Hudson Valley Murder Mayhem by Andrew K. Amelinckx

Author:Andrew K. Amelinckx [Amelinckx, Andrew K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781467136433
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing SC
Published: 2017-06-26T00:00:00+00:00

A HORRIBLE CRIME DISCOVERED

On the morning of Monday, September 4, 1893, Paul Jr. and his brother-in-law Cornelius Canfield, a local constable, rode out to the old man’s farm to check on him. It had been nearly a week since anyone had seen the elder Halliday, which was unusual since he was a gregarious fellow who liked to visit with friends and family on a regular basis to jaw and gossip a bit about the goings-on around town. When Paul Jr. and Canfield arrived at the farm, Lizzie was heading to the barn carrying some hay, apparently on her way to feed the cows. Paul asked Lizzie where his father was. She answered that he’d gone to the neighboring town of Bloomingburgh (now called Bloomingburg) with some masons to work on a new piece of property he’d just purchased. Lizzie, sensing something was up, asked what they wanted with her husband. Canfield responded that Paul owed him some money. “I’ll talk to him about it,” she said, ending the conversation. Suspicious, the pair went to Justice Abraham Thayer for a search warrant. They returned to the farm, warrant in hand, with Thayer and a few other townsfolk in tow. Lizzie refused to let them search the place and even took a swing at the constable with a board. She eventually agreed to take Canfield and Thayer to where she claimed her husband had gone. As soon as she left, Paul Jr. and the others began to search the farm for the old man.

Inside the residence, they didn’t find Paul Halliday Sr., but they did discover bloodstains on the floorboards, carpet and bedclothes; what appeared to be charred bones on the stove (later determined to be beef bones); and a length of rope that had been recently washed. When one of the men twisted it, a reddish liquid dripped out. The men then searched the nearby barn, focusing on a corner of the cow stables where new hay had been tossed over a hole in the foundation. Underneath the hay, fresh manure from the other side of the barn had been thrown in. They cleared it away. A communal gasp escaped from the men. They half expected to find the remains of Paul Halliday but were instead staring at the moldering corpses of two women, one younger and one older. Who were they, and why were they buried in the Hallidays’ barn, the apparent victims of homicidal violence? It would take several days to learn their identities. The “why” has never really been answered.

Several men pulled the women’s bodies out of the barn and carried them into the shack, while others of the party spread the word around town about what they had found. A coroner’s jury, under the direction of Coroner Joseph Roesch, was quickly assembled, and several local physicians arrived at the farm to examine the women’s bodies, which were laid on a crude dissection table made from a barn door placed on a pair of chairs. The older woman,

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.