Victimology: William Hill

William L. Hill

After the murders, nearly all of the attention was given to the Cowing family and, what would become, a very public and bitter fight between the Clackamas County prosecuting attorney's office and the Clackamas County Sheriff.  The focus was entirely on Ruth Hill and her family. This seems natural since Ruth had grown up in Oregon City and her father and brother (all her brothers, really) were respected businessmen in the area. William Hill's entire family lived in Washington state as did his ex-wife and her new husband and before you ask, no, she was never a suspect. At the time of his death, William was a pipefitter for the Portland Gas Company in the community of Sellwood, just a few miles west of Ardenwald. Generally, not much was known about William. He was new in the area having just recently moved his new family into the little cabin by the woods. Neighbors would note he was a hard worker but not much else could be said. Let me add a bit more information about Mr. Hill...

Victimology: Ruth Cowing Hill

Thomas F. Cowing, Sr.

Thomas (Tom) F. Cowing emigrated from England as a child with his family and grew up in Wisconsin on his parent's farm. He enlisted in the 2nd Infantry of Wisconsin in 1861 and was wounded  and captured at the 2nd Battle of Bull Run on August 28th, 1862. His wound was considered fatal and the Confederates released him. However he recovered and was transferred to the Veterans Reserve Corp in December of 1863 until his term of service ended in June of 1864. He returned to Wisconsin and married Abby Bennett a month later. Eventually he moved to the fledgling town of Alexandria, MN and, with a partner, opened a hardware and implement store. Selling hardware and farming implements paid well and Thomas built a new house for his family. This is the house in which Ruth would spend the first 11 years of her life and it still stands today. Thomas Cowing was a well respected and prosperous member of the town, and Douglas county, when he passed the Minnesota Bar exam in October of 1889, but he promptly moved the entire family to Oregon City. He was named Notary Public of Clackamas county and passed the Oregon Bar in December of the same year. By February of 1890 he had opened a partnership with his oldest son Eugene, arguing land grant cases. It seems this early business venture may not have worked out because he was soon working for J.B. Brockenbrough's land agency. I don't know why Mr. Cowing decided to leave a prosperous life behind and move his whole family to Oregon but it worked out for him financially. Mr. Cowing, and his family, would prosper in the West.

Victimology: Pauline Showman

The frame is to class up the the
poor quality picture

Continuing in my series on the victims I'll write a bit more on Pauline Showman.  As readers may know, when the murder of the Showman family was discovered, investigators immediately settled on the motive being revenge against Pauline for...something.  For small, Midwestern town sheriffs and night marshals this would be a natural conclusion to make.  Mrs. Showman was mistreated after she was killed and was the only victim in the house which received any postmortem attack.  See here for comparison.  Pauline was born in Kansas to John and Theressia Kratky in Dec of 1885 and was one of the younger of many Kratky children.  John and Theressia had emigrated to the United States around 1878, right after their daughter, Wilhelmina, or Willie, had been born in their native country, Czechoslovakia, which was sometimes referred to as Bohemia. John farmed mostly but his children pitched in to help the family where they could.  At the age of 14, Pauline took the job of a live-in house keeper for another family in the county.  In 1904 Pauline would meet and marry a local chauffeur named Will Showman.  I am only speculating but it is likely that he was working for the same family that Polly was keeping house for.

Victimology: May A. Burnham

Victimology is becoming a much more important area of study in the larger field of criminology. Most often a criminal is caught by tracking down points in time and locations at which the victim may have contacted the perpetrator. What were the victim’s habits or actions that might have led to this contact? Often times a victim who seems to be a low risk for violent crime is discovered to have engaged in high risk behaviors such as drug use or prostitution. Victimology is not without controversy. Victim’s advocates have argued this is a way of assigning partial responsibility for the criminal’s actions to the victim themselves (the old “[he, she] was asking for it” fallacy. In fact there is a term in sociology, penal couple, which assigns near equal blame to the victims of violent crimes. As an anthropologist I think this, along with a lot of sociology, is utter crap. But that’s for another day. For now let’s look at May Burnham.

Twenty-five year old May Alice Burnham was the oldest daughter of John and Emma Hill. John met Emma while working for the railroad making railroad ties and they were married about 1882. John’s job would require him to move his family on down the line as the rails were built. May and her younger sister Nettie would be born in Kansas before John picked up and moved the family on into Colorado Springs. Around 1890 Emma had had enough and it was time her daughters went to school. John purchased a house and took a job as a wagon maker, giving his family some geographic stability for a change. May and her sister were extremely close growing up, likely owing to their constant relocation, and this closeness remained strong even after both of them had married. John, it seems, took up with the railroad shortly after Nettie had married. This time his work as a carpenter for the railroad took him south into Mexico. This is where he was at the time of his oldest daughter’s murder. Shortly before this, Emma, now making pastries at a local hotel, petitioned for a divorce.

May would marry Arthur, then a recovering “lunger” around 1904. Arthur worked as a store clerk in various locations throughout Colorado Springs, including a candy store near the neighborhood they would later live in. When Arthur’s tuberculosis became worse and he moved into the sanitarium almost full time, May became essentially a single mother. She and the children moved into her childhood home to live with her mother for a while. Sometime in the middle of 1910, Arthur was deemed well enough to leave the sanitarium occasionally and he moved his family out of Emma’s house and into the upstairs rooms of Anna Merritt. It was during this time that Anna and May would become good friends. Some time in early 1911, Arthur would discover the little cottage on the edge of town, near the railroad tracks. It was a quiet little neighborhood and very near the road out to the sanitarium.

One thing to examine when putting together a victimology is the kind of behaviors a victim has that put them into contact with strangers. In order to make ends meet, May would take in “overflow” from Anna Merritt’s house when someone needed a bed for the night. This often involved renting the bed in one of the two rooms of the house. The door between these rooms had a lock on it and could be secured from one side although I admit I do not know which side it was. May also allowed borders to rent the hammock on the front porch of the house. This would have brought her into contact with strangers regularly and in the few weeks the Waynes lived in their home, would have brought them into contact with these strangers as well. Because of the proximity to the D&RG railroad tracks and with the prevalence of “stowaway” passengers on (yes I know, hobos) they would have seen more then their fair share of itinerant strangers as well. For a general timeline of the Burnham’s movements on the day of the murders, go here.

Victimology: Blanche V. Wayne

I have already gone into Blanche Wayne’s family background here so I won’t repeat it. I want to try, as best I can, to follow her movements before the night of September 17^th, 1911. Blanche had just turned 23 and from photos and descriptions was quite pretty.

Based on Arthur Burnham’s statement that Henry Wayne had called him on August 23^rd (a Wednesday) then it is likely that the entire Wayne family arrived in Colorado Springs either on or near that date. Burnham stated that he spoke to Wayne about the cottage and the next time Burnham went home (Wednesday the 30^th) the Waynes had moved in. The little cottage was $6 per month rent (about $138 today) and Henry paid for two months in advance. Lulumay and the Burnham children played in the back of the houses from time to time and May Burnham had told Arthur “[Blanche was] a nice little woman.”

Colorado Savings Bank (1950s)

From the time the Waynes moved into the little cottage, Blanche would be seen around the neighborhood with her daughter while on walks to the corner store and to the park a few blocks away. To a person, those in the neighborhood said they didn’t know the Waynes well. The only exceptions were apparently May Burnham and Grant Collins, the owner of the corner store. Collins told investigators he saw the Wayne family almost every day but hadn’t really talked to them until the Sunday afternoon before their deaths. Blanche apparently did speak to her neighbors as some of them stated she told them the $55 Henry placed into savings was from the sale of furniture in Indiana. Some time during the week of September 17^th, 1911, Blanche spoke to her neighbor, Martha Evans, about barrowing her axe, which would ironically become the murder weapon. There hasn’t been anything in my research to indicate Blanche or Henry were high probability targets for violent crime. If anyone has any more information about Henry or Blanche Wayne, particularly from relatives, I would really appreciate hearing from you. I would like to flesh out these victimologies with a bit more info and history.

Victimology: Henry Wayne

September 17^th, 2011 will mark 100 years since the (unofficial?) beginning of the series of murders known as the Midwest Axe Murders. I am in the camp of these murders being the work of a highly mobile serial killer. Of particular interest to those who study serial killers are the victimology. What traits, characteristics or actions lead to the killer choosing this particular victim? Ideally I want to start examining the victims a bit more in order to gather information that could lead to, at least a few, conclusions about victim selection by the killer. Since the Wayne’s were possibly the very first victims of the Midwest Axeman, I’ll look at them first, starting with Henry “Frank” Wayne.

Henry Wayne was the third of eight children born to George and Terrissa Wayne. Henry grew up in Pulaski County, Indiana, near the small town of Medaryville. George was a farmer, originally from Ohio, and made sure his children went to school. Henry alternatively went by Frank which was the short form of his middle name, Francis. Henry married Blanche McGinnis in 1908 and their daughter, Lulamay was born in 1909. Probably around September of 1910 Henry left for Colorado Springs to receive treatment for tuberculosis at the recently opened Modern Woodman Sanatorium. He stayed in the Sanatorium for 11 months and was released. Arthur Burnham told investigators he had told Henry about the cottage next to his and Henry decided to move in. According to Burnham that was the extent of their socializing. In early August of 1911 Burnham was told by the cook at the sanatorium that Henry was to be his replacement in the kitchen. Henry worked there for a few days then went back to Indiana to bring out his family. On August 23, Henry placed a call with the operator to Burnham and asked about the empty cottage next door. On August 31, 1911 Henry made a deposit of $55.00 ($1300 today) in a local bank. Blanche Wayne had told neighbors this was from the sale of furniture in Indiana.

A restored TB hut on the old grounds of the Modern Woodman Sanatorium

Initial investigations of the murders focused around love triangle hypotheses and it wasn’t just regarding the Burnhams. Remember I said in a previous post that Denver Chief of Police Hamilton Armstrong believed the murderer was a woman? Well the hypothesis behind this belief was Henry, away from his family for so long, had been friendly with another woman and Henry broke the whole thing off when his wife and daughter got to town. There isn’t anything to suggest this was the case at all. In fact it’s very likely that Henry spent the majority of his time at the sanatorium before he was released. According to accounts in the newspaper, Henry had no friends in the city and only vague acquaintances at the sanatorium any way. The only solid evidence of Henry interacting with anyone was an argument he was seen having with another man in the front yard of his cottage the week before the murders. No one could say what the argument was about and the man was never found.