Barnes Foundation"
/>
In Sheffield, on Thanksgiving evening, Mr. and Mrs. David Stillman were brutally murdered. They were clubbed to death; their bodies were hacked into pieces. The year was 1877.
The bodies were discovered by a young boy. Fourteen-year-old John Carey Jr., a neighbor, was employed by the Stillman’s to milk the cows and do other chores around the farm. Arriving early, Carey entered the house and found the bloody scene.
Mr. Stillman lay on a divan, his head crushed. The murder weapon, an axe, was on the floor just under the divan. Mrs. Stillman was not in the room. Walking through the house, Carey found blood-splattered walls in the stairwell to the cellar. Mrs. Stillman’s body lay sprawled at the foot of the stairs. The child ran for help.
Investigators assumed the husband lay on the divan unaware, reading. They found a blood-stained stone. They thought the murderer brought the stone as a weapon but discarded it in favor of a better weapon when he spied the axe.
Mrs. Stillman’s spectacles and a candle were found at the top of the stairs. At first, investigators assumed she was attacked as she was coming up the stairs. After being struck, she fell or was pushed to the bottom of the stairs. However, as easily, she might have been fleeing down the stairs when she was struck, dropped her candle, lost her glasses, and fell to the bottom.
When the bodies, the stone, and the axe were removed, what remained was a calm, modest, well-organized, 19th-century household. Mr. Stillman had been resting on the living room divan reading the Berkshire Courier. On the table before the fire, Mrs. Stillman had been working on a patchwork quilt. Also on the table were a pitcher of cider and a pot of tea.
A four-pound pail of butter was on the table. Beside it was a butter measure, and it appeared the pound had been measured preparatory to selling it to someone—one pound of butter with a fork still inserted in it used to lift it from the pail.
Before the perpetrator entered, what was the life of Mr. and Mrs. Stillman like? Were they happy? Were they a loving couple? Were they successful? Did they incite jealously? Had they made enemies?
The juxtaposition of the signs of ordinary life and extraordinary death was disturbing. The good people of Sheffield wanted to find the perpetrator both to serve justice and to quell rising fear. The spreading fear was exasperated when the town learned that there was also suspected arson. Kerosene had been spread on the floor of the attic and lit with paper. It had charred but had not ignited. Presumably the murderer attempted and failed to light the house on fire to hide the evidence of the crime.
The Courier reported, “Suspicion quickly fell on John Ten Eyke, a colored man, who lived in the vicinity, before any evidence of his guilt was developed.”
Therein hangs the tale. If you decide in advance who committed the crime, will you find only that evidence which supports your assumption? Will you shape what you find to fit the hypothesis? It was 12 years after the close of the Civil War, and yet, absent proof, the cry went out, “the Black man did it!”
We know Ten Eyke was arrested, tried, convicted, and hung for the crime, but do we know who killed the Stillmans?
There was blood on Ten Eyke’s jacket. The prosecution said it was the Stillman’s blood; the defense presented a witness that testified it was Ten Eyke’s blood from his nose.
Carey testified that he and Ten Eyke met on the road outside the Stillman house on Thanksgiving evening. Ten Eyke asked him if the Stillman’s still sold butter. Carey said he thought so but that Ten Eyke should ask them. Was the butter measured and ready on the table for Ten Eyke? Even if it was, does that lead to murder?
People said Ten Eyke was bad and brutal and, therefore, guilty. Ten Eyke had witnesses, men he had worked for, who said he was a steady and trustworthy worker. Ten Eyke had borrowed matches from another neighbor a few days before. Matches of the same type were found near the abortive fire. The matches, however, were widely sold in the previous weeks by a peddler.
Ten Eyke’s estranged wife testified that he was brutal, and he may have been, but it was also true that she was living with another man to whom she was not married. She explained her behavior was justified by Ten Eyke’s brutality.
Mr. Joyner, counsel for the defense, concluded that another man, a man who had been anxious to testify against Ten Eyke, was the true culprit. Mr. Train, for the prosecution, made a startling closing argument. Train said while it was a case with only circumstantial evidence, no direct evidence, and no witness; circumstantial evidence was sometimes stronger than any other form of evidence.
It was reported that Ten Eyke was “silent on the scaffold,” and that, while the witnesses to his death had hoped for a confession, he was defiant to the end. He did, in a way, deny the charge. Before his death, Ten Eyke made a written confession of every crime he had ever committed. It was a neat list that Ten Eyke said was complete; the Stillman murders were not among them.
