Radio Script #600

Little Talks on Common Things

February 2, 1964

On several occasions I have devoted one or more broadcasts of this 16 year old program to the account of some Maine murder. Fifteen years ago, when the program was not a year old, I told the story of Waterville’s first murder, the killing of young Edward Mathews by Dr. Valorus Coolidge, and later published the story in “Kennebec Yesterdays”. Several years later I recounted the exciting story of the trial of a Poland man for the brutal murder of his wife and published that story also in “Remembered Maine”. That Poland case was especially interesting for two reasons: first, because the man’s conviction depended in large part on the expert testimony of ox drivers on how fast it was possible to drive an ox team from Poland Corner to Gray and second, because the convicted man was sentenced to death, but his execution never took place. He spent 42 years in the State Prison at Thomaston and died there a natural death.

Today I want to tell you about another famous Maine murder, one that has long been called “The Murder on Smutty Nose”. The case is well remembered, because Edmund Pearson, that indefatigable collector of murder stories, published an account of it about 25 years ago under the title “Murder on Smutty Nose”. The crime is referred to in Dorothy Simpson’s book, “The Maine Islands”, and in several other volumes. But I suspect many listeners to this program are not familiar with the details of that interesting case. Only a few weeks ago I ran across a book, the existence of which I had not suspected. Consisting of nearly 300 pages, it is a verbatim account of the trial for that Smutty Nose crime. Published in Saco in 1874, the book carries this lengthy title: “Report of the Trial and Conviction of Louis H.F. Wagner for the murder of Anethe M. Christensen, at a special sitting of the Supreme Judicial Court held at Alfred, Maine, June 9-18, 1873”.

The copy of this record that I had the recent opportunity to examine is in the Colby College Library, placed there at the time of its publication by Colby’s distinguished graduate, General Harris M. PLaisted of Bangor. Plaisted had graduated from Colby in 1853 and was a Bangor lawyer when, at the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, he became captain of a company in the 11th Maine Regiment. Before the end of the war he had risen to the rank of Major General. In 1867 Plaisted was elected to the Maine legislature, served his state in Congress, and was twice elected Governor of Maine. From 1873 to 1875 he served as Attorney General of the state. In his capacity as attorney general he cooperated with the county attorney of York in prosecution of the Smutty Nose murder, and it was Plaisted who made the closing argument to the jury.

Now let us see what that murder case was. Off the mouth of the Piscataqua River at Portsmouth and Kittery lie eight islands and several isolated rocks called the Isles of Shoals. The three southernmost islands belong to New Hampshire, the five northernmost to Maine. The largest of the Maine islands is Appledore, famous a hundred years ago as one of the first summer resorts in our state. In a large hotel, built as early as 1847, there summered such notables as Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Russell Lowell and Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Appledore was more familiarly called Hog Island. The second largest of the five Maine islands is Smutty Nose, so named because it has a rocky black point projecting into the sea. At one time Smutty Nose had several families as residents, but in 1873 there lived on the island only one family, that of a Norwegian immigrant fisherman, John Hontret. The household consisted of Hontret and his wife Mary, her brother Evan Christensen and his wife Anethe, and Hontret’s unmarried brother Mathew.

On March 5, 1873 there was a third woman in the house, unmarried Karen Christensen, sister of Mrs. Hontret and Evan Christensen. She had a job in Portsmouth, but was then visiting her Smutty Nose island relatives for a few days. On that March afternoon in 1873 John Hontret, accompanied by Evan and Mathew, went in Hontret’s schooner to Portsmouth to buy bait and bait their trawls for the next day’s fishing. They intended to return to Smutty Nose the same night, but were delayed because the herring bait did not arrive at the Portsmouth wharves until nearly midnight, and it was six o’clock the next morning before the trawls were baited. On that night of March 5, 1873 three women were therefore alone on Smutty Nose.

At that time many of the inhabitants of the other Isles of Shoals were Norwegians, and it was George Ingerbredsen of Hog Island who, early on the morning of March 6, heard shouts from Smutty Nose. Almost at the same time Hontret and his two companions, returning ,to Smutty Nose, were hailed from Hog Island and told about the shouts that Ingerbredsen had heard. Thus a group from Hog Island and the men with Hontret all arrived on Smutty nose at about the same time. At Hontret’s house they found Evan’s wife Anethe lying dead just inside the door. In another room was the body of Karen Christensen. The third woman, Mary Hontret, was the person who had raised the shouts heard on Hog Island. She had a gruesome story to tell.

Mrs. Hontret said that, at about 10 p.m., she and Anethe had gone to bed together in the bedroom in the western part of the house, while Karen made her bed on the lounge in the kitchen. The door between kitchen and bedroom was left open. The outside door of the house was not fastened because the lock had been broken for some time and had not been repaired.

Mrs. Hontret was awakened in the night by hearing Karen cry out. On the witness stand Mrs. Hontret testified that Karen shouted, “John kill me. John kill me.” Mrs. Hontret jumped out of bed and tried to open the bedroom door. Left open when she retired, ,the door was now fastened. She could hear blows being struck.

Breaking the door open, Mrs. Hontret, because a full moon gave good light. could ,see a tall man grasping a broken chair. She succeeded in pulling the bruised Karen into the bedroom, but not before the man had inflicted two severe blows on Mrs. Hontret herself. Then the woman told Anethe, who had remained in the bedroom, to jump out the window, go down to the shore and shout in hope someone would hear from one of the other islands. Hearing that excited advice to Anethe, the intruder rushed out of the kitchen and around the house, where he encountered the fleeing Anethe.

Mrs. Hontret next testified that she then heard Anethe shout several times the name Louis. Looking out the window, Mrs. Hontret saw and recognized the man as Louis Wagner, a German fisherman sometimes employed by her husband and one who had frequently been in the house. As she watched from the window, Mrs. Hontret saw this man pick up an axe that stood by the kitchen door and attack Anethe savagely with it. Begging her sister Karen to follow, Mrs. Hontret, when the intruder went again toward the door, jumped out the window and ran to the hen house, intending to hide in its cellar. But the family’s little dog followed her and she feared its barking would betray her. So she locked the dog in the hen house and herself ran down to the shore. Finding no boat there by which she could leave the island, she hid behind the rocks until daylight. Soon after sunrise, seeing no sign of the man, she began shouting and was soon heard on neighboring Hog Island. When help arrived, she learned that Karen as well as Anethe had been a victim of the terrible axe.

Two days later Louis Wagner, arrested in Boston, stoutly protested his innocence. But the preliminary hearing at York justified his trial, which began on July 9, 1873 in the Alfred Court House. No witness ever directly placed Wagner on Hog Island on that fatal night, but circumstantial evidence against him was overwhelming. No one could substantiate his statement that he had spent the night in Portsmouth. Fresh blisters on his hands indicated hard use of oars. He could not account for blood stains on his clothing.

Several witnesses testified that he was so hard up for money that he said he must have some even if he had to kill for it. Wagner had reason to believe that Hontret had concealed somewhere in the house nearly $600 recently received for a cargo of fish. He had taken pains to inquire not once, but three times, whether Hontret and the two men intended to return to Smutty Nose that night. It took the jury less than two hours to reach a verdict. They found Wagner guilty of murder in the first degree. All appeals were denied, and Wagner was executed by hanging on January 29, 1875, one of the last executions in our state. Four years later Maine abandoned capital punishment.

An important angle of the case concerned whether York County Court had jurisdiction. The defense contended that, while Smutty Nose was in the State of Maine, the act so placing it had been made after the creation of York County and no mention of any county was made in the record concerning the islands. The prosecution submitted evidence going as far back as 1620, and from that date traced the connection of the islands with the mainland, contending that the mainland was clearly York County. The judge who presided at Wagner’s trial declared that the prosecution was correct and that York County had jurisdiction. The defense objected that the judge went beyond his authority in making such a declaration, and appealed the decision to the law court. The higher court upheld the trial judge, and since that time there has never been any question that the five Maine islands of the Isles of Shoals belong in York County.

Many a murder trial has hinged on some peculiar point. The Knight case in Poland depended on how fast a yoke of oxen could be driven. The Coolidge case in Waterville rested on the identity of the contents of a basin used at the autopsy. So it was that a vital object in the Wagner case was a button. In the accused man’s pocket was an unusual button that was known to belong to Anethe Christensen.

Of course much was made of the conflicting identifications made by the two victims. Karen had shouted “John kill me”. Anethe had yelled “Louis, Louis”. Testimony revealed that Karen did not know Louis Wagner and that the man expected that night was John Hontret. The jury believed her shouts were from mistaken identity and that Mrs. Hontret’s identification of Louis Wagner was correct. Certainly John Hontret was not on the island that night. Three other men were with him all the time in Portsmouth, baiting trawls from midnight until daylight. If the murderer was not Louis Wagner, it could not have been John Hontret. The mass of circumstantial evidence against Wagner convinced the jury, and perhaps it ought to convince us ninety years later.

Yet it is possible that the impoverished German fisherman who was hanged for that crime in 1875 may have been innocent after all.

Year: 1964