No Place Like Murder by Janis Thornton

Author:Janis Thornton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2020-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

PART V

DEADLY DECISIONS

12

MURDER ON ANDERSON AND MAIN

ELWOOD, 1903

Andrew Jackson “A. J.” Baker and Etta Kaiser never admitted to an extramarital dalliance, but Etta’s husband, Frederick, suspected as much. The notion had eaten at him since the days he worked for Baker’s meat market, almost a decade before. Sober, Kaiser lacked the confidence to challenge Baker face-to-face about his suspicions. But drunk, he was a tiger. That is why at 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, September 3, 1903, at the busiest corner in downtown Elwood in front of at least a dozen witnesses, Kaiser confronted his wife’s alleged lover. Unfortunately, the confrontation backfired, and twenty minutes later, Etta’s marital status had deteriorated from adulteress to widow.

Shot in Plain Sight

By morning, the town was in an uproar about the scandalous incident, thanks to the Daily Record’s blow-by-blow details, laid out under a banner that screamed, “Elwood Disgraced by a Foul Murder,” and an encapsulating, two-column headline that read, “Frederick Kaiser Shot and Killed by A. J. Baker.” The newspaper noted that Kaiser’s murder was the first to “stain the fair name of Elwood” since the city’s incorporation three decades before.

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