On November 13, 1894, a conscientious neighbor passing by the Viroqua, Wisconsin farm owned by Mary Jonas noticed that her cows had not been milked as usual. He also noticed that there was no smoke coming from the chimney and that the 160-acre farm looked as if nobody had been maintaining the property. This seemed out of character for the 37-year-old Mary who had been living alone on the family farm since her mother left town months earlier to live with her son in Missouri. Widely-known as a pleasant and hard-working woman, she had reportedly planned to sell the farm and move to Missouri herself though it seemed incredible that she would just abandon the farm she had managed for years. Worried that something was wrong, the neighbours knocked on her door and, when there was no answer, broke into the house to check on her. While nothing seemed wrong on the main floor, they went upstairs and, to their horror, found Mary Jonas hanging from a rope attached to one of the rafters.
Despite the initial belief that she had committed suicide, the local sheriff immediately noticed some details that suggested otherwise. First of all, the chair on which Mary had supposedly been standing when she was hanged was upright and just behind her feet rather than being knocked over as with genuine suicides. He also noticed other details such as how the rope was tied that made him even more suspicious. Once he reported his findings to the local coroner, a jury formally ruled that Mary Jonas came to her death "at the hands of parties unknown."
Mary's brother David arrived in Viroqua after learning of his sister's death and agreed that she could never have killed herself. He also insisted that he knew who was really responsible, a 55-year-old married farmer named Samuel Buxton, who lived about a mile away. Building a case against Buxton wasn't that hard considering that Mary's neighbours all knew that he had been visiting her regularly for months. The sheriff also discovered a series of letters among Mary's effects that left little doubt about the kind of relationship she had with Buxton. Even more damningly, the sheriff also learned that Buxton had recently paid off a number of debts though where the money actually came from was a mystery.
Satisfied with the case against Buxton, Samuel Jonas and the sheriff visited the office of the district attorney and swore out an arrest warrant. Buxton was quickly arrested and, once he was in custody, was grilled relentlessly by the sheriff and his deputies. They even took him to the Jonas farm and confronted him with all the evidence they had gathered. Finally, after being held in jail for a while, Buxton finally made a full confession.
And what a confession it was! According to what he told witnesses, Buxton had worked for Mary in the past and formed a bizarre scheme to steal her money to pay off his own debts. This scheme began with a s series of letters that he had sent her in 1891, all of which "purported to come from a witch" but had been written by Buxton himself. The letters, which were later recovered from Mary's home by the sheriff, played on Mary's superstitious beliefs about witchcraft and, by telling her about his own supernatural powers and how they would help Mary with her witch problem, would make her more open to his romantic advances. That they soon became lovers suggests that this strategy worked very well for him.
Along with convincing the hapless woman about his powers, Buxton also made repeated promises that he would soon leave his wife so that they could be married. Except of course, for the fact that he had become tired of Mary's incessant demands and had absolutely no intention of ever leaving his wife and two children. There was also his debts which he hoped to pay off using the tidy nest egg of cash he believed Mary had hidden in her house. To rid himself of his inconvenient mistress (and acquire the money to pay his bills), Samuel Buxton hatched yet another bizarre scheme to play on her superstitious beliefs, namely convincing her to hang herself as part of a "magic ritual" to kill her rival.
As Buxton told the sheriff (and later confirmed at his trial), he sent Mary another letter shortly before her death which had supposedly been written by the same witch who had troubled her in the past. In this letter (which doesn't seem to have survived), Mary was told that, if she simply hanged herself until she was apparently dead, the same thing would happen to Samuel Buxton's wife as well. The only difference being of course, that Mary would survive while the other woman wouldn't.
Amazingly enough, Mary actually believed this and, arranged with Samuel Buxton to be present to prevent any mishaps. Buxton even helped secure the rope around the willing woman's neck and watched as she hanged herself. This attempt only failed because he suddenly panicked over the sight of Mary hanging by a rope and let her down instead. Deciding to try again, he returned to the Jonas house the following Sunday and told her that the hanging attempt had nearly killed his wife and, by letting Mary hang even longer this time, the ritual would surely succeed the second time around.
There was no last-minute reprieve for Mary Jonas on that day though. Not only did Buxton help Mary fasten the rope to one of the rafters in the house and around her neck, he also kicked away the chair she was standing on. If she expected Buxton to save her life, she very quickly learned otherwise as Buxton even held her down until she was definitely dead. He then searched her house for anything of value that he could steal before returning to his own home.
Once the sheriff had this confession, he then charged Samuel Buxton with Mary's murder. When the news got out, the entire community was outraged and the sheriff even had to transfer him to another jail to save his prisoner from a lynching. While awaiting trial at the jail in Sparta, Wisconsin, Samuel Buxton wrote a long and rambling letter to the editor of the local newspaper trying to tell his side of the story. Though Buxton called it a confession, it seemed mainly intended to smear Mary Jonas as much as possible. Essentially describing her as an evil temptress who tried luring him away from his loving family, he insisted that he had only killed her because she refused to let him out of their relationship.
After a preliminary hearing in which he pled guilty, Samuel Buxton was sentenced to life imprisonment on October 30. And, that was pretty much it for him. Despite being a reportedly model prisoner, Samuel Buxton remained in the Waupun Correctional Institution for the rest of his life. The very nature of his crime made parole extremely unlikely in his case and nobody seemed inclined to push for his release from prison. A brief newspaper item appearing in the local Viroqua paper on June 27, 1900 announced his death from unspecified causes and, since no one body in Viroqua seemed inclined to claim the body, Buxton was buried on the prison grounds in an unmarked grave.
As for Mary Jonas, her murder became headline news throughout the Midwest. It even made the front page of Chicago's Saturday Blade (along with a drawing of Buxton holding Mary's legs while she was hanging from the rafter). Despite becoming part of Viroqua's colorful history, her story was largely forgotten except in local lore. There aren't even any colorful ghost stories about her, a sad epitaph for a woman whose belief in the supernatural led to her death...
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