True Crime Stories You Won't Believe: Book Two: True Stories You Won't Believe

When I first became a psychologist, I never considered that I’d end up working in a maximum-security prison or that I’d spend fifteen years of my life there. Granted, the cases I encountered were often fascinating, if distressing, given the details of the crimes committed, especially the sex offenders, since it meant that I had to study the nature of their crimes. Though I developed a bit of a thick skin when it came to stories of the people who were victimized, including children and other vulnerable members of society, it was never something I could share with the people in my life, both for professional reasons or simply because I hated talking about these cases when I was away from work.

Launching my Providentia blog in 2007, not long after I left for private practice, represented a form of therapy for me since it allowed me to explore criminal cases in a way I never could when actually working as a prison psychologist. Over the years, however, it expanded into much more than due to my passion for telling stories about bizarre historical episodes relating to true crime, science, religion, medicine, and pretty much anything else that came to my attention. Granted, it proved somewhat of a mixed bag as my attention shifted or I decided specific topics merited more attention due to what was happening in the world at the time.

I was often drawn to historical criminal cases simply because the media coverage of current crimes often left much to be desired, mainly since many of the details would not be provided until long after these cases came to trial (and not even then, at times). But many of these old cases are also fascinating regarding how quickly they become forgotten. Not only does this seem to happen because of the often-graphic nature of the crimes, but also because newer cases have a way of driving them out of public memory and, if they are recalled in the media, only in a where are they now? sense.

In my first book, True Crime Stories You Won’t Believe, I packaged many of the cases discussed in my blog and updated them to share with a larger audience. Given the excellent response that the book received, I decided to follow up with this new book, True Crime Stories You Won’t Believe.: Book Two.

In this book, I present additional tales of true crime and bizarre applications of justice (or injustice, as the case may be). They include:

The real story behind Arsenic and Old Lace and why the reality isn’t as lighthearted as Hollywood made it out to be.

A case in which a dream helped solve a gruesome murder. Or did it?

When a staunch Irish sea captain murdered almost his entire crew on the high seas and what happened afterward.

Did an Ouija board drive an Alabama mother and daughter to commit murder?

The story of Jane Toppan and what drove her to kill so many of her patients.

The story of Blanche Monnier, whose family locked her away for decades to keep her from marrying the wrong man.

Was the Devil responsible for the murder of Alan Bono?

The true story of the Vampire of Le Muy and his bizarre need to steal corpses.

The story of Bridget Cleary, whose husband killed her in the belief that she had been replaced by fairies.

And this is just a sampling of the stories you will find. Though you may well be acquainted with some of these stories, I try to be as complete as possible, including newspaper accounts and additional details from what other true crime writers have written about these cases. Again, as I warned readers of the last book, you may find some of the details I include disturbing. I make no apologies for that since it’s important to tell the whole story as much as possible.

This book is just the latest installment in what I hope to be a lengthy series containing both published stories and new stories as they come along (and I have a fat file of potential stories to work on). I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed writing them.

Romeo Vitelli

Even for Boston in the 19th century, it was a ruthless murder.

On October 27, 1845, police were initially called in to investigate several suspicious fires at an upscale boarding house (i.e., brothel) in Boston. After dousing the fires, police soon discovered the body of a 21-year-old prostitute named Maria Ann Bickford in the room where she lived and worked. Bickford’s body was nearly decapitated, and her throat cut from ear to ear. From what police could determine, the fires were likely set to conceal the crime, but they still found a man’s vest and cane, covered with blood, at the scene.

Since the landlord insisted that the house had been securely locked to prevent any intruders from getting in, police only had one real suspect in the killing. Albert Tirrell was a 22-year-old paramour of Maria Bickford. The son of a successful manufacturer and a member of a well-established family, Tirrell had lived with his wife and two children in Weymouth, Massachusetts, when he apparently grew tired of the domestic life. Whether he had abandoned his family before or after meeting Maria Bickford in a Boston brothel isn’t clear, but they certainly became inseparable afterward.

Maria Bickford’s history was a little different from Tirrell’s. Born and raised in Bangor, Maine, she married a shoemaker at 16 and had one child who died in infancy. Her friends took her to Boston to help her overcome her grief, but she quickly became fascinated by Boston life. After only three years of marriage, Maria soon abandoned her husband and took up with a paramour, who then left her. With no other options, Bickford turned to prostitution to support herself. Her youthful beauty made her extremely popular, and she quickly became established in brothels catering to the wealthy Boston elite. That she soon became Albert Tirrell’s constant companion did nothing to change that.

Whether Tirrell was just her lover or Maria’s pimp was never clear though they often traveled together from one new address to another. Despite never marrying (they were both legally married to other spouses), Albert and Maria often posed as husband and wife, staying in some of the most fashionable hotels along the East Coast.

They also scandalized Boston society, and Albert even stood trial for adultery at one point (it took an impassioned plea from family members, including his young wife, to save him from prosecution). He and Maria frequently quarreled, but she would claim that she didn’t mind because they had such a good time making up. Under the name Maria Welch, she and Tirrell maintained a house on London Street for a little while. It was hardly a secret that the house was a front for Maria to entertain clients (Maria’s name was on the front door), but prostitution was still technically illegal. For this reason, she and Tirrell rarely stayed at any address for long despite Maria’s exclusive clientele.

At the time of Maria’s murder, she and Tirrell both lived at a thinly disguised brothel in Boston. An elderly couple ran the place and advertised it as a boarding house, but it seemed clear enough that people rented the rooms for only one purpose. Though Albert supposedly lived elsewhere, he stayed with Maria frequently and was known to have slept there the night of her death. Other residents reported hearing loud noises coming from Maria’s room early in the morning, but nobody investigated until after the body was found.

When police tried to question Tirrell about the murder, they found that he had disappeared. Still, he was their only suspect since he had been with the victim earlier that night and was likely the last person to see her alive. The bloody clothes in Bickford’s room were identified as belonging to Tirrell. Also, one witness had reported seeing Tirrell afterward arguing with a livery stable keeper about getting a horse. He reportedly said he was in a scrape and needed a horse and carriage as fast as possible.

Albert Tirrell disappeared for months until Louisiana police, acting on a tip, arrested him on a boat in the Gulf of Mexico on December 5. As Boston police later learned, Tirrell had driven to the home of some relatives in Weymouth, MA, on the day of the murder. These relatives supplied him with money which he then used to flee to Canada. He formed a convoluted plan to sail to Liverpool from Montreal, but lousy weather eventually led to his sailing to New Orleans instead. There, he was arrested and returned to Boston to stand trial for the murder of Maria Bickford.

While nobody could be sure who was responsible, a book titled The Life and Death of Mrs. Maria Bickford was released shortly before the trial began. The book, a largely fictionalized account of Maria Bickford’s life up to the time of her murder, portrayed her as a beautiful and tragic figure victimized by the men in her life. Though portraying Maria as a victim, the book also highlighted all the stereotypes associated with prostitutes. Despite claims of being true to life, the book was primarily fabricated and meant to capitalize on Tirrell’s upcoming trial. There is no evidence that any jurors in the trial read the book, but it likely added to the media circus surrounding what promised to be a high-profile case.

Despite the scandal Tirrell brought to his family, they were well-to-do enough to hire Rufus Choate to defend Albert in the lurid trial. Choate, a prominent lawyer and politician, had already served in Congress and as a senator and was legendary for his skill as an orator. Since virtually everybody in Boston knew about the overwhelming evidence against his client, Choate was obliged to try a different strategy to save his client, thanks to the scandal sheets that described every detail of the case.

First, he attacked Maria Bickford’s character to make her less sympathetic to the jurors. Through evidence carefully orchestrated by Choate, Tirrell’s cousins portrayed Maria Bickford as a shameless siren who had seduced poor Albert away from his wife and children. They also claimed that she had a fatal hold on Albert and forced him to spend nearly all his inherited wealth on buying her jewelry and dresses while she continued throwing herself at other men. Despite this apparent abuse, Choate also insisted that his client would have been entirely irrational to kill Maria due to his love for her. As Choate pointed out, she had held him spellbound by her depraved and lascivious arts for a long time.

There was also a touch of racism added as Choate also brought in witnesses who testified that they had seen Maria with non-white clients (likely meant as proof of her moral turpitude). As a fallen woman, anything Choate could say about Bickford must have seemed plausible enough to jury members, all of whom had seen the rise of urban prostitution in their lifetimes.

To explain the evidence against his client, Choate and his defense team would do everything in their power to further blacken Maria Bickford’s reputation, even suggesting that the wound to her throat had been self-inflicted. He also broadly hinted that prostitutes were prone to committing suicide due to their immoral lifestyles. But Rufus Choate didn’t push this argument very far. Considering that Maria was nearly decapitated, arguing that she had done it to herself would have been too much for even a sympathetic jury to swallow. Not to mention the trifling problem of who had set the fire that nearly consumed her body.

All of which led to his second great defense strategy: sleepwalking. Since somnambulism was regarded as a mysterious phenomenon without a rational explanation, arguing that Tirrell must have murdered Maria while in a trance state was a bold move on Choate’s part. As he stated in the courtroom, Evidence will be produced to show that it had pleased Almighty God to afflict the prisoner with this species of mental derangement. That evidence included anecdotes from history, including famous people such as Alexander the Great acting strangely while sleepwalking. The defendant’s family and friends also described episodes from Tirrell’s life, showing that he had been sleepwalking from a young age. To cap off the testimony on Tirrell’s behalf, Walter Channing, dean of Harvard Medical School, testified that it was theoretically possible for a man to commit murder while sleepwalking.

Whether it was the character assassination of the victim or the novel sleepwalking defense, Choate’s ploy worked. But it was his own fantastic skill at rhetoric that truly swayed the jury on his client’s behalf. Even the court stenographer recording Choate’s arguments complained that she had difficulty keeping up with him during the trial. Who can report chain lightning? she reportedly said.

It took only two hours for the jurors to hand down a not-guilty verdict. Spectators applauded, and Albert Tirrell burst into tears. Of course, his legal problems were hardly over. He still had to stand trial for arson (which was also a capital crime at the time), but Choate also got him off on that charge too. According to historical records, Tirrell failed to get Choate to refund half his legal fees because his innocence was so obvious.

Not that Tirrell escaped justice completely. The judge refused to acquit him on the charge of adultery, and he eventually spent three years in state prison. He soon vanished into well-deserved obscurity after his release from what I could find. Whether Tirrell ever went back to his long-suffering family isn’t mentioned.

Afterward, Choate left private practice to return to public office (after being reportedly besieged by defendants hoping he could help them as well). Despite his reputation as a statesman, Rufus Choate never quite lived down being the one to introduce the sleepwalking defense. Following his death in 1859, one lawyer eulogized him by saying that Choate was the lawyer who made it safe to murder.

Which is one hell of a legacy when you think of it.

When Joseph Kesselring’s play Arsenic and Old Lace premiered in 1939, the dark comedy about a pair of eccentric spinsters poisoning lonely men and burying the bodies in their basement became an unlikely hit. Later adapted by Frank Capra into a 1944 comedy movie starring Cary Grant and Raymond Massey, the film is still considered a classic. Despite the humorous overtones of the movie, few people realize that the play and film are both based on a real-life case that is not quite so lighthearted.

The woman at the center of the case was born in 1868 in Milton, Connecticut (other sources say 1873). Though little is known about her early childhood, Amy E. Duggan married James Archer in 1897, and the birth of a daughter followed shortly afterward. By 1901, she and her husband worked as caretakers for an elderly widower, John Seymour, in Newington, Connecticut. After Seymour died in 1904, the Archers continued caring for elderly boarders until the Seymour family sold the house in 1907. Moving to Windsor, Connecticut, Amy and her husband pooled their savings and purchased a large brick house they renamed the Archer Home For Aged People.

One of the