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| Springs Gazette Sept. 4, 1911 |
"Oly" in the comments on this old post has provided a very good and plausible hypothesis regarding the flashlight found behind the Dawson's house in Monmouth, Illinois. For those of you that didn't take the time to check the other article, here's the key takeaway:
I have four different phrases reported on the flashlight. The New York Times reported in 1915 the words “Colorado Springs” and “Lovey.” Pretty damning if true, however newspapers in Colorado reported the writing to say “Lovely, Colorado Springs.” The comma is paramount here as it’s the difference between a possible name (Lovely and Loving have both been reported as Mitchell’s first name) or a phrase you might find on a souvenir from a resort town like Colorado Springs. Another Colorado paper reported “Loving Colorado Springs.” The Monmouth Review-Atlas reported simply “Colorado Springs” in 1915, and in a 1984 article rehashing the incident the same paper reported “Colo. Sprig. Sept. 4.”
Ten yeas ago (holy crap) I spent a little time trying to find the significance of September 4, 1911 in Colorado Springs. I quickly filed it under "Get To Later" and was distracted by other shiny things. Thank goodness for readers! Oly may have found the definitive evidence linking the Burnham-Wayne murders to the Dawson murders. A Labor Day picnic in Colorado Springs! Hosted, in part, by the Modern Woodmen of America! On the date reported to have been scratched into the side of the flashlight! I'm extremely excited by this!
Up until now, the only reason I could connect the two events was through crime scene elements and due to lack of real primary sources (inquest transcripts, coroner records) those links were strained at best. Investigators in 1911, and later, 1915, had attempted to use the flashlight to link the two but due to the disappearance of physical evidence (i.e. the flashlight) they couldn't. As the previously linked article demonstrates, prosecutors and investigators couldn't agree on what was actually written on the flashlight. Did Ralph Eckley, the author of the 1984 article, pull that date out of thin air? It doesn't look likely. This also adds weight to my hypothesis that the flashlight found behind the Dawson's house was a souvenir, owned by one of the victims in Colorado Springs, and taken from the crime scene by the murderer, only to be dropped in the dark while making his escape. The flashlight probably wasn't purchased but may have been given as a prize for winning a race or game. Scratching the place and date into the metal was akin to writing on a photo or postcard; something to be remembered forever.
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| The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. Via citylab.com |
13 comments:
I'm curious if you've looked into the James Dunham case? I tried searching though your posts, and didn't see any mention of him.
In 1896, Dunham killed 6 members of his family in Campbell California, fled, and was never seen or heard from again. Here's an article from 1898 suggesting he may have also committed the Brookfield Massachusetts Murders in 1898, and that Paul Mueller is actually James Dunham. https://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=SFC18980315.2.129
Ashley - I'm not familiar with the Dunham case at all. Thanks for bringing my attention to it. The newspaper article you link to is a good example of the problem with linking crimes. Dunham fit a "description" to Mueller and the method of killing was "an axe being used." I'm actually surprised Bill James didn't try to link these two crimes together :) After reading up on it, my initial thoughts are they aren't related. Dunham's were deeply personal murders with a lot of rage behind them. He actually waited for two other members of the household to return home so he could kill them as well. Beyond that, Dunham doesn't fit the physical description of Mueller at all and Dunham appears to have been a well off, American born gentleman. Mueller was not. Thanks for reading!
First of all, glad to see you're posting again.
Not related to this post, but a thought's been rattling around my brain for some time now and I'd be interested to hear your take on it. It seems fairly clear to me that our unsub wasn't just picking victims/houses at random, given the regularity (and apparent focus) of prepubescent or pubescent girls among his victims, and therefore I believe we can safely suppose at least some degree of prior observation and preselection.
I presume (and I'd be glad to be corrected if I'm wrong) that in small midwestern towns at that time, church services would be an ideal context in which to observe a large portion of the townspeople, and at the same time a place where passers-through would not be particularly conspicuous. I'm struck by repeated references in the various accounts to the victims' church attendance, or links to a local church, or a particular church service on the day of the murders (as well as the fact that several of the murders occurred on Sunday nights). Do you think there could be anything at all to this?
"suppose at least some degree of prior observation and preselection."
I believe there was some observation that occurred prior to the murders. The extent of that observation is what I'm unsure of. There was some evidence in Villisca of a person watching the house from the barn. Bloodhounds tracked a scent to some bushes near the Showman house in Ellsworth. And in Colorado Springs, Nellie May was said, by her aunt, to have reacted to something at the window the night of the murders.
Your church idea is a good one. Church attendance was much higher back then but I think, especially in the small communities, a stranger in the pews would be noticed. It doesn't mean a person couldn't hang around near the church and observe the congregants as they left. The only victims I'm 100% sure went to church before their deaths were the Moores. The Wayne family wandered all around the neighborhood the day of the murders. The Dawson family was murdered in the early morning hours of a Sunday, before church, and the Hills were killed on a weekday. I do like the idea, even if it doesn't fit all circumstances.
Fascinating - I hadn't heard about the bloodhounds and the bushes at the Showman house, or Nellie May Burnham's apparent reaction to something at the window, and I'd always been dubious about the supposed hiding place in the Moore barn.
When I was puzzling over observation, I wasn't thinking so much of our unsub laying up somewhere to watch the houses prior to the crimes (although your response sheds very welcome light on something I'd wondered about), but rather his apparent process of preselecting his victims which doesn't appear to me to be random.
You mention, for example, in one of your posts about the Dawson murders, that he struck one of the only white families in a predominantly black neighborhood. He chose, unerringly, houses without dogs, and with a young woman or girl present (which I believe to have been a particularly strong motivation for him). I've been trying to think of where such a person, coming from out of town and unfamiliar with the locals, might have gone in order to get a kind of overview from which to make his 'selection', and I imagine that at the time churches in railroad towns would have a pretty regular smattering of out-of-towners passing through. He definitely doesn't seem to have just wandered up to any old house, except perhaps in the double-events. Any thoughts?
I don't know if this is of any interest to you, but these last few days I've been studying old railroad maps of the Midwest, looking specifically at the spatial relationship between the murder sites in the hope of finding a probable "hub" for the crimes. Since there's no observable directional drift (ie, the murders moving generally westward over their course) which would suggest a wholly baseless, transient killer, I believe it can be surmised that he was returning to a home of some sort between the attacks. Given the layout of the railroads at that time, both Omaha NE and Kansas City MO sit at the nexus of lines that would seem to link all of the Midwestern crime scenes. When looking at them in this way, they appear like spokes on a wheel.
To use Omaha as an example:
- Colorado Springs is roughly 500 miles west (representing, perhaps, a transitional point between the Pacific Northwest and the Midwest?)
- Monmouth is 275 miles east
- Ellsworth is 200 miles southwest
- Paola is 200 miles south
- Villisca is 50 miles southeast
The prevailing theory regarding geographic profiling is that the killer starts closer to the area they are most comfortable with then moves outward as they gain confidence. We're also talking huge distances being traveled so I don't know if that doesn't break most geographic profile models. I like your spoke and wheel idea. When I've done my own geographic analysis it points to the Kansas City and Topeka areas as the hot zone. I'll post that map so you can see what I'm talking about.
I agree that Kansas city is the most probable home for our unsub - from there, Monmouth lies on the direct line to Chicago, Ellsworth on the direct line to Colorado Springs (he had no doubt passed through it en route from the Burnham-Wayne murders), and Paola on the direct line to Tulsa and Oklahoma City.
If this is the case, though, he seems to have acted conversely to the expected geographic profiling model - circling inwards, closer to home rather than outward from it. You're almost certainly correct that the vast distances break the usual assumptions. Could it be that he began with victims farther from home for fear of being traced by law enforcement, and then as he gained experience (and found that he was not caught, or even suspected) he became comfortable enough to strike closer and closer to his place of residence?
As usual I wait with bated breath for your next post.
Thank you so much for your response. I actually came across someone else I thought might be a better suspect; his name was Bert Dudley. I'll leave a link to a blog post, which is basically a mini biography of him. Given the other comments here, it's interesting that Dudley's official "home" was in the Kansas City area, but he was known to be a transient. His first (alleged) murders were also close to home. The records of when he was in and out of prison also coincide with when the murders were/weren't happening. Just curious what you think, here's the link: https://newsantafetrailer.blogspot.com/2017/10/six-victims-same-style-johnson-county.html?m=1
While it does make sense that the flashlight could tie the Colorado Springs murders to the ones in Monmouth, it seems odd that the killer would have thrown it and the murder weapon under a pile of debris in the back yard. Why would he hide the murder weapon at that crime scene, but leave others out in the open at other times? It just seems odd.
In Ed Epperly's book he stated that it was recorded in district court records that the writing on the flashlight was illegible. Who knows?
Lee, the only court documents available are from the 1915 attempt at conviction. By then, the flashlight was missing and no one could swear to what was written on it. I use the 1984 article only as a guide because the reporter was a long time writer for the Review-Atlas and seemed to have a friendly relationship with the living Dawsons. He may have had access to documents he didn’t cite. I found it too coincidental for his article to be so specific about what was scratched into the flashlight metal.
Anonymous, as of March 22nd, 1915 they knew exactly where the flashlight was, along with the gas pipe and other articles connected with the crime - no doubt including the bloody handprint on a 9" piece of door jamb cut out of a closet by Deputy Sheriff Bradley - they were in a safety deposit box in one of the local banks as was verified by a banker to a Review Atlas reporter. As for what was actually etched on the Eveready flashlight, who's to say now. All I was relating was what Mr. Epperly stated in his book. Stands to reason that if it was indeed a court document from 1915, that it's likely the person documenting that the words on the flashlight were "illegible" had actually examined it.
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