Murder at Rocky Point Park:: Tragedy in Rhode Island's Summer Paradise

by Kelly Sullivan Pezza

“I don’t think the man is crazy,” Officer Kettle said. “I can’t get it into my head that he is. It seems to me there was too much deliberation. But for his own benefit, I hope he is.”

  Before sending the jury out to make its decision, Judge Douglas defined for the members the crime of murder. He likened the murder of a human being committed by an insane person to that of a murder committed by a child. “There can be no criminal intent in either case,” he said. “It is up to you, the jury, to decide if Frank Sheffield had criminal intent when he killed his daughter.”

  There was much to weigh and consider as the jury filed out of the courtroom at 2:55 p.m. However, just eight minutes later, the members returned with their verdict: not guilty, by reason of insanity.

  After the jury members were excused from their duties, spectators began to leave the courtroom, some relieved and some shocked. As the room began to clear, Nancy arose and went to sit beside her husband. When she spoke to him, he smiled.

  9

  THE AFTERMATH

  Guilt Is the Motive, Not the Result

  In order for Frank Sheffield to be found not guilty of the crime of murder, he had to have legally been found to suffer from insanity. Guilty people are not let back out onto the streets, but neither are insane people. Therefore, the verdict did not free Frank back into society but earned him a bed at the Rhode Island State Hospital for the Insane, located on Howard Avenue in Cranston.

  The hospital was part of the Rhode Island State Institutions complex, situated in the village of Howard. The complex was an effort to separate the poor, the insane, the feeble, the criminals and the inebriates who had all been lumped together in institutions for generations.

  In 1869, the state had purchased two adjacent pieces of property: the Stukeley Westcott farm and the William Howard farm. A workhouse, an almshouse, a prison, a county jail, a reform school for boys, a reform school for girls and the hospital for the insane were built on the land. Some of the structures were of the rustic wooden variety, while others reached high into the sky, in Gothic brick-and-stone fashion. The complex, in its entirety, was managed by the Board of State Charities and Corrections.

  Exactly one week after Maggie had been bludgeoned by her father behind the beautiful cliffs of Rocky Point, the matter had seemingly been all but forgotten by the vast majority of the public. On that particular day, the park had its biggest turnout of the year. A new holiday, Labor Day, had been added to the calendar, and the masses were ready to celebrate.

  On that cool, crisp September morning, nearly ten thousand Rhode Islanders gathered together at half past nine to march through the streets in honor of this new yearly occasion that celebrated the workingman. It had taken a great deal of petitioning to accomplish, but at last, laborers had managed to legally establish the first Monday in September as their day. The rhythm of drumbeats and the piercing melody of fifes set the pace for decorative floats and elated marchers to weave their way toward Dyer Street in Providence. There, on the wharves, they happily assembled to board the steamboat for Rocky Point.

  The Rhode Island State Hospital for the Insane, where Frank Sheffield was locked away for life. Vintage postcard, author’s collection.

  The crowd that day was much larger than what had been expected, and the Continental Steamboat Company actually had to enlist the help of its competitors in order to carry the thousands of passengers down the bay to the park. Once the steamships docked, the excited masses headed toward the grove beside the park pavilion where they began a two-hour rally. A delicious clam dinner followed at the Shore Dinner Hall, and then the revelers dispersed in all directions, taking in the rides, animal menageries and performances.

  The gaiety and laughter went on as usual. Nothing but a single rocky ledge separated the celebration of that day from the site of the mournful tragedy that had occurred there the week before.

  On March 14, 1901, Frank died at the state hospital.

  Nancy remained living in the 27 Liberty Street house for the rest of her life. By that time, she had invited her fifty-seven-year-old widowed sister, Wealthy Pendleton Sisson, to come live with her. Wealthy had been married to John Edward Sisson, a veteran of the Civil War who had served in Company M of the Sixth Connecticut Artillery.

  The grave of Frank Sheffield at Elm Grove Cemetery in Mystic, Connecticut. Photograph by Kelly Sullivan Pezza.

  Their sixty-one-year-old brother, Charles, who had served in Company C of the First Cavalry during the Civil War, also moved in. In addition to her two children and two siblings, Nancy housed two boarders, John Wilcox and Roland B. Gavitt, who worked as machinists at a local company, and a seven-year-old girl named Lillian M. Gardner.

  Nancy continued to work as a dressmaker for most of her life, visiting the homes of clients who sought her skills as a seamstress. However, in 1917, her son, Amos, who was employed as a teamster on the farm of F.L. Merritt in Noank, asked to be exempted from the draft for World War I due to the fact that he had an elderly widowed mother who was dependent on him for support.

  By 1920, Amos had gained work at a local lumberyard, and the only occupants of the house at that time were himself, Nancy and Wealthy. Wealthy passed away on April 29, 1925. Nancy followed on June 25 of the following year at the age of seventy-four. Two months later, the Liberty Street house passed into the hands of a new owner.

  Nancy and her sister were both laid to rest at the Thompson Family Cemetery in North Stonington, Nancy being separated from her husband even in death. Nancy, who was born on September 17, 1852, was one of nine children born to Amos Sheffield, who had died on December 4, 1888, and Sarah Warner, who had died on March 15, 1887, at the age of forty. In addition to her brother Charles, Nancy’s other siblings included brothers James and Joseph, as well as four sisters: Sarah, who died in 1865 at the age of twenty-four; Mary, who died two months later at the age of nineteen; Phebe, who passed away at the age of seven in 1862; and two-year-old Harriet, who died in 1852.

  Frank and Nancy’s daughter, Sarah Elizabeth, went on to marry William Woodward Goff, a piano tuner, fourteen years her senior. The couple lived in Providence, Rhode Island, for a while before settling down in Westerly.

  The Palmer Street School, which had been the stage for an injury that would become a subject of court testimony, was sold to the Lorraine Manufacturing Company in 1900, when the much larger West Broad Street School was constructed. Having opened its doors in 1875, Palmer Street School was initially a small institution of learning with just four classrooms and 150 students. Growing attendance necessitated the need for an addition to the building in 1890.

  On September 21, 1911, the empty schoolhouse caught fire. The blaze began somewhere in the lower hallway and worked its way up three flights of stairs to the clock tower, where the bell was housed. That bell, which had apparently caused Frank a lifetime of misery, crashed down so loudly from the burning tower that it awoke half the town. By the time the flames had been put out, only one wall of the school still stood in its entirety. The other three walls remained partially standing. The entire third floor was gone, and the interior of the building contained nothing but charred wood fragments and ash.

  Workmen from the manufacturing company later located the bell in the rubble. As the Pawcatuck Congregational Church of Westerly had been using a bell that was cracked, the company gave it the school bell. However, after it was installed in the church and rung, it was discovered that the heat from the fire had destroyed its tone. After being sent to a foundry, melted down and recast, it was replaced in the church belfry, where it remained until the highly destructive hurricane of 1938. Heavy winds caused the belfry to go crashing through the roof, bringing the bell down with it. As the costs for reconstruction were too high, the bell was stored away in the attic of the church.

  When plans were made to raze the church in 1970 so that a gas station could be built on the property, the bell was discovered still in the attic. Plans were made to move it to the new Congregational church and place it atop a ledge in
the yard.

  The Kent County courthouse, where Frank’s trial was held, still stands at 127 Main Street in East Greenwich. Built in 1805, it served as the seat of the Rhode Island state government until 1854 and is one of the five original statehouses in Rhode Island. The learning institute that would later become Brown University was originally established in this building, and the site also marks the location from which the first U.S. Navy was commissioned. Ownership of the building was transferred from the state to the Town of East Greenwich and underwent a total restoration. In 1995, it reopened as the East Greenwich Town Offices.

  The East Greenwich jail building still stands as well. If the walls could talk, they would whisper of excuses and explanations and the great regard for the well-being of Frank Sheffield while the body of his daughter lay cold in her grave, miles away. Located at 110 King Street, it now houses the East Greenwich Preservation Society. On the lower floor of the building, the cell where Frank was confined is still intact, along with the others that line the short hallway. The heavy steel doors and musty coldness of the area still feels shrouded in a dark past. Upstairs, the witness stand from the courthouse is used as a podium for meetings.

  The old East Greenwich jail as it looks today. Photograph by Kelly Sullivan Pezza.

  On Frank’s death certificate, his cause of death is listed as “petit mal epilepsy & pulmonary laryngeal tuberculosis.” Although there was a documented outbreak of tuberculosis in the institution at that time, it may or may not be coincidence that prolonged opium use made one more prone to contracting respiratory diseases.

  While petit mal epilepsy is normally a childhood disorder that is usually outgrown by adulthood, one could argue that the blow to the head by the school bell caused brain damage that manifested as epileptic seizures. Such episodes, which can occur dozens of times per day, can include such symptoms as staring vacantly into space and short lapses in awareness as the brain’s electrical activity is briefly disrupted. Such seizures, however, last for about thirty seconds, not the duration of time it would take for a person to walk aimlessly for miles and miles. In addition, they would not cause one to have conscious or subconscious murderous intent.

  There seemed to be no definite answers to the many questions left in the wake of Maggie’s death. What the world was left to understand of the tragedy was only what was documented in court transcripts and newspaper interviews. What is found there are not answers, but what seems to be a greater concern regarding the quality of life for Frank Sheffield than the five-year-old girl whose life was tragically over. From Maggie’s own family, to Frank’s co-workers, doctors, friends and complete strangers, thoughts seemed to center more on Frank’s well-being than anything else. Virtually no one could wrap his mind around the idea of Frank knowingly committing a heinous murder. He had grown up as the son of a clergyman, raised by the word of God. He had even felt the call of the ministry himself as a young man. His early life had been perfectly normal and happy, void of tragedy or hardship. He had been a beloved teacher and school principal who was adored by those he worked with and those he taught. He fell in love, married and welcomed two beautiful children into the world, including a little girl to whom he lovingly attached himself.

  Life for Frank was normal and happy up until that time. But then something unexpected happened. Something went horribly wrong. The woman he had pledged his life and love to, the woman who was supposed to help him raise those two children and remain his constant companion forever, was suddenly gone. The reason she was gone, one can calculate, was because of injuries suffered while giving birth to Maggie. Frank loved Maggie, but perhaps he loved her tragically. It was never his infant son he voiced his concerns about to friends, never his son he admitted to his doctor he was afraid of not being able to support. It was Maggie.

  Sigmund Freud indicated in his theories on the human psyche that our feelings toward another person actually have nothing to do with that person. Those feelings, he believed, were innately inside us already, driven by our subconscious minds to assign them to something tangible. Perhaps the immense love Frank felt for his daughter had been first assigned to his wife before her life ebbed away, leaving him with nothing to attach it to. Perhaps he transferred those feelings to Maggie. She was, after all, the tiny female embodiment of all that he had lost.

  How could Frank Sheffield, a man of such good character, willfully murder the child he loved so much? He’d had absolutely no history of violent or criminal behavior in the past. Interestingly, except in the case of serial killers, most people who commit murder have no prior criminal history. In addition, up to 85 percent of all murders are committed by a friend or relative of the victim. Why would a man kill a child he loved, even if the act was for subconscious reasons? Perhaps Frank reasoned, consciously or subconsciously, that his life had been torn apart by the death of his wife. If Mary hadn’t died, he wouldn’t have been forced into the throes of depression. He wouldn’t have had to worry about who was going to care for his children. Perhaps he wanted to blame Mary for all that she had left him to handle alone. But he couldn’t blame Mary. Mary was dead.

  According to Freud’s psychoanalytical research, a sense of unconscious guilt usually exists before a crime is committed, with that guilt being the motive, not the result, of the crime. He believed that people committed crimes, such as murder, to be able to fasten their guilt to something tangible, thereby providing them with final relief. Perhaps, based on Freud’s theories, Frank needed to attach those feelings of blame to someone who was present.

  10

  THOSE LEFT BEHIND

  Shadows Flee Away

  Maggie’s maternal grandparents raised her brother, Mason Sheffield. The couple was well to do, and Mason was provided with a privileged lifestyle. In 1898, he applied to Webb’s Academy and Home for Shipbuilders, located at 188th Street in the Bronx, New York. The private undergraduate engineering college had been established by shipbuilder William Henry Webb in 1889. Having experienced the hardship of financing his own education, Webb wanted to offer young men interested in shipbuilding the opportunity to advance toward their chosen career without worrying about money. Those accepted at Webb’s Academy would receive four years of training at no expense. Built of New York brownstone in the Romanesque style to resemble a castle, the academy had an attached hospital and home for the aged where elderly shipbuilders and their wives were given a place to live free of charge.

  In 1902, Mason graduated from the academy, along with eleven other students. On September 14, 1910, he married twenty-nine-year-old Elsie Lenore Thorp, who had also enjoyed a lifestyle of affluence. A resident of Stonington, her father was the proprietor of a hardware store, and their family’s staff at that time included two household servants.

  Mason and his new wife removed to a home located at 165 Broadway in New York, where he worked as a draughtsman. The couple later relocated to 880 Clermont Street in Brooklyn, and Mason worked as a topographical draughtsman for Corporation Counsel Delany’s Bureau of Street Department.

  In the fall of 1916, Mason returned to Mystic, where he and his wife took up residence at the Octagon House, a two-story structure built in 1850, on West Mystic Avenue at Willow Point, and he began designing boats. They called their home Rose View Cottage, and in the summer of 1917, Elsie held a tea to celebrate a visit from Mason’s aunt Mary Charlotte Brightman, who had brought along her grandson.

  Later that year, Mason and Elsie removed to 5551 Pulaski Avenue in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where Mason was an assistant designer for an engraving company. Elise had given birth to two sons in New York, in 1915 and 1917, and by 1920, Mason was employed as a shipyard draftsman. At that time, the family was living in a rented house at 2970 North Congress Road in Camden, New Jersey. A few years later, they moved to the town of Burlington and settled into a home at 423 Cinnamonson Avenue while Mason worked as a structural engineer.

  By 1933, Mason and his family were back in New York, at Pearl River and, two years later, living at 45 A
drian Avenue in New York City, where Mason worked for the Board of Water Supply, located at 346 Broadway. He passed away on June 28, 1952.

  Mason Crary Hill, the man who had taken on the responsibility of raising his grandson and providing him with great opportunity, was born in the winter of 1817 in New London, Connecticut. After the tragic death of his wife, Mary Ann, and his subsequent marriage to Margaret Wheeler, he enjoyed great success brought about by his shipbuilding venture. His shipyard, located at Pistol Point at the foot of Willow Hill in Mystic, gained him such high regard that, during the Civil War, he was selected by Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles to act as inspector of government sailing vessels. He filled the position for several years. Prior to the war, he had constructed clipper ships there at Pistol Point, among them being the Seminole, the Flying Cloud, the Southern Lights, the Twilight and the Golden Horn.

  Business advertisements for “M.C. Hill” at Mystic Bridge stated that he provided shipbuilding in all its branches and was a dealer in oak and yellow pine, timberland plank, pure leads oil, turpentine, varnish, mixed paints and colors, glass, putty, brushes, Paris green, tar pitch, rosin, coal tar and bright varnish, oakum, caulking cotton, iron spikes, chains, anchors, wire rope and rigging and moth-proof felts. Mason also added that he was an agent for Averill, rubber and other paints and Leffert’s Galvanizing.

  Mason and Margaret resided at 295 York Street near the Mystic Bridge with their family. Their first child, Mary, died at the age of thirty-three in 1888. Son Charles died in 1881 at the age of twenty-five. James was born in 1858 and died in 1863. Their fourth child, son John Ethan Hill, was born in 1864, lived well into adulthood and graduated from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.

  Daughter Lucy was born and died in 1867 with their next daughter, who was unnamed, dying the same day she was born in 1869. In 1871, son Herbert Crary Hill was born, and he also went on to graduate from Yale University. In his 1894 yearbook, he stated that although he had never researched his family history, he believed that his ancestry could be traced back to William the Conqueror. He also stated that he believed he was of English, Irish, French, Russian, Scotch and German blood. Another daughter belonging to the Hills, Maggie, died in 1874 when she was just a year old.