Murder & Mayhem in Jefferson County

by Cheri L Farnsworth

  Miles insisted that things seemed to be going along fine with Mrs. Ward until a dispute on September 19, 1893, when James Casey came by to pay the couple $332 for hay, and Mrs. Ward grabbed the check and refused to divide it with Henry. Justice of the Peace Fred E. Croissant testified that the couple had been before him that month to make their “understanding” official.

  Courtesy of the author.

  He said:

  She was to pay him $300, and he was to go away. The agreement they had previously made was to the effect that they should share equally in the avails of the farm. I don’t think anything was said in the agreement about what was to be done with the property after either of them died. I saw her snatch this paper from him. She afterwards made a complaint to me about an assault that he committed on her. He pleaded guilty, and I sentenced him to pay a fine of $10 or ten days in jail. I saw him after he came out of jail.

  In Miles’s brief absence, Mrs. Ward wasted no time in hiring another man to work on the farm, and Miles was forced off the very property he had tried so hard to hold onto. Renting a house across the road, he kept watch on the activities of Mrs. Ward, day and night, and was convinced that she was having “improper relations” with twenty-eight-year-old Richard Rusaw, the young man she had just hired. Miles also became convinced that Ward was trying to put poison in his food when she invited him for several meals, so he stopped eating there but occasionally accepted odd jobs around the farm for pay from Ward. His plans had all been turned upside down, when he was cast out of his own home by the very person he trusted to help him keep it.

  The night before the murder, as Miles spied on the house in a snowstorm, he was sure he saw Mary and Rusaw in her room, so he went to the house at 3:30 a.m. and ordered Rusaw to leave. Rusaw begged to stay until morning, for he had nowhere else to go in such inclement weather, and he didn’t realize he was dealing with a homicidal maniac. The next morning, Miles returned to the house at 7:30 a.m. in a highly agitated state.

  His story, remarkably similar to that of the other witnesses, was as follows, according to the Herald:

  [Mrs. Ward] told me that I had gotten through there and that she would not take me back. I said, “Mary, if you do not take me back, I will kill you,” and at the same time, I told the young man to get out of the house, as I was going for my gun and that he had better move quick. I went across the road, then to my house; I took my breech-loading shotgun down from the wall where it was hanging and put two cartridges in it. After doing that, I drank a cup of tea, ate some crackers, filled my pipe and smoked it, and then looked out of the window to see if the young fellow had gone; I could not see him down the road. I then took my gun and mittens and walked leisurely over to Mrs. Ward’s and went to the back kitchen door. I looked through a window and saw the hired man going out into the wood shed, and Mrs. Ward was just behind him. She told him to shut the outside wood shed door. I said, “Never mind, young fellow. Where is your hat?” He told me that it was none of my business. I then kicked the wood shed door open. Mary said, “Get out of here or I will have you arrested.” I asked her if she wasn’t ever going to give me back any of my property or else take me back. “No, I will never have you in the house again,” she replied. “I will kill you if you don’t, and I will be as good as my word,” I retorted. She replied by saying, “You dare not touch me.” I told her then that I didn’t want to touch her nor harm her, but that she must do as she had agreed.

  The hired man said, “Get out of here or I will stick you,” but with what kind of an instrument, I know not, as I did not see any around. Upon hearing this from him, I quickly cocked my gun and fired into the wall. He ran, and I didn’t see him again. I now spoke to Mary and asked her if I should kill her, or would she do as she had agreed. She replied by telling me to get out or she would have me arrested, and then she grabbed hold of the gun and tried to take it away from me, when I slapped her across the forehead or else across the ears. Then she ran out the doors, yelling with all her might. I called out to her not to run to the neighbors’, but to stop, and if she didn’t I would kill her. She sped on; I cocked the trigger to the empty barrel. It snapped. Then I cocked the other one, pulled the trigger and fired, and Mary fell.

  Miles told of his actions as if he truly believed he was in the right—that she had been warned and didn’t heed his warning, so he was justified in acting upon his threats toward her. When I.M. Carpenter was summoned to the scene, Miles and Carpenter carried the body into the house and lay it down on the bed “where he folded her arms nicely before leaving to give himself up to an officer.” Carpenter said:

  [Miles] folded her hands, closed her mouth, and kissed her several times. He was sobbing all the time. He said, “Mary, I killed you because I love you. You proved false and I couldn’t stand it.” He asked me to take him to the Mills [Evans Mills]. He said he wanted to give himself up, saying that he might harm somebody. He took me in the house and showed me some things that he desired his little girl to have. He wanted me to take him to Philadelphia so that he could kill his brother, Andrew, saying that Andrew had robbed him all his life and that he would fix him. He gave me the gun, but asked for it again, saying that I could have it, but he wanted to use it once more. I told him he didn’t want it; he dropped his head and finally said that he was ready to go. We drove to the Mills in a buggy. I noticed that his face was very red. On the drive to Evans Mills he said he had watched the house all night and that he did not intend to kill her. I did not detect the smell of liquor on him and did not observe that he had a bottle of whiskey. At the Mills we got a pair of [illegible] and, in company with Constable Fredenberg, brought Miles to jail, arriving here about 1 p.m.

  From the moment Miles admitted to the Carpenters that he had killed Mary Ward, he spoke freely and unapologetically about his crime, assuring all who would listen that he wanted a speedy trial and didn’t care to be alive any longer. Miles’s dying father was spared news of his son’s actions for fear that it would hasten his demise, and his mother became ill upon hearing of it. This deeply troubled the otherwise undemonstrative killer. But what troubled him far more was his brother’s response when asked who was living on the farm now. It was, of all people, Richard Rusaw! The Frenchman that Miles despised, because he believed he was having relations with Mrs. Ward, was now living there on what Miles considered to still be his property. The revelation infuriated Miles beyond words, and he “flew into a frenzy and said that he was now sorry that he didn’t follow Rusaw down the road that Sunday morning and kill him,” according to the Herald.

  Rusaw added additional details to Miles’s story. He said Miles had been lurking around the outside of Mrs. Ward’s home in the snowstorm, threatening his and Mrs. Ward’s lives all night long. He came back over on Sunday morning, and when Rusaw saw that he had the shotgun, he escaped out of the back door. Miles, he said, smashed the door, accused Mrs. Ward of being intimate with Rusaw and begged her to take him back. Authorities believe he struck her over the head when she refused, because she had two deep cuts on each side of the scalp reaching to the bone.

  Rusaw, according to the Watertown Re-Union of March 14, 1894, said:

  I reside at Whitney’s Corners; am 23 years old and my parents are dead. Mary A. Ward hired me to work for her on Sunday, November 19, just two weeks before the murder. When I went there, Mrs. Ward and I were the only occupants of the place. Miles was standing in the horse barn door. When Mrs. Ward and I drove up that Sunday, she spoke to him and asked him what he was doing there, saying that she didn’t want him around. He asked for some grease for his boots, and she gave it to him. He said to her that she had got a hired man, and she made no reply. I next saw Miles the following Monday morning. He had a conversation with Mrs. Ward and said he wanted some potatoes. She told him to get the bags and she would fill them. He called her a vile name, and she told him to get off the premises. He told her that she wanted to get that young fellow out, meaning me, and told me to get away or he would fix me so that I would. The next t
ime I saw him was on Friday, Dec. 1, when Mrs. Ward came to Watertown to pay her interest. Miles was standing on the plaza of his house when I asked him which would go best, a cutter or a wagon. He replied neither one. He saw us drive away.

  I went to bed at 9:15 the night before the murder and occupied the bedroom off the kitchen. About midnight I awoke and heard Miles say: “Mary, you told me if I ever caught you, I could kill you, but (with an oath) I won’t do it.” He then came over to my window and said: “Dick, how easy I could knock out a pane of glass and kill you right in bed!” He then went away but returned shortly afterwards and told me to get out. I told him I would in the morning. He accused me of having been in Mary’s room. When he came around again early Sunday morning, I told him we would cut some bolts, which are used for the heads of cheese boxes. He asked how much Mrs. Ward would pay, and I told him 40 cents a cord. He said with an oath he would make her pay 50 cents. I asked him if I should go to his house or come back to Mrs. Ward’s. He told me to come to his place and that he would kill me if I ever came back out there again. About 7 he came to the kitchen window and asked me if I was going to get out. I told him I was, and then Mrs. Ward came out in the kitchen where I was and told me to lock the door. At that, he burst the door open, and I ran out. Before that, Mrs. Ward said she would put a bullet in him if he didn’t go away. He placed his face against the window and dared her to shoot, saying that he would go home and get his gun and kill us both. When Miles came back and broke in the house, I heard a scuffle and the explosion of a gun, followed by a scream. A moment later, I heard her say: “For God’s sake, help me, Dick!” I looked back and saw Mrs. Ward running from the house and Miles following her. I heard the report of a gun again, and another scream, and that was all. I run down to Mr. Carpenter’s.

  A number of individuals at the trial testified that they had witnessed Miles’s violent tendencies firsthand, like Will Youngs and Burt Haun, who were threatened with a pitchfork; Jacob Helmer, whom Miles threatened “to smash”; August Stoll and John Baller, who saw him threatening to kill a man with a knife in Rochester; and Ele Sovey, who heard Miles threaten to kill his own dog and a neighbor boy during one of what he called “those spells.” Perhaps one of the more damning recollections came from a Philadelphia, New York man named Fred Hart, who had known Henry Miles nearly all his life.

  He said:

  One day Henry came up to a ditch where I was working. He had his sleeves rolled up and was as calm as you and I are to-day. I said something about Andrew B. Miles. He became angry and said that all Andrew was after was law and to beat folks. Henry then said that if Andrew was here, he would cut out his heart and hang it on a stake.

  Miles’s fourth wife, Mercy Corp, showed up in court as the defense opened. She had with her Henry’s little girl, whom he held in his lap for the remainder of the last day of the trial. Their entrance resulted in the first show of emotion anyone had seen on Miles’s face the entire trial.

  The Re-Union said,

  Just before Attorney Charles G. Porter arose to address the jury, a good-looking young woman entered the courtroom, leading a pretty girl of five summers. The woman was a decided brunette, had large, bright eyes, a clear complexion, and was neatly dressed in black.

  Miles’ child had pretty rosy cheeks, large brown eyes, and smilingly ran up to the prisoner, jumped into his arms and kissed him. It was his own offspring, and the woman was formerly his wife…The prisoner and the woman did not speak, but Miles held the child in his arms and sobbed bitterly all the afternoon.

  Even though the defense tried to show that Miles’s temperament was the result of several head injuries suffered early in his life, exacerbated by the trials and tribulations of his later years, the jury needed only two and a half hours to reach a guilty verdict: murder in the first degree. On March 13, 1894, Miles was brought before Justice Peter B. McLennan and, before an audience of some two thousand people who had crowded into the courthouse and the walkway leading to the jail, he was sentenced to die in the electric chair at the state prison in Auburn the week of April 22, 1894. When asked if he had anything he wanted to say before his sentence was read, he declined comment.

  Courtesy of the author.

  The judge, in his sentencing speech, said, in part:

  The court believes you have had a fair and impartial trial…after, as I believe, considering it fairly, honestly, and conscientiously, the jury decided that you were guilty of the highest crime known to the law. They decided that you deliberately, and with premeditation intending so to do, took the life of Mrs. Ward. After hearing your history from your own lips, it is not a matter of much surprise that your career should have ended in that way. You seem to have had your hand raised against society and its laws almost since your boyhood. You seem to think you could maltreat the weak women at pleasure and will, seemingly becoming, as the years went on and on, more and more determined in your course to injure anyone who crossed your path. I only wonder that some such catastrophe had not happened long before.

  While we are sorry for you and sympathize with you in your trouble, we are also sorry for your victim and sympathize with her. Though perchance her life was a little stained by sin, yet so far as it appears, it may have been the result of your actions only. In all events, she came to her death by your deliberate act. The law is that for such crime, punishment must follow. The last words that I would say to you is that in the few weeks that remain to you, you think of brighter spots in your career, and give those sentiments and impulses that are pure the ascendency, so that you may be better prepared for your fate. You may rest assured that you must pay the penalty.

  Miles showed no emotion and didn’t even blink as the judge read his sentence. Perhaps it was shock or stunned silence, as the reality of his conviction set in. But he broke down on the way out of the courthouse. To his estranged wife, Mercy Corp, he left all of his money and asked that she deposit it in the Jefferson County Savings Bank in the name of his daughter. With only that loose end to tie up, he was ready to go and face his sentence. En route to Auburn, he said, “I won’t ask for a new trial, but I suppose my lawyer will. If a new trial means imprisonment for life, I do not care for it. I would rather have things go on just as they are planned. I would rather die at the time set than spend the balance of my life in prison. It’s been bad all the way through, and I do not fear death.”

  Early postcard of Auburn Prison, circa 1914. Courtesy of the author.

  At Auburn, Miles became an exemplary inmate; and his death wish was soon rescinded. He decided that he wanted to live, after all. According to the Re-Union of November 10, 1894, the prison chaplain said that Miles “was a model prisoner and had lost all of his bravado and boasting that he was ready and wishing to die.” Thus, Judge Wilbur F. Porter and the Reverend Francis A. Strough made an earnest appeal to Governor Flower on Miles’s behalf on Thanksgiving Day, presenting the governor with a petition for the commutation of the sentence to life in prison, rather than the electric chair. Strough’s plea was that the murder of Mrs. Ward was “the natural result of Miles’ environment and early training, and that even Governor Flower or himself, if brought up under similar conditions, might have committed a like deed.”

  The governor was moved by the gentlemen’s arguments, and in early December 1894, he agreed to commute the sentence, saying:

  Taking into account Miles’ low order of intellect, the great excitement under which he was laboring, and all other circumstances of the case, the deliberation and premeditation necessary to constitute murder in the first degree do not seem so clearly established as to warrant the infliction of the death penalty. The case has naturally excited great interest in Jefferson County, where the homicide occurred, and there is a very general sentiment among all classes of people that life imprisonment will be a juster and wiser punishment; and upon a careful consideration of all the facts, I am fully convinced that justice will be best promoted by commuting the sentence.

  Governor Roswell Flower. From Emerson�
��s Our County and Its People (1898).

  Henry was relieved and expressed “profound gratefulness” to the governor for sparing his life. Nearly seven years later, Miles died in prison of “valvular disease of the heart” at the age of sixty-two. His remains were sent to Philadelphia for burial following funeral services at the Congregational church.

  CHAPTER 7

  THE MARY CROUCH-MARY DALY DOUBLE HOMICIDE

  SACKETS HARBOR, 1897

  The criminal annals of Northern New York contain nothing in any manner paralleling the Sackets Harbor tragedy. As the rumors are sifted and facts brought to light, it is difficult to decide whether it was a deliberately planned murder or brought about by circumstances as yet unknown.

  —Watertown Herald, April 24, 1897

  About 2:45 a.m. on the morning of Friday, April 16, 1897, liveryman William Markham was unhitching a team of horses when the team that Private George F. Allen had hired some eight hours earlier came rushing into the yard without its driver. As Markham approached the carriage, he was horrified to see two lifeless female bodies hanging precariously out of the buggy—that of Mrs. Wilbur Crouch and her friend and coworker, Miss Mary Daly, to whom Allen was engaged to be married the very next day. “Save for a little spasmodic movement of the jaw in the case of Mrs. Crouch, life in both cases was extinct,” said the Watertown Herald two days later.

  And the Watertown Re-Union, in its first article regarding the case, said:

  His [Markham’s] blood was chilled as he saw that the carriage was occupied by the corpses of two women. One was the body of Mrs. Wilbur Crouch. It was on the left side of the buggy, most of her body being outside of the box and her head on the floor of the barn, the body between the forward wheel and the dash. Her disheveled hair had trailed through the mud, and her face was covered thickly with mud, as if it had passed through the puddle of the roadway. Blood was oozing from a large wound on the head. The scalp had been peeled partly from one side of the head, as if by violent contact with a stone. The other woman was Mary Daley [sic]. She had sunk down into the bottom of the buggy box. Her clothes were badly burned, especially on the back, and the fire had eaten away part of the fabric of her corset. One of Mrs. Crouch’s feet had been caught under the seat and that was what held her body in the position in which it had evidently been during a ride of several miles. The paint had been worn from the buggy wheel where it had come in contact with her body.