Whipped Cream Difficulties

100 years ago today, in the evening on September 14th, 1922, Edward Hall and Eleanor Mills were murdered. Their bodies were not discovered until the morning of September 16th, but they were last seen on the evening of the 14th and it is believed they were murdered that night.

Edward Hall was an Episcopal priest in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He was married to Frances Hall (Stevens). Eleanor Mills (Reinhardt) was married to James Mills and was a member of the choir at Reverend Hall’s church. Her husband was the church’s sexton. Their bodies were found together:

The bodies appeared to have been positioned side by side after death. Both had their feet pointing toward a crab apple tree. The man had a hat covering his face, and his calling card was placed at his feet. Torn-up love letters were placed between the bodies.

Both had been shot: Rev. Hall once, Mrs. Mills three times. Mrs. Mills also had her tongue and vocal chords cut out, though apparently that was not noticed until an autopsy was done…four years later.

A police officer at the scene noticed that the woman’s throat had been severed, and maggots were already in the wound, indicating the death occurred at least 24 hours earlier.

This was, to put it mildly, a frigging circus. Rex Stout is quoted as stating the investigation showed “a record of sustained official ineptitude, surely never surpassed anywhere.” (Stout, of course, passed away before the OJ trial.)

There was a question of jurisdiction between Somerset County and Middlesex County, as the site where the bodies were discovered was right on the boundary between the counties. The police were very much in “Crowd control? What’s that?” mode: the crowd trampled the scene, walked off with possible evidence, and even stripped a tree completely of bark looking for souvenirs. According to Bill James, “The scene where the murders occurred was mobbed by so many people that eight to ten vendors set up tents on location, selling popcorn, peanuts, candy and soft drinks to the Lookie Lous.”

(In fairness to the local police, not only did the dispute over jurisdiction throw a wrench in the works, but at that point in history, the number of people who knew how to properly secure and investigate a crime scene, even by 1922 standards of “investigation”, would probably fit in a small auditorium at best. Forensic investigation was not a well developed science at that time. And I should probably write a longer piece on American Sherlock and 18 Tiny Deaths one of these days.)

The prevailing theory of the case seems to have been that Francis Hall, her two brothers (Henry and William or “Willie”), and one of her cousins, Henry de la Bruyere Carpender, committed the murder, though who did what when and to whom isn’t known. The supposed motive, of course, was the obvious one: Hall and Mills were intimate, and one of their spouses found out.

It isn’t 100% clear to me why Mr. Mills wasn’t suspected, and Bill James makes a good case for him as an alternative suspect. The letters were from Mrs. Mills to Rev. Hall, but according to James, they were written but never mailed. There’s a general suspicion that Mr. Mills knew his wife was having an affair, but liked his job, and liked the money he was getting from the Reverend. Francis Hall came from a pretty well-off family, and the theory is that Rev. Hall married her more for money and status than love.

There seems to be something awfully personal about the violence directed at Mrs. Mills, which could imply an angry husband. Or, alternatively, a wife angry at her husband’s mistress. If it is true that the letters were never mailed, it seems that Mr. Mills is the only one likely to have had access to them, though there is a theory that Mrs. Mills brought them to the rendezvous to give to her lover. (The letters were, supposedly, written to Rev. Hall while he was away on vacation.)

There is also a third theory that the murders were actually the result of a robbery gone bad. This can’t be ruled out, as a significant amount of cash ($50 in 1922 dollars) and a gold watch were missing from Rev. Hall’s body. On the other hand, the investigation was so badly botched, nobody knows if the watch and money were taken by robbers, or walked off with by one or more of the Lookie Lous.

There was a grand jury investigation in 1922, but no indictments were returned. However, the New York Daily Mirror, a good Hearst newspaper, kept on the case and managed to get it re-opened in 1926. This time the grand jury indicted Mr. Carpender, Henry and William Stevens, and Mrs. Hall. Henry Carpender asked to be tried separately: his request was granted, and he was never tried.

From the accounts I’ve read, it was a pretty colorful trial: if you enjoyed OJ, you would have loved this one. Instead of Kato, there was the “Pig Woman”, so called because she had a farm with pigs near the crime scene. Also, she is (cruelly, in my opinion) described as “kind of looking like a pig”.

To quote Bill James again:

Mrs. Hall’s brother Willie, a defendant in the subsequent trial, became so famous that his peculiar looks and odd hair would be a touchstone of common reference for people of that generation. A writer of the 1920s would say that a person “looked something like Willie” and people would know that that meant Willie Stevens, just as a 1990s writer might say that somebody “looked a little like Kato”.

(“Willie was a colorful character on the witness stand, delivering credible and not unsympathetic testimony. He was incapable of holding a job and spent most of his time hanging out at a local firehouse. Although the condition had not yet been clinically described during his lifetime, Willie’s eccentric personality was consistent with high-functioning autism, although no conclusive diagnosis can be made.”)

Francis, Henry, and William were all acquitted. Mrs. Hall sued the Daily Mirror for defamation, and settled out of court.

And this would have gotten completely past me if it weren’t for a guy named Joe Pompeo, who has a new book out this week: Blood & Ink: The Scandalous Jazz Age Double Murder That Hooked America on True Crime (affiliate link). And tied to that, two articles: an excerpt in CrimeReads, and a second article in the New Yorker mostly focused on the magazine’s coverage of the trial. (The New Yorker was just a year old at the time of the trial: Morris Markey did the coverage.)

(Other folks who covered the trial: Damon Runyon, Mary Roberts Rinehart, H. L. Mencken, and Billy Sunday.)

To be honest, Mr. Pompeo’s book is getting so much press coverage that I’m suspicious. But the Hall-Mills case is a forgotten and fascinating period murder that hasn’t been written about in quite a while, and if he got a good book out of it, so be it.

Wikipedia entry. I know I plug this book a lot, but, yes, there’s a good write-up in Popular Crime. Really, you could do a lot worse than to buy a copy of the James book just to have around as a reference whenever someone mentions a case you’ve never heard of.

Fatal Tryst: Who Killed the Minister and the Choir Singer? appears to be out-of-print and out of control. I’m hoping that Mr. Pompeo’s book is a more than acceptable replacement.

Wikipedia also mentions The Minister and the Choir Singer by William Kunstler (yes, that one) which I actually own a copy of but haven’t read. James sort of likes the book, but dismisses Kunstler’s theory of the crime. I am inclined to agree based on the summaries I’ve read. (Since Wikipedia and Bill James spoil it, I’ll do so as well: Kunstler’s theory of the case is…the Ku Klux Klan did it.)

This is a really fun article from The Journal of the Rutgers University Libraries by Mary S. Hartman, “The Hall-Mills Murder Case: The Most Fascinating Unsolved Homicide in America“, which also provides a good summary of the case.

One juror admitted afterwards that he would stay there thirty years rather than to convict anyone on the evidence the pig woman gave.

Henry de la Bruyere Carpender died in 1934. Henry Stevens died in 1939. Frances Stevens Hall died in 1942, as did Willie Stevens. James Mills apparently died in 1965. The murders remain unsolved.