Family, Friends and Neighbors: Stories of Murder and Betrayal

Introduction

As a writer of true crime books, I am no stranger to locations associated with murder. During the course of my writing career, I have had the opportunity to spend time in such places as the Moore residence, the scene of Iowa’s as-yet-unsolved Villisca ax murders. I also spent some time in residence at Fox Hollow Farm, Indiana, the former home of alleged serial killer Herb Baumeister, who is also known as the I-70 Strangler.

The Moore house is a small wood-framed structure that has been restored to a close approximation of its condition circa the early 1900s. On the night of June 10, 1912, a killer (or killers, depending on which theory you believe) either broke into the house or was lying in wait inside the attic when the Moores returned from spending the evening at church. All six members of the family—two adults and four children—were murdered in their beds with an ax taken from the barn. Also killed were the two Stillinger sisters, friends of the Moore children, who had accompanied them home from church for a sleepover.

Stepping inside the house more than a century later, the faces of the victims look down on the visitor from framed photographs hanging on the walls of the rooms in which they died. In the master bedroom at the top of the stairs, one can still see gouges in the ceiling made by the ax head during its backswing. I’m not a particularly sensitive man, but even I had to admit that the house has an atmosphere that might best be described as either heavy or oppressive. Standing in the rooms in which they died, one cannot help but feel deeply connected with the Moores and the Stillingers, even after so many years have passed.

Located in Carmel, Indiana, Fox Hollow Farm is a larger, more modern estate, the centerpiece of which is a grand mock-Tudor house. In the basement is a swimming pool in which thrift store owner Herb Baumeister is said to have murdered an undetermined (though there were at least 11) number of men, based upon the number of bones and fragments that were found scattered around the grounds of the estate.

After picking them up in a gay bar, Baumeister liked to drug his victims, invite them to swim in the pool, and then engage them in bouts of mutual autoerotic asphyxiation, the sexual practice of strangulation in an effort to enhance the potency of orgasm. In Herb’s case, he simply refused to stop strangling when he should have and kept applying pressure until they were dead. The bodies were then disposed of in the woods directly behind the main house. Some were burned, mulched, or otherwise desecrated. None were buried, so the local wildlife scattered the remains far and wide. To this day, bones are still being discovered at Fox Hollow Farm.

I spent a week on site at Fox Hollow and its surrounding environs. During that time, I swam in the pool where Herb is believed to have committed most of the murders; fixed drinks at the adjacent wet bar; sat and wrote at the desk in his library, poring through books he had left behind after his death, some of which were annotated with handwritten notes; and ate food in his kitchen. Thankfully, I felt no sense of connection with him at all and certainly not one shred of sympathy. Although he had fallen on rough financial times, with his marriage failing and a probable family breakup being imminent, he earned no sympathy from me. I reserved all of my concern for the poor men he had tricked, murdered, and cast away with no more thought than if they were yesterday’s trash.

Both Herb Baumeister and the unidentified Villisca ax murderer had targeted those whom they did not know: strangers, for the most part, against whom they bore no personal malice. (Although one of the suspects in the Villisca murders was connected to the Moore family, few consider him to be a particularly credible candidate for their murderer.) Today, our serial killer–obsessed society places murderers such as John Wayne Gacy, Theodore Ted Bundy, and Jeffrey Dahmer on a pedestal, with countless documentaries and books devoted to them. This includes my first book for Visible Ink Press, Serial Killers, which had a dedicated chapter for each criminal, covering the murders he committed.

The mass media–fueled public fascination for details about serial murderers and their activities misses one key point, however: We are far more likely to be murdered by somebody that we personally know than by a complete stranger. In actuality, stranger homicides, a term that incorporates home invasions, off-the-street abductions, and random killings, tend to account for a minority of homicides. Although these crimes do happen, they are far less common than murders that take place between two or more parties who already know each other.

In a 2012 report titled Violent Victimization Committed by Strangers, Erika Harrell, Ph.D., writing on behalf of the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, studied the contrast between stranger homicides and murders between known parties that took place during a 15-year period. The researcher scrutinized homicide data that was reported to the FBI between the years 1993 and 2008. Her conclusions were both alarming and illuminating. For those homicides in which the relationship status of the murderer and victim was known, between 21% and 27% were carried out by a perpetrator who was completely unknown to the victim. Between 73% and 79% of homicides happened between people with an existing relationship.

A 2011 report that was compiled for the same agency by statisticians Alexia Cooper and Erica L. Smith noted that between 1980 and 2008, 22% of homicides were committed by a stranger (https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf). Of the remaining 78%, 10% of the murders were committed by the victim’s spouse; 6.3% by a boyfriend or girlfriend; 12.4% by another member of the family; and 49.4% by an acquaintance or friend.

To sum it up, during the time period being studied, Americans were almost four times more likely to be killed by someone they knew than by a stranger.

Analyzing the same statistics as they pertain to intimate partner killings reveals the significantly increased risk that females bear in proportion to males. An intimate partner is defined as a present or former romantic partner, such as a spouse, fiancé(e), boyfriend/girlfriend, lover, or ex; even somebody whom the victim was casually dating can meet the criteria.

Sixteen percent of all murders studied in which the relationship between the parties was known were committed by an intimate partner. However, two out of every five (40%) female murder victims were killed by an intimate. That number increased to 45% by 2008; for males, it was 4.9%. Women were almost ten times more likely to be killed by an intimate partner than a male was.

Why would this be the case?

In a significant number of murders, the female was involved in or attempting to leave an already abusive personal relationship. Subsequent investigation of such situations may reveal previous episodes of physical violence, culminating in a crisis situation. The males involved tend to be controlling, prone to jealousy, and extremely aggressive. Once the aggressor learns that his victim is seeking escape, feelings of rejection and rage can lead to a murderous assault, sometimes predicated on the idea of if I can’t have her, then nobody can. One of the warning signs is an attitude that suggests the victim is their property, rather than a living, breathing human being, which makes it easier for the abuser to depersonalize and harm them.

Escaping from an abusive situation is no guarantee of safety, however. There are numerous cases on record of women being murdered by an intimate partner months or even years after having left them. These tragedies are often preceded by episodes of stalking behavior, restraining orders, police protection orders (which are frequently violated), and other indicators of escalating danger.

Once a murder has taken place, a line has been crossed. Some killers attempt to shift the blame onto the victims, a strategy that rarely succeeds in a court of law. Others choose to take their own lives in order to avoid being brought to justice, sometimes becoming family annihilators in the process and wiping out everybody in their immediate familial circle, from grandparents to infants.

The data analyzed by Cooper and Smith revealed trends relating to murders within the family unit. In 1980, half of those killings were committed by a spouse or an ex-spouse. By 2008, that number had declined to 37%, but this still remained the most common type of familial murder. The second most common was a child or children who were killed by their parents. Coming last in terms of frequency are parents who are murdered by their own child. We will see examples of all three types in this book.

Although there are instances in which women murdered members of their own family, the reality is that the vast majority of familicides are carried out by men (some studies place the prevalence at a shocking 90%).

As the cases covered in this book will demonstrate, by far the most common type of murder weapon used is a gun. We have already established that at the root of many familicides is the perpetrator’s need for control; firearms can also come into play as a method of gaining control over the victim or victims, forcing them into a vulnerable situation from which they simply cannot escape.

When explaining the motives behind crimes of familicide, the same set of circumstances tend to crop up over and over again: an angry, possessive, controlling male, often with a history of domestic abuse (which may never have been reported to the police) and with ready access to guns. Such crimes take place in countries all around the world, but in nations such as the United Kingdom or Europe they occur less frequently than they do in the United States.

In short, the textbook case of familicide tends to be a crime in which the toxic emotional traits of a possessive, domineering male are inflicted on those who should be nearest and dearest to them; that jealousy, rage, and fear of loss of control manifests as a form of extreme violence.

Yet there are also outliers. In the chapters ahead, we will meet family murderers who, consumed by crippling debt and terrified of an imminent loss of social status, killed for financial reasons. Others killed family members out of hatred, revenge murders following years of abuse and pent-up resentment. And there are men who tried to use murder as a method of leaving a marriage from which they wanted to escape rather than obtaining a divorce.

It was while spending several nights at Britain’s historic Bodmin Jail that I was introduced to the sad story of Selina Wadge. The jail was built in the 1770s, and during its time as an active prison facility was a place of incarceration for men, women, and children alike. Murderers, rapists, and violent offenders shared cells with petty criminals, who could be imprisoned for a relatively minor infraction such as stealing a loaf of bread. At least one inmate was sentenced to prison for the crime of bestiality with a sheep.

Twenty-eight years old in the summer of 1878, Selina Wadge was the single mother of two young children. She had borne both out of wedlock, which turned her into a pariah under the Victorian social mores of the time. It was all but impossible for her to make enough money to support herself and her children, Harry and John; she had nothing in the way of professional skills with which to earn a living. She somehow managed to make ends meet, but it was always difficult.

Selina was romantically linked with a man named James Westwood. Sometime between June 21 and 22, Selina’s youngest son disappeared. People who knew her understandably asked what had happened to him. Selina and James told two different stories. According to Selina, James had thrown the helpless child down into a well and left him to drown. Selina said she was powerless to stop the murder and then added that James had also said he would kill both her and John if they gave him any trouble.

James, on the other hand, said that it was Selina who had killed her own son. The boy had been gravely disabled and something of a hindrance to Selina and her beau. His death meant that there was one less mouth for her to feed.

Whichever version of the story happened to be the truth, while searching for the missing boy, police constables discovered the lifeless body of Harry Wadge floating in water at the bottom of a well shaft. While she was waiting for the police investigation to progress, Selina changed her story, claiming that she was the one to have thrown Harry down into the well. Westwood had been present, she said, but she had carried out the actual murder herself. Her motive had been a promise by Westwood that he would, in the parlance of the age, make an honest woman of her, if only she would get rid of Harry first. This was something Westwood would later vigorously deny.

Wadge was arrested and charged with the crime of murder. The following month, she was tried and found guilty. Ignoring the jury’s recommendation for clemency, the presiding judge sentenced Wadge to be hanged by the neck until dead. She was sent to Bodmin Jail and kept in the condemned cell. I spent several hours sitting in that same cell by myself, contemplating the thoughts and fears that must have gone through Selina’s head in the run-up to her death.

Wadge’s date of execution was set for the morning of August 15, 1878. Public executions were once held directly outside the prison gates. It was a spectacle on a par with big sports games today, crowds of hundreds and even thousands gathering to watch and celebrate the death of a convicted criminal. By the time of Selina’s hanging, the authorities tried to provide the condemned prisoner with a little privacy. This meant setting up the gallows inside the prison itself.

I followed the path that Selina and her escorts took from her cell to the hanging site, gaining a new appreciation for the sense of impending dread she must have felt growing with every step. Her last words, once the noose was secured around her neck, were: Lord, deliver me from this miserable world.

At 8:00 A.M. the hangman did just that. The execution went off without a hitch. Selina’s body was allowed to dangle from the rope for the period specified by English law, and after being certified dead by the attending physician, she was buried somewhere within the grounds of Bodmin Jail, where she remains today.

As I sat in the room where Selina Wadge had spent many a sleepless night prior to her death, I tried to put myself in her state of mind. Was life really so desperate for her that she had no better option than to murder her own helpless son in exchange for the possibility of a husband and a bit of security in an uncertain world? Or had she really been railroaded by James Westwood, as she had claimed at first, and found herself paying for it with her life?

The more research I conducted into different cases of familicide, the more tragic I found them to be. No matter the reason, whenever human lives are lost, taken by those whom they trust and often love, an act of betrayal is committed, one that tugs at the heartstrings and sickens the gut in equal measure. Familicide is, I believe, one of the most senseless of crimes. Understandably, it is also one of the hardest to forgive.

In writing this book, I have attempted to include a varied cross section of familial murder cases. In some of these cases, the perpetrator was found guilty in a court of law and a sentence was imposed—usually imprisonment or death. In others, the alleged killer took their own life before they could be arrested and tried. Finally, there are some cases in which the guilt or innocence of the alleged perpetrator is still debated by many; this even includes cases in which someone was convicted and imprisoned.

The inclusion of a case within this book does not necessarily imply guilt. Some of the events covered in these pages remain murky and even controversial. In all instances, I have attempted to provide a reasoned and impartial analysis of the facts that were available to me at the time of writing.

—Richard Estep

January 2023

DEATH BY ARSENIC: MARY ANN COTTON

Whether or not the case against Selina Wadge discussed in this book’s introduction is clear, it’s not impossible to have sympathy for her. But although we might be able to empathize with how a few killers might have been led down a path to murder, the same cannot be said for Victorian-era serial poisoner Mary Ann Cotton (1832–1873).

Despite the fact that she became the center of a national scandal, many of the specifics of Mary Ann Cotton’s life remain somewhat nebulous. Born in a small English village named Low Moorsley in 1832, at the age of 16 she found employment as a nurse. This position regularly put her in the company of younger children, although it is not known whether she harmed any of them.

At the age of 20, Mary Ann married the first of several husbands, a coal miner named William Mowbray. The newly married Mr. and Mrs. Mowbray wasted no time in adding children to their family, but it seemed that as quickly as Mary Ann could give birth, they started to die. In most cases, the stated cause of death, gastric fever, would almost certainly not have held up to a thorough autopsy by today’s standards.

Although Mary Ann Cotton was only convicted of one murder, she is believed to have killed over a dozen members of her own family.

The symptoms of gastric fever included nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and severe abdominal pain, usually accompanied by an elevated temperature. These same symptoms are caused by arsenic poisoning. Arsenic was in many ways the perfect poison, due to the fact that it is both odorless and tasteless. Slipping the poison into an unsuspecting victim’s food or drink was relatively easy, particularly when the person doing it was their mother, who was responsible for preparing the food for the household.

Gastric fever and arsenic poisoning have many of the same symptoms such as abdominal pain, fever, and nausea.

Arsenic was more readily accessible during the mid-to-late-1800s than at any other time in British history. The Industrial Revolution was in full swing, with factories and mines springing up all across the country. In lower concentrations, arsenic could be found in soaps and cosmetics, and was even mixed into certain medications. In more concentrated amounts, it was highly toxic, and there was no antidote to arsenic poisoning then, just as there isn’t today. Mary Ann Cotton found it easy to get hold of arsenic, easy to make her victims ingest it, and easy to write off the resulting death as a gastrointestinal problem.

In 1865, 13 years after they were married, William Mowbray and at least three of the children he had fathered with Mary Ann Cotton were dead. The cause was always the same, or at least similar enough that in hindsight it becomes obvious that most (if not all) were likely poisoned—probably with arsenic.

William was insured, and his death brought Mary Ann a substantial cash payment. This gave her the freedom to leave town and start a fresh life in a new town … after a suitable period of mourning, of course. Although not formally trained, she was a sufficiently skilled actress to play the part of the grieving widow and mother in a very convincing way.

Once she had settled down in a new town, Mary Ann remarried. Before the year was out, husband number two was also dead. Fortunately, his sobbing widow had shown the foresight to take a life insurance policy out on him too. The resultant windfall went straight into Mary Ann’s pocket. She was starting to become greedy.

Target number three was a widower named James Robinson. Mary Ann wormed her way into his affections by taking a job running his household and then ensuring that the relationship with her new employer quickly developed into a romance. In the months after she moved into the household, three of Robinson’s children died under questionable circumstances. So did Mary Ann’s own daughter, who came to live with them. James Robinson cannot have suspected his new housekeeper of having had a hand in this string of deaths, because shortly afterward he proposed marriage to her. Robinson was fairly well off, and she did not hesitate to accept.

After they were married, the Robinsons had a child of their own, a daughter who, sadly but all too predictably at this point, mysteriously died. James Robinson slowly began to suspect that his new wife was far from what she seemed. His suspicions were confirmed when he learned that she had been quietly bilking him out of his money and secretly selling off his possessions and pocketing the cash. This was the last straw for Robinson, who washed his hands of Mary Ann and evicted her from the home they shared. With the benefit of hindsight, this may well have saved his life—from death at the hands of the woman who had just insisted on having him insured.…

Although she was still legally Mrs. Robinson, the suddenly homeless and destitute Mary Ann wasted no time in hunting down husband number four. Her new spouse, a man named Frederick Cotton, died within three months of marrying Mary Ann … but not before she had taken out an insurance policy on his life.

One side effect of the husbands and lovers Mary Ann accumulated over the years was that she tended to accrue stepchildren along the way. These children also had a habit of dying shortly after she entered their lives, and it’s likely that at least some of them were victims of poisoning. It was circumstances such as these that finally brought Mary Ann Cotton to the attention of the authorities. The deceased Fred Cotton’s 7-year-old son, Charles, died shortly after his father had.

During Victorian times, arsenic was an ingredient found in a number of common beauty products, and so it was not difficult for an ordinary person to obtain this deadly chemical.

For the first time, people were finally paying attention to the death toll that accompanied Mary Ann’s presence. There was talk behind her back, and dark rumors began to spread. Her history of familial deaths came to light. The police got wind of things and, acting on the suspicion that she had been responsible for the death of Charles Cotton, exhumed his body and had it tested for poison by a medical expert. The results came back positive for traces of arsenic.

This was enough to put the dead boy’s stepmother in court, on charges of murder. Despite her vehement protestations of innocence, Mary Ann Cotton was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging, to be carried out on March 24, 1873. By all accounts, the execution was an ugly one. Rather than breaking her neck quickly and cleanly, she was instead left dangling at the end of the hangman’s rope, as the noose slowly and excruciatingly strangled her to death. There was widespread gossip that the executioner had badly botched the job.

How did Mary Ann Cotton get away with murder so many times, and for so many years, before she was detected? As previously mentioned, this was the Victorian age, and although what we think of as modern medicine was beginning to take root and flourish, the science of the time was still far from the quality we take for granted today. The infant and childhood mortality rate was exceptionally high. A child dying of natural causes was taken as an everyday fact of life. Large family sizes meant that the death of a child could hit the parents hard but was something that the family could recover from and move forward. However, even by the standards of the time, the number of children (and husbands) that Mary Ann lost was disproportionately high.

Mary Ann Cotton traveled around the country, moving from place to place over the years, leaving a trail of death by poison in her wake—or so the prosecutors would contend. Much of this travel was funded by the proceeds of insurance policy payouts from dead family members. Although a number of police services were being formed across the country at that time, there was nothing along the lines of a cohesive law enforcement network with widespread jurisdiction, let alone the ability to recognize a pattern of suspicious deaths and launch an investigation into their cause. This was the perfect time for a serial killer to thrive, and thrive Mary Ann Cotton did for many years, living on the proceeds of the life insurance policies that had been placed on her loved ones before their untimely deaths.

For many years, nobody paid attention to the death toll that was stacking up around the former dressmaker. It is impossible to determine exactly how many of her children and adult family members