Murder & Mayhem in Jefferson County

by Cheri L Farnsworth

  Sketch of carriage carrying bodies from the Watertown Re-Union, 1897. Printed with permission from the Watertown Daily Times.

  Forty-five minutes later, as authorities rushed to the bizarre murder scene at the livery, thirty-two-year-old Allen staggered into the Madison Barracks mess hall badly wounded. He was begging to be taken to the hospital. Over the course of the next six months, his version of the events that transpired that evening, while in the company of the two aforesaid lady friends, changed with such frequency that District Attorney V.K. Kellogg would remind a jury at Allen’s trial, “the stories do not harmonize, and that is the way that criminals are always caught”—always. Nevertheless, Allen, a private in Company F with a dozen-some years of military service, maintained that the man who left him for dead and slaughtered the two women was Mrs. Crouch’s former husband, Wilbur Crouch.

  George Allen-Haynes. Sketch from the Watertown Herald, 1897. Printed with permission from the Watertown Daily Times.

  When questioned by Coroner Dick and Dr. Ware, Allen’s original story—called an “incoherent utterance” by the Watertown Re-Union of April 21, 1897—was this:

  [Thursday] night, about 8, I went to Thomas Jackson’s livery stable and hired a team to take Mary Daley [sic] and Mrs. Crouch to the home of Mrs. Carr, Mrs. Crouch’s mother. A soldier named Davis road to the barracks club with me, where we got some cigars. I told Davis that Crouch had seen me get the team and was watching me and would probably follow. I took the women in the carriage, and we went to the home of Mrs. Crouch’s mother. I noticed a buggy on another road nearby as we were returning. We were about a quarter of a mile from Mrs. Carr’s when we met a man in the road afoot. The man grabbed a line and stopped the team. I recognized him as Crouch. I was on the right, and Miss Daley was sitting on my lap, driving, while I had my arm around her. I tried to start the team, but Crouch hung on. I started to get out of the buggy. As I did so, Crouch hit me with a stone, which he held in his hand. I fell forward on the dashboard. I tried to make a bluff with a little 22 caliber revolver that I had and by accident it went off and shot me.

  Mrs. Crouch exclaimed, “Oh, my God!” Then several shots were fired by the assailant. Miss Daley fell forward and then Mrs. Crouch fell, both on me, pinning me down in the buggy. It seemed to me that as many as 16 shots were fired. Crouch then got into the buggy and took the reins and drove to the Watertown road and up that road to the turn toward Brownville. I have an impression that there was a young man with Crouch part of the time, but can’t say for sure. After he started with us up the Watertown road, I revived slightly and struggled out from under the women. Crouch then hit me on the head with a stone or something sharp, and whenever I would move or show signs of life, he would pound me on the head and shoot me. After we had gone some distance, the man pulled me from the buggy and threw me into a creek or pond. I floated ashore and crawled up the bank and across the fields to the hospital.

  Postcard of Madison Barracks at Sackets Harbor. Copyright 1905 by Rotograph Company.

  Allen then implored the coroner and doctor to hasten to the scene of the crime in nearby Hounsfield and search for the women, whom he said were probably still in the creek. News of the slain women had not yet reached the barracks, so Allen was told that the women were probably fine, or they would have heard about it. He knew better, of course, even if those assisting him to the hospital were unaware of the murders. Soon, every detail of Allen’s initial story would be questioned and ultimately debunked, like his statement that he only owned a small caliber weapon that he used to kill cats with; yet, he had given a boy named Frank Gomery some money to go to the store just hours before to purchase a new revolver for him. But Allen was cut some slack on account of his own injuries and the possibility that his confusion stemmed not from being caught up in his own lies but because of either shock or head injuries suffered during the ordeal. Furthermore, doctors in charge of his treatment at the army hospital refused to let investigators speak to him, which stifled the investigation considerably. According to Dr. Ware, he had “three wounds on the right side of the neck, with two cuts in the forehead, as if he had been struck with a stone. There was one bullet wound over the right temple and a contusion on the left breast, while his head was covered in bruises.” Crouch, who was forty-four years old, had become the most viable suspect simply because poor Private Allen—the wounded steward of the officers’ club—had said so.

  Wilbur Crouch. Photograph from the Watertown Herald, 1897. Printed with permission from the Watertown Daily Times.

  Constable Maxon was sent to arrest Crouch and said:

  I went to the place and knocked at the door. In about two minutes, Crouch unlocked it. I opened it and went in. He was dressed in his stockings and drawers and was pulling on his pants. He said, “What do you want?” I said, “I want you, Crouch. Your wife and Mary Daley [sic] have been murdered, and Allen is only just alive. I must place you under arrest.” Crouch started and, striking an attitude of surprise, said, “My God, what will my poor children do?” I said, “Crouch, do you know anything about this?” He said, “Not a thing.”

  Crouch had been a butcher by trade and bore a reputation of being an “ugly drunk” with a penchant for gambling. His wife left him on account of his drunken tantrums. But he insisted he held no ill will toward her and knew nothing about the horrible murders. The Herald said:

  His long-standing trouble with his wife, his quick temper, and the statement of Allen, all helped to fasten the crime on him at the start. He tormented his wife, who was separated from him, but not a word against her has passed his lips. He believed her a virtuous woman and has maintained this from the beginning of their troubles, which he claims was due mostly to his own temper.

  For example, according to the Herald of April 24, 1897, Mrs. Robert Morris testified at the coroner’s inquest that she had stepped in and protected Mary Crouch on more than one occasion:

  I have known Mary Crouch for more than ten years. There was no bright spot in her life except when with her little ones Sunday afternoons. Mrs. Crouch was a hard-working woman. She had earned her own home by sewing and taking in boarders, when her husband would come home, kick, choke, and pound her. She fled to my house for protection many a time. I have caught him choking her, and I have saved her life. I was not afraid of him.

  Mary Crouch. Photograph from the Watertown Herald, 1897. Printed with permission from the Watertown Daily Times.

  Yet, regardless of the allegations of spousal abuse that resulted in Mary Crouch securing a “limited divorce” the previous fall, some, even at that earliest juncture, believed Crouch to be innocent, including Chief of Police George Mason. And many were beginning to wonder if Allen knew more than he was willing to admit. The Herald said:

  Some believe that he [Allen] became too familiar with the women in the buggy and that Mrs. Crouch drew her revolver to defend her honor; that Allen may have drawn his to frighten the women, and the shooting began; that after he saw what he had done, he walked to the barracks and let the team go with the dead to the stable. There is but very little time between the arrival of the team at the barn and Allen at the barracks. His purchase of a revolver the day before, his talk of Crouch watching him, his approaching marriage under peculiar circumstances, even the little slips in his delirium talk, are worked together to form a chain of evidence to convict him instead of Crouch, but the officials seemingly are ferreting out evidence to convict Crouch.

  Hence, Crouch’s sleeping quarters, dubbed “the shack,” were searched, with the only suspicious findings being a couple of handkerchiefs stained with blood that was later determined to be animal and nasal (nosebleed) blood and a book about crimes and criminal escapes. The Re-Union said, “The book was found open at the exciting story of the escape of a man accused of murder.” But his horse and buggy showed no signs of having been out that evening. It had been a wet, messy night, but there were no signs of mud on the horse or buggy, whatsoever; and his overcoat was likewise clean. Had he been in
volved in such a horrific scuffle as this, it wouldn’t have been so. Crouch told a reporter:

  I was coming up at about 7:45 with a man named Simmons and another man on the road leading from in back of the barracks onto the main road. They walked with me as far as Longworthy’s. Afterwards, I went to the hotel and stayed around till a little after 9. I didn’t go home till 10. A man named Sprang walked part way with me. I went home and went to bed.

  This alibi was corroborated by a number of individuals, including “Joe” Roach, who knocked on Crouch’s door at the time the murders were believed to have been taking place to see if Crouch felt like a game of poker. Crouch clearly replied, Roach said, that he did not before going back to sleep.

  At the coroner’s arraignment of Crouch, Judge W.F. Porter came to his defense, saying, “We are at the mercy of a man who did commit this crime, in my judgment, and would perjure himself and send himself to perdition for the purpose of saving his own life and freeing himself from the consequences of a deed which he himself committed and would fasten upon an innocent man.” Still, the coroner’s jury “rendered a verdict to the effect that the two women came to their death by bullet wounds believed to have been administered by Wilbur Crouch.” Crouch was then locked up in the county jail, as confident as you would expect an innocent man to be that his counsel would soon get to the bottom of it and have him released.

  Crouch’s attorney, Nathaniel F. Breen, meanwhile, continued to sort the fact from the fiction of Private Allen’s account and began to rapidly accumulate a preponderance of evidence against the hospitalized so-called third victim of this tragedy. First of all, George F. Allen was really Edward George Haynes; and even though he was engaged to be married to Mary Daly that very weekend, he was still married to Nellie Barnacle of Chicago, whom he had wed only a half year earlier. And he was engaged to yet another young lady named Fanny Waters, besides Miss Daly. What’s a poor man to do?

  Shortly before the murders, Haynes made the mistake of confiding in a number of acquaintances that he was in a predicament. A saloon proprietor, for example, testified that on the day of the murders, Haynes came into the saloon and confessed to him, “I am in trouble, and I don’t see how I can ever get out of it. I might as well shoot myself and end it all!” To Albert Parker, who was delivering milk to the officer’s club shortly before the murders, Haynes allegedly said: “Parker, I’m in a h——l [sic] of a fix. Mary Daly wants me to marry her, and I won’t do it.” Then, according to Parker, Haynes “threw up his hands and pulled imaginary weapons from his coat, saying: I’ve a good notion to blow my brains out!” He must have decided the only way to prevent the unlawful marriage to Mary Daly from taking place that weekend was to simply do away with either himself or her and lay the blame upon another man. So he hatched a carefully considered plan that conveniently involved Wilbur Crouch as the scapegoat killer, making sure to drop hints to various persons he encountered that evening, including Mary Crouch, that he believed Wilbur Crouch was following them, knowing all along it was untrue.

  It didn’t take Breen long to size up Haynes. But others remained under his spell, including one reporter who called him mild mannered and courteous. The reporter described Haynes as having light hair and a light mustache, a tall athletic build and expressive grayish-blue eyes and said, “He was considered one of the best athletes among the troops at Madison barracks.” Breen was not impressed. It didn’t take him long to see that his client, Wilbur Crouch, was being unlawfully detained. So the attorney summoned Special County judge A.E. Cooley to Watertown. Upon the judge’s arrival, Breen made an application for a writ of habeas corpus, which was duly granted. According to the Re-Union, the writ was served upon Sheriff Kellogg, who was ordered to appear before Judge Cooley two days later:

  The writ was granted to compel the people to show cause why Crouch is retained in jail. He was arrested a few hours after the murder was committed, detained at the Earl house at Sackets Harbor until the verdict of the coroner’s jury was rendered and then was brought to Watertown by Constable Maxon, of Sackets Harbor, and lodged in jail here. No warrant was issued for his arrest, and he has had no preliminary examination before any magistrate.

  The law provides that a person must be given a hearing within 48 hours and that he cannot be detained without legal process.

  Crouch was thereby formally and properly arrested (rather than being released), but he had faith he would be exonerated. He told a Re-Union reporter,

  I hope to be out of here soon. I don’t think they are going to try to indict me, though if by any possibility they should, this would be a pretty tough place to spend the summer. This is a civilized age, and there is no danger of an innocent man being convicted. I have perfect faith in the district attorney. I think he is trying to find out the truth, and if my staying here a few days more will help him, I’m perfectly willing to do it.

  Does that sound like a man hiding something?

  On April 28, 1897, Wilbur Crouch was brought before Recorder Cobb for an examination on the charges being made against him; but because there were no witnesses to testify against him, the examination was adjourned. Then, on May 17, 1897, the grand jury returned a true bill against George Allen. He was arrested and brought to the county jail, and Crouch was finally released from Cell No. 1 of the east wing of the county jail where he had been incarcerated for a full month. Haynes—who had just been released from the government hospital at Madison Barracks—immediately took up residence in the very same cell. I wonder if they passed each other in the hall, as one was leaving and the other was just arriving. It was Haynes’s turn now, even though he was not fully healed of his wounds. He had been shot in the head from behind, either by himself or at the hands of another, and the bullet had lodged over his right eye. Another bullet had entered Haynes’s neck on the right side and lodged against his lower jaw bone; and two additional bullets were still believed to be somewhere in his neck, not causing him any trouble, at the time of his arrival at jail. Two stray, innocuous bullets were the least of Haynes’s worries, though. He had to suspect, by then, that he would never walk free again.

  On May 19, 1897, Haynes pleaded not guilty at his arraignment but was indicted for the first-degree murders of Mary Daly and Mary Crouch. The trial for the murder of Mary Daly, one of the most sensational in Jefferson County history, would be first; it was set for August 31, 1897. Because of the widespread publicity of the case, an additional panel of two hundred jurors was drawn. Justice Maurice L. Wright presided. District Attorney Virgil K. Kellogg was assisted by county judge E.C. Emerson and Joseph Nellis; Haynes was represented by Frank H. Peck and Watson M. Rogers. Judge Emerson opened for the prosecution, describing in great detail, according to the Watertown Re-Union of September 15, 1897, how the defendant planned to leave both women for dead and frame Wilbur Crouch:

  Judge Edgar C. Emerson. From Emerson’s Our County and Its People (1898).

  And here we see him [Haynes], engaged to marry two women and legally married to a third. Now gentlemen, it was discussed between this defendant and Mary Daly that they were to go to Oswego and that she was to apply for her divorce there, and that they were after to marry. They were to have left for Oswego on the next day after the murder, and after the divorce had been obtained they were to have been made man and wife. She had packed her trunk and made all due preparations to leave the garrison. The defendant had also informed the officers of the Officers’ club, where he was employed, that he was to leave the service on that Saturday. A new man had been provided to take his place. Mary Daly and Mary Crouch had been bosom friends and on many occasions, he had been seen with them. After it had been arranged to go to Oswego, a trip was laid out when Allen was to take the two women and drive them to Mrs. Carr’s for a farewell visit.

  On the morning of the 15th, a man named Rhinehardt was engaged to take charge of the club house in the place of Allen, who was expected to leave. He came to Allen and asked him what to do, as he was, of course, unacquainted with the duties of t
he position. Allen told him when he appeared that he had decided to remain the month out, and also said the job was a hard one anyway, and no kind of a job. He told the new man to tell Lieutenant Connell, who had sent him, that he could not take charge of it at present, as he had to work around his place, and the man did as requested…That morning, also, Allen secured the services of a young boy named Gromeley, who ran errands for inmates of the garrison, and sent him to the village to buy a self-acting 32-caliber revolver and a box of cartridges for it. The defendant had another revolver which he is understood to have used to shoot cats. The boy fulfilled the errand as requested, and when he came back and handed the revolver to the soldier…and when Allen had got it, he put it in the cupboard with the remark that he had to send it away. This is a revolver that he afterward said in one of his statements that he had sent to Billy Moore. Gentlemen, I think we will prove to you that this was a falsehood, and that Allen never sent that revolver away; that it was not on the shelf the next morning in the cupboard where it had been left; that it did not pass out of Allen’s possession, and that it was the revolver with which the shooting was done.