Jane Matilda Bolin, LL.B. was the first black woman to graduate from Yale Law School, the first to join the New York City Bar Association and the first to join the New York City Law Department.
Ambitious. Brilliant. Driven. And yet humble, generous, and kind. One of the most accomplished legal minds of her generation, and a breaker of glass ceilings throughout her life—today on Crime Capsule, as we continue our series on notable African-Americans in criminal and judicial history , we’re proud to introduce you to Jane Bolin of Poughkeepsie, New York.
One of four children, Bolin (1908-2007), was born into a family of trailblazers. According to Helen Engel and Marilynn Smiley in their book Remarkable Women in New York State History, Jane’s father, Gaius Bolin, an attorney in Poughkeepsie, had been the first African-American graduate of Williams College in Massachusetts.
Partly inspired by her father, young Jane excelled academically as she began to pursue her own career in the legal profession: not only did she graduate from Wellesley in the top twenty of her class, but the first glass ceiling she ever broke came at the age of twenty-three, when she became the first African-American to graduate from Yale University School of Law.
Rather
than rest on her laurels, however, Bolin immediately set to work breaking
another glass ceiling: becoming, upon her passing the bar in 1932, the first
African-American woman to join the New York City Bar Association. After her own
marriage and a brief stint in private practice, she joined the municipal court
system, where she soon shattered the largest glass ceiling yet—one that
stretched across the entire United States. Engel and Smiley have the story:
“In 1939, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia appointed her a judge of the Domestic Relations Court, now renamed the Family Court of New York. This made her the first African American woman in the United States to become a judge, and she was just thirty-one years old.
The ceremony where she was sworn in as judge made news around the world. She served with distinction and was reappointed to ten-year terms by Mayors William O’Dwyer, Robert F. Wagner Jr. and John V. Lindsay. Bolin achieved major changes, which included the assignment of probation officers to cases without regard for race or religion and a requirement that publicly funded child-care agencies had to accept children regardless of ethnic background.”
As
she attested at various times in her life, Bolin’s upbringing—including facing
harassment and discrimination during her education—gave her a deep sympathy for
those who faced the same, and a corresponding drive to ensure fairness and
respect within families and communities using the power of the legal system. Interestingly,
as one account of her life notes, in order to
make children feel more comfortable in her courtroom she refused to wear
judicial robes. But did we mention ‘driven’ earlier? In 1979, at the
sprightly age of 70, Bolin only retired because she was forced to, after forty
years of serving as a judge.
Even so, a little speed bump like that couldn’t stop her from caring for others—even after retirement she continued to serve as a math and reading tutor in the New York City public schools.
Indeed, beyond her legal work, Bolin’s efforts reflected her abiding concern for the vulnerable, with service to organizations such as the Child Welfare League of America, the Neighborhood Children’s Center, the NAACP, the Scholarship and Service Fund for Negro Students, the Committee Against Discrimination in Housing, and the Urban League of Greater New York.
Now, we’ve never heard of judges and attorneys being given jerseys when they enter the public arena, but maybe it’s not a bad idea. One thing is for sure, however: Bolin’s would be hanging from the rafters, her number entered into retirement, as one of our all-time greats. Now that’s a motion we could get behind—provided, of course, that ceiling is made out of anything but glass.
We’ve profiled exceptional lawmen and women before, but as the first of several articles highlighting the contributions of African-Americans to our country’s law enforcement and judicial systems, today we wanted to introduce you to an impressive and unlikely figures we’ve encountered: someone who would take even famed criminal-catchers John Shaft and Axel Foley to school.
Meet
Bass Reeves.
Hailed as one of the most accomplished lawmen of his generation, Reeves came from humble beginnings in the mid-1800s. While not much is known about his early life, in her book Oklahoma Originals: Early Heroes, Heroines, Villains & Vixensauthor Jonita Mullins records that he escaped from slavery in Texas and settled for a time among the Creek Nation of Oklahoma before emancipation. At the time, much of Oklahoma was still reserved for separate Native American nations—as Mullins details, the Indian Territory (as it was called) was well out of reach of federal law enforcement. Following the Civil War but before statehood, different nations had different visions of justice, and restitution was almost unheard of, especially from nations back to the Fed.
In
other words, a perfect place for criminals to hide.
And yet, a perfect place for a certain skilled tracker and scout who was fluent in the Muscogee language to come and find them. When in 1875 a federal court gained jurisdiction over the territory, the famous “Hanging Judge” Isaac Parker recruited over 200 men as deputy federal marshals. Prominent among this new cohort, Reeves became, historians believe, the first Black deputy marshal to take the oath west of the Mississippi River.
Nor
did he waste any time. According to Mullins, “Reeves quickly established his
reputation as a fearless lawman whose quick draw saved his life on many
occasions. Known for his courteous manners and strict sense of duty, the
marshal spent thirty-two years in the service and was responsible for nearly
three thousand arrests.”
It’s
an oft-forgotten fact that in the history of temperance movements, the Indian
Territory in the Oklahoma region was legally dry for decades in the 1800s—well
before the Volstead Act. Unsurprisingly, those unsavory folks who savored illegal
hooch had enjoyed a profitable trade in the region. Mullins tells us that
moonshiners and bootleggers quickly became one of Reeves’ main targets, partnering
with other famous lawmen such as Floyd Wilson and Bud Ledbetter to bust up
stills and arrest as many smugglers as he could.
“On Statehood Day, the US law enforcement staff of Indian Territory took this photo at the federal courthouse. In the center, with the wide hat, is US Deputy Marshal James “Bud” Ledbetter … The African American deputy on the far left is the legendary Bass Reeves, who is considered to be the most important African American lawman of his generation. Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society. From Roger Bell, Images of America: Muskogee.
When the Sooner state became a state in 1907, Reeves transitioned out of his role as a deputy marshal and joined the Muskogee Police Department, where he remained until the end of his days. Reeves died in 1910, after decades in law enforcement, still at the top of his game, leaving behind a legacy that includes a yearly gathering of historians known as the Bass Reeves Western History Conference. But before you go, to celebrate one of our country’s finest, put this fact in your pipe and smoke it: “Even at age sixty-nine,” Mullins writes, “Reeves’ reputation as a lawman was so intimidating that crime was nonexistent on his police beat.”
That’s
right—nonexistent.
Any questions, Mr. Shaft? Mr. Foley, will you take your seat? For school is now in session.
Yet
for many observers of these events, one of the saddest aspects of this story
was how unsurprising it was. In the heart of the Deep South, sometimes it seems
that the old adage is especially true: the more things change, the more they
stay the same.
Reflecting on this story brings us to another incident in the Magnolia State’s history featuring Parchman Farm, hardly a dignified institution like some others we’ve explored. Founded in 1905, built with convict labor, and operating as a working farm staffed by thousands of inmates, the longstanding suffering found at Parchman casts a long shadow over Mississippi’s efforts to break free of its Jim Crow past. So when 150 innocent civil rights activists were arrested and sent there without cause in 1965, one can only imagine the shock and the horror that they felt.
In their book The Parchman Ordeal: 1965 Natchez Civil Rights Injustice, authors G. Mark LaFrancis, Robert Morgan, and Darrell White—a Mississippi-based team of historians, activists, and documentarians—tell the story of that fateful experience for the first time. Largely obscured from public memory in the wake of so many other events of that turbulent year, these activists’ harrowing story now enters the historical record.
“Front page of The Natchez Democrat, August 28, 1965, reporting on the attempted assassination of George Metcalfe. Courtesy the Natchez Democrat.”
The March That Led to Parchman Prison
How
they ended up there is due to, sadly, a classic confrontation of the era.
Members of The Silver Dollar Club, a breakaway racist sect in Natchez even more
bigoted than the Klan (if that’s even possible), had car-bombed George
Metcalfe, local NAACP president, nearly killing him. Galvanized by the attack,
the African-American community rallied together to march against city officials’
handling not just of this particular crime but of mistreatment and
institutional racism generally, a march that—unsurprisingly—those same city
officials quickly declared was illegal.
“Natchez police chief J.T. Robinson extends an arm to halt a civil rights march led by NAACP field secretary Charles Evers (with hand in pocket) after it left a church in Natchez. AP photo. Used with permission.”
The
marchers gathered at local Baptist churches outside of Natchez. Charles Evers—brother
of slain Jackson civil rights leader Medgar Evers and leader of the march—led
the assembled, calling for solidarity, peacefulness, and nonviolence towards white
authorities as they marched to City Hall. But from the moment they opened the
church doors, it became clear that they would never reach their destination: local
law enforcement was waiting right outside to transport them all to the Natchez City
Auditorium, where eventually over 700 marchers, the vast majority of them
young, would spend an anxious, fearful weekend locked inside.
Some
of the activists were sent to local jails, and others were later released on
misdemeanors. But then came the buses—the buses headed north to Parchman Farm.
“Police watch as young African Americans are taken from the Natchez City Auditorium in October 1965. AP photo. Used with permission.”
What
happened on the long ride up to Sunflower County, and what happened during the
days those 150 activists were detained at Parchman Farm is best reserved for those
activists’ own words, and thankfully, their accounts now have a home. Part of LaFrancis,
Morgan, and White’s contribution is that through their research they were able to
interview numerous survivors of the ordeal and hear their experiences
firsthand, experiences they then included verbatim in the book.
Harrowing?
Absolutely. Traumatic? Without a doubt. But also gripping, stirring, and
inspiring? A story of resilience, bravery, and justice over decades? From the
first page to the last. After all, we here at Crime Capsule know that it’s these
aspects of courage and resolve that define us, not just the Mississippians who
fought for a better state then—and continue to do so now, even in the face of
injustices today—but for all Americans around the country.
Perhaps Mississippi’s own William Faulkner said it best. “The past isn’t dead,” he famously wrote. “It isn’t even past.”
Golden-haired
maiden. Radiant young mother. Seasoned jailbreaker. Feared outcast. Talented
healer and sympathetic goodwife—and last but not least, murderous witch. In her
years upon this earth, the mysterious Maria Hallett of Cape Cod, Massachusetts,
lived a startling number of lives. But were any of them true?
Growing up with the legend of a beautiful young woman who was seduced by a dashing British privateer—code for you-know-what—author Kathleen Brunelle spent years trying to figure out just who was this enigmatic figure in Massachusetts history, a figure about whom scant reliable information exists (as we’ve seen before). As Brunelle attests in her book Bellamy’s Bride: The Search for Maria Hallett of Cape Cod, the parade of Hallett’s biographers draw as much from hearsay, folklore, and rumor as much as they do from historically verifiable sources.
“Maria Hallett under the apple tree. Illustration by Olivia Englehart.”
Take,
for instance, the accounts of Hallett’s deal with the devil. After her pirate
lover had sailed south from Massachusetts, leaving her only with vague promises
of return and a rapidly swelling belly, she was forced into an impossible
position. Outcast from home, without a named husband to the child (in Puritan
New England, not just scandal but crime), and living in desperate circumstances,
at Hallett’s giving birth the townsfolk found the baby had not survived. Was it
stillborn? Or had Hallett had a hand in its demise?
It
didn’t matter. Off to the whipping post, and then to jail she went, where somehow
this humiliated, traumatized young woman managed to escape multiple times.
According to Hallett’s chroniclers, this was only thanks to a visit from Old Nick:
“Bellamy was gone,” Brunelle writes, “her child was dead and she stood accused
of fornication and infanticide. The people also suspected her of witchcraft.
The devil, then, represented her only hope. How could the desperate girl
refuse?”
Read the full story of Maria Hallett’s deal with the devil.
Bellamy Returns to Cape Cod
Hence
the problem: no one has any idea where any of this came from, and yet, the tale
of Hallett’s supernatural encounter has been repeated nearly every time her
story is told. Another problem still? Nearly every aspect of her life—from her
chance meeting with Bellamy, to her seclusion on the Cape Cod coast, even to
her death—only exists in multiple versions. For every tale, a counter-tale; for
every square on the quilt of her life, a ripped stitch, a crossed pattern.
The
fog of historical time grows thick, but one fact gleams it through like a
lighthouse: the fact that in April 1717, against all odds, Bellamy returned to Cape
Cod at the helm of the Whydah, a treasure-laden
galley he had seized two months earlier—and sailed directly into a raging storm.
One legend has it that Hallett, furious at her ex-lover for having abandoned
her and her infant child, either caused the storm to sweep up and sink the ship,
or at the very least, led it willfully astray as it was trying to come to
shore. Hell hath no fury…, as they
say.
“The advertisement posted by Captain Cyprian Southack as a warning to Cape Codders who had already picked the Whydah wreckage. Massachusetts State Archives.”
The location
of the Whydah was in doubt for decades,
but all speculation was laid to rest in 1984, when marine explorer Barry Clifford
finally found it underwater. Hailed as one of the great archaeological discoveries
of the century—and indeed, laden with spectacular amounts of plunder—the wreck
has yielded unparalleled insights into what is called the Golden Age of piracy.
And
Hallett? Ironically, the historical attestation for an itinerant, vagabond
pirate is more complete than that for a woman who lived in the same exact community
for the whole of her life. If, that is, she even existed. According to
Brunelle, the woman known as Maria Hallett may well have been a composite of
several different women over time, woven together from folklore, long-lost
families, and pure, wistful invention—the need to spin a great yarn.
Or perhaps—just perhaps—her obscurity was one of the last enchantments that she cast, ensuring that none of us would ever know the truth.
Previously on Crime Capsule, we took a look at what happens when the dead begin to speak: when DNA evidence helps to convict a criminal, and how that evidence can change the course of a case. As the case of Tina Faelz showed, evidence can sit for years, even decades, before a case is reopened and new tools of investigation are brought to bear.
Unfortunately,
however, law enforcement isn’t always so lucky, as a case down in St.
Augustine, Florida, reveals.
No one in town could deny that Athalia Ponsell Lindsley, a realtor known for her independence and bold assertion, and Alan Stanford, Lindsley’s neighbor and a county engineer, shared bad blood. Not only had they been involved in previous disputes over their adjoining property, but at the time of her death Lindsley had publicly challenged Stanford’s credentials (which she claimed were misrepresented) and his capacity to serve as a city employee.
Was that
enough for the embattled Stanford, humiliated and angered by Lindsley’s crusade
against him, to take a machete and nearly decapitate her on her own front
steps? Such was the question faced by a jury in St. John’s County, after
Lindsley was found gruesomely slaughtered in broad daylight, with a trail of blood
leading directly back to Stanford’s house.
The Trial
The evidence found in the swamp by the city dump off Riberia Street. Courtesy of the St. John’s County Sheriff’s Department.
Yet once the trial began—there were no other immediate suspects, certainly none with a motive as clear as Stanford’s—the defense began a systematic unraveling of the prosecution’s case. Witness testimony from the day faltered under cross-examination, and key evidence—bloody clothing and a rusted machete, suggested as the murder weapon—came under scrutiny given its poor handling by local investigators. Surely, the defense claimed, as the St. John’s County police ransacked Stanford’s home in the days after the murder, it was not beyond a reasonable doubt that the overzealous cops took evidence that they later planted to be suddenly, miraculously, found in a city dump?
Lindsley,
the defense pressed furthermore, was prone to derangement, flights of fancy,
possibly deteriorating mental health: any number of people, including random
transients, could have killed her. And Stanford himself—a longtime member of
the local Episcopal church—how could such an upstanding member of polite
society commit such a grisly deed? As Randall details, what appeared at the outset
to be an open-and-shut case for the prosecution gradually turned upside down, and
in early 1975, Alan Stanford walked away a free man, acquitted on the grounds of
circumstantial evidence.
The question
that history will never answer is whether that evidence was in fact circumstantial
at all. By the time DNA testing became available, the murder weapon, Stanford’s
wristwatch, the blood-soaked clothing, and strands of hair were all cleared out
of evidence years later, and that whatever remained was so badly compromised as
to be untestable. Could they have convicted Stanford, just as blood spots
convicted Steve Carlson thirty years after the fact? We’ll let Randall have the
last word:
“Real life produces an outcome so unlike fiction. Often there is no resolution. Events build up to a climax and then just dwindle away. There are no confessions, no tying up of loose ends. The horror that struck still echoes—a faint remembrance, the edge of nightmare, cloven footsteps in the distance. …
Nancy Powell’s follow-up on her friend’s case in 1976. Courtesy of the Times-Union.
Since the controversy concerning this case has not gone away, there is still time—there is always time—for the truth. There is still time to answer the question, ‘Would the truth put this case to rest?’ Perhaps Athalia is still waiting for the ‘mystery’ to be solved.”
In 1920, ten-year-old Geneva Hardman was murdered on her way to school, just outside Lexington. Both civil authorities and a growing lynch mob sought Will Lockett, a black army veteran, as the suspect. The vigilantes remained one step behind the lawmen, and a grieving family erred on the side of justice versus vengeance. During the short trial, tensions spilled over and shots were fired outside the courthouse, leading to a declaration of martial law. Six people died in what civil rights leader W.E.B. Du Bois described as the “Second Battle of Lexington.”
“I am going to school” were a few of the words written by Geneva Hardman to her sister just eleven days earlier. And so she did.
About 7:30 a.m. on the morning of February 4, 1920, Geneva departed for the schoolhouse. The distance was about four-tenths of a mile from her home. On most mornings, a neighbor boy about Geneva’s age joined her for the almost half-mile walk to school. But on February 4, he was kept at home to help on his family’s farm. Severe weather, as observed in Geneva’s letter to her sister, continued in late January and the first days of February; it is likely that Geneva’s young walking companion was needed on the farm to help clean up from the most recent rounds of bad weather. And, so, Geneva walked alone.
The young girl, known for her sweet disposition and for being a quick study, darted between the raindrops on the cold, rainy morning. J. Winston Coleman began his pamphlet Death at the Court-House by setting the scene as being “a cold, wet Wednesday morning.” She must not have sensed the presence of another coming upon her. For it was on this morning that young Geneva would be brutally taken from this earth.
The afternoon’s Lexington Leader ran that day under the headline “Girl Murdered by Man in County.” On her walk to school, ten-year-old Geneva was knocked unconscious and dragged some one hundred feet away from the road. She was both assaulted and murdered in the field.
The allegation of rape never appeared in the court record, but allusions to such a heinous crime exist in several accounts. Specifically, military intelligence reports identify that the assault having been committed against the young Geneva was of a sexual nature.
Across the road from the gruesome scene, Belle McCubbing was feeding her chickens. During this daily routine, she often heard the voices of children before and after the school day. But she reported hearing nothing unusual— and certainly no sounds of distress—on the morning of February 4, 1920.
Some have suggested that McCubbing not having heard any distress as being an indication that the man ultimately accused was innocent. This theory suggests that Geneva would have screamed if an unknown man suddenly appeared and then attempted to assault or harm her.
Speed Collins, a farmer in the South Elkhorn community, passed along the site where the young Geneva was first attacked as early as 7:45 a.m.
Then and there, he observed a school satchel lying beside the roadside Believing it belonged to one of the pupils at the nearby South Elkhorn School, Collins took the satchel up the hill to the schoolhouse. Geneva’s teacher, Anne Young, immediately recognized the bag as belonging to Geneva Hardman.
Young considered the most likely cause of the wayward satchel: Geneva had fallen ill on the way to school. As a result, the schoolteacher dispatched a few of the older students to return the bag to Geneva at her home.
The minutes that followed are the nightmare of any parent. When her classmates arrived at the door, Mrs. Hardman answered. This much was clear: her daughter was missing. She had left for school and had neither arrived at her destination nor returned home; en route, she had lost her satchel. The Lexington Leader offered that “the mother immediately became alarmed and with another son and daughter started out to search.” A search was immediately begun for ten-year-old Geneva. The schoolchildren stopped at Claude Elkin’s store. Elkin joined the search, along with Collins, Thomas Foley, and Geneva’s mother and one of her brothers.
The search for Geneva began where Collins had found the satchel.
Someone in the search party quickly noted the “tracks of a large man and the child…on the other side of the fence in the field, where the mud was very deep, and a shallow trail indicated that her body had been dragged back into the field.” The tracks, “plainly” visible, were followed. This detail of the duality of plainly visible tracks has also been identified, by some, as evidence that Geneva willingly went with whoever would be her assailant.
Beyond whatever tracks may have been visible, corn fodder partially covered the body of the young girl. All was splattered in the innocent blood of a child, and a hair ribbon lay trampled in the mud. The umbrella that she had carried to protect her from the rain lay broken on the ground.
J. Winston Coleman Jr.’s Death at the Court-House, a booklet published in 1952 and considered to be the most complete accounting of the events described in this book, wrote that “a large, blood stained rock which had been used to crush the child’s skull was found by her side. The condition of the ground has somewhat cushioned the blows of the killer, and the impression of the child’s head, with one of her hair ribbons, was seen in the soft earth.” The frightful scene could have only been made worse by Mrs. Hardman being in the search party that day. The overwhelming emotion of finding one’s child in such a condition is not fathomable except to those who have experienced a similar event themselves.
Reported the Lexington Herald: “The child’s body was removed to [her] home within an hour after she had left it at 7:30 o’clock. The mother was prostrated by shock.” She did not, however, grieve alone. Soon, all of central Kentucky would grieve for Geneva Hardman.
Both law enforcement and the civilian posses multiplied in number as word continued to spread of the murder. Police officers and sheriff ’s deputies from Fayette County were joined by their colleagues from Jessamine County (and its seat, Nicholasville) and Woodford County (and its seat, Versailles).
The South Elkhorn neighborhood is situated not far from the intersection of these three counties. Armed farmers joining the manhunt ultimately numbered in the hundreds.
Whoever was to catch the accused would be forced with the decision of turning him over either to the law or to lawlessness. If the civilian searchers found him, it was feared that a lynching would immediately result. A race to catch Geneva’s assailant was on “Will Lockett was the man searched for from the first,” wrote the Lexington Herald on Thursday morning under the headline “All-Day Pursuit Brings Capture; Negro Confesses.” The column reported that all those seeking a culprit immediately focused on Will Lockett.
Wrote J. Winston Coleman, “After an all-day pursuit [of] several hundred farms and [by] officials from three counties, Lockett was captured at 4:30 o’clock in the afternoon at Dixontown.” Upon discovery and capture, police offiicals engaged Lockett in a harried interrogation. Finally, Lockett was asked about motive: “What made you kill her?” To which the accused responded, “I don’t know.” After the confession, Lockett was immediately transferred to the county Jail – but swiftly transferred to the state reformatory over concerns for his safety. The concern was well founded. Soon, a crowd (unaware that Lockett was no longer inside) formed outside the Fayette County jail demanding that the accused be released to the crowd.
The Trial On the morning of February 5, 1920, the Fayette County grand jury issued an indictment against Will Lockett for the murder of Geneva Hardman the day before. The grand jury’s indictment found that Lockett “with force and arms, did unlawfully, willfully, maliciously, feloniously and of his malice aforethought, kill, slay and murder Geneva Hardman by striking, wounding and beating the said Geneva Hardman with a stone, a deadly weapon, from which striking, wounding and beating the said Geneva Hardman then and there died.”
Even with the justice system progressing at a hurried pace, the mob action of the previous evening did not abate. Judge Charles Kerr recognized that in order that justice might prevail through the avoidance of an unjust lynching of the accused, he scheduled the trial for Monday, February 9, during the court’s regular session. After a frantic trial, Judge Kerr permitted the jurors to return their verdict without leaving their seats. He gave the jury its charge: “Gentlemen of the jury, you are directed to find the defendant guilty of murder and fix his punishment at life imprisonment in the penitentiary, or death, in your discretion.” The jury returned a death sentence at 9:40 a.m. Will Lockett would be electrocuted in Eddyville, Kentucky, on March 11, 1920.
The Mob
The shots that had been fired at 9:28 a.m. on the morning of February 9, 1920, were not merely warning shots. Some thought them to be those of a machine gun rattling off rounds into the mob that sought entrance into the old courthouse “to rob the law of its victim.” Final reports indicated that the machine gun saw little to no use, while soldiers firing above the crowd with automatic weapons caused the reverberating sounds.
Ultimately, neither the gauge of the bullets nor the type of firearm discharged altered the outcome. The afternoon Lexington Leader’s afternoon headline read: “Four Persons Lose Their Lives When Attempt Made to Storm Court House.” In the newspaper the following morning, citizens learned that the initial fatality list was an under count. Although five killed had been immediately reported, a sixth would die from injuries sustained. An ensuing riot led to a two-week declaration of martial law following the trial.
And still, another score suffered.
“This is a true crime story that won’t let you put it down! And the chilling account of unfolding mob mentality made me think of the fiction novel To Kill a Mockingbird. (Perhaps this was part of her motivation?!)” – Reader Review
It
was almost the perfect crime. Stabbed forty-four times, sixteen-year-old Tina
Faelz had been murdered in a tucked-away blind spot of Pleasanton, California, her
body found in a drainage ditch just a stone’s throw away from her home. No
witnesses to the actual event, barely a shred of evidence at the scene, and alibis
for the major suspects that all, incredibly, seemed to check out. In 1984,
there was no municipal security camera footage to check, nor any digital
footprint to follow. In short, Steve Carlson nearly got away with it—for well
over twenty years.
Until
the day the dead began to speak.
Author and journalist Joshua Suchon, in his book Murder in Pleasanton: Tina Faelz and the Search for Justice, tells the incredible story of a murder investigation that started hot and gradually, achingly, grew colder and colder over time. It’s a story of disaffected young men and women, of families broken by drug and alcohol abuse, of a community rife with mistrust and resentment at the authorities who tried unsuccessfully to close this case. And a story, ultimately, of the emerging science of DNA testing, one of the most powerful tools in the investigative arsenal.
An officer examines the crime scene on the day of the murder. The body is blurred out by the white flash. Courtesy of the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office.
The problem wasn’t that police didn’t have a suspect. Carlson, one of Tina Faelz’s high school classmates, had been fingered for some involvement early on, but detectives couldn’t conclusively tie him to the case. Beset with drug and alcohol addiction, antisocial, and belligerent, before he moved away from the Pleasanton area Carlson had even half-bragged to his peers at parties and other gatherings that he had killed her, or just as frequently, refused to deny that he had.
Unfortunately for him, however, a speck of blood did the talking for him. As we’ve explored before, evidence can be found in surprising places. One of the few pieces of usable evidence collected at the scene, Faelz’ purse—spattered with various bloodstains—had been found hanging from a branch of a tree, presumably thrown there by her killer. As Suchon details, while authorities weren’t able to fully examine it at first, as the years drew on, and the leads ran dry, it sat silent in drawers and shelves, patiently waiting.
Tina Faelz, Decades Later
By the late 2000s, more than two decades after Faelz’ death, DNA testing had matured considerably, enabling a closer examination of her purse. At the federal lab in Quantico, Virginia, FBI biologists conducted a series of tests on the dried blood that first revealed the presence of male DNA alongside Faelz’ own, and then, with a standardized level of certainty, the blood of one Steve Carlson. (Such a match wouldn’t have been possible had Carlson not stayed out of jail, but as Suchon records, his addictions over the years had landed him numerous different stints in the pen.)
An
arrest on those grounds shortly followed, and as murder has no statute of
limitations, a trial for what was by then a thirty-year-old crime. Naturally,
the purse was at the center of the evidentiary hearings, with Carlson’s defense
arguing that there was no way to determine how or when or why his blood had
come to land on it. Unconvinced, the judge allowed the purse in, and as the state
prosecutor argued to the jury, in the absence of anyone else’s biological
material on any of the other evidence at the scene, “the only reasonable
conclusion is he left that blood on her purse when he killed her.”
How
did Carlson’s blood end up on Faelz’s purse? That fact will never be explained,
but a fact it was, and it was fact enough for Carlson to be convicted. The
severity of the crime—forty-four separate attacks with a knife—was fact enough furthermore
for the jury to up the charge to murder in the first degree. Carlson’s sentence?
Twenty-six years minimum—almost exactly the amount of time that had passed
between the murder and his arrest—to life in prison max.
Amazing,
isn’t it, what happens when the living and the dead begin to speak.
Shirley Faelz poses with a framed photo of her daughter in the late 1980s. Courtesy of the Faelz family.
Our mission is to dig up true
crime stories from America’s past and bring them to America’s present. Every
week we publish historic true crime stories, solved and unsolved. The smoking gun. The bloodstained knife. Nothing
fascinates us more than the deeds and misdeeds of our citizens that have
stunned our communities and in some cases, shaped our nation. We love the wily
ways that crooks just slip past the law, and we crave the stray piece of
evidence that clinches a case. We hate the crimes, but wonder at the criminals:
who were they? Where did they come from? What drove them to do what they did?
We travel the country looking
for the local, the weird, and the untold. We celebrate local authors who know
their stuff: who are passionate about their communities, and whose long hours
of research have given us amazing accounts of crime chock-full of all the gory
details (often literally). It’s our privilege to bring those stories to you.
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Quick,
someone call John Walsh: there’s a culprit on the loose. We’ve got strange
sightings, unexplained sounds, and curious glowing orbs. Not to mention crimes long
unsolved and legacies of abuse, all taking place in an abandoned prison. That’s
right, crime fans—it’s time for an episode of Michigan’s Most Haunted!
We
jest, but in fact, we don’t jest at all. More than anything else, we tip our
hat to brave author Judy Gail Krasnow, who tells the story of one of the most
infamous correctional facilities in American history, the first Michigan State Penitentiary
in Jackson, MI. After all, to Krasnow, “Jacktown” isn’t just a tourist destination.
It’s her home.
This postcard shows the West Wing, Administration Building and East Wing of the prison. It includes a written message. Courtesy of the Jackson District Library.
Krasnow’s book: Jacktown: History & Hard Times at Michigan’s First State Prison is fascinating for many reasons. First, it’s an in-depth account of a place of extraordinary misery, where the harsh conditions alone killed inmates by the hundreds, if not the thousands. But like our exploration of Missouri’s jails, it’s also a story of remarkable resilience, where those same inmates found ways to combat their desperate circumstances—most famously, perhaps, by training the oversized prison cockroaches to serve as couriers for their cigars.
Yes,
you read that right.
Human ingenuity was used to gain a small amount of pleasure, as in the story of the cockroach and the cigar in The Night Keeper’s Reports. Courtesy of Jackson Historic Prison Tours.
But
perhaps most interesting of all is not what happened while Jacktown was open,
but what happened after it closed in 1934. Its life as a prison now over—the state
built another, larger facility elsewhere—it reopened for World War II as an
armory and remained that way until 1996. It wasn’t until the late 2000s that a
movement began to reopen it as an artist’s residential colony: the Armory Arts
Village. Learning of the conversion by happenstance, Krasnow packed up her
former life in Florida and set out to take part in this ambitious, some might
say crazy, project—which is right when she met the ghosts.
A
seasoned researcher and historian, Krasnow isn’t one to make up strange
sightings lightly; the research she’s done for her book is partly an attempt to
determine where these appearances and voices in her new home have come from,
and her results are, to say the least, eerie. As she writes:
“Several dogs in the building still bark vociferously for minutes at a time at things their owners cannot see. They stop as quickly as they start, when whatever excites them departs. A repairman who had worked on the building during its renovation informed me that he’d signed up for night duty as a watchman with another worker. After three days, in spite of the high pay, the two quit. They heard screams echoing from the tunnels underneath, dogs barking where no dogs existed, whips lashing and the sounds of footsteps behind the but only the empty night when the men turned around…
Photos reveal hundreds of pure orbs in the old West Wing cellblock, now the Grand Gallery. Orbs, as seen in the accompanying image, have been photographed in the former solitary area. An artist hung her paintings on the wall over her mantel. Constantly, one of them—the same one—kept flying off the hook upon which it hung. She took a photo. In that exact spot, her camera snapped a pure orb. She photographed the wall behind the other paintings hanging over the mantel, but they revealed nothing.”
A particular painting, hung the same way as the others, kept flying off the wall. This artist’s photo shows a pure orb at the exact spot where this particular painting hung. Courtesy of Armory Arts artist Jennifer Redensky.
That’s
just a starter to whet your appetite. For the full stories of what Krasnow
experienced when she moved in—of objects moving without her touch, of silent music
boxes that suddenly played at random, and of uniformed apparitions manifesting on
her television, despite it being turned off—you’ll have to read the Ghost
Whisperer’s book, or better yet, rent
an apartment in Jacktown yourself…
Until,
that is, the body of twenty-three year old Oscar Harrison, a local white superintendent’s
son, was found slain in the home of Cornell Van Gaasbeek, an African-American
man of Harrison’s acquaintance. Understandably, the news of the crime rocked
the small-town community, from its grisly methods (a bloodied hammer was found
nearby) to the mysteries of their association. Suspicion immediately fell on
van Gaasbeek, but
like other alleged criminals we’ve covered, he had already fled the
scene.
Headline as it appeared in the Kingston Daily Leader. Retrieved from microfilm printout. The Kingston Library.
Enter Roosa: The Mechanic Sherlock of Woodstock
Rubberneckers. Gawps. Busybodies. Call ‘em what you want, it doesn’t matter: they’re the worst. Always sticking their noses into other people’s business, interfering on some kind of personal crusade. Thinking they’re entitled to know what’s going on, even when, nine times out of ten, they’re just getting in the way. But every now and then you get a diamond in the rough: someone who bucks the trend, steps in to actually lend a hand. Allow us, then, to introduce you to one Everett Roosa, of Woodstock, New York.
According
to Heppner, Roosa, a local mechanic, despite having no formal training, no law
enforcement background, and no personal or professional attachment to the case,
still somehow managed to wangle his way into a position with the Woodstock and
Kingston authorities to go off in search of van Gaasbeek. Heppner: “…it seems
that Roosa’s ‘expertise’ came, primarily, from being an avid reader of Sherlock
Holmes mysteries. In fact, he would readily boost that he had read everything
Conan Doyle had ever written.”
The
thing was, Roosa wasn’t half-bad: not only did he unearth a letter van Gaasbeek
had received from his sister, offering a clue to his possible location, but he
came up with the idea to ask area schoolchildren, who would have spent
considerable time outdoors, whether they had seen a man of van Gaasbeek’s
description. Remarkably enough, some of them had, and by coordinating their
accounts, within a couple of days Roosa was able to track his suspect down to
the Catskills village of Purling, where he made the arrest.
Sketch of Cornell Van Gaasbeek as it appeared in the Kingston Daily Freeman during the trial. Retrieved from digitized scan. HVRH website
But the story doesn’t end there.
As Heppner recounts, after a sensational trial, van Gaasbeek was found guilty of manslaughter, but his attorney, incensed at the lack of direct witnesses and the use of circumstantial evidence by the prosecution, appealed the conviction and secured a new trial for his client. Second time was the charm, and after a grueling re-examination of the evidence and testimony—including Roosa’s, given again from the stand—Van Gaasbeeck was eventually acquitted of the crime. Aged, worn, and suffering from two years in the harsh Dannemora Penitentiary (known as ‘Little Siberia’), Cornell van Gaasbeek was nevertheless a free man.
Now, the question remains: who killed Oscar Harrison? For that, you’ll have to read Heppner’s book. But Roosa? Believe it or not, his story has an (almost) happy ending too: later in life, Heppner says, Roosa did actually end up working in law enforcement. He became a temporary patrolman at the nearby Ashokan Reservoir, and eventually, a deputy sheriff. He might not exactly have been a Pinkerton, but you gotta admit—not bad for a self-taught Sherlock, was it?
