The upper ten thousand rest on the shoulders of the great mass. Is this really going to last? Is not a change our duty? Shall we keep our hands in our laps forever?

-Reinsdorf at trial

* We have in these pages already met one such predecessor who went under the fallbeil in 1878; the zeal of such men had given the Reich pretext to ban the Social Democrats.

** “Prince of Grapeshot”, a bygone nickname that paid derisive tribute to Wilhelm’s mailed fist in the Revolutions of 1848.

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2013: Kepari Leniata burned as a witch

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On this date in 2013, villagers at the Papua New Guinea village of Paiala tortured their neighbor Kepari Leniata into confessing the witchcraft murder of a local child, then burnt her alive in a trash dump. Sorcery is widely feared and practiced in PNG.

Kepari Leniata, 20, ‘confessed’ after she was dragged from her hut, stripped naked and tortured with white-hot iron rods.

She was then dragged to a local rubbish dump, doused in petrol and, with hands and feet bound, thrown on a fire of burning tyres. As the mother-of-two screamed in agony, more petrol-soaked tyres were thrown on top of her.

…

The tragedy unfolded after Miss Leniata’s young neighbour fell sick on Tuesday morning. He complained of pains in the stomach and chest and was taken to Mt Hagen hospital where he died a few hours later.

Relatives of the boy were suspicious that witchcraft was involved in the death and learned that two women had gone into hiding in the jungle.

After they were tracked down, the pair admitted they practised sorcery but had nothing to do with the boy’s death. Miss Leniata, they said, was the person responsible.

The boy’s family went to her hut at 7am on Wednesday, stripped her and dragged her away to torture and death. (Source)

Horrific pictures circulated in the international media.

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1892: A day in the death penalty around Kentucky

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The Bluegrass State had what one paper jokingly called a “hanging match” with hangings in the towns of Stanton, West Irvine, and Henderson on this date in 1892 — as we see from this economical entry from the Chicago Daily Inter Ocean of Feb. 6, 1892:

Although not the most historically consequential hangings, uxoricide was good enough to earn Mr. Bush (he’s also called “Simpson Bush” in some accounts) a murder ballad.

… They say he tried to drown her, but in that did not succeed
But with the fatal pistol he carried out the deed
The babe was in its mother’s arms, Up to them he did creep
The demon pulled the trigger and killed her while asleep.

[He stepped] up to her bedside, [and] shot her through the head
The infant drank its mother’s blood, while the woman lay there dead
They say that he was jealous when he done this cruel crime
He shall stand before his Maker and answer another time …

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1851: Ruben Dunbar, Destructiveness and Combativeness

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On this date in 1851, Ruben Dunbar hanged in New York for murdering two little boys: the 8- and 10-year-old nephews to his widowed mother’s second husband. Thanks to the mother’s remarriage, these boys had supplanted Dunbar as the heirs to his mother’s property.

We’re indebted for highlighting this case to our crime-blogging friends at Murder by Gaslight, who also call attention to a short pamphlet entitled “Phrenological Character of Reuben Dunbar, With a Short Treatise on The Casuses and Prevention of Crime”. This item is available free from Google Books and contains the findings of a phrenologist — Margaret Thompson — who examined Dunbar. (Phrenology was already into an advanced stage of disrepute by the 1850s.)

We begin with the core metrics:

His physiology is sound and good. He has a fair proportion of all the temperaments, with a predominance of the vital. The size of his head is 22 3/4 inches in curcumference, over the organs of Individuality and Philoprogenitiveness; and 13½ inches over the top, from Destructiveness to Destructiveness, over Firmness. The size of his phrenological developments, on a scale of from one to seven, are as follows:

Amativeness, 5; Philoprogenitiveness, 4; Adhesiveness, 6; Inhabitiveness, 5; Concentrativeness, 4; Vitativeness, 6; Combativeness, 6; Destructiveness, 6; Alimentiveness, 6; Acquisitiveness, 6; Secretiveness, 7; Cautiousness, 6 to 7; Approbativeness, 7; Self-Esteem, 4; Firmness, 7; Consceintiousness, 4; Hope[,[ 5; Marvellousness, 4; Veneration, 4; Benevolence, 5; Constructiveness, 5; Ideality, 4; Sublimity, 5; Imitation, 5; Mirthfulness, 5; Individuality, 6; Form, 6; Size, 6; Weight, 6; Color, 6; Order, 6; Calculation, 5; Locality, 6; Eventuality, 6; Time, 5; Language, 5; Causality, 5; Comparison, 6

Several pages then elucidate the weight and combination of these figures in the estimation of the examiner, also neatly retrofitting the crime that she knows Dunbar stands accused of.

Philoprogenitiveness is only average. He might love his own children, but would not care for the children of others; and his large Destructiveness and Combativeness would incline him naturally to be impatient, severe, and even cruel with children over whom he has control.

His selfish propensities are large, while his moral faculties are between full and average. In such an organization the selfish feelings have a very powerful influence, and without great care and constant exercise of the moral organs, will be sure to gain the ascendancy. Acquisitiveness is large and very active. This gives him a strong desire to obtain money, property, &c.; and with his inferior moral brain, would lead him to be penurious and covetous. Secretiveness is very large. He is exceedingly cunning, and capable of acting artfully and deceitfully; has uncommon power to conceal his real feelings. Seldom discloses his plans to others; is secretive and says little. Destructiveness and Combativeness are large also; so is firmness. These, with his other combination of organs, make him quarrelsome, harsh, severe, self-willed, tenacious of his rights, wilful, and desperately determined.

All told, she reckons, Dunbar labored under “an unfortunate organization; one in which the animal propensities govern, because the moral faculties are not sufficiently large to balance and control them.”

Thompson’s pamphlet then pivots curiously from her diagnosis of Dunbar to that of his entire society, and reaches her own science’s strange circuits a familiar conclusion:

Crime is caused by an abuse or perverted action of the animal propensities, owing principally to education, and partly to the hereditary transmission of those faculties from parents to their children … It is a fact which comes within the range of our observation daily, that the faculties of Destructiveness and Combativeness are almost universally strengthened and encouraged in children by severe and coercive measures … Punishment with the rod invariably tends to give a highly stimulated and perverted action to Destructiveness and Combativeness … by repeated whippings an increased quantity of blood is sent to the base of the brain, and it is thereby inflamed and excited, and increased in size and activity. If children are punished in anger, and from a spirit of retaliation, we may reasonably expect to see in them, when full grown and matured, an abnormal exercise of Destructiveness and Combativeness.

Thompson recommends a more rehabilitative approach to criminal justice, a combination of instruction and what she calls “the law of love” — “of the efficacy and power of kindness over man, even when in ruins, and sunk to the lowest depths of sin and degradation. However far he may have wandered from the paths of truth and virtue, still he is a man and a brother — an immortal being, having claims on our sympathy, and our best efforts to reform him and make him happy.”

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1696: Thomas Randal, obstinate

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On this date in 1696, Thomas Randal was executed and hanged in chains for the robbery-murder of a Quaker named Roger Levens or Leavens.

Despite what the broadsheet below would have you believe, Randal never acknowledged the crime and begged forgiveness, at least not outside the confines of his own soul. The Ordinary of Newgate devotes a considerable portion of his 29th January 1696 account to his thorough but unavailing work on Randal’s conscience.

“On Wednesday in the Afternoon I took him aside,” he recounts — seemingly referring to a conversation a week prior to the hanging, which took place on Wednesday the 29th.

and for a considerable time endeavour’d to perswade him, no longer Athiestically [sic] to deny the Crime; but he stood out in the denial of it, whereupon I read to him, what was sworn against him at his Tryal, and that the Jury was fully convinced in their Consciences that he was guilty. Which they declared, when they gave their Verdict. He reply’d, That he did not matter that, being clear in his own Conscience. Then I told him, that he obstructed any Rational Hopes of his Salvation, and that all Persons who read the Book of Tryals, whom I met with, believ’d him to be guilty.

I pray’d, that God would work him to a free and full acknowledgment of his Crime, and grant him Repentance for it. Yet he deny’d it, and said, That he was resolved to to so at the time of his Death. I told him of a Person who Murther’d his Wife, and deny’d it several times at the place of Execution, wishing Damnation on himself, if he knew any thing of it. After I had pray’d thrice, that God would perswade him to declare the Truth; I told him, If I went out of the Cart any more, he would be presently Executed, and then he could not be Saved, dying in his Atheistical Impenitency. At last he call’d me back and said, I Murthered my Wife with a Pistol, and shot her in the Head; but let not the People know it. I said, your self shall declare, that you Murthered her. Then he said, All you that behold me pray for me, that God would Pardon my great Provocation of him denying my Crime against my Conscience; for had I died with a Lye in my Mouth, I had been damned. This Account somewhat startled Randal, and altred his Countenance; then I pray’d again, that God would not leave him to dye in so barbarous a Crime, but to confess it, and to Repent of his former Obstinacy. After this he said not any word by way of reply: Then I told him, that he ought to consider of whatsoever I had said, and I hoped that he would confess the Crime before he dy’d. He said, that he had lived in much Sinning, but would not acknowledge any particular.

Breaking down the obstinance of the doomed was one of the Ordinary’s core competencies but he never managed to add Randal’s soul to his ranks of sheep stealers made saints: the man went to the gallows with the same story on his lips.

On Wednesday the 29 January, Thomas Randal who killed Roger Levens the Quaker, was put into a Cart and conveyed by the Deceased’s Door at White-Chappel, and from thence to the Place of his Execution at Stone-bridge by Kingsland, where he is to hang in Irons, on a Gibbet, till his Body be consumed. He did confess that he was at the Marshalsea with Lock and Green but denied that he never spoke any such Words, that he did kill the Quaker: he acknowledged that he did say to the Serjeant when he was Taken, that he was a Dead Man, and that he had been a very wicked Sinner, and had been Guilty of all manner of Sins in general; (except that of Murder) He owned a Burglary that he committed at Linton, near Saffron Walden in Essex; but would not confess any of his Accomplices. He said that Hunt and he had been in many Robberies. The Worthy Sheriffs did exhort him with Spiritual Council, that he should make an Ingenious Confession, and not to perfist in his Obstinacy, and Dye with a Lye in his Mouth, but to have regard to his precious soul; it wrought nothing upon him, his Heart being so hardened, he would not discover any thing of the Murder; nor any of the Persons that was with him at the time; but hoped that he had done his Work with God-Almighty. Then Mr. Ordinary pressed him, and told him that Confession was the first step to Repentance; and without that he could hardly make his Peace with God; but it did avail nothing with him, he still persisting in the same, till the Cart Drew away; He was turned off.

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1830: Benito de Soto, a pirate hanged at Gibraltar

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On this date in 1830, the Galician or Portuguese pirate Benito de Soto was hanged at Gibraltar.

One of the very last of the dying breed of high-seas pirates, de Soto mutinied aboard an Argentine slave smuggler in 1827, re-christened her Burla Negra (“Black Joke”), and ran up the black flag.*

The pirates now entered freely into their villianous [sic] pursuit, and plundered many vessels; amongst others was an American brig, the treatment of which forms the chef d’oeuvre of their atrocity. Having taken out of this brig all the valuables they could find, they hatched down all hands to the hold, except a black man, who was allowed to remain on deck, for the special purpose of affording in his torture an amusing exhibition to Soto and his gang. They set fire to the brig, then lay to, to observe the progress of the flames; and as the miserable African bounded from rope to rope, now climbing to the mast head — now clinging to the shrouds — now leaping to one part of the vessel, and now to another, — their enjoyment seemed raised to its highest pitch. At length the hatches opened to the devouring element, the tortured victim of their fiendish cruelty fell exhausted into the flames, and the horrid and revolting scene closed amidst the shouts of the miscreants who had caused it.

Of their other exploits, that which ranks next in turpitude, and which led to their overthrow, was the piracy of the Morning Star. They fell in with that vessel near the Island Ascension, in the year 1828, as she was on her voyage from Ceylon to England. This vessel, besides a valuable cargo, had on board sevreal [sic] passengers, consisting of a major and his wife, an assistant surgeon, two civilians, about five and twenty invalid soldiers, and three or four of their wives. As soon as Benito de Soto perceived the ship, which was at day-light on the 21st of February, he called up all hands, and prepared for attacking her; he was at the time steering on an opposite course to that of the Morning Star. On reconnoitring [sic] her, he at first supposed she was a French vessel; but Rabazan, one of his crew, who was himself a Frenchman, assured him the ship was British. “So much the better,” exclaimed Soto, in English, (for he could speak that language,) “we shall find the more booty.”

The Burla Negra was much the faster and better-armed ship — in fact the Morning Star was completely unarmed, with not even a store of small arms for her frightened passengers — and soon corralled her prey, murdered the captain and mate, plundered the ship, and gang-raped the women aboard. The only mercy was that the marauders, out of tenderness or drunkenness (having also helped themselves to the Morning Star‘s wine), only imprisoned the human cargo below when they scuttled the ship and sailed away — and the passengers and crew were able to free themselves before they drowned and return safe home to tell the tale of their outrage.

Benito de Soto sailed next for his home port of Corunna, with the aid of a hostage navigator commandeered from his next prize. (The captain ruthlessly shot said unwilling helmsman dead upon arrival.) This adventure, however, marked the last of his career for on the way back to sea the corsairs were shipwrecked and had to take refuge at British Gibraltar where, after residing some time under false identities, a survivor of the Morning Star recognized them.

Easy come, easy go. “Adeus todos!” were his understated last words, not counting those syllables whistled by the salt winds through his posthumous pike-mounted skull.

However, British authorities — who were very conscious that they had detected the villain by pure chance — were not at all amused by the ease with which he had set up in Gibraltar. His legacy would be an impetus to Gibraltar officials to tighten up entrance regulations and, later that same year of 1830, to institute the Royal Gibraltar Police — the oldest police force in the Commonwealth outside the British isles.

* The slaver was full of African slaves, so the first profitable thing the buccaneers did was complete the vessel’s “legitimate” purpose by smuggling them to the West Indies. A black cabin boy that de Soto chose to retain would be captured with the rest and give evidence against the pirates. “The black slave of the pirate stood upon the battery trembling before his dying master to behold the awful termination of a series of events, the recital of which to his African countrymen, when he shall return to his home, will give them no doubt, a dreadful picture of European civilization,” muses our reporter.

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1874: Marshall Martin, “an innocent man compared to that woman”

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(Thanks to Robert Elder of Last Words of the Executed — the blog, and the book — for the guest post. This post originally appeared on the Last Words blog. Fans of this here site are highly likely to enjoy following Elder’s own pithy, almanac-style collection of last words on the scaffold. -ed.)

Gentlemen, I am here to die, but I am an innocent man compared to that woman. She deserves death ten times more than I do.

-Marshall Martin, convicted of murder, hanging, California. Executed January 23, 1874

Martin’s work supervisor was Valentine Eischler, whose marriage with wife Elizabeth was in the course of unraveling. According to Martin’s testimony, Elizabeth seduced him and urged him to murder her husband. Eventually, Eischler died in an attack with an ax, with both parties claiming responsibility at different times. Elizabeth pleaded insanity and was sent to an asylum. Martin was convicted of first-degree murder. It’s worth noting that the Chicago Daily Tribune recorded slightly different last words: “Gentlemen: I want you all to understand that I am here to die; but I am an innocent man; I don’t deserve this. The woman that caused me to do this deserves death a thousand more times than I do. That’s all I have to say.” Martin’s hanging was particularly gruesome, as recorded by the newspaper Alta California: “Although there was a drop of only six feet, the body dropped headless to the ground. His head rebounded a distance of six feet.”

(Also see a 2011 feature on the crime and the hanging in the San Jose Mercury News: Part 1 | Part 2 -ed.)

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1886: Henry Jackson, religiously inclined

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From the New York Times, Jan. 23, 1886:

NEW-ORLEANS, La., Jan. 22. — Last July Henry Britton, of Minden Junction, was found murdered in his store. He had been shot through an open window with a shotgun and his brains blown out. The murderer, it was subsequently shown, deliberately crawled into the store window over the dead body, took down some sardines from the shelf, opened them, and made a meal. After eating he rifled the cash drawers and the dead man’s pockets, securing about $130 in money and two watches. He then went out the front door, taking the key which had been left sticking into the lock on the inside. He closed the door and carried away the key. The next morning, which was Sunday, a negro named Henry Jackson appeared at the negro church at Arcadia, 10 miles away, took a prominent part in the services, and contributed liberally to the church. On Monday morning, as soon as the business houses were opened, Jackson commenced purchasing goods freely, which led to a suspicion of his being the man who committed the murder.

Jackson was arrested, and when searched the money and watches — one of them with the murdered man’s initials on it — and the store key were found on him. He stoutly asserted his innocence until he was returned to Minden and jailed. He then confessed. He said that he knew Britton had money, and he murdered him for it. Jackson was tried by a jury composed of his own color, who found him guilty of murder in the first degree, without leaving their seats. He was sentenced to be hanged on such day as the Governor might name. He experienced religion a week after he was jailed, and he said that the Lord had forgiven him, and he was going straight to heaven.

The murderer was hanged to-day, and the event is notable in consequence of his being the first person ever legally hanged in Webster Parish. He came down the stairs to the gallows singing a negro revival hymn at 12:50 in the presence of the Sheriff, his deputy, and the witnesses allowed by law. The rope holding the trap on which the prisoner stood was cut, and in 15 minutes the doctor declared the man dead. His neck was instantly broken, and there was every indication of an instantaneous death. Jackson was singing a hymn when the trap fell.

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1875: A day in the death penalty on opposite sides of Pennsylvania

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Pennsylvania, that state once described as Philadelphia in the east and Pittsburgh in the west with Alabama in between, had dueling hangings in its two metropolises on this date in 1875.

Philadelphia: Frederick Heidenblut

German immigrant Fritz Heidenblut, who weighed in at a reported 52 kg, strangled to death on a too-short drop. Boarding with the Kuhnle family, Heidenblut had unexpectedly attacked them on Dec. 31, 1873, with the base objective of stealing cash and valuables.

The mother (barely) survived the ordeal, and would later describe how she

was suddenly awakened by a heavy weight pressing upon my breast; and, looking up, I found Fritz kneeling on me, and his hands grasping my throat. He did not speak, and I was unable to do so. In the struggle I scratched his face, and he bit off a piece of my ear and the end of one of my fingers. He then left me for dead, as I suppose, and went to the bureau-drawer, from which he took $55.

When Mrs. Kuhnle came to, she was able to crawl downstairs where she found her husband murdered in the family bakehouse. Heidenblut was arrested that evening, blowing through the $55 at a nearby tavern.

After execution, Heidenblut’s body was turned over to physicians for galvanic experimentation.

Pittsburgh: Samuel Beightley, Jr.

While Heidenblut’s spirit faltered visibly as his hanging-day approached, Pittsburgh’s Samuel Beightley maintained his obnoxious joviality — even pranking his counsel with a fool’s errand to find his “hidden treasure” on the eve of execution.

Beightley, a few days after being discharged from his seasonal farmhand gig by Murrayville farmer Joseph Kerr in autumn 1873, had returned and slaughtered Mr. Kerr, again with the motive of robbery. Like his Philadelphian brother in homicide, Beightley earned low marks for concealment, leaving his own bloodied coat at the murder scene as he retired home where he popped into bed and pretended to be asleep when the posse came.

“To see Beightley was to hate him,” observed the Chicago Daily Tribune, whose Jan. 21, 1875 issue is our source for both crimes in this post.

He was of that peculiarly brutal cast of countenance which shows murder in the very cut of the jaws, and the bull-neck was but the mere accompaniment to an evidently-merciless disposition. He was about 22 years old, and rather short, but stoutly built. His conduct since his condemnation showed the nature of the man. He evidenced no sorrow or remorse for the killing of the old man, who to him had proved a good and true friend. Beightly was fond of rowing, and led a lazy, vagabond life, scarcely ever working. He lived mostly by petty thefts.

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1767: John Williamson, cruel husband

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From the London Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, Feb. 2, 1767.

An Account of the CRUELTIES, exercised by JOHN WILLIAMSON on his wife, whereby she left her life, and for which he was lately executed in Moorfields.

JOHN WILLIAMSON, Journeyman Shoemaker, a widower with three children, who all starved together in a garret in an alley in Little Moorfields, found a woman who had upwards of 60l. weak enough in understanding to marry him; but she did not bed with him above two or three times; yet they continued sociable for two or three weeks. But the poor woman soon after finding herself ill-used, and denied common food, made complaints to some neighbours; which he resenting, debarred her from going abroad.

The wife being subject to fits, used to turn up the whites of her eyes, at which a neighbour, and Williamson’s daughter, of fifteen, pretending to be frightened, he thought proper, when he went out, to tie a rope around her waist, and fastened it to a post near the bedstead: but afterwards he procured some hand-cuffs, which were put on in the daytime, and she permitted to sit on a trunk.

Besides having fits, and turning up her eyes, she once drank a dish of tea left in the pot for the little boy, and filled the pot with water; she slapped the boy’s face when he had done a fault; the husband once missing a pair of soles, he supposed she must have made away with them; she struck a light with one of his working knives; she often begged of him for victuals; and he as constantly beat her for it, and once when her husband had been out with other company, and returning about nine at night, her usual time of going to bed, she was found asleep, which was reported to be drunkenness.

These things were thought sufficient reasons by her husband to hand-cuff her, with her hands behind, and tie her up in a closet; he tied a rope to a staple, put it through the hand-cuffs, and drew it up to a nail over her head, so as to cause her to stand on tip-toe, and left her in that condition and posture for near a month together, without being set down or going to bed — not even when she was in fits.

Her husband gave her every day a bit of bread and butter, laying it on a shelf she could easily reach with her mouth, when she could not, sometimes they would put it close; they used to hold water to her mouth while she drank. When she asked for more bread and butter, the husband would not let her have it.

She was also beaten, bruised, and wounded, and frequently sluiced in the face and all over with cold water.

Want of every necessary, and the repetition of the above cruelties, were too much for a woman, and she sunk under them. The day before she died, she was let out of the closet, and offered meat when she could not swallow; she was also then allowed to warm herself, but in ten minutes she was told she was warm enough, and should sit there no longer, but must get into her kennel; she staggered to the closet, and the door was shut; she fell into a delirium, and died in strong convulsions in the evening.

Casualties of Williamson’s abuse outlived the man and his poor wife: Williamson’s children landed in the workhouse of St. Giles’s Cripplegate, whereas elsewhere …


Item from the May 18, 1767 Boston Evening Post.

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