CLEWS The Historic True Crime Blog

A Particularly Unsettling Exoneration

At the length truth will out.

-The Merchant of Venice

The Court of Appeals said the evidence was "overwhelming." Nathaniel Maurice Hatchett confessed to carjacking and raping a woman. The victim identified him as her attacker. He was caught driving her car three days after the crime.

And yet he walked out of a Michigan prison this week after serving twelve years, because the semen found on the victim did not match him. The current prosecutor remarked, "We went back in and did a full investigation. We could have fought for a new trial, but our job is to seek justice. It was served today."

And now for the unsettling part: the prosecutor, trial judge, and Court of Appeals knew at the time of his bench trial that the DNA from the semen did not match the defendant, but the 17-year-old was convicted anyway. It now appears that the only "overwhelming" evidence in State v. Hatchett is the proof of prosecutorial abuse and judicial incompetence.

They also knew that at the time Hatchett was caught with her car, the ignition had been popped out. Curious - the carjacker left the victim on the side of the road and took off - with the keys in the ignition. Why would he bust the steering column if he had the keys?

They also knew that some details from the confession did not match the victim's account. For example, the defendant denied robbing her.

But the most burning question concerned the DNA result. When weighed against a victim's cross-racial identification, even against a confession elicited after several hours of interrogation of a teenager, isn't DNA evidence from semen, in a rape case, a trump card?

Apparently not. Said the trial judge: "[The DNA can] hardly be found to represent a reasonable doubt considering all of the evidence in the case. The court does not find that the laboratory analysis is a fact which would lead to a verdict of acquittal."

DNA - not exculpatory? I find that logic quite strange. By the way, that trial judge is now a federal judge - appointed by President William J. Clinton.

But surely there are smarter judges at the Court of Appeals level, right?

The appellate decision is available online. The bizarre logic applied by the unanimous, three-judge panel that affirmed his conviction makes for hair-raising reading.

Said the Court of Appeals: "We agree... that while the DNA test results introduce a slight doubt... there are several plausible explanations for these results." The Court of Appeals goes on to give two "plausible explanations." Not "several" - two.

One. "The victim told the treating nurse that defendant ejaculated 'on' her, and she told the treating physician that she was only 'fairly certain' that defendant ejaculated at all; therefore, it is altogether possible that defendant's semen would not be found in the victim's vagina or in her underpants."

This is quite curious reasoning. Someone's semen was found on the rape victim. Do these three judges have their heads in the sand? How can the judges choose to question the victim's veracity when she described her attacker's ejaculation while simultaneously refusing to harbor any doubt about her identification of Mr. Hatchett as the rapist? They said her evidence was "overwhelming" - and I guess it was, except for the details.

Two. "The donor might have been the victim's spouse."

That is a plausible explanation. So why didn't they obtain a racial profile from the DNA? Or better yet, test the husband? When twenty-five to forty years of a man's life are on the line, why was that question posed but not answered?

As it turns out, the husband was in fact tested. He did not match the DNA from the semen. The prosecutor never brought that fact to the attention of the defense attorney, the trial judge, or the Court of Appeals. He is still a prosecutor today - and he actually denies knowingly putting an innocent kid in prison, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

Unfortunately, nothing will come of it. The prosecutor won't be affected. The trial judge now has a lifetime appointment. None of the appeals court judges will even see their names in the paper, let alone be made to feel like court jesters, as they sh0uld. Judges William B. Murphy and Donald S. Owens are still sitting on the Court of Appeals.

Mr. Hatchett is the 216th person freed by DNA, his exoneration coming at the behest of the Thomas M. Cooley Law School's Innocence Project . What a shame for Nathaniel Hatchett that twelve years had to pass before the DNA evidence that was there all along was brought to the attention of fair-minded men.

An Historic Criminal Trial in Oil, or the Shame of Mrs. Carpenter

At the Kalamazoo Valley Museum hangs a painting that depicts a legal milestone in Michigan history: it is a scene from the first criminal trial ever conducted in Kalamazoo, Michigan, one of the oldest cities in the state. The trial took place 175 years ago. The crimes that called for such an assemblage were the acts of Hannah Carpenter, depicted at the far left on trial. She was found guilty and fined $25. Her crime, according to the only readily available record: "the crime of the woman whom Jesus of Nazareth bade 'go and sin no more.'"

Well, I had to get out my Bible, I'm sorry to say, to understand the reference.  From the Book of John, Chapter 8:

1Jesus went unto the mount of Olives. ... 3And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst, 4They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. 5Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou? 6This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him.

But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not. 7So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. 8And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground.

9And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.

10When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?

11She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.

An article in a recent Michigan Bar Journal talks about the painting and its origins in detail. It says the two men at the center of the painting, the pair who face away from the judges, are "parties to the criminal suit." One is Mr. Carpenter, we can assume, and the other, ahem.

So it was that in the wilds on the territorial frontier as three Potawatomi sit in the corner listening to the proceedings, all the learned men for who knows how many miles assembled themselves and swore one another to solemn oaths and went about their duties creating a memorable scene as they publicly shamed Hannah Carpenter for adultery.

Coral Watts is Dead, God Damn His Soul

It is a terrible, a sad day in Michigan today. Coral Eugene Watts is dead at 53 of prostate cancer.

That psychosexual sickness that led him to indiscriminate murder must have festered until it killed him.

We will never know, not now, if he did indeed murder a hundred women, as he once claimed. He died without confessing.

He is, at this moment, if there is any justice in this plane or the next, signing his confession at the gates of Hell.

For more --

The Disturbing Reason Why You’ve Never Heard of Coral Eugene Watts

An Interview with the Hero Who Put a Serial Killer Back in Prison

Serial killer Coral Eugene Watts confessed to murdering eleven women in Texas and is a suspect in dozens of other murders and attempted murders in several US states and Ontario. Thanks to a putrid excuse of a prosecution -- Texas let him plead guilty to burglary -- he was up for mandatory parole in 2006.

Michigan decided to try to go after Watts to keep the women of America and Canada safe. But it was a challenge to find proof. Since he did not rape his victims, the biological evidence that usually puts his type behind bars is lacking. And he did not have a habit of leaving living witnesses behind.

Then a witness stepped forward to tell his story.

It was December 1, 1979, in Ferndale (suburban Detroit). Helen Dutcher had her last meal in Alfie's Diner. Outside the place, she was attacked -- chased into an alley -- stabbed and killed.

Joseph Foy (photo above) witnessed the murder from his back porch, and as the scene unfolded, from various windows in his house. In doing so, he became another victim of Coral Watts. And the only person who could keep him behind bars.

The police developed a very good likeness of the killer based on Foy's description, but it's all they had to go on. The case went cold. But Foy saw Coral Watts on TV in 1982 when he was prosecuted in Texas, and he recognized Watts.

It took two decades for authorities to follow up on Foy's eyewitness account. It was the critical evidence they needed to prosecute the man who killed Helen Dutcher. They got a conviction; Watts is now locked up for life.

Clews had a chance to ask Mr. Foy a few questions and he kindly obliged. Here is our Q&A.

What you did see on that night long ago?

I've told this story so many times and the horror and coldness of it never changes. The swelling of the eyes and the lump in the throat start immediately. I can still recount every move once I got up from the couch and first seen his car in the alley till the time I see him back down the alley as he left her lying there dying.

I still remember as if he was looking at me this very moment, the absolute coldness and evil in his eyes as he locked eyes with me as he made his way around the front of his car with the knife still in his hand. I'll never forget how my life changed that very instant when I saw her drop to the ground after his slashing motion.

Time's clock went into slow motion at that very second to where the next minute or so seemed like forever, to where my senses were so keen that I focused totally on the scene and what was taking place. I will never forget the cold, evil, so "matter of factly" way he took Helen's life. It was just so routine, like I was quoted "like he was dropping off his laundry".

I could not in typed or spoken words ever truly convey the pure horror, coldness or sadness that took place that night. But from that moment I was changed and for that I will have a special hatred for him till the day I die.

What is it like to be the one of the only living witnesses to a serial killer?

Hell, in only the way that binds the three of us, Helen, Watts and me. I still cannot shake how I seen her spend her last seconds on this earth...in pure terror. I will never shake his evil cold eyes. I will never shake being a witness to all the evil he imposed on all the victims' families, all the sadness I was, I guess "blessed" to hear as the families trusted me to open up to as they poured out all the pain they had suffered for so many years at the hands of Watts.

I still cannot go a hour without thinking about the whole damn thing. I can't stop the way he invades my dreams turning them into nightmares that upsets my world for days. It has and always will consume my life and I don't have a fucking choice in the matter.

My wife and others tell me to "drop it" or "just don't think about it" but the only way for that to happen is for me to die and I won't let that happen until the Lord decides it's time, so until then, I deal. But if I could go back and change one small item and that would of been to stop him that night because if I would of so many countless innocent sweet women would still be alive today and that cross sometimes is unbearable.

Have you ever talked to him?

I don't think I'm on his "visiters list". But I do send him random letters reminding him of what a piece of shit he is and how he needs to step up and do the "right thing" by opening up his dark soul and telling of all the numerous others. I also send him a anniversery card every year on the date we got a murder conviction. So you see this is quite personal between him and I, we both share a very special bond that I never asked for, so he now has me in his life till he rots in hell, because he will be in mine till I am gone.

What about his family? Sorrow is how I feel for them. I can't imagine what they went through but they still stood up for him all throughout the trial by calling me a "liar" and "how can he remember" something that happened 25 years ago. After that my feeling for them is "fuck you".

Do you think there are more victims out there that we don't know about? Or do you think Watts is lying about how many women he killed?

I think when Watts was asked "How many have you killed Coral?" Then he said "that there wasn't enough fingers and toes in this room for as many as I've killed" and there were 5 people total in the room. Yeah it was exaggerated but by too few.

Here was an animal that went stalking for innocent women and was known to kill mutiple times a day. I don't think that was a fluke but more of the norm. So yes, his count could reach into the hundreds. When I saw how callously he killed Helen back in 79, he was well on his way to being a killing machine. Then all the murders in A2 [Ann Arbor], the Detroit murders, the Windsor murders, let's not bar Toldeo by any stretch of the imagination, when he fled Michigan he drove to his Aunt's I believe in Kentucky(?) then to Texas and you can't tell me he sat on his hands all that time.

So I'm sure they have a whole line of unsolved crimes from Michigan to Kentucky to Texas that has Watts' name written all over them.

Then you have the ones he confessed to in Texas. The key word is "CONFESSED" and granted immunity to. He won't say shit about any murder unless he gets a full "get out of jail free" card to do it. So they have a pile of cases in Houston that he wouldn't talk about. So, No, I don't think he's lying.

Someone told me he has cancer?

Yes, Colon or Prostate. That's what slowed his extradition here, they wanted to finish treatment in Texas and make sure they could take over treatment here. The things we do for our killers. I say let it eat him till he screams for the end to come and God makes him wait a minute longer.

The only speck of happiness was during the trial I knew as I looked at him he was sitting there in a diaper (friend of mine was a sherrif).

Well it'll be interesting to see what happens in Kalamazoo with him. I think that it doesn't have enough to convict and in a way it makes the state look hokey by trying too hard with so little. But for the sake of Gloria [Steele]'s family I hope they get a conviction so they can finally get the rest they deserve.

I would walk through hell again a hundred times over to make sure he was convicted just to ease their pain and sorrow in some small way that they so deeply deserve.

***

Yesterday, the Michigan Supreme Court refused to hear Watts' challenge to his Michigan conviction, as was first reported by the Detroit Free Press. As Mr. Foy put it, the ruling "seals the coffin tight on the son of a bitch." Thanks to Joseph Foy, a serial killer is finally behind bars for good.

***

For more on Watts, see the book penned by Corey Mitchell -- Evil Eyes. See also -- Coral Watts - Back in the Dock (about his upcoming trial in Kalamazoo).

The Disturbing Reason Why You’ve Never Heard of Coral Eugene Watts

(UPDATE: Coral Watts is going on trial. See this post).

Coral Eugene Watts is one of the luckiest serial killers who ever butchered an innocent woman. He went on a murder binge between 1974 and 1982, attacking and killing at least 13 women – probably dozens more; he suggests 80 to 100, and it is a frighteningly credible claim. His killings took place in various cities from Houston to Detroit to Kalamazoo to Ann Arbor to Windsor and points between. His Texas rampage alone resulted in the deaths of a dozen women in less than a year. It was only his own sloppiness that eventually led him to a life term in a Michigan prison.

He attacked his victims on the street or in their homes in a sudden frenzy, often by stabbing them, sometimes by drowning or choking his victims to death. His “signature” was the rapidity and savagery of the attacks. Some women who survived his assaults reported that he laughed while he tried to butcher them.

So why haven’t you heard of him? He is easily in the running as one of the most prolific serial killers ever produced in the United States, and he cut a wide, international swath. And yet if you search on Google for “Coral Eugene Watts” (in quotes), you’ll find a paltry 812 pages mentioning him. In Internet terms, that’s next to nothing. Other serial killers with comparable “body counts” are much more infamous. “John Wayne Gacy” gets 358,000 internet mentions. “Jeffrey Dahmer” gets 418,000. "Ted Bundy," 670,000. Even an obscure killer of seven prostitutes like “Dayton Leroy Rogers” has 6,650 mentions.

Is the only difference the fact that Coral Eugene Watts did not rape his victims?

There was no overt sexual component to his killings – that was all in his head. Does that explain why Watts is unknown, while sex killers become household names? What else would explain it? And if that's the case, what does that say about our crime media? What does that say about us? Frankly, I don’t like the answer.

Indeed, I could not even find one single website that accurately listed all of his known victims and the dates on which he killed them.

Watts, born in Texas but raised in Inkster, a working-class black suburb of Detroit, started attacking women when he was only 15 years old and was “treated” with outpatient therapy. He attended college in Kalamazoo (Western Michigan University), and his attendance coincided with a wave of attacks on women there. Over the years, he escalated in savagery and frequency of attacks.

This post ends with a partial list of some of the cases connected to Watts. Bold cases are those that he confessed to. This list may contain errors, as there is very little information on the internet documenting his crimes. Watts has never granted an interview. He says he killed dozens of women, but he won’t confess without a deal. And it seems there aren’t many people who care.

June 24, 1969 – Joan Gave was beaten by her teenage paper boy – Coral Watts.

Oct. 25, 1974, Kalamazoo - Lenore Knizacky, 23, was strangled and nearly killed in her apartment.

Oct. 30, 1974, Kalamazoo – Gloria Steele was stabbed to death 33 times. Watts never confessed to this murder. A trial was planned but put on hold.

Nov. 12, 1974, Kalamazoo –Diane Williams was attacked but lived.

October 8, 1979, Detroit -- Peggy Pochmara, 22, was strangled to death.

Oct. 31, 1979, suburban Detroit -- Jeanne Clyne, 44, a reporter for the Detroit News, was stabbed 11 times in the chest and killed as she walked in her neighborhood in Grosse Pointe Farms.

December 1979, suburban Detroit – Helen Mae Dutcher was stabbed 12 times and died in Ferndale. Watts was convicted partly with a confession, though he now denies the crime.

January to May 1980 – Watts went through a divorce.

March 11, 1980, Detroit - Hazel Connof, 23, was strangled to death.

March 31, 1980, Detroit -- Denise Dunmore, 23, was strangled to death.

April 20, 1980, Ann Arbor – Shirley Small, 17, was stabbed twice and died.

May 31, 1980: Linda Monteiro, 27, strangled, Detroit.

July 1980, Ann Arbor – Glenda Richmond was stabbed 28 times and died.

July 1980, Windsor - Irene Kondratowiz, 22, was attacked, but lived after having her throat slashed. Sandra Dalpe, 20, lived through being stabbed from behind. Mary Angus, 30, of Windsor, escaped attack by screaming when she realized she was being followed.

Sept. 14, 1980, Ann Arbor – Rebecca Huff, 20, was stabbed about 50 times and died.

Nov. 15, 1980, Ann Arbor – Police caught Watts stalking a woman on the streets.

Jan. 17, 1981, Toledo - Connie Sue Thompson, 18, was found stabbed and strangled. Watts was suspected by police at one time.

Spring, 1981 – Watts moved to Texas.

September 5, 1981, Houston – Linda Tilley, 22, was drowned in her apartment complex swimming pool.

September 12, 1981, Houston – Elizabeth Montgomery was stabbed to death. The same day, Susan Wolf, 21, was stabbed to death.

January 4, 1982, Phyllis Tamm, 27, was choked to death and her body hung from a tree at Rice University.

January 17, 1982, Houston – Julie Sanchez was stabbed several times but lived.

January 17, 1982 - Margaret Fossi, 25, was also killed at Rice.

Jan. 29, 1982 – Alice Martell was murdered.

Jan. 30, 1982 – Patty Johnson (survived?)

Feb. 7, 1982, Houston – Elena Semander, 20, was strangled.

March 20, 1982 – Emily LaQua, 14, was strangled to death.

March 27, 1982 - Anna (Edith?) Ledet, 34, was murdered. Glenday Kirby (survived?)

March 31, 1982 – Mary Castillo was strangled to death.

April 3, 1982 - Christine McDonald was strangled to death.

April 5, 1982 - Suzanne Searles, 25 ?

April 15, 1982 – Corrie (Carrie?) Jefferson, 32 ?

April 16, 1982 – Yolanda DeGracia (Gracia?), 21 ?

May 1, 1982 – Sheri Straz ?

May 1982 – Gloria Cavellis ?

May 23, 1982, Houston – Michele Maday was strangled and drowned in her bathtub. The same day, he attacked roommates Lori Lister and Melinda Aguilar, but they escaped him. His bungled attempt to murder these two women led to his eventual seizure.

***

Sources:

Crime Library http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/predators/coral_watts/3.html

About.com on C.E. Watts http://crime.about.com/od/serial/p/watts2.htm

Murder Victims http://www.MurderVictims.Com/

Serial Killer Central http://www.skcentral.com/news.php?readmore=582

Houston Chronicle, Via Justice for All http://www.jfa.net/pub/page6.html

Predator Profiles http://www.extremeselfprotection.com/predator_profiles.htm

Legends of True Crime Reporting: John Voelker

The law, for all its lurching and shambling imbecilities, the law – and only the law – is what keeps our society from bursting apart at the seams, and becoming a snarling jungle. While the law is not perfect, God knows, no other system has been found for governing men except violence.

--John Voelker, Anatomy of a Murder

Here’s a bubble-bursting note for all you Truman Capote fans in the world. You’ve probably never head of John D. Voelker, but if anyone conquered the bestseller lists while “inventing” literary or fictionalized true crime in the 1950s, it wasn’t Truman Capote. It was John Voelker -- a justice on the Michigan Supreme Court.

Photo: Voelker, from Michigan History

Just before he was elected to the highest court in the Great Lakes state, Voelker wrote a novel that closely tracked the facts of a real story. It was a fictional treatment of a true murder case he handled while a “backwoods barrister” in northern Michigan. He acted as defense attorney in the trial of a cocky young lieutenant accused of murdering the barkeep who raped his wife, or may have.

Justice Voelker’s account of the murder was published under his pen name, Robert Traver, in January 1958, months after his election. It immediately soared to the top of the New York Times bestseller list, was snapped up by a major book club, sold Broadway rights, and then generated even more buzz when it was revealed that the author was a state court justice. The book remained the number one book on the Times bestseller list for an astonishing sixty-six weeks – that’s sixteen months.

The reviewers gushed, as did this one from California’s Oakland Tribune:

Every possible facet of the multiform aspects that make every murder trial a duel to the death is flashed before the reader: the strategy and courtroom tactics of opposing lawyers; the deep mystery of human conduct and human emotions; the obsession with the “case” to the point of physical and nervous exhaustion, regardless of all other considerations; the chance, tantalizingly suggested, that the only possible defense, even if successful, may be more closely related to trickery than to truth.

After being so well reviewed (but then I am a sucker for a run-on sentence) the film rights were sold for well into the six figures and the movie was made the following year to critical and commercial acclaim as Anatomy of a Murder. It’s widely considered the best courtroom drama of all time.

Justice Voelker became wealthy overnight, and his book has remained in print ever since. Years later, the author would be quoted saying, “I still can’t believe it.”

I think some young, obscure fiction writer named Truman Capote might’ve noticed the biggest literary phenomenon of 1958-59.

Just a hunch.

In November 1959, the Clutter family was murdered in Holcomb, Kansas. According to legend, Truman Capote read an account a day or two later in the New York Times.

In Cold Blood was published in 1965 and was hailed as a “new journalism.” It’s still credited today as the book that "changed journalism forever".

How brief was Justice Voelker’s reign as master of the true crime novel!

After the phenomenal success of his novel, Voelker eschewed the limelight, served a brief stint on the Michigan high court, then soon retired to life in the far north in the Upper Peninsula, writing several books about fishing still considered classics in that genre. He died in his late eighties, suffering a heart attack while on his way to his favorite fishing hole. That’s a good ending, eh?

A New Chapter in Michigan's Death Penalty History

It takes a real ignoramus to get the death penalty in a state that doesn't have the death penalty and has never executed anyone.

Michigan resident Marvin Gabrion killed another Michigan resident in Michigan. Gabrion, furious with a young woman for accusing him of rape, kidnapped her and her infant. Gabrion transported Rachael Timmerman to the Manistee National Forest, handcuffed her to cement, and threw her alive into a lake. Her infant Shannon has never been found.

If Gabrion had any sense at all, he might have noticed the national in "Manistee National Forest." That's how the feds got hold of him -- he committed a capital crime on federal land.

In the federal court in Michigan, Gabrion was sentenced to stretch hemp, or however they do it these days. Last week the sentence was upheld.

Note to defendants undergoing the penalty phase of a capital trial: do not beat your lawyer in the head in front of the jury.

Photo: Marvin, from his whiny plea for pen pals. Do not write to this shit. That flower belies an evil mind. He has taunted his victims' families by implying that the baby is still alive, and he is suspected in several other deaths.

He is brutal. Dumb. Most of all dumb, bestially stupid; the executioner is a most appropriate remedy.

Though I don't think too many folks would mind if they strung him up in, oh, say, Indiana.

***

For more on Michigan's death penalty history see this post.

Thanks to Robert Waters for the link.

The Mysterious Death of Maybelle Millman, Part 2

Part 1 can be found here.

In 1909, George A. Fritch found himself under arrest for suspicion of murder when the dismembered corpse of a young woman showed up in a Detroit-area creek. The doctor, who was 37, was a Canadian-born man of English extraction who’d immigrated in 1898. He was short and thin with a sandy moustache and had a wife and family on Trumbull Avenue in Detroit.

And the homicide detectives in Detroit knew that they had him “dead to rights this time.”

The young lady who pointed the accusatory finger at the doctor was Martha Henning, chum of the murdered girl. Martha testified that just before Maybelle disappeared, she was in a plight. She received a registered letter at the post office with a large sum of money. Then both young women made a trip to Detroit.

The last time Martha saw her friend, she said, Maybelle was in the office of Dr. Fritch. What happened after that, she didn’t know. She went to Dr. Fritch’s office several days later and inquired, but the doctor said he’d refused her case.

The young chum of the dead girl was asked repeatedly to name the man who’d been involved with Maybelle. Martha never gave them a name.

And then the medical men made news again, telling reporters that Maybelle wasn’t actually pregnant. Well, they put it this way: “[S]ome grim caprice of an ironical fate led Maybelle Millman to her death on an operating table when her need for surgical attention was but an illusion.”

Dr. Fritch was put on trial for manslaughter in the spring of 1910. When it came time for the doctor to mount his defense, the scene was one of the most pathetic in the history of Detroit’s Recorder’s Court. The principal witness for the doctor was a woman named Mrs. Bessie Knott. She testified that she was in Dr. Fritch’s office Aug. 27 when it was alleged Maybelle was there. She denied seeing the girl and explained that she would have seen her if she had been there.

While Mrs. Knott was testifying, a man stepped up to the judge and said, “You should not let her testify, Judge. You ought to stop it.”

“Why?” asked the judge in surprise.

“It’s rank perjury,” the man said. Then he said he was Frank Knott, the woman’s husband. Judge Phelan recessed court for the day.

At the trial’s end, Dr. Fritch was found guilty of manslaughter for causing the death of Maybelle Millman by a criminal operation and attempted concealment of the crime. In sentencing the doctor to a minimum of 15 years in Jackson Prison, the trial judge excoriated the physician.

After his sentencing, Dr. Fritch remarked, “All I can say is that they are sending an innocent man to prison.”

But the doctor stayed in prison far, far beyond the 15 years of his sentence. It's one thing to perform an illegal surgery. Quite another to chop up the victim. Dr. Fritch’s name appears in the 1910 census as a prison inmate in Jackson Prison. In 1920, the census-taker found him in a State House of Correction in Marquette. In 1930, twenty-one years after the death of Miss Millman, the census shows Dr. Fritch was in Jackson Prison. At 63, he was one of the oldest inmates, and he worked as a nurse at the prison hospital.

Eventually, one supposes, because the records end there, he was released from prison only to fade into the bloody pages of a forgotten history.

Sources: Van Wert (Ohio) Daily Bulletin, Sept. 13, 1909. Washington Post, Sept. 13, 1909. Elyria (Ohio) Evening Telegram, Sept. 10, 1909. Coshocton (Ohio) Daily Age, Sept. 9, 1909. Nebraska State Journal, March 3, 1910. Marion (Ohio) Weekly Star, March 12, 1910. Modesto (California) Morning Herald, Oct. 26, 1909.

The Mysterious Death of Maybelle Millman

In the autumn of 1910, a young woman disappeared. She was Maybelle Millman of Ann Arbor.

A few days later, parts of a dismembered human corpse were found in two sacks, floating in the Ecorse creek in the western suburbs of Detroit. The next day, another sack was found, washed ashore on Grosse Isle. And the mystery of Maybelle’s disappearance was solved.

Her brokenhearted mother and brother Harry, bowed down by the terrible secret that led to Maybelle’s death, held a funeral for her at St Thomas’s Catholic Church and buried her there in the cemetery. Then a witness came forward to tell police the name of the last person to see Maybelle alive. And the police knew the man well.

He was a notorious Detroit physician, Dr. George A Fritch, who’d been involved in a scandal a few years before. As one newspaper would later succinctly describe the affair:

DR. FRITCH was previously arrested in connection with the mysterious death of Miss Edith Presley, proofreader for the state senate, who died under suspicious circumstances in Detroit in April, 1907. After that tragedy, two men were charged; one a member of the lower house of the legislature, which was thrown out for lack of evidence. The case against Dr. Fritch was nolle prossed as prosecutors could not get the testimony of the legislator.

Two coroner’s physicians examined the “grewsome” remains of the Ann Arbor woman and announced that Maybelle Millman met her death on the operating table. There was every indication, the medical men said, that “means to produce artificial respiration had been resorted to and the flesh covered with blisters, mute evidence of a surgeon’s attempt to keep the young woman alive while under an anaesthetic.”

Dr. Fritch, when detained, said he never met Maybelle Millman in his life. And for a while, that’s where things stood.

..read the rest of the story on Clews Monday…

The Case of Sister Mary Janina

Up through the muck of current crime stories, another murder case is rising to ascendance in our public discourse. It concerns Father Gerald Robinson, a Catholic priest who is currently on trial for the murder of Sister Margaret Ann Pahl.

The case has a striking parallel in Michigan's criminal history. Father Robinson, you see, isn't the first priest to fall under dark suspicions for the murder of a nun.

It was 1907; the place was Isadore, Michigan, a remote Catholic outpost where a priest and two young nuns worked on a mission to raise the Polish farmers' children into good Catholic boys and girls. Sister Mary Janina was young and plain. The priest may or may not have been intimate with her. In either case, one day in August she up and disappeared.

They looked for her in every farmhouse, in the swamps, in the woods. Not a trace. Did she break her vows, flee her holy orders? Did someone kidnap her? Was she lost? For years, nobody knew what became of her. Everyone assumed the worst of the priest. He must have gotten her pregnant. That was the speculation.

Then someone confessed to bludgeoning the young nun and burying her half-alive in the crawlspace underneath the church. The priest who heard this confession was a gossip, and he told the bishop. It soon became common knowledge in certain Catholic circles that Sister Mary Janina had been murdered. Still, the church covered up the crime.

Then, nearly ten years later, the bones of Sister Janina were found, and the trial began for her murderer -- Mrs. Lipczynska. The person who murdered the nun was not the priest, but the priest's housekeeper, a very old Polish grandmother who was furious that the priest was "treating her [Sister Mary Janina] like a wife." Mrs. Lipczynska was convicted and went to prison.

Meanwhile, the story of the murder has been dramatized as a play written in the 1970s called The Runner Stumbles, which is occasionally produced as community theater to this day.

The lesson in this case from Michigan's past is a motive alone does not a murder make. Even where the truth seems apparent, the reality can be even more diabolical.

***

The best book about this case is The Errant Nun by "Natsolim," pen name of H. Milostan; a used copy sometimes pops up on Amazon. The case was also the subject of a chapter of the book Butcher's Dozen by Larry Wakefield, about 13 famous Michigan murders and one of this Michigander's favorite books.