Entering "Hatchet"...

The old Showman house is gone but the place where it once stood is known to residents as “Hatchet.” Sheriff R. W. Bradshaw and town marshal Merritt speculated the killer must have had some knowledge of the house. A later investigation by The Whitsett National Detective agency out of Kansas City believed this as well but why would this be the case? The house was typical for its time; a two room house that was originally a one room house with a lean-to addition tacked onto the back. The house extended to the back of the hill it sat on with a concrete foundation laid to support the addition. The house itself was about 15 feet wide by 16 feet long (18’ by 18’ at best) and the two rooms were separated by a wall with a door about the middle of the room. On the door was a bracket on which hung an oil lamp. The bracket could be swung in either direction in order to cast light into the front room, the kitchen or both. It was this lamp that was used by the killer and found at the foot of Will and Pauline’s bed.  

Author's representation of the house

In the front room, where the family slept, two beds were arranged side by side at one end of the room. In the picture above, the beds sat on either side of the double hung window facing the camera. In this layout, the sleeping area would have been incredibly cramped and allowed a maximum of two and a half feet of floor space between the two beds (based on a standard size of three and a half feet wide beds). Investigators felt the light thrown from a chimneyless lamp would have been too dim for the killer to have committed the crimes in such cramped space without prior knowledge of the house. The confined space could also account for Pauline waking up as the killer might have swung the axe across her body at a diagonal from the foot toward the head of the bed but that is only speculation.  I arrived at the measurements in two ways; first by using the intuition of Google Sketchup's Photomatch feature and second using the double hung window as a scale.  Sketchup measured the house to be 15' by 17' while the window measured it to be 18' by 18' (based on a standard width of 29").  The 3D model I created measures 16' by 17', 6".  Either way the front room measures just over nine feet wide in order to accomodate the beds being arranged the way they were.  

More on the family and the crime scene...

Will Showman was the youngest son of David and Sarah Showman. David was a veteran of the Civil War and served in Company H of the Maryland Volunteers. He moved his family to Ellsworth County sometime between 1872 and 1880 and took a job as a mail carrier. David died in April of 1898. Pauline Kratky was the youngest daughter of John and Theressia and was born in Ellsworth County around 1884. John and Theressia had emigrated from Bohemia (now the Czech Republic) and were part of a burgeoning Bohemian culture establishing itself in the area. The influence of this culture is seen every July when the town of Wilson holds its annual Czech Festival. Will and Pauline were married around 1904 and had three children; Lester, Fern and Fenton. At the time of his death Will Showman was a chauffeur which didn’t pay too much especially in a rural town like Ellsworth. The family was regularly seen at church and Will was an active member in good standing with the local Redmen Lodge. Will was reported to have a kind heart. His former brother in law had been arrested a few years earlier and Will would visit him and bring tobacco and food while he was at the Ellsworth County jail.

As many of you probably read before, it was Laurie Snook who discovered the crime around five o’clock in the afternoon on October 16th, 1911. I have been debating with myself over how much detail on the crime scene to write about since it could very easily cross over into tabloid territory so I’ll give a few generalizations. Will and Pauline’s bed sat in a corner with Will positioned on the inside against the wall. Pauline was on the outside and two-year old Fenton was between his parents. Will was killed first without ever waking but Pauline woke up. She attempted to fend off the attack and in the struggle woke up the children. The children were all killed while sitting up. A bucket of bloody water was found in the kitchen as well as a blood stained piece of cloth. The killer used the water and the cloth to clean off his hands and the blade of the axe. He took a dress belonging to Pauline and hung it over the phone in the kitchen. He pulled the covers up over Will leaving only the top of his head exposed. He leaned the axe against the wall behind the door between the kitchen and the front room. He went about his macabre work by the low light of a coal oil lamp absent its glass chimney. The chimney was found, depending on the source, either under the foot of the bed or under a chair in the kitchen. The lamp was placed at the foot of Will and Pauline’s bed and left to burn out. Out of respect for family members who may be reading or may come across this post I will only say that Pauline was posed by the killer before leaving the scene.

"Ellsworth the wickedest..."

Will Showman

In the former cattle town of Ellsworth, Kansas, Will Showman and his family were visiting the home of W. O. Snook on Sunday, October 15, 1911. Mr. Snook worked nights and usually slept during the day so Laurie Snook was glad for the company in the evenings. Around nine o’clock, Will and his family said good night and walked the two blocks back to their house. The Showman's had lived in their little house for about four years. Will had purchased the property from the county after the previous owners had failed to pay the taxes on the house. It sat perched on a small hill overlooking the railroad tracks which were just a few feet from the front door. The house was originally a one room shack but at some point had been expanded with a lean-to addition on the back where the kitchen was located. The family slept in the front room with beds on both sides of the house. Just to the north of the Showman home lived Bill Miller and his family. In his front yard, embedded in a tree stump, was his axe. A few days before, Miller and some friends had a competition to see which of them could drive the axe head the deepest into the stump. Fred Boyer took the honors after driving it in so deeply the men had to use another axe to remove it, chipping the blade in the process. A few houses away lived the Ellsworth town marshal; his name was Merritt but I have never located a first name. Merritt was sitting in his front room reading when he heard a peculiar noise coming from the back room. It sounded as if an animal were scratching at the back door. The noise stopped and Merritt went back to his reading. The noise began again and this time the marshal decided to investigate so he grabbed his lamp and went to the back room. The noise had stopped again and when it didn’t return, Merritt assumed whatever it was had been frightened off and he left it at that. The next morning it was discovered that the screen had been removed from the back window and an attempt had been made to pry the window open. I’m not going to go into all the detail of the discovery of the Showman’s bodies because the Millers Paranormal folks have the newspaper reports available for you to read so go there.

I have more details about this crime to share and will talk about suspects and hypotheses later. I want to talk about the Showman’s a bit more as well since victimology is an important aspect and this site is more or less about remembering the victims and not just the crimes.  Till next time…lock up your axes. 

To busy to blog

Sorry I haven’t written anything in a while but first my laptop went haywire (don’t buy HP notebooks) then with the combination of not much new info and just being out of the habit of writing I got into other things. I’m not going to write specifically about another murder because, hey it’s Christmas and I don’t want to bum anyone out. So instead I’ll just make a quick note in general about the organization of these crime scenes.

Most people who read about true crime know about the difference between an organized and a disorganized crime scene. For those of you who don’t know it basically boils down to the difference between an organized office and a disorganized office (OVER generalized, I know). When I first began researching these crimes I somehow came away with the notion that these crime scenes were pristine. While trying to reconstruct the crime I started to get bogged down in details I had to guess at; such as did the Unsub wash his hands before or after he closed the curtains? I read an account of the Villisca crime scene and looked at some photos of another and realized my assumptions were way off. As I wrote in my “profile” post the crime scenes showed a mixed typology and I still think they lean more toward organized than disorganized but why mixed and why do I (it is my opinion) believe they lean organized?

Glidden, Texas - March 1912 

First of all, contrary to what I started out thinking, evidence of the unsub’s identity was left everywhere. With today’s technology this guy would have been arrested or at least identified a day after the bodies were discovered in Colorado Springs. Because the killer used a burglary kit and was able to move through a dark house so quietly, I’m pretty confident in saying he likely had a prior arrest for burglary (if not attempted assault) so his fingerprints would have been in the system. Using the Villisca crime scene as a guide there were probably bloody prints left throughout both the Burnham & Wayne cottages on doors and curtains. This was probably a characteristic of all the crime scenes but scene control was likely a problem as well (see photo above) so any prints left behind were wiped out or contaminated by morbid “tourists.” The mess of fingerprints is a characteristic of disorganized behavior but there was a ritual and a plan carried out which shows an organized mind. I also believe there was an “escape” plan carried out after the murders but I’ll get into that when I begin to discuss the Showman murders after the New Year. For now, have a merry Christmas, happy Hanukah, joyous Kwanza, wonderful Festivus or just a happy New Year.  

Cults and Holy Rollers

Warning: This is a long post.
Some of you who have been reading might be wondering why I haven’t discussed the Showman family who were killed in Ellsworth, Kansas on October 15, 1911. I assure you I will get into that murder in more detail later. I am going to discuss it a bit here due to some (probably red herring) connections to other axe murders throughout the country. Beginning in 1909 in Rayne, Louisiana, a series of axe murders was attributed to a black, voodoo/Christian cult called the “Sacrifice Church” headed by Rev. King Harris. The families lived along the Southern Pacific Railroad line which led investigators to believe the killer worked for the railroad. All the families were black and I have seen some reports stating all the families had mixed-race relatives but have not found any source documents to back this up. So why get into it?

On January 20, 1912 in Lake Charles, Louisiana the Broussard family was discovered bludgeoned to death in their home. Felix, Matilde, Margaret, Lewis and Albertine Broussard had all been murdered in their beds with an axe. Somewhere at the crime scene was left a message: “When he maketh inquisition for blood, he forgetteth not the cry of the humble.” The message was either followed with the words “the human five” or signed with a name, Pearl Ort. According to one source, the words “the human five” were written at a number of crime scenes and there was some speculation that the killer was aiming for five victims each time but that is not born out by the crimes themselves. It was also reported that in several crime scenes the victims had their fingers splayed apart by bits of wood so their five fingers were held apart. The religious message is an intriguing thing. It is Psalm 9: 12 and means God will not allow evil to go unpunished. Another biblical quote attributed to these crimes is “Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire” and is from Matthew 3:10. The fire is God’s wrath and the tree is the physical person. The fruit is the soul and so means if a person does not have a good soul, they are meant for God’s wrath. More literally, if a tree continually produces bad or no fruit then its best use is firewood. If it is true all the victims were or were related to people of mixed race then it can easily be interpreted this was a message of purification. The use of Psalm 9:12 probably indicated a killer who believed they were God’s agent on earth. The human five could relate to the five senses but I honestly have no clue.

Officials in Ellsworth, Kansas received a letter from Denver and according to the newspaper it was postmarked six hours before the discovery of the murders. The letter rambles a bit but specifically mentions Mathew 3:10:

[sic]According to Mat. 3:10 and Josh. 9:24-27 the ax users namely the
Gideonites are inhabitants of Lincoln, Neb., and surroundings of the same city.
If you will follow my advice examine all Nebraskians, living in your city, and
if you fail to find the ax man, I may write you more.

To me this is clearly a rambling letter from nobody. The post mark issue could easily have been a mistake of the Denver postal worker who failed to change the time on his stamp. The letter is unspecific and references nothing at all except that a “Nebraskian” might be the axe murderer. A more intriguing letter was sent after the Villisca murders. Detective Thomas O’Leary had been put in charge of filtering the mail Villisca was receiving after the murders of the Moore family and Stillinger girls. One he received was from Wichita and the writer identified himself (for lack of a gender-less term) as “Miss Tree of life.” The letter spoke of vengeance and axes and referred to “death upon earth [as] Errette.” Errette likely comes from the German erretten which means (roughly) deliverance and could have been capitalized because it was being used as a proper noun. I only say this because the letter mentions it again “It is only More for the Errette is still in you.” The capitalization of “More” probably references the surname Moore and another passage, “the neighborhood, the press where these killings take place, seldom record or take note of the root, for God will Show Man,” probably referenced the Showman family. The letter was signed “Eli Eloi which is an obvious reference to “"Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" (My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mat 27:46 & Mark 15:34)

This is intriguing only in its capitalization and a fleeting reference to the Showmans. The two letters were written by two different persons, the Villisca letter was written by a more educated person, and with the letter to Villisca coming from Wichita it’s very likely the writer knew about the Showman murders when writing it. Are these letters anything more than sick jokes? Probably not and the Biblical references don’t really link them to the crimes in Louisiana and Texas. For one it seems those murders where the work of multiple people. Clementine Burnabet was arrested after the murders of the Randall family in Lafayette, Louisiana in November of 1911. Ms. Burnabet’s father was awaiting his hanging after being convicted (on testimony of his daughter and son) of murdering the Andrus family in Lafayette in February 1911. Clementine was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. She then confessed to killing three other families in Rayne, Crowley and Lafayette, LA. While she was incarcerated four more families were wiped out and I’m unsure if investigators ever looked into her brother, Zephirin. Her father was granted a new trial but it isn’t clear how that went. The Texas/Louisiana axe murders show a classic “mission” style of killer or for a more modern term, ideology driven, while the Midwest Axe murders are sexually based. The Midwest Axe man likely had no interest in communicating with the authorities in any form as it would just have attracted more attention to him and in his mind; he had a good thing going. If you have more information about the Texas/Louisiana axe murders let me know.

Accounts of the Texas/Louisiana murders from Gene Thibodeaux, Crowley Post-Signal, February 4, 2007.
Villisca letter found in “Villisca: The true account of the unsolved mass murder that stunned the nation,” by Roy Marshall.

Connected or copied?

It was Halloween morning, 1911 in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, just sixty miles from Monmouth. Bert Jordan was in his upstairs bedroom when he heard his mother shout from her bedroom below. It was about 5:20 in the morning. When Bert found his mother she was lying across her bed with the bed clothes thrown over her. Mrs. Jordan had been struck twice; once behind her right ear resulting in a fractured skull; once over her right eye causing a deep gash and later loss of sight in that eye. Bert told his siblings (a brother and two sisters between the ages of 15 & 10) to wait while he ran to get his father who had left for work a few minutes earlier.  

The Jordan’s house was immediately adjacent to railroad tracks and there had been a number of break-ins reported along the tracks in the weeks before. The family had lived in the house for two months. A wrench was found outside the kitchen door but it was unclear whether there was blood or rust on it.

Belle Jordan was the wife of J. B. “Zill” Jordan and was about 40 years old when the attack occurred. She was tall, had dark hair and was described being “a fine appearing woman.” Since she was found lying crossways on the bed it seems she was probably standing when she was attacked. The description of the injuries suggest her back was too her attacker when she was initially struck. The first blow did not knock her out but she was dazed and fell onto the bed. The attacker turned her over and as he brought the weapon down for the next blow she yelled for her husband. Bert told investigators he yelled down through the register if she was alright and heard no response. The sound of Bert’s voice likely saved his mother’s life. The attacker threw the bedclothes over Mrs. Jordan, either to cover her eyes or because he thought she was dead. Nothing was disturbed inside the house and nothing was missing.

So did Bert Jordan deny the Midwest Axe Man another victim or was this just a robbery gone badly? The timeline suggests the intruder was watching the house. Zill left the house around 5:10 a.m. to walk to work, which was only a block away from the house, so it would not have taken long (no more than five minutes I imagine) for Zill to have gotten to work. He did not lock the kitchen door. At 5:30 a. m. Bert showed up at his father’s workplace and told him what had happened. Bert likely ran and so it would have taken less time to reach his father. Assuming Bert left within five minutes of discovering his mother and it taking no more than two minutes for Bert to run a block that means the attack ended around 5:23 a. m., leaving the intruder a mere ten minutes to enter the house, assault Mrs. Jordan and flee to parts unknown. What, if any similarities are there here? Aside from the blitz-style, blunt force attack used, the covering of the victim with bedclothes is all I have. The proximity to the railroad tracks is not as important as the railroad that used those tracks but that’s another post for another time. For now have a happy and safe Halloween and make sure your axes are locked away in a safe place.