Radio Script #629

Little Talks on Common Things

November 22, 1964

Each year I try to include on this program at least one murder case that occurred in Maine. So today I want to tell you about a crime that happened in the little town of Shirley up near Moosehead Lake 63 years ago.

On the night of Sunday, May 12, 1901 the farm buildings of J. Wesley Allen, a prosperous farmer and selectman of the town, burned to the ground. Situated in Shirley on the stage road between Monson and Greenville, the place consisted of a story and a half house with one story ell, several sheds, and a large barn about 100 feet distant from the house. Strangely no one had been drawn to the fire, which must have happened long before midnight, because at 7:30 the next morning the ruins were scarcely smouldering.

The discovery was made on Monday morning by Charles Tibbetts. Driving his children to school, Tibbetts was suddenly and surprisingly confronted by the ruins of the Allen place. He stopped his team and got out to investigate. Near what must have been the entrance to the barn he saw what looked like the remains of a human body. That led him to look carefully into the ruins of the house, where he found another body under what had been the living room and a third under the kitchen in the ell. Those bodies had fallen with all the debris of the completely consumed house into the cellar.

Tibbetts’ find accounted for all occupants of the place — Wesley Allen, his wife, and his daughter, a woman in her twenties. Investigating officers soon concluded that the three persons had been murdered. It appeared the house and barn had burned separately, and what seemed to be blood stains were found between the two buildings.

All Maine newspapers carried front page accounts of the tragedy. At that time the Waterville Mail, for half a century a weekly paper, had become a daily. Its issue of May 14, 1901 gave its first words about the murder. It said: “The only clue was furnished by a man named Johnson, who reports that he was held up early yesterday morning near Bunker Brook by four men, all intoxicated, who answer the description of the four who held up the Willimantic stage last week.”

Posses scoured the countryside for those four men while terror reigned in Shirley. The Mail tells us: “The greatest excitement prevails. The stocks of arms and ammunition in the village stores have been depleted by anxious farmers who fear for the safety of their homes.”

A tramp named Daniel Creighton, suspected of being one of the stage robbers, was arrested and placed in the jail at Dover. He was soon able to establish his innocence. Four vagabonds were next arrested at Brunswick, one of them suspected of being an Indian half-breed, a kind of person not unfamiliar in the Moosehead region. But the fellow soon made it clear that he was no Indian, but a member of the little Negro colony at South Warren, where several reliable persons reported they had seen him on Sunday night. Two men were arrested as far away as Fort Fairfield in northern Aroostook, but those arrests also proved futile.

In its issue of May 15 the Waterville Mail gave a hint at what was soon to happen. It said: “The air is full of rumors and the next arrest may be made in an unexpected quarter. The belief that the motive was not robbery was strengthened yesterday when a gold watch and a quantity of silver coin were found in the ruins. Authorities now believe the men who held up the Willimantic stage did not commit these murders.”

Then on May 17, four days after the discovery of the crime, the Waterville Mail broke sensational news of a new arrest. Authorities had placed in the Dover jail a 26 year old, illiterate French-Canadian named Henry Lambert, who for four years had from time to time made his bachelor home in a log cabin not far from the Allen farm. Witnesses said that Lambert had been paying unwelcome attention to the Allen daughter, Carrie, and had made vulgar remarks about her. Near the Allen barn were the prints of new rubber overshoes, and officers claimed they found similar prints near the log cabin. There also appeared a trail of blood spots between the Allen place and the cabin.

Lambert admitted that he had been drinking on Sunday, but was sober when he reached his boarding place on Sunday night.

The Waterville Mail ended its May 17th story with these words: “The officers are working on the theory that Lambert, when drunk, went to the Allen house and had a dispute with Mr. Allen, who was leading Lambert toward the cabin when Lambert struck Allen down near the barn. Then Lambert entered the house and killed the wife and daughter.”

The following autumn Lambert was brought to trial in the Piscataquis County court. Two men testified they had heard Lambert voice threats against Carrie Allen. Angered and embittered by the way the girl had repulsed him, the State contended that Lambert had gone to the Allen place and committed the terrible murders. Although the prosecution never directly proved that the footprints were made by Lambert, the implication that he had worn the overshoes that made them was impressed upon the jury.

Much was made of a missing piece of cloth torn from Lambert’s shirt. The state contended that, if it could be found, it would bear evidence of the crime. It was never found. Lambert stated that he had torn off the piece of shirt to bind up his blistered feet, as he bathed them at a spring on his way down from Greenville, where he had gone to a dance, wearing a pair of patent leather shoes. But no one remembered seeing Lambert at the dance, and the prosecution made the most of that situation.

Witnesses testified that on Friday night, when he went to Greenville, Lambert left his boarding place with umbrella and rubbers, and returned without them. Never during the whole trial was the time of the killing or even of the fire, definitely established. By evidence of the couple with whom Lambert was boarding at the time — he was not then actually staying in the log cabin — he was at their home and in bed by 9:30 on that fatal Sunday night. The state contended that the fire could have been set as early as 9:00, and by the condition of the ashes the next morning probably was set as early as that or even earlier. Yet witnesses who were out on the road where they could plainly see the Allen lot testified they saw no fire there as late as 8:30.

During the months between Lambert’s arrest and his trial tension against Lambert had increased rather than cooled. When the jury found him guilty of first degree murder, very few people were surprised. His counsel appealed, but the law court upheld the verdict. All that took more than a year and it was on March 23, 1903 that Henry Lambert entered the State Prison at Thomaston for the triple crime committed on May 12, 1901.

From time to time a number of persons interested themselves in the case of Henry Lambert, who maintained a record as a model prisoner at Thomaston. But it was not until 1923, when the man had served 20 years of his life sentence, that any legal mind seriously challenged the original jury verdict. In that year 1923, when Percival Baxter was Governor of Maine, a prominent attorney, Charles Hichborn of Augusta, laid the case of Lambert before the Governor’s Council, and made an eloquent plea, not merely for commutation of sentence, but for full and complete pardon.

One member of that council was my family physician in my boyhood days, Dr. Herbert A. Lombard of Bridgton. The other councilors were Cecil Clark of Hollis, Rupert Baxter of Bath, Leroy Folsom of Norridgewock, James Clement of Montville, William Owen of Milo and Robert Peacock of Lubec. The eloquent words of Mr. Hichborn’s plea are preserved in a pamphlet printed in Augusta in May, 1923, and bearing the title “Henry Lambert, a plea for humanity and an argument for justice before the Governor and Council by Charles S. Hichborn of Augusta.” Foreword to the pamphlet was written by one of Maine’s best known editors, Arthur Staples of the Lewiston Journal.

Reviewing the trial in detail, Hichborn showed how flimsy and ill-supported had been the evidence of the footprints, the blood, the shirt, the unidentified time. The result of the trial, contended Hichborn, had been easy to predict, for Lambert had already been tried by an excited public opinion and found guilty without trial.

Hichborn pointed out that there was not one shred of evidence to show that either woman had been attacked and killed, nothing to show that both may not have died as a result of the fire. “But”, said the attorney, “that story, once started, could not be checked. The newspapers were filled with it. The whole country became wild with fright. Ultimately popular feeling, seeking to punish someone for what seemed to have been a crime, settled on this homeless young man, a French Canadian who worked in the neighborhood for years. He was convicted in a case based on suspicion and far-fetched circumstantial evidence, amid sharply conflicting testimony, where no proof of felonious assault was ever established, where reason laid down its sceptre and fear and prejudice reigned supreme.”

More than a month after Mr. Hichborn had made his eloquent plea, the council rendered its decision. On June 26, 1923 Henry Lambert was granted a full and unconditional pardon. Out of the State Prison, after 20 years within its walls, walked a man concerning whom the State of Maine now declared that he was innocent of the crime for which he had been convicted in the heat of popular feeling up in Piscataquis County two decades before.

Year: 1964