Murder & Mayhem in Jefferson County

by Cheri L Farnsworth

  Emerson went on for the remainder of the morning to carefully describe, in meticulous detail, the activities and actions of the defendant and his victims on the night of the murder, from the time Haynes picked up the horses and buggy at the livery stable until he came staggering into the mess hall. Following the lunch break, Emerson continued, describing the sounds witnesses had heard along the alleged route of the crime, corroborating the prosecution’s version of events. He then went into detail regarding the condition of the victims and the defendant and what their expert witnesses had to say about it:

  The clothes worn by the two victims, Allen and Crouch, have been submitted to experts, along with other things. A second autopsy was made with the aid of the microscope. On the front and side of Mary Daly’s clothing, the fire had burned it away. The two bullet wounds had passed through her cloak and the holes had been burned out, the result of contact shots and some grains of powder were in her flesh. There is a certain quantity of powder that is not burned and it tends to spread itself out. With experiments made by the same revolver and similar cartridges, it was held within three inches of Mary Daly’s neck when the discharge took place.

  Original photograph of carriage carrying the bodies of Crouch and Daly. From the collection Robert and Jeannie Brennan, Sackets Harbor.

  It was found that Mary Daly’s cloak was smeared with mud…There were burns on Mary Daly’s legs below the stockings, but there were no burns on the stockings. There was mud on the outside and inside of her stockings…which would indicate that her stockings were pulled down over her shoes and afterward pulled up. The mud on Allen’s shoes was the same as on Mary Daly’s shoes. An examination showed that the shoes worn by Allen and Mary Daly fitted the tracks on the Burton place…It was found that the bullet in Mary Daly’s breast was a 22-caliber bullet, and the bullet that went through Allen’s coat was of the same size. All other bullets were of 32 caliber. It was further found that all the bullets were from Allen’s revolver.

  After reminding the jury that Haynes had motive—he was engaged to Daly and Fanny Waters, married to Nellie Barnacle all at the same time and knew he was in trouble if he didn’t do something about it—Emerson said Haynes came up with a diabolical plan. He would secure a revolver, take a road trip, as it were, in the guise of a farewell visit to Mrs. Carr’s and convince everyone that he was being stalked by Crouch, whom Haynes knew would make a worthy scapegoat. Crouch’s anger issues were well known within the community. Emerson closed his opening statement by saying:

  The people believe that the key to the transaction is that Allen pulled the 22-caliber revolver and hit Mrs. Crouch in the breast. Then the struggle began, and the bullet went through Allen’s coat. After trying to fire that revolver without success, the 32-revolver was pulled and Mrs. Crouch was killed. It was getting too near the village, and they drive to the Burton place. Mary Daly escapes from the buggy, but the assassin pursues her and ends her life. He puts her back in the buggy and starts back. Dazed and not knowing what to do, he starts to burn the bodies. The fire is extinguished and then the drive was made over the ford and back to the Watertown road, where it was turned around and came back to the stable. We don’t know where the bullets in Allen’s neck came from. They may have been self-inflicted or received in the fighting. We believe you will see all these facts clear and find the defendant guilty.

  Attorney Frank H. Peck. Sketch from the Watertown Herald. 1897. Printed with permission from the Watertown Daily Times.

  Even after the defense’s impressive effort to cross-examine Crouch, the original suspect, and convince the jury that he was still the more likely perpetrator of the gruesome double-homicide, the evidence against Haynes was overwhelming. But that didn’t stop Frank Peck and Watson Rogers from doing their duty on behalf of Haynes. The Herald said that Rogers spent a full day making his plea for the prisoner.

  He opened in a low, earnest tone, with a graceful compliment to the judge and jury and as he proceeded, his powerful voice brought out the words calculated to free the prisoner. There was logical reasoning as he explained the evidence, biting sarcasm in referring to numerous actions of the defense, and severe satire where occasion seemed to demand it.

  The court room was filled. As he began, one watching the jury could not help noticing a coldness, an air that said they knew all about it, but as he proceeded, this was changed, and when he came to the analysis of the evidence, they showed an anxious interest in his remarks. And this interest he retained until the close of his argument. The plea will go down in history as a model address to a jury.

  District Attorney Kellogg followed the next morning, Friday, October 29. His closing address to the jury, showed “step by step how the murderer had been tracked, [and] how link by link the chain had been made, until there was no doubt in his mind who was guilty of the death of Mary Daly and Mary Crouch.” The Herald said, “Mr. Kellogg surpassed any of his previous efforts.” And the Re-Union said it “was one of the most notable addresses ever made by a prosecuting officer of this county.” Kellogg had to prove not only that Haynes was to blame but also that Crouch was an innocent man who had been framed. Hence, the district attorney had a double task to accomplish. But he did it admirably, and it paid off.

  The following evening at six-fifteen, Deputy Sheriff Thomas Ballard notified Judge Maurice G. Wright that a verdict had been reached. Because nobody was expecting an early decision (since both sides had been so compelling), there were only a dozen people in the courtroom, if that. Most had gone home for dinner, figuring it would still be a while. Nobody thought it would take the jury only five hours to come to a decision on a trial that had lasted a grueling eight weeks. Once the attorneys for both sides had arrived, the judge took his seat at the bench, the jurors filed into the room and county clerk Frank D. Pierce said, “Gentlemen of the jury, have you agreed on your verdict; who shall say for you?” Jury foreman H.E. Carpenter stood and said, “We find the prisoner at the bar guilty of murder in the second degree.” Haynes showed no sign of emotion. Attorney Peck moved for a new trial—which the judge denied—and then he moved for a new trial again on the grounds that decisions of the court had been erroneous and evidence offered by the prosecution had been at fault. Again, the motion was denied. On the morning of the sentencing, two days later, according to the Herald, Haynes was told, “The sentence and judgment of the court is that you be confined in the state prison in the city of Auburn for and during the term of your natural life.”

  Early postcard of a cell block at the state prison in Auburn. Courtesy of the author.

  Two years later, a blurb in the Watertown Herald said, “George Allen, the murderer of Mary Crouch and Mary Daly, is still doing hospital work in Auburn Prison. He is considered the best nurse there and appears cheerful and always ready to do his keeper’s bidding.” In 1907, a new law regarding parole for prisoners who had been sentenced to life was created. It stipulated that

  murder in the second degree is punishable by imprisonment under an indeterminate sentence, the minimum for which shall be twenty years, and the maximum the term of the offender’s natural life; and any person serving a term of imprisonment for life murder and originally sentenced for murder in the second degree, when this act as amended takes effect, shall be deemed to be thereafter serving under such an indeterminate sentence.

  In other words, this law would allow Haynes to be eligible for parole after serving twenty years. Fast forward to 1916 when the state prison commission, touting Haynes’s “perfect record” at Clinton prison in Dannemora, announced that he would go before the parole board in 1917. He had been transferred to Dannemora “in order that he might spend more time in the open air” because he was “broken down in health,” according to the Journal and Republican. When he returned to the state prison at Auburn, he appeared “greatly improved in health” and weighed nearly two hundred pounds. District Attorney Virgil Kellogg adamantly opposed the parole of the prisoner and wrote the parole board, “saying that he [was] unalterably
opposed to the granting of the parole.” He said he considered Haynes a dangerous person to be at large. I could find no further mention of Haynes in the sources at my disposal, so it is likely that parole was denied. Had he been released, it would certainly have made news locally.

  As for Wilbur Crouch, he drowned in December 1902, just five years after the Crouch-Daly nightmare. At the time of his passing, he was the second mate of the steamer Sylvester J. Macy of Detroit, which foundered and sank, taking all hands on board to the depths of Lake Erie.

  CHAPTER 8

  THE SUSPICIOUS PASSING OF MARY OCKWOOD

  HENDERSON, 1897

  Less than three weeks after the murders of Mary Crouch and Mary Daly, while most of the county’s legal resources were already stretched thin working on that case, another Jefferson County woman named Mary met a tragic, mysterious end just ten miles south of the Crouch-Daly murders. On Saturday morning, May 8, 1897, the body of a “half-breed” French Indian woman was found on the shore of Warner’s Island, about two miles from Henderson, by L.J. Vorse, who occupied a farm on the island. A single oar and two baskets had washed ashore alongside the body. Coroner W.H.H. Sias of Ellis was notified and arrived the next day. Upon viewing the body, he ordered it taken to Henderson where a postmortem could be performed by Dr. Olin F. Buell. The autopsy, according to the Watertown Herald, “indicated that the woman had not drowned, but had been killed by heavy blows on the head, producing sufficient injury to the brain to cause death, though the skull, which was of abnormal thickness, was not fractured.” Early news articles stated that there was a wound over the right eye consistent with a blow made by a sharp object, such as a boat hook; and a large contusion on top of the woman’s skull appeared to have been made by a heavy club. “The woman,” according to the Herald, “was last seen alive in Sackets Harbor the previous Thursday, when she was in company with a medium sized half-breed, supposed to be her husband.”

  Photograph by W.S. Tanner, 1894. From the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

  The deceased was soon identified as forty-year-old Mary Arquette. Investigators learned that she and her husband, named “Rasfan Arquette” in several papers and “Aaron Alquit” in others, had lived with a St. Regis Indian basket maker named “Big Louie” Antro for nearly two years in a small house at 8 Haney Street in Watertown. The couple had no children living with them at the time, and they had a very quiet existence—so quiet, in fact, that none of the neighbors even knew their names; they knew of them only by appearance. When questioned during the coroner’s inquest, Louie said the couple always seemed to get along fine, with little quarrelling or fighting. They did, however, like to drink heavily on occasion. Louie recounted how the couple had decided to return to the St. Regis Mohawk Indian Reservation up in Franklin County, where they were both from, and they had agreed that the most economical way to do this would be to purchase a skiff and row up Lake Ontario, the St. Lawrence River and, finally, the St. Regis River. So they purchased a boat from a Mr. Wagoner at Henderson Harbor ten days before their trip and stored it at E.A. Hovey’s boathouse in Sackets Harbor until they were ready to use it. On Thursday, May 6, 1897, Nelson Montondo kindly drove them from Watertown to Sackets Harbor where they set sail, their first destination being Bull Rock, at the extremity of Pillar Point. The wind was blowing something fierce that day, and the couple had been drinking rather heavily—not a good recipe for a safe journey on choppy water.

  The Herald of May 15, 1897, said:

  They were thus in the trough of a heavy sea stirred up by the northeast wind, which was blowing half a gale when they left the slip at Mr. Hovey’s boathouse and went out around Ship House Point.

  The wound on the woman’s head was caused by a blow. One thing is a practical certainty; the woman was killed either on shore or in a boat and her body thrown into the water. This is circumstantially proven by every post mortem finding.

  Mrs. Arquette had money on her when they left, but none was found on her when her body was discovered. Louie said that Mary was the “purser of the household,” meaning she held and dispensed of the money—at least what little the couple had. He said he was absolutely certain that any money they had would be found on the woman and not on her husband. Yet, nothing of value, except a string of beads, was found on Mary Arquette. Thus, in the absence of Mary’s husband to defend himself, he was beginning to appear guilty, the theory being that he killed his wife and fled.

  District Attorney Kellogg, Sheriff Kellogg, Charles Forsythe and Dr. J.D. Spencer all went to Henderson on Sunday night. The district attorney asked Deputy Sheriff Harrison Algate and Constable George Allen to thoroughly search the shoreline where the body was found. This they did at daylight on Monday, searching the water and the shore for any sign of the missing man to whom Mary Arquette was married. Their search proved futile. However, the next day, the plot thickened.

  The Herald reported:

  Tuesday morning, the boat with which Arquette, the alleged husband of the murdered Indian woman, left Sackets Harbor was found at White Bay [sic] in Henderson Harbor. The missing oar, baskets and mattresses were found near the boat, and other things that they were known to have with them. With the wind that has been blowing, it seems impossible that the boat could have drifted to the place found, and it is believed that Arquette abandoned the boat at that point and escaped.

  Choppy waters on the St. Lawrence River. Photograph by Detroit Publishing Company, 1890. From the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

  And the Re-Union, which had determined that the correct surname of the couple was Ockwood and not Arquette, chimed in, rather harshly, saying:

  On Tuesday morning the boat in which the Indian and his wife left Sackets Harbor on the afternoon of May 6 was discovered bottom upward on the shore of White’s bay opposite Henderson Harbor. Experienced watermen say it could not have drifted to that point, where the woman’s body was found. A short distance from the boat was found a mattress, rolled up and tied, as it had been when the Indians left Sackets Harbor. The end of the rope which bound the mattress was bound securely around a bush on shore in such a manner that it was at first thought it had been done by the action of the waves. In view of later developments, it is thought that the fastening of the rope was the work of the Indian.

  A man with enough shrewdness to try to cover up a crime by manufacturing evidence that he was drowned would know better than to purchase a ticket at a small way station near the scene of the crime. He would naturally ride a freight or board a passenger train and pay his fare on the train. Conductor John Lennox, who runs a passenger train between Oswego and Suspension Bridge, has informed W.J. Dempsey, of Oswego, the R. W.&O. Detective, that on Tuesday afternoon, an Indian who closely corresponded with the description of Ockwood boarded his train at Ontario and rode as far as Windsor Beach, at the mouth of the Genesee river and opposite Charlotte. The Indian had no ticket, and when he paid his fare on the train, he displayed a considerable sum of money. He had been at Ontario nearly all day Tuesday and had been eyed with suspicion by the villagers.

  Meanwhile, Dr. Spencer made another examination of the body, as did Dr. A.E. Goss of Adams, who was called in by Coroner Sias for a second (or third) pair of eyes. Third time’s a charm. It was on this third examination of the body that a fracture of the skull at the base of the woman’s brain was first noticed. Remember that the initial autopsy showed an unusual thickness to the skull, but no fracture? With the latest revelation, Coroner Sias concluded the coroner’s inquest, and a verdict was soon reached.

  The Re-Union of May 19, 1897, said:

  [On May 12] After a discussion of the case by the coroner and the jurymen, the jury [was] left to consider the verdict. At 3:15 the jury rendered the following verdict:

  “We the undersigned jurors, find that the deceased came to her death by blows received on the head and the body, inflicted by her husband with a club or heavy weapon at or near Six Town Point, on or about the 7th day of March, 1897.
”

  All the jurors except Reuben Bunnell signed the verdict. Bunnell dissented from that portion of the verdict which described the weapon with which the injuries were inflicted and identifying Ockwood as the murderer.

  Smart man, Bunnell. But we’ll get to that later. With a supposed killer on the run either westward, as conductor Lennox suggested, or north toward the St. Regis Mohawk Reservation, Coroner Sias telegraphed Sidney Grow, the former Indian commissioner at Hogansburg, New York, where the reservation is located, and told him to be on the lookout for Ockwood. Shortly after, Aleck Pork, Mary’s brother, arrived from the reservation to identify his sister’s body. He brought a marriage certificate to prove that the Arquettes were really the Ockwoods. His sister, he explained, had married William Ockwood (aka James Ockwood, Aaron Alquit and Rasfan Arquette) in 1892, but he wasn’t sure where the wedding took place. It was her second marriage, and she had a son named Andrew Phillips from her first marriage who lived with her mother on the reservation. She was surely looking forward to seeing him again. William had a daughter “living somewhere at school” and a son that had drowned at Kingston three years earlier. Both of his parents were deceased, but a brother still lived on the reservation. While Pork shed much light on the couple’s married life, authorities only had his word and that of Louie. No other witnesses were ever questioned in the matter.

  According to the Re-Union of May 19, 1897:

  Pork stated that since the marriage of William Ockwood and his sister, they had lived in Kingston, Watertown, and Brownville. About a year ago, in May 1896, [Pork] left Kingston and went to St. Regis. The following day, he was joined by his mother, who was bruised and wounded in both eyes and over the head. She told him at that time that William Ockwood had assaulted her, beating and kicking her, and [Pork] knew that she was sick a long time from the effect of her injuries and came near dying. She also said at that time that Ockwood had pounded his wife, and that she got away.