Back in March I was prepping some articles for my Monmouth/Dawson/Mitchell postings when I came across an interesting fellow from Australia. Dan has a very interesting blog about which I am apprehensive about telling for fear the five or six of you reading will abandon me for him. Anyway, Dan likes flashlights…well…like may be understating it a bit but he knows his stuff even if he claims he’s not an expert. I had a hypothesis rattling around my skull about the flashlight found in Monmouth but I needed to somehow verify its viability so I fired off an email to Dan to get his opinion. The long and short of it is my hypothesis is valid while my thinking had to change. 
Initially I felt the flashlight was some kind of souvenir you might buy on the counter at a roadside diner. You know the kind I’m talking about; the cheap tin flashlight with “Yellowstone” stamped into the body. I thought what was written on the flashlight was “Lovely Colorado Springs” and that you could pick one up on the way out the door of your local TB hospital (or at the neighborhood grocery store across the street from your house). With this in mind I thought it highly likely the flashlight was absconded from either the Burnham or Wayne cottage as the killer’s souvenir. He then used it to guide himself through the Dawson house and as a replacement for an oil lamp with its chimney removed. After killing the Dawsons the killer dropped the flashlight as he crawled through the fence at the back of the property and either didn’t notice or didn’t take the time to pick it back up. I still believe the crime scene scenario is valid but the probability the Wayne or Burnham families owned a flashlight at all are a bit slim. As Dan put it “[Novelty flashlights were common], yes - though they weren't cheap.” Indeed they were not. The photo above is of an Ohio Electric Flashlight from about 1900. Note the price on the box of a hefty $2.50. By 1911 the technology in flashlights had gotten better but the price remained about the same. The average salary for a worker was around $2.20 so a flashlight of any kind would cost more than a day’s earnings for the time period. Adjusted for inflation it would be the equivalent of $54.99! The best flashlight I own is waterproof, floats in water and has a beam bright enough to drive off vampires and it cost me half that price. Henry Wayne had $55 in savings so it’s possible the flashlight was his but clearly a flashlight would be considered a frivolous purchase by either family. While I can’t discount my hypothesis entirely, I am moving it to the “highly unlikely” category. Check out Dan’s blog.
2 comments:
Hi, Astrid from Tasmania, Australia here! I know I’m a little late to this party, but I’ve recently become fascinated with this series of murders so I’m deep down the research rabbit-hole of all the first hand documents I can find (weirdly, only newspaper reports; can’t find any coronial transcripts, on the web at least, as you note!) I came across your blog yesterday and nearly swooned with joy, firstly thank you so much for all your research - which gives the most comprehensive and referenced view of each crime out there!
I have a theory on this topic (yes, I feel embarrassed about presenting my own theories on this stuff to someone who’s been studying it in depth for 15 years, but what the hell).
Can’t help but note that the Wayne family arrived to live in Colorado Springs a few weeks before the murders and that the text ‘scratched into’ the torch bore a date that was a few weeks earlier than the murders. Bear with me here . Agreed, A flashlight would have been too pricey for a cheap souvenir … but a nice gift for a lady to buy her husband, on the occasion of their moving to a new town. The text on the flashlight fits with the idea of marking a special event; it doesn’t seem to have been professionally engraved as the contemporary accounts would have said it was ‘engraved’ but they say the letters were ‘scratched in’ which particularly in those days, was another thing entirely because there was a class/social difference about how possessions were marked (if you were middle or upper class, you’d have had it properly engraved by the local silversmith or locksmith, but this was expensive and these families didn’t live that sort of life. So what we have is a reasonably luxurious item (for the victims or the killer let’s assume)) with a handmade inscription noting a place name, a date, and (I think) a term of endearment. Are you following me? Interesting, too, that there was no lamp missing its glass cover found on the floor, table etc in the Wayne crime scene as far as I know. It makes me wonder if the torch belonged to Mr Wayne and was left out somewhere conspicuous (I mean, how useful would it be to have an electric torch kept by the back door in 1911?!). If the torch was Mr Wayne’s, and IF it was just inside the back door, the killer might very well have seen it and used it instead of a lamp - far easier, and we know this killer was adaptive and versatile- he used weapons of opportunity, he entered sometimes through doors and sometimes through windows. So, let’s say he uses the torch to see his way to kill the Waynes. Now, it seems he rarely tried to take anything from any crime scenes (although I am fascinated by that neatly-wrapped parcel of bacon found at Villisca, which clearly he meant to take away and forgot to). But this was an electric torch - and it’s 1911 - and he engages in nighttime raids where a small amount of light is needed. If I were him, I would’ve nicked the torch and put it in my pocket for next time. Which it appears he did, given that it was discovered at the fence line of a later crime scene - just the place it might have slipped out of a pocket.
Anyway. there is absolutely no evidence for this theory. But if I interpret the known facts through the lens of normal human behaviour, that’s what I come up with.
Very happy to be corrected, though!
Astrid - Thanks for reading and thank you for your comment! My operating hypothesis on the flashlight is very similar to yours. I have no idea in which house it was procured, but I believe it was a prize or souvenir that came from a Labor Day picnic that was thrown out at the Modern Woodman TB camp just outside the city. The Wayne's did have money in a savings account so there's a good chance they may have purchased it. If you have been going through the articles, I discuss this on the following: https://gettingtheaxe.blogspot.com/2018/04/colorado-springs-and-monmouth-one-clue.html
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