As the three of them spoke privately, Frank quietly took hold of his daughter and walked away from the house.
George had been away from home conducting a funeral service at the time of Frank’s departure, and when he returned home, Mary Charlotte alerted him that Frank had disappeared and taken Maggie with him. Other family members were made aware of what had happened, and a search for them was quickly begun.
After the search party had gone out into the town and questioned several people, it was discovered that Frank and his little girl had left North Attleboro on the trolley, heading toward Pawtucket. Pawtucket police were notified to be on the lookout for him, and Nancy was contacted and informed of all that was going on.
By noontime, Frank and Maggie had arrived in Providence, where he purchased tickets for the one o’clock departure of the Bay Queen steamer. Once aboard, Frank apparently felt the pangs of hunger again, as he stepped up to the purser and informed him that he desired to stop at Silver Spring to get a shore dinner.
Silver Spring was one of the many summer resort parks situated along Narragansett Bay. Standing within the town of East Providence, it had been opened in 1869 by Hiram Drowne Maxfield, a former caterer at Rocky Point. However, Frank was out of luck. The purser explained to him that this particular boat did not stop at Silver Spring. Its only destinations were Rocky Point Park and Crescent Park. Other passengers on the boat would later relate how their attention had been drawn to Frank’s scruffy appearance, strange vacant staring spells and aimless, unusual bodily movements.
With Maggie in tow, Frank got off the boat at Rocky Point and reached into his pocket to retrieve the ten-cent fare. They went directly to the park’s Shore Dinner Hall so that Frank could partake of the near-famous clam cakes, chowder, lobster and fish.
Silver Spring, where Frank Sheffield had planned to enjoy a shore dinner on the day he killed his daughter. Vintage postcard, author’s collection.
Rocky Point’s Shore Dinner Hall, famous for its seafood and clambakes. Vintage postcard, courtesy Jules Antiques & General Store.
The waiters and ticket-takers at the hall immediately noticed that something was not quite right about Frank’s behavior and would later testify that, as Maggie talked incessantly, it was obvious that Frank was trying very hard to pay attention to her but that his gaze was pulled around the room without reason, stopping regularly to stare into nothingness.
He consumed another rather large meal before leaving the dining hall with his daughter and heading up over the hill that led toward the theater and the high cliffs jutting up around the edge of the park.
The time was about half past three. In less than an hour, the happy little girl walking alongside her father, taking in the gay laughter and barrel organ melodies that surrounded her, would be dead.
5
THE ARREST
I Can’t Remember of Killing but One
Seventy-year-old Warwick medical examiner Moses Fifield of Centerville, Rhode Island, performed the autopsy on Maggie’s body at about nine o’clock that evening. He later stated in his report that there was a compound comminuted fracture of the skull above the right side of the forehead, as well as another fracture, about six inches long, across the top of the head. He added that, as a result of the injury, the little girl’s brain was protruding through the top of the head.
George Brightman had been in attendance at a Methodist meeting that evening when a newspaper reporter arrived there to speak with him. The reporter informed George that there had been a terrible tragedy at Rocky Point Park. He set out for home, returning at about ten o’clock to receive a message that the telegraph company had failed to deliver two and a half hours earlier. Reading the message, he was finally to learn that his young niece had been killed and his brother-in-law had been arrested. Now someone had to go claim Maggie’s body. The little girl had been transported to the undertaking rooms of thirty-seven-year-old Thomas Francis Monahan, located on Wickenden Street in Providence. George arrived there sometime around midnight. While the body of his dead child was being probed, Frank had become strangely silent in his jail cell, miles away.
Early the next morning, authorities called in Frank’s former in-laws for an interview. Mason and Margaret Hill told them that they had recently received three postal cards from Frank informing them that he was in Attleboro and was in good health. After receiving the message that he had gone missing and taken Maggie with him, they were very concerned, they said.
The death certificate of Maggie Segur Sheffield, who died from a compound fracture of the skull, caused by her father, Frank. Courtesy Warwick Town Hall.
The Hills had thought there was something wrong with Frank for quite some time, the couple shared, ever since the first time he had aimlessly wandered away from home and showed up on their doorstep. Frank’s problems, they surmised, had resulted from him overworking himself at the railroad freight depot in Westerly.
When they were questioned concerning what they knew about Frank receiving a blow to the head from a school bell, the Hills said they knew about the incident and that it had caused him to experience frequent and severe headaches.
They stated that they were not aware of any serious mental issues Frank might have been dealing with, as they saw him only occasionally. They claimed that Frank had loved his daughter very much, favored her even, and that they had never had cause to worry that he might do something to harm her.
It was not only Frank but everyone who favored Maggie, Mason confessed. “She was the sweetest little thing you ever saw.”
Later that morning, forty-nine-year-old coroner Albert Rowland Greene of Apponaug arrived at the Fourth District Court’s office of the clerk with a warrant sworn out by Justice of the Peace Charles C. Phelps of Apponaug. Greene handed the warrant to the deputy sheriff, forty-nine-year-old Michael Bernard Lynch of Warwick, so that it could be served to Frank.
At 9:30 a.m., Dennison Hinckley and fifty-one-year-old court clerk and former cigar-maker Thomas James Tilley accompanied Lynch to the jailhouse, where Frank had been brought and incarcerated the previous evening.
The men made their way down a corridor to the cell where the prisoner was secured and found him half reclined on his cot, his head on a pillow and his eyes staring into space. Lynch prepared to inform him that he was about to be formally charged with murder.
“Good morning, Mr. Sheffield,” Lynch offered. Frank looked over at him.
“Would you please get up?” Lynch asked.
Frank did as he was asked and left the cell to follow the men into another room.
There, jail keeper Mrs. Smith, Tilley and the others waited while Frank seated himself in a nearby rocking chair. He listened with concentrated interest as the warrant, which charged him with willfully, maliciously and feloniously assaulting and killing his daughter, was read to him by Lynch.
“You have heard the warrant read, charging you with the murder of your daughter Maggie, alias Eliza Roe,” Tilley said. “What do you say to the charge? Are you guilty or not guilty?”
Frank thought hard, narrowing his eyes as if in the process of deep recollection. But the answer to that question was not forthcoming.
“Are you guilty or not guilty?” Tilley asked.
When Frank finally spoke, his voice was quiet and dripping with despair. “I killed my little girl,” he said.
Hinckley attempted to comfort Frank, but for several moments, Frank said nothing and just stared at Hinckley as if he were a complete stranger. Then he extended his hand and replied, “Oh, yes. This is Mr. Hinckley.”
“Did you sleep well last night?” Hinckley asked.
“I don’t know,” Frank answered. Those employed at the jailhouse had noticed just before midnight that Frank’s short intervals of sleep were interrupted by something that seemed to be causing him physical pain.
Frank immediately became very agitated. “I must go to Mystic today to see my boy,” he announced.
Hinckley, as well as the others in the room,
knew that the man before them was not going to Mystic or anywhere else.
“What does Eliza Roe mean?” Frank suddenly asked them.
The men explained to him that the name was simply an alias. It had been used as a reference to Maggie until they were able to determine her real identity.
Just hours after Frank was charged with murder, his daughter’s remains were transported from Providence to Westerly, where they arrived at five o’clock that evening. There, the body was prepared by Hinckley for the next day’s funeral.
Almost immediately after Maggie’s body arrived in town, Nancy sent a telegram to her husband, telling him she would be coming to visit him at the jail later in the day. Before her arrival, seventy-six-year-old Reverend Smith Bartlett Goodenow of the First Congregational Church, which Nancy attended, stopped by to see Frank. The two men reminisced for a good amount of time about happy occasions that had taken place during their friendship. But eventually, the conversation turned to the events of the afternoon of August 28.
“I can remember being with Maggie among the rocks at Rocky Point,” Frank recalled. He said he believed there were other people nearby the cliffs as he and Maggie happily conversed.
“The last thing I recall is Maggie asking me for my handkerchief, so that she could tie it into the form of a doll,” he said. He didn’t remember what happened after that. His next conscious memory, he claimed, was the look in Maggie’s eyes as she stared up at him with blood gushing from her head.
“I don’t remember picking up the stone or striking her with it,” he told the reverend. He then strangely added, “They charge me with murdering two girls, but I can’t remember of killing but one and that was my little Maggie.”
Frank had apparently been very confused by his earlier conversation with the police officers. He had somehow come to believe that “Eliza Roe” was another child who had been killed, even though it had been thoroughly explained to him that the name was merely an alias.
Frank then informed the reverend that he was expecting a visit from his wife and was very concerned for her safety. He requested of the jail matron that she not let him out of his cell while Nancy was there. He explained that he was afraid he might go violently insane again and end up harming his wife this time.
The grave of Maggie Segur Sheffield at Elm Gove Cemetery in Mystic, Connecticut. Photograph by Kelly Sullivan Pezza.
Later that day, Frank received another visitor in the form of a man identified as Officer Gavitt.
“Do you know me?” Gavitt asked, as he entered Frank’s cell.
“Yes,” Frank answered. “You come from Westerly. I have seen you often around the railroad station.”
“How are you feeling?” Gavitt asked.
“I have terrible pains in my head,” Frank replied. He told Gavitt that he knew he was in a really bad situation.
On Wednesday afternoon at half past one, Maggie was laid out in her father’s home on Liberty Street as her uncle George preached the funeral sermon with the assistance of Reverend Goodenow. The service was a simple one, consisting of only one hymn, a prayer and some brief remarks. Her body was then taken to Elm Grove Cemetery, and she was placed in the ground beside her mother.
6
THE HEARING
He Might Have Brought It upon Himself
A preliminary hearing was held on September 5, 1893, at the Kent County courthouse on Main Street in East Greenwich. The defendant entered the courtroom wearing a somber black suit and a matching cap, which was pulled tightly over his head. With him was Nathan Barber Lewis, whom he had employed to act as his attorney.
Lewis was a fifty-one-year-old native of Exeter, Rhode Island. After having been elected to the legislature in 1886, he was chosen to preside over the Second Judicial Court District of Rhode Island. A widower who had lost all but one of his four children in infancy, Lewis had been a private in the Rhode Island Seventh Regiment during the Civil War. He was well respected and staunch in his belief that Frank was insane at the time of the murder. He confidently entered his client’s plea of not guilty.
Under the law, a person must possess evil intent during the committal of a crime in order to be found guilty of such a crime. The law also states that when a person with a diseased or defective mind commits a crime, he or she has no capacity to know the quality of his or her actions and can therefore not be held responsible. It was the belief of Lewis that Frank was incapable of forming the intent to commit murder or realize what he was doing when he killed his daughter.
While the attorney made his explanations to the court, Frank sat in his chair silently, alternating between looking terribly bored and covering his face with his hands. Once Lewis was finished stating his case, the prosecuting attorney, Albert Rowland Greene, who was also the coroner, took over everyone’s attention.
Kent County courthouse, where Frank Sheffield stood trial for killing his daughter. Vintage postcard, author’s collection.
At the time forty-nine years old, Greene had graduated from Brown University, Cornell University and the Michigan University School of Law. Also a veteran of the Civil War, he had been president and a member of the Warwick Town Council for three years. Another well-respected citizen and lawyer, he was confident in the guilt of the man before him.
In front of the court, Greene displayed a brown paper bag from which he carefully removed a little girl’s dress and shoes, both darkly stained with blood. He called Officer Kinnecom to the stand and asked the policeman if he could identify the articles of clothing. As Kinnecom testified that they were the clothes Maggie had been wearing at the time of the murder, Frank removed his hands from his face and looked up at the evidence. He then pulled his gaze away and lowered his chin to his chest.
No defense was offered at the preliminary hearing, but Judge Warner pronounced Frank probably guilty and set the matter down for trial. While he was being led from the courtroom to return to his cell at the jail, Frank’s calmness disappeared and he exploded in a severe bout of emotion. Physical restraint was necessary to subdue him, and this made Lewis even more determined to prove that his client was insane.
The following day, Lewis paid a visit to fifty-seven-year-old Judge Pardon Elisha Tillinghast and asked him to order a psychological examination of Frank. Tillinghast stated that he would do so only if a petition calling for such an examination was presented to him giving him jurisdiction. Lewis immediately prepared the proper petition and went to see fifty-five-year-old Deputy Sheriff Amasa Sprague in order to get his signature.
Expecting that Lewis would soon return with the signed petition, Tillinghast contacted a Providence doctor, asking him to go to the jail and complete a thorough examination of Frank.
However, upon Lewis’s request for a signature, Sprague decided to consult the attorney general first regarding his personal opinion on an examination of the prisoner. Lewis’s ability to do anything further was delayed for several days until Sprague contacted him to say he had decided not to sign the document.
Sprague’s position could not be altered, so Lewis visited the Office of the Rhode Island Agent of Charities and Corrections to appeal for help. There, he was informed that the officer he would need to speak with had left on a trip to see the World’s Fair, and nothing could be undertaken until he came back.
Eventually, the officer returned and met with Lewis, explaining to him that if Deputy Sprague felt Frank could be cared for properly at the jail and was not suffering from his incarceration there, then he did not feel the need to arrange a transferal. Lewis pointed out that the petition was not a request to have Frank moved but merely to have him examined so that a professional determination could be made regarding his sanity or lack of it. If such an examination indicated that Frank was suffering from insanity, Lewis added, it would still have to be proven before the judge would order him moved to a hospital.
If indications of insanity were discovered and subsequently proven, Frank would leave the confines of the jail cell and be transported to a psyc
hiatric hospital. The officer informed Lewis that he didn’t think Frank could be tried if he were admitted to the hospital, and therefore, it was best that he remain in jail. Upset by such a rationalization, Lewis asked him why the state would want to try an insane man who is not legally responsible for his own acts.
Perhaps, the officer suggested, the situation was not as simple as that. “He might have brought it upon himself,” he argued. After all, there were reports swirling around town from reputable sources that Frank had been a regular user of cocaine for at least the last five years, while others claimed it was opium he was using.
7
THE DRUG RUMOR
On Coca
By 1886, opium had become as common to Americans as apple pie. The dark brown gummy substance was sold in pure form right over any pharmacy’s counter. More commonly, it was used as an ingredient in many familiar medications of the time. Everything from cough syrups for children to adult headache relievers listed opium as an element in the mixture.
Opium cases, containing all people needed to inject themselves into oblivion, were also sold over the counter, as plain or ornate as one wished to get. The cases could be engraved with the user’s name and contained a needle, syringe and small vessels in which to keep the drug.
In addition to injecting opium, one could also smoke it, as was obvious from the number of opium dens that had popped up all over America by that time. Many thought that Frank Sheffield was quite likely to be an opium user, as the rumors indicated. Several signs of opium use did seem to be apparent in the behavior he regularly exhibited.
Opium causes one to experience headaches and a ringing in the ears, not unlike the symptoms Frank suffered from, which he attributed to being clanged in the head by the school bell. It causes objects and people to appear faded and distorted, which would explain why Frank had a habit of staring so strangely at things around him. Under the influence of opium, sounds and words are not heard clearly, and this would explain Frank’s delayed response whenever anyone asked him a question. And opium makes the user restless and inclined to wander aimlessly for extended and exhaustive periods of time, which would easily explain the occasions on which Frank wandered away from home. In addition, the drug has a tendency to cause severe memory loss.
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