Moonlight Murder on Lovers' Lane
Read Moonlight Murder on Lovers' Lane Online
Authors: Katherine Ramsland
Moonlight Murder on Lovers’ Lane
Dr. Katherine Ramsland
Lovers’ Lane
Photo by Phil Williams
Copyright
Moonlight Murder on Lovers’ Lane
Copyright © 2012 by Dr. Katherine Ramsland
Cover art to the electronic edition copyright © 2012 by RosettaBooks, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
Electronic edition published 2012 by RosettaBooks, LLC, New York.
ISBN e-Pub edition: 9780795326073
Contents
Chapter 6: The Cuckolded Husband
Chapter 7: Persons of Interest
Chapter 16: Another Grand Jury
Chapter 19: More Than Meets the Eye
Chapter 20: Incident Reconstruction
Chapter 21: The Case Falls Apart
Chapter 24: What They Didn’t Know Then
eForeword by Marilyn Bardsley
This double homicide generated a great deal of excitement in the 1920s. Unlike Lizzie Borden, who became a household name as the central figure in another unsolved double homicide, comparatively few people today are familiar with the Hall-Mills murders. Now, a man with a scientific background discovers a new clue hidden in plain sight that points strongly to one particular suspect. Dr. Ramsland makes a very convincing case for this suspect as the murderer. She explains what criminal psychology experts now know that could have focused more attention on this suspect.
It takes an expert in the study of murder to make sense of this spectacular mystery and disentangle the evidence from the botched investigation. Dr. Ramsland has taken a confusing set of circumstances with a wealth of suspects and evaluated each suspect’s potential as the killer. Her strong expertise in criminal justice, forensics, and criminal psychology, plus her encyclopedic knowledge of homicide, gives this story the fresh insight and analysis the case requires.
Dr. Katherine Ramsland has published more than 1,000 articles and 40 books, including
The Forensic Psychology of Criminal Minds, The Human Predator, Inside the Minds of Serial Killers
, and
The Mind of a Murderer
. She holds graduate degrees in forensic psychology, clinical psychology, criminal justice, and philosophy, and teaches forensic psychology and criminal justice at DeSales University in Pennsylvania. Ramsland has worked with prominent criminalists, coroners, detectives, and FBI profilers. She speaks internationally about forensic psychology and serial murder, and has appeared on numerous documentaries, as well as
The Today Show
,
20/20
,
48 Hours
,
Larry King Live
, and
E! True Hollywood Story
.
Chapter 1: Cries in the Night
I’ve often driven past a place in New Brunswick, New Jersey, that once was a secret lovers’ lane. Back in the 1920s, a married minister and his mistress used to meet there. One September evening, someone followed them. A shot rang out, a woman screamed, and there were three more shots. The lovers were dead. Their killer posed the bodies to ensure that whoever discovered them would know exactly why they had to die.
Investigators thought the case would be “a cinch” to solve, and there were plenty of suspects. But it turns out that many more secrets surrounded these two than anyone realized, so plenty of hurdles were placed in the way. Every lead was a labyrinth.
The double homicide of the minister and the choir singer launched a sensational trial, to which
The New York Times
devoted more print than to any murder case before it. Renowned journalists crowded in for a salacious story. Some have speculated that the sordid tale even inspired parts of
The Great Gatsby
.
Because the case remains unsolved, it presents an enduring mystery like that of Lizzie Borden or Jack the Ripper. Even today, inquisitive people revisit the story to rethink suspects and evidence.
Which brings us to an enticing item that has never been considered before. It was in plain sight all along and it implicates a suspect who might have eluded arrest due to ignorance back then about a specific type of motive.
So, let’s see how this tragic tale unfolded. You can decide for yourself if this new discovery is a clincher.
It was a brisk but sunny Saturday morning on September 16 in 1922. Fifteen-year-old Pearl Bahmer had a date with Raymond Schneider, 23. They had argued the evening before, and Pearl had stomped off. Now she hoped to restore the romance.
Around mid-morning, they set off for a walk around their neighborhood. They left the busy Easton Avenue, with its trolley and touring cars, to find an isolated spot near the abandoned Phillips farm on De Russey’s Lane. Hand in hand, talking softly, they proceeded down the dirt road toward a driveway on their left and turned on to it. This took them over a low embankment and onto a weedy path.
De Russey’s Lane
Near a small crabapple tree, Pearl saw something odd. It looked as if someone had dumped a pile of clothing there. No, it looked like someone was actually
sleeping
there, with his hat over his face. He lay next to another lump of clothing that looked like a dress. Pearl pointed.
“Look over there,” she said to Raymond. “Are those people asleep?”
They ventured closer. A gold watch lay on the ground, but she didn’t touch it. Pearl and Raymond stopped and stared. The two people, lying side by side, weren’t breathing. They weren’t moving. They lay face-up, and the woman was staring up at the sky.
Pearl swallowed. This didn’t seem right. They shouldn’t be here, not like this. But she could hear the flies buzzing, and she could see for herself that these two were beyond help.
They were dead.
Chapter 2: The Bodies
Pearl and Raymond turned and raced back to Easton Avenue. They approached the home of Edward Stryker to ask someone there to phone the police. They could hardly believe they’d seen a dead body, let alone two!
Patrolman Edward Garrigan and Officer James Curran soon arrived. Pearl and Raymond led them to the scene, but Garrigan stopped them at the embankment.
He could see the bodies stretched out near the crabapple tree. Their stillness was eerie. Both were stiff and had drawn flies, so it was clear to him that they’d been there a while. It was hard to ignore the odor of death.
Garrigan and Curran moved closer. Both victims lay on their backs, with their feet pointed toward the tree.
Bodies of victims
The female, an adult woman, wore a blue dress with red polka dots, black silk stockings and brown Oxfords. Her blue velvet hat lay to the right of her body and a gold wedding band shone bright on her finger.
The man was dressed in a dark gray suit with polished black shoes. A white Panama hat had been placed atop his face. When Garrigan moved it he saw a pair of brown-spotted glasses. It was not yet clear whether the spots were from blood or flies.
The man’s right hand was extended partly under the dead woman’s shoulder, and their clothes were so neat they might have merely lay down to rest.
Although the girl who’d discovered this scene had mentioned a watch, the officers didn’t see one. They wondered if she’d taken it.
The victims had clearly been murdered and then positioned to resemble a lovers’ embrace. It was a crass gesture, seemingly aimed at mockery. The grass around them looked flattened, as if someone had spent a lot of time there, working on them. The attention to detail suggested that the killer had been confident about not being seen.
The woman’s head, her wide eyes staring upward, rested on the man’s right arm. Her left hand had been placed on his right knee. Her legs were modestly closed. A brown silk scarf, swarming with maggots, was loosely wound around her neck. Scattered pieces of torn paper with penciled handwriting lay in the narrow gap between the bodies.
The killer had shot the male just once in a close-range execution over his right ear, but the female had taken three bullets. This discovery indicated the killer was angry at her. He, she, or they had probably known her, or had known them both. She had been shot under the right eye, straight into the right temple, and over the right ear.
Despite the obvious violence, the victims appeared to be at peace, as if comforting each other. In fact, they looked as if they’d been prepared for burial.
The whole thing had been contrived for effect. The scene looked like someone’s morbid idea of a joke.
The officers noticed a small business card leaning against the heel of the male victim’s left shoe. It seemed to have been carefully placed. This, too, bore dark speckles.
They looked around and found a man’s leather card case, lying open on the ground. It contained a driver’s license. The name was Edward Wheeler Hall of Nichols Avenue. Hall was likely the male victim.
The killer had taken no pains to hide the victims’ identities, so the cops believe it would be easy to discover who Hall’s companion had been. Curran left the scene to call it in.
Albert Cardinal, a reporter from the New Brunswick
Daily Home News
, entered the area with a camera. He asked if he could pick up the card at the foot of the male corpse. Garrigan nodded. Without taking precautions, Cardinal picked it up and looked on both sides.
This error would be the first of many in handing the scene and the evidence. No one had roped it off the crime scene, and no one seemed to realize that touching something might corrupt its value for solving the case. Fingerprints were the primary source of identification in those days, but investigators had relied on them for less than two decades.
Chapter 3: The Minister
Cardinal noticed the name on the card, Reverend Edward W. Hall. He knew that Hall was the pastor of the Episcopal Church of St. John the Evangelist in New Brunswick. He realized that this man lying on the ground was an Episcopalian minister. He’d been just 41 years old. Cardinal took pictures and made several notes. Then Cardinal lifted the dead female’s scarf to see what had drawn the maggots. He was startled. In a special news edition that day, he would describe the woman’s ear-to-ear neck wound as “a great open gash.”
In the meantime, Curran had arrived on Easton Avenue. He had someone summon a relative of Rev. Hall for identification and then stopped a driver, Dr. E. Leon Loblein, and asked if he knew the minister on sight. Loblein said that he did, and he accompanied Curran to the crime scene. Bending over the male corpse as Garrigan raised the hat, Loblein affirmed that the dead man was indeed Reverend Hall. They noticed that someone had closed his eyes.
By this time, word was on the street. Several people walked down the dirt lane to see for themselves. Garrigan and Curran tried to keep them out, but more kept coming, and there was only so much that two officers could do.
In those days, crime scenes drew ghoulish souvenir hunters who thought nothing of trampling evidence and taking pieces from the scene. The crabapple tree was soon stripped of much of its bark and the business card had been passed from hand to hand for examination. There was no point even looking for footprints or tire impressions. The best that investigators could hope for was information from an eyewitness.
