Moonlight Murder on Lovers' Lane (2 page)

Crabapple tree

The next person to arrive was Detective George Totten from Somerset County, along with a physician, Dr. William Long. Totten noticed that the pieces of paper scattered between the corpses were letters. He asked an officer to collect them. A .32-caliber cartridge case was discovered near the bodies, as well as a 2-feet-long piece of iron pipe. Each item was carefully wrapped in brown paper.

Detective at crime scene

Dr. Long estimated the time of death for both victims, which had probably occurred in close succession, to have been about 36 hours earlier. This finding was considered odd, since a lovers’ lane should have had a lot of activity on a Friday night and the bodies had already begun to smell. It was possible, some investigators surmised, that people
had
seen them, but instead of reporting it, they’d taken the opportunity to rifle through the victims’ pockets and perhaps steal the woman’s purse. The man’s card wallet looked as if it had been removed, emptied of money, and dropped.

A glance through the letters indicated that they had been written to Hall from a woman who obviously adored him. She wrote in dramatic phrases to describe how she felt about him. In childish handwriting, she spoke of “eternal love” for her “noble man.” Had she brought these letters with her, they wondered, or had someone else found them and used them to decorate this fatal deed?

Soon, Edwin R. Carpender, a cousin of the dead man’s wife, drove into De Russey’s Lane, accompanied by former Senator William Florence. Carpender walked over to the bodies, pale and visibly upset, and confirmed Edward Hall’s identity. No other reaction was recorded, but he must have felt shocked by Hall’s flagrant besmirching of his family’s good name.

Some three and a half hours after the initial discovery, Sam Sutphen, the Somerville undertaker, arrived. He found in Edward’s pockets 61 cents in change and two handkerchiefs, which he bagged. Then he placed the stiffened bodies in his hearse to take to his funeral home.

Chapter 4: Discoveries

With the bodies on separate tables, Sutphen worked on Edward first. As he struggled to remove the suit jacket, a bullet casing fell out and pinged on the floor. Sutphen put it aside for the police. As he cut the shirt away, he saw an area of discoloration on the right hand. He didn’t know what it was, but he made a note before he finished the disrobing.

Then Sutphen turned to the Jane Doe. As he unwrapped the scarf, he saw that, aside from the three bullet holes to her head, her throat had been sliced open. He determined that this had likely been done after she was already dead. A small wound also marred her upper lip and her arm had been bruised, as if someone had grabbed her. Sutphen prepared her for an autopsy.

That evening, an undertaker from New Brunswick arrived.

“I’m to pick up Reverend Hall,” he said.

The Jane Doe remained behind in Somerville. Whatever assignation the lovers had planned, they were now forever parted.

No official identification of the dead woman was necessary for members of Hall’s family or congregation. It had long been an open secret that Edward was smitten with a 34-year-old married woman named Eleanor R. Mills. They spent a lot of time together, and her life had revolved entirely around the church. Eleanor sang soprano in the choir, and their affair had been obvious for at least four years. In fact, Eleanor had flaunted it. Some people believed they had planned to run off together, and a few knew that they had prepared that night to carry it out. Japan had been their ultimate destination.

The Reverend Edward Hall

Edward, the rector at St. John’s for 13 years, had been married for 11 of those years to Frances Noel Stevens, a member of one of New Brunswick’s elite families. They were related to the eminent Johnson family, who had founded Johnson & Johnson to sell surgical supplies. Frances Hall and her two brothers had inherited a large fortune and she carried herself as if she were royalty.

Frances had been seven years older than her husband and was not nearly as attractive as the 34-year-old soprano who’d won his heart. Edward had been short and hefty. Despite losing his hair, he still had a handsome face. He also had the aura of a man of God, which had attracted a number of female admirers.

Eleanor had lived with her husband, James, just five blocks from the imposing, two-story Hall mansion, but their circumstances were considerably more modest. James had married Eleanor when she had been just 15 and he was 25, and through the years, they had barely scraped by on his meager salary. He’d jumped from job to job, but for the past two years, he’d been a janitor. They had two children, 16-year-old Charlotte and 12-old Danny. Given how financially limited their circumstances were, it was little wonder that as Eleanor lost herself in romantic fantasies about heroes and princes, she looked for a man who more ably fit the masculine image she craved.

So Eleanor, slender and pretty, now lay on a cold slab in a funeral home. Her corpse was bereft of personal papers, purse, or distinct markings. The person who finally identified her was a reporter, Frank M. Diener, of the
Daily Home News
.

Once the victims had been identified and burial preparations were under way, it was time to focus on suspects. The most obvious persons of interest were the respective spouses, Frances Hall and James Mills. Given the likely humiliation they had suffered from the whispered rumors, they both had motive. But did they have the means and opportunity?

Chapter 5: The Cheated Wife

Prior to her marriage to Hall, Frances had lived with her mother and brother Willie at their red brick home at 23 Nichols Avenue in New Brunswick. They had two household servants, including a chauffeur. Frances then married, but after her mother died, she and Edward had moved in to manage the place. Fifty-year-old Willie, who needed supervision and care, remained in the house with them.

Hall Stevens mansion

Detectives who went to question Frances were surprised to learn that she claimed to know nothing of the affair between her husband and Eleanor.

“I trusted my husband,” she told them. As unlikely as this seemed, there was no proving otherwise unless she changed her story.

Frances had learned that missing from her husband’s effects when he was found off De Russey’s Lane was the money he usually carried—about $50—and an antique gold watch that was quite valuable. She suggested that robbery was a motive.

Despite the open affair, no investigator could turn up a report of bad blood between Frances and Eleanor. In fact, just eight months earlier, Frances had visited Eleanor frequently during her convalescence from surgery. She’d even driven Eleanor home from the hospital. She either did not realize what was going on under her nose, or she was truly a devious schemer with a long-range plan that involved a cordial pretense.

Mrs. Frances Stevens Hall

Frances told the police that she and Willie had been home all night, but she later prepared a statement for the press in which she explained what she had done over the days leading up to the murders. It turned out that there had been an excursion. On Wednesday, Frances stated, she had attended a church picnic honoring the contributions of two women, one of whom was Eleanor.

On Thursday afternoon, September 14, Frances was making preserves in her kitchen when Eleanor Mills had called to leave a message for Edward. Around 6:30 that evening, Frances delivered the message to her husband. She knew that Eleanor had called again half an hour later, and around 7:40 PM, Edward said he was going out to check on a problem with Eleanor’s medical bill.

Frances maintained that his errand had not disturbed her; he’d often looked after his parishioners, no matter what the hour. While he was away, she had played solitaire for the next two hours. Willie came out of his room to say good night and then she went to bed.

At 2:30 AM, she realized that her husband had not yet come home, so she dressed and woke Willie. They checked Edward’s study: he was not there. Together they walked two blocks to St. John’s to look for him. No one was present, so they walked another three blocks to the Mills’ second-floor apartment on the seedier Carman Street. This, too, was dark, so they decided to go home. Frances said she had fretted the rest of the night.

In the morning, she had called the police and learned that no casualties had been reported. She had not left her name, but continued to search for her missing husband until she finally learned on Saturday that he’d been murdered.

By this time, investigators had read the letters that were scattered between the bodies. They realized from the overblown language that Edward and Eleanor had been secretly meeting, and had been exchanging declarations of love for quite some time. On her last day alive, Eleanor had written about her concern that she loved Edward “too much.” She had added, “Oh my darling babykins, what a muddle we are in!”

It remained unclear whether Edward had brought the letters with him to the place of assignation or whether someone else (Frances? James?) had found them and brought them to set near the bodies. The latter would indicate a revenge killing by someone who wished to punish these two. Detectives learned that Frances had sent one of her maids down to the eldercare home near De Russey’s Lane on Thursday, the day of the murders, as if possibly checking on one of Edward’s supposed visits of compassion.

Potential clues were popping up, but Frances was not the only suspect.

Chapter 6: The Cuckolded Husband

James Mills, 44, was the acting sexton at St. John’s and a full-time janitor at the Lord Stirling Elementary School. He was aware that Edward had come frequently to see Eleanor. He told police that he’d been flattered by the reverend’s attention. He hadn’t realized, he said, that Edward and Eleanor had spent part of each day together because they were in love.

Like Frances, James claimed ignorance of the affair, stating that Rev. Hall was “too good a friend of mine” for such a thing. The reverend had once even paid for some major surgery for Eleanor when James could not.