Providentia

The Mad Bomber

On November 16, 1940, a crude pipe bomb was found by police in Consolidated Edison's office building in Manhattan.  Although the bomb hadn't exploded, a note attached to the bomb threatened further attacks against the company.  The second pipe bomb was found nearly a year later.   Police received a note signed "F.P" (meaning "Fair Play") announcing that the bomber was planning to suspend the bombing campaign due to "patriotic feelings" for the "duration of the war."   Sure enough, the next bomb wasn't found until March 29, 1950, at Grand Central Station.  Between 1940 and 1956, a total of 33 bombs were planted in different sites across New York City, although no actual injuries would occur until 1953. 

The most devastating explosion was on December 2, 1956, when a bomb went off in a movie theatre in Brooklyn, injuring six people.  The bomb had apparently been planted inside one of the seats after the bomber cut open the upholstery.  With the escalating violence of the blasts and the taunting letters sent by "the Mad  Bomber" (the name that the media had for him), police were desperate to solve the case.  Inspector Howard Finney of the New York crime then decided to follow the advice of a fellow police officer and consulted Dr. James Brussel.

As New York state's assistant commissioner of mental hygiene and a prominent forensic psychiatrist, Brussel had modest success in solving previous cases but had never been consulted in a major case before.  Forensic profiling was still a largely experimental approach to solving crimes, and police were reluctant to consider it.  Brussel examined photographs of the various crime scenes and the bomber's notes.  In one of the first uses of offender profiling,  he concluded that they were seeking a "rather ordinary-looking man, quiet, polite, proper, and well-dressed." He added that the bomber would be "between 40 and 50 years old, foreign born—probably central European (possibly Slavic)—a Roman Catholic, and fairly well educated, sexually abnormal, probably single, living with his mother or maiden sister in Westchester County or Connecticut and, when police found him, he would be wearing a double-breasted suit, buttoned".   Brussel persuaded the police to release the profile to the media in the hope that it would draw the bomber's attention.

The rationale behind the profile that Dr. Brussel developed on the Mad Bomber was straightforward enough.  He diagnosed the unknown offender based on his own clinical experience with similar offenders and also on prevailing theories relating to mental illness and physical build.  Since the bomber was likely suffering from paranoia, Brussel estimated that he would be around age 50 based on the year of the first bombing and the lifetime incidence of paranoid symptoms.  Brussel also stressed the "phallic" nature of the bombs and the likelihood that the bomber was suffering from an Oedipal Complex (the police were not too impressed with this conclusion).  His idea of publicizing the profile came from the bomber's eagerness for publicity, but police knew that most of the leads that the profile turned up would be false (still a common problem with profiling).

In an unanticipated development, the bomber phoned Dr. Brussel directly and warned him to "keep out of this, or you'll be sorry."  He then hung up before the call could be traced.  After numerous false confessions and poor leads, Consolidated Edison searched its own records and turned up a name that appeared to fit the profile.   George Metesky was a 52-year-old bachelor who had worked for Consolidated Edison for several years before developing tuberculosis.  Metesky had apparently blamed his health problems on the company and had written several threatening letters after being denied a disability pension.  Those letters were still on file, and they were quickly matched to the notes by "F.P."  When the police came to his Waterbury, Connecticut home, he confessed immediately (while he was wearing a bathrobe at the time, he did change into a double-breasted jacket before going to the police station)  

After Metesky's arrest, neighbors reported that he was a quiet man who lived with his sisters and had no visible means of support.  They noticed that he became friendlier and more animated after the Brussels profile came out, but nobody suspected him of being The Mad Bomber.  Police found a complete workshop in his garage where he had built his bombs, and he talked about his plans for an even bigger bomb that he would detonate in the New York Coliseum.   He would later claim that he had deliberately planned the blasts to avoid any fatalities.

Diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, Metesky was declared legally insane and committed to Matteawan Hospital for the Criminally Insane at Beacon, New York.  He would never respond to treatment but was a model patient otherwise.  After being released in 1973, he lived quietly in his family home until his death in 1994. 

James Brussel's role in capturing the "Mad Bomber" propelled him to national fame and gave offender profiling new respect that it never had before.  Brussel was frequently consulted in later cases but was best known for his role in the Boston Strangler investigation.  While he is still viewed as the "father of psychological profiling," his inferential approach to offender profiling has not held up over time.  Later critics have pointed out that only one of his profiles was ever validated and largely relied on his clinical experience and assumptions that were frequently incorrect.  His success in the Metesky case (and his presumed success with the Boston Strangler case) represents his most notable achievements despite being consulted in numerous other cases. 

Modern offender profiling, as practiced by most law enforcement agencies, has a multi-disciplinary focus combining medico-legal death investigation, criminalistics, and psychology.  While commonly accepted standards have been adopted, changing demographics and increased publicity surrounding police procedures (including popular television shows) have made the profiler's task more difficult.  To this day, it remains an open question whether profiling is more of an art than a science.

Witchcraft and Superstition: A Deadly Combination

The recent death of a young boy in Maharashtra, India, after being beaten by a witch doctor to expel a supposed demon, highlights the dangers of believing in superstitions and resorting to witchcraft. The 13-year-old boy was taken to the witch doctor by his parents, who believed that he was possessed by an evil spirit. The witch doctor proceeded to beat him with a stick, causing injuries that eventually led to his death.

This tragic incident is not unique to India. Superstitions and witchcraft are prevalent in many parts of the world, especially in rural areas where people have limited access to medical facilities and education. Believing in superstitions and resorting to witchcraft can have deadly consequences, as seen in this case.

It is important to understand that there is no scientific evidence to support the existence of demons or evil spirits. Mental and physical illnesses should be treated by medical professionals, not by witch doctors or other practitioners of alternative medicine. It is also the responsibility of governments to ensure that their citizens have access to quality healthcare and education, which can help to dispel myths and superstitions.

Communities should be encouraged to speak out against practices that are harmful and dangerous. Education and awareness campaigns can help to promote rational thinking and dispel superstitions. It is also important to hold those who use witchcraft and other harmful practices accountable for their actions.

In conclusion, the death of the young boy in Maharashtra is a tragic reminder of the dangers of superstitions and witchcraft. It is the responsibility of governments, communities, and individuals to promote education and rational thinking and to hold practitioners of harmful practices accountable for their actions. Only then can we hope to create a world where such tragedies are a thing of the past.

What Influences Social Networks?

In recent years, social networks have become very popular and an integral part of everyday life. People express their feelings and experiences in this virtual environment and become aware of others’ opinions and interests. Among them, influential users play an important role in disseminating information on social networks. Identifying such influencers is important in designing techniques to increase the speed of information dissemination. Such techniques are applicable in various fields including viral marketing, preventing the dissemination of harmful information, providing specialized recommendations, etc. Various approaches have been used to detect influencers on social networks, mostly based on the individual’s position in the network structure and their interactions. Considering the strengths and weaknesses of the previous methods, a study presented in the journal Applied Artificial Intelligence presents a novel method based on the content of the users’ posts without considering the network structure. This is done using a combination of high-level features extracted from images to measure the individual’s influence. Users’ images are investigated from three aspects: (1) color scheme, (2) advertising nature, (3) images’ semantics. To describe each of these aspects, feature extraction methods were used with acceptable accuracy in recognizing influential users. Finally, to achieve greater efficiency and precision, feature-combination methods have been investigated to provide an integrated classifier. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

For the abstract

The Case of the Corregio Soapmaker

Rome's Museo Criminologico [Criminological Museum]  may not be to everybody's taste,  but it's worth seeing (alas, it's now closed though, hopefully, that will change in the future).  The museum's collection featured photographs and memorabilia from some of the most gruesome forensic cases in the long history of Italy.   From Renaissance murders to the Mafia, this museum had it all.  

There, I first learned about Leonarda Cianciulli, a.k.a. the "Soap Maker of Correggio," and her bizarre criminal career.   While almost unknown outside of Italy, Leonarda's career as a serial killer is still unparalleled in many ways, both for her unique method of concealing bodies and her rather odd motive for murder.

Born in 1894, she was raised in one of the most poverty-stricken regions of Italy.   Her mother, Emilia di Nolfi,  had become pregnant due to rape and was later forced to marry her rapist, Mariano Cianciulli when she realized she was pregnant.   By most accounts, Leonarda's early childhood was a grim one.   Her father died when Leonarda was young, but her mother's later remarriage did little to ease the situation at home.  Due to emotional abuse by her mother, she would make two suicide attempts.   Leonarda compounded her woes by marrying a man of whom her parents disapproved (they had a more prosperous suitor in mind).   She would later claim that her mother had placed a curse on her due to her 1914 marriage to Raffaele Pansardi, and the tragedy she later endured seemed to bear that out.  

Along with being imprisoned for fraud and later seeing her house destroyed by an earthquake, she also lost three children in childbirth and another ten as children.   Of her seventeen pregnancies, only four survived to adulthood, and she was especially protective of all of them as a result.  Despite these troubles, she and her husband eventually settled in the town of Correggio, near Naples, and Leonarda settled into everyday life as a shopkeeper and part-time fortune teller.  

A long-time believer in the supernatural, she had once consulted a Gypsy fortuneteller who, among other things, predicted that all of her children would die before her.  A different fortuneteller told her that she faced either a future in prison or a criminal asylum though Leonarda seemed not to take that warning seriously.    Her neighbors would later describe her as a gentle soul fond of poetry.   Nobody suspected what would be coming next.

For Leonarda, everything changed in 1939 when Benito Mussolini began drafting young men to prepare for Italy's entry into World War II.   Il Duce's popularity had slipped during the 1930s, and the prospect of Italy entering the war on the side of Nazi Germany alarmed most Italians.    Leonarda became mentally unbalanced at the thought of her favorite son, Giuseppe, being drafted and possibly dying in combat.    The prospect of losing Giuseppe led to her decision to carry out human sacrifices to preserve her son from death.  As she would later state during her testimony, killing others would keep her children safe by providing God with other deaths in their place.   Since she had four remaining children, she would need to sacrifice four others to keep them safe.

Her first victim was a 50-year-old spinster named Faustina Setti.   Faustina recruited Leonarda as a fortune-teller/matchmaker and paid her 30,000 lire to find a suitable husband.     Telling her that she knew of a good marriage prospect in a nearby village, Leonarda persuaded Faustina to write letters and postcards to relatives that she would later post from out of town to reassure them she was okay.    She also instructed Faustina not to tell anyone about her marriage plans.    When Faustina was to leave Corregio, she visited Leonarda's home for the last time.   There, Leonarda gave her drugged wine and chopped her body into nine pieces with a hatchet. 

According to the official statement she gave to police afterward:  I threw the pieces into a pot, added seven kilos of caustic soda, which I had bought to make soap, and stirred the whole mixture until the pieces dissolved in a thick, dark mush that I poured into several buckets and emptied in a nearby septic tank. As for the blood in the basin, I waited until it had coagulated, dried it in the oven, ground it and mixed it with flour, sugar, chocolate, milk and eggs, as well as a bit of margarine, kneading all the ingredients together.  I made lots of crunchy tea cakes and served them to the ladies who came to visit, though Giuseppe and I also ate them.

After pocketing the money Faustina had brought with her, Leonarda selected fellow villager Francesca Soavi as her next victim.   After telling Francesca that she had found her a job at a school in Piacenza, Leonarda persuaded her to keep the job offer secret.   She also persuaded Francesca to write a series of letters and postcards that would be mailed later.   Copying the murder of Faustina Setti almost exactly, Leonarda drugged Francesca and dismembered the corpse with an ax on September 5, 1940.    She also pocketed her life savings (only 3,000 lire this time).   Once again, no suspicion was attached to her, and Leonarda was free to find another victim. 

It was this last victim who would prove to be her undoing.   Virginia Cacioppo was a former soprano who had sung opera professionally at La Scala in Milan.  She was also wealthier than Leonarda's other victims, with more than 50,000 lire in cash and jewelry.   After Leonarda lured Virginia to her house with the promise of finding her a job with a mysterious impresario, she was killed like the other victims.   In a last, ghoulish touch, Leonarda added cologne to the soap she made from Virginia's remains to make it more appealing to friends and neighbors.  

Virginia Cacioppo's sister-in-law became suspicious and began investigating her disappearance.   When she learned that Virginia had last been seen entering Leonarda's shop, she went to the police superintendent.  Following an investigation, Leonarda Cianciulli was arrested for murder.    She was unusually open with the police and described her crimes and how she disposed of the bodies in ghoulish detail.    Since World War 2  was still underway, putting her on trial for the murders was hardly a priority.   It was not until 1946 and Italy's defeat that the "Corregio Soap Maker" trial finally began. 

And it was quite a trial.   Though her son Giuseppe had been arrested as a possible accomplice, he was later freed.    Leonarda's detailed confession of the murders, complete with descriptions of what she did with the bodies afterward, generated international publicity.  During her testimony, she quickly corrected the prosecutor on any details that she considered inaccurate.    At one point, she proudly pointed out that she "gave the copper ladle, which I used to skim the fat off the kettles, to my country, which was so badly in need of metal during the last days of the war. . . ."    She also described her reason for the murders, including her desire to help her son with human sacrifice.  Whether she truly believed what she had said in court or was hoping to avoid prison through an insanity plea, the graphic details of her crimes attracted a fair amount of public attention in a country still recovering from war.

Found guilty by the court,  Leonarda Cianciulli was sentenced to thirty years in prison and three years in a criminal asylum.   While in prison, she wrote her memoirs, Le confessioni di un’anima amareggiata  (Confessions of a bitter soul).  Unrepentant to the last, Leonarda died of cerebral apoplexy (stroke) on October 15, 1970.   As she would later insist, "I did not kill for greed," though her reason for killing three people seems as murky as ever.    When it was still open, Rome's Criminology Museum contained numerous artifacts from the case, including the pot she used to boil her victims for soap.   

Online music-assisted rehabilitation system for depressed people based on deep learning.

The processing of negative emotions is closely related to the occurrence of depression, and improving the mood of patients with depression has an important effect on improving symptoms.  An article recently published in Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology & Biological Psychiatry applies deep learning to the diagnosis and treatment of depression patients, combined with music-assisted rehabilitation to help depression patients recover. Moreover, this paper strengthens deep learning, combines the psychological characteristics of depression to improve the algorithm, and analyzes the algorithm with music-assisted rehabilitation, and obtains an intelligent algorithm that can be applied to the music-assisted rehabilitation system. Finally, this paper constructs an online music-assisted rehabilitation system for depression based on deep learning. The results of the experimental research show that the online music-assisted rehabilitation system for depression based on deep learning can play an important role in the treatment of depression. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

For the abstract

How To Be A Nazi Bride

It must have seemed like a splendid idea (at least to the Nazi ideologues who first came up with it).

When the Nazis first came to power in pre-WWII Germany, they needed to reshape German society and discard anything they considered "decadent" or dangerous.   And that meant redefining what constituted "proper roles" for German women.   While generally tolerated in menial positions (e.g., secretaries and factory workers), women were banned from more "masculine" professions such as medicine, law, or academics.   But women were regarded as being primarily suited for three things:  "kinder, küche, kirche" ("children, kitchen, church"), and any training they received had to prepare them for those roles alone.   In other words, to stay at home and produce as many children as possible for the glory of the Fatherland.  

As Adolf Hitler told various women's groups, the concept of "female emancipation" was a plot by Jewish intellectuals to undermine traditional values.   Instead, he insisted that German women did not need emancipation, given how well-treated they were.   Herman Goering summarized the Nazi view best when he wrote in 1934 that women needed to "take hold of the frying pan, dust pan, and broom, and marry a man."    Granted, there were highly placed women in the Nazi hierarchy, primarily working through organizations such as the NS-Frauenschaft for older women and the League of German Girls (Bund Deutscher Mädel) for younger women. Still, they were primarily entrusted with upholding Nazi ideals for how women needed to behave.

But that wasn't enough to satisfy the Nazi high command, many of whom felt that the rise in divorces and drop in birth rates since World War One represented a threat to the very existence of the Aryan race.   To counter what they saw as the corrupting influence of degenerate Western ideas, they implemented a multi-prong approach:   not only did membership in the Nazi female-led organizations become mandatory, but they also implemented a special award for any woman having multiple children, the  Ehrenkreuz der Deutschen Mutter or cross of Honour of the German Mother.  Women having eight or more children got the medal in gold, but there were bronze and silver versions as well.

Still, the most bizarre strategy for training women involved the Reichsbräuteschule (Reich bride schools),  first introduced during the late 1930s.  Supposedly inspired by the bride schools commonly seen in Japan during that era, such schools were already in place in some parts of Germany. However, they primarily aimed at educating women about birth control and better health care to reduce infant mortality and malnutrition.   But  a special order from Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler  in 1936 soon changed all that.  

Organized under  Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, the head of the NS-Frauenschaft, the new Reich bride schools were as much about indoctrination into the Nazi philosophy as it was about educating them.   While the schools for mothers continued (albeit with more ideology and "training" in race and genetics), bride schools focused on encouraging women to forget their previous lives and prepare themselves for their new role in life.   According to a 1937 Associated Press story on the schools:  "in circles of twenty students, the young girls should attend courses at the institute, preferably two months before their wedding day, to recuperate spiritually and physically, to forget the daily worries connected with their previous professions, to find the way and to feel the joy of their new lives as wives."  

Though the first attendees were =women engaged to be married to prominent members of the Nazi party, this was quickly expanded to include women from across Germany.   All "proper" women, that is, since only women of "pure" Aryan stock were allowed to attend.  Anyone deemed to have "defective" genes or who were of Jewish or Roma heritage was typically weeded out (and likely recorded as potential candidates for sterilization or imprisonment).  

For six weeks, the attendees of the bride school lived together in a three-room structure where they would be thoroughly grounded in all the skills expected of them, i.e., cooking, cleaning, and managing a household.   They were also required to swear an oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler and his party and to accept the various dos and don't associated with being a proper Nazi wife.  These included not working outside the home, NEVER wearing trousers, not wearing makeup, not wearing high-heeled shoes, and not dying their hair or otherwise altering their appearance to make themselves more "sultry."    They were also ordered to have as many children as possible and to ensure their blood was kept "pure" by only marrying men of proper Aryan stock.  They were also pledged to raise their children to abide by Nazi codes of conduct.   Each school graduate also received a subsidy (around $400  U.S.) to help set the happy couple up for married life.

The earliest bride schools were propaganda tools with extensive media coverage (distributed to newspapers worldwide).   The pictures that were often displayed, with young women learning to arrange flowers, cook, and sew, helped give the Nazi movement a more human face, particularly given the horrific stories that refugees were spreading as they fled for safety.   Still, the concept of a bride school seemed to resonate overseas as similar establishments sprang up in other parts of Europe and North America (albeit without the Nazi indoctrination).   

Granted, it's hard to say how well the bride schools worked in actual practice, especially after the outbreak of World War II when labor shortages forced many women to return to their factory jobs to help the German war effort.  Also, as the first wounded veterans began returning home, the curriculum at the schools underwent a subtle change.  This included training unattached women as brides and arranging for them to meet these wounded ex-soldiers at fashionable resorts for potential marriage (Hitler remained determined to have men with "good genes" continue fathering as many children as possible).  

By 1944, most of the bride schools had been either closed or were on the verge of closing as the end of the war drew near.   Even Gertrud Scholtz-Klink accepted that there were more important priorities for women than being perfect brides.   By the war's end, the Nazi bride schools were virtually forgotten, with virtually no reference to them in the extensive media coverage of Germany's defeat and reconstruction.   Aside from what little information is to be found in historical archives,  it's as if they had never existed.

But the concept of "bride schools" hasn't been wholly forgotten.  For example, in post-WWII Japan, the Red Cross set up special bride schools for Japanese women marrying American soldiers to prepare them for life in the U.S., along with "training films" describing life for interracial couples and mandatory health and military certification.   More recently, the South Korean government has launched a crackdown on schools preparing Vietnamese women for mail-order marriages to South Korean men (training included learning to speak Korean and how to show proper respect for a mother-in-law).    

Still, while marriage preparation courses remain popular, they have become a bit more egalitarian, with both men and women being invited.   No Nazi oaths of loyalty required...

A Tale of Two Killings

"TERRIBLE TRAGEDY IN WASHINGTON!  P. BARTON KEY, U.S. DISTRICT ATTORNEY KILLED BY HON.  DAN'L SICKLES of NEW YORK"

News of the murder of U.S. District Attorney Philip Barton Key (son of Francis Scott Key of Star Spangled Banner fame) on February 21, 1859, would have been electrifying enough by itself.   That Key had been killed by New York Congressman Daniel E. Sickles, a prominent politician and lawyer who believed that Key had been romantically involved with his young wife ensured the full attention of Washington society.   

Daniel Sickles was certainly no stranger to scandal.    Having been first elected to the New York State Assembly in 1847 (with the help of the notorious Tammany Hall political machine to which he belonged), his marriage to Teresa Bagioli in 1852 helped alienate his family and hers as well (he was thirty-three while she was only fifteen at the time).   Whatever misgivings people had about the age difference didn't prevent Sickles from holding a diplomatic post in London before returning to the U.S. and winning his first seat in Congress in 1857.   Despite his successful marriage to Teresa, Sickles also had a long association with notorious New York courtesan Fanny White and had even taken her with him to London while the pregnant Teresa was left at home.   

Whether it was being neglected by her husband or the humiliation of the very public affair he had been having with Fanny, Teresa's affair with the handsome and charismatic Philip Key was the apparent trigger that led to murder.  According to the lurid news coverage that I was able to track down, Sickles had heard rumors of the affair and confronted his wife, who "sighed as acknowledgment of her guilt."  Though he ordered Key to leave his wife alone, Sickles decided that threats alone wouldn't be enough.  Later seeing Key near Lafayette Square, across from the White House, Sickles left his nearby house to confront him.  After accusing Key of "having dishonored him and destroyed his domestic peace," Sickles then shot him twice.  One bullet was lodged near Key's right side, while the other bullet was lodged in his right side near the femoral artery.  Falling to the ground, Key begged Sickles not to kill him, but Sickles fired a third time, and Key died at the scene.  

Though there is no plaque to mark the site of the shooting, it’s hard not to appreciate just how public the killing was.   Having visited Lafayette Square once or twice, I can certainly picture the crowds who must have seen the murder.   Whatever was going through Sickles’ mind at the time, the prospect of getting caught didn’t seem to have dissuaded him in any way.

After the shooting, Sickles went to the nearby home of his friend, Attorney General Jeremiah Black.   Black urged Sickles to turn himself over to the police, which he promptly did.  In the meantime, Key's body was taken to the nearby National Club house where an inquest had little trouble determining that Sickles had been responsible for his death.   There were numerous witnesses, after all.  

Though Sickles was taken to jail and charged with murder, he was still visited in prison by some of the most prominent members of Washington society.  Then-President James Buchanan even sent a note of support which likely explains the special treatment Sickles received in jail.  He was even allowed to keep his gun and use the warden’s office to meet his prominent visitors privately.  Despite the favorable treatment, Sickles knew well that he would stand trial soon.

As one newspaper story I found pointed out, "the high position of the parties in this tragedy has caused the most unusual excitement."   Despite facing a possible death penalty, Sickles attracted a lot of sympathy (even though his infidelities were well-known).   Newspapers also related all the details of Sickles' visits from various family members describing his young wife's emotional torment over the role she played in the whole scandal. 

Looking over the newspaper coverage of the case, I couldn't help but be struck by the almost total support Sickles received from Washington society.   At the same time, there was virtually no sympathy for Teresa Sickles or Philip Key (which likely distressed both their families).  That Teresa likely had to endure far worse from her husband's affairs was dismissed as irrelevant.   If she was mentioned at all, it was for being a remorseful adulteress who drove her husband to murder.  

Sickles immediately began putting together a "dream team" of prominent attorneys to defend his case.  The team included Edward M. Stanton (later Secretary of War), fellow New Yorker James T. Brady  (both Brady and Sickles were Tammany Hall cronies), and Brady's partner, James Graham.   Under their legal guidance, Sickles agreed to plead temporary insanity (the first time this had ever been attempted in a U.S. trial).  

The real defense would be the "unwritten law" allowing a man to murder to avenge the sexual "dishonor" of a wife, daughter, or sister.   Beginning around 1840 (likely sooner), men who went on trial for cases very similar to Sickles' were typically acquitted because of the "unwritten law."   It was an often-slippery defense to try using in a courtroom, though.   Given the eminence of Sickles' victim and the murder that occurred near the White House, pleading temporary insanity likely seemed safer to his lawyers. 

The trial began on April 4 in a stuffy Washington courtroom with Robert Ould and J. M. Carlisle acting as prosecutors.   And it was quite a trial.   Edward M. Stanton and James T. Brady both gave stirring arguments on behalf of their client.  The fact that Stanton was a personal friend of the defendant helped add to the courtroom drama.    The "unwritten law" was central to their defense and their claim that Sickles was too mentally disturbed to be held accountable for his actions.   

Though the prosecutors attempted to bring up Sickles' infidelity to show that he wasn't too emotionally invested in his marriage, the judge excluded that line of testimony.   The prosecution then shifted to discussing the cold-bloodedness of his attack on Key and downplayed any supposed provocation.

The trial lasted for twenty-two days with numerous melodramatic scenes, highlighting the domestic drama of the case.   Members of the audience often cheered at something Brady or Stanton said despite stern warnings from the judge.    Stanton was particularly effective as he weighed in on the "sanctity of the marriage vows" and the husband's right to defend his home.   One commentator later said Stanton's performance was "a typical piece of Victorian rhetoric, an ingenious thesaurus of aphorisms on the sanctity of the family."   Newspaper editorials across the country weighed in on the case, and full details of Teresa's candid confession were leaked to the press (likely by Sickles' attorneys).  

Popular magazines such as Harper's Weekly ran pictures of Sickles in prison, often showing him in prayer or weighed down by the stress of the case and the horrors of being in prison (despite being far better treated than the average prisoner).   Many editorials even suggested that Sickles was a hero for "saving all the ladies of Washington from this rogue named Key."  There seemed little doubt that he would eventually be acquitted.

Not surprisingly, the defense worked.   After deliberating for only seventy minutes, the jury brought in a verdict of not guilty, and the crowd went wild.   To prevent a mad rush to congratulate his client, Stanton asked the judge to release Sickles from custody which was immediately granted.  As one eyewitness reported, "Mr. Stanton, unable to repress the emotions of his big heart, . . . almost rivaled David when he danced before the ark of the Tabernacle."   Enthusiastic supporters serenaded Stanton, Brady, and Sickles that night at their homes.

After the acquittal, Daniel Sickles publicly forgave his wife for the affair (with no mention of his infidelity) and temporarily withdrew from public life.  If anything, the public seemed more outraged by Teresa than her husband, and she became a social pariah afterward.   Sickles never resigned from Congress, and his political career continued as strongly as ever.   It helped that he had the public support of then-President Buchanan (who was openly thrilled by the acquittal), not to mention the not-so-covert aid of the Tammany Hall political machine. 

Any political fallout from the acquittal was quickly overshadowed by the U.S. Civil War, which broke out soon afterward.  Daniel Sickles became a prominent figure in the Union Army and, ironically, his old courtroom adversary Robert Ould would become part of the Confederate Army.   Though he stayed in the army until the war's end, Sickles' military career ended after losing a leg in the Battle of Gettysburg.  Ever the showman, Sickles donated the fractured bones of his lost leg, complete with a miniature coffin, to the new Army Medical Museum in Washington, D.C., where they remain on display even today.  Eventually promoted to major general, Sickles moved on to a diplomatic career with postings to Colombia and Spain (and a rumored affair with the deposed Spanish queen).    After Teresa died in 1867, he remarried and had two more children with his second wife.  

Daniel Sickles died in New York City in 1914 and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Though he is mainly remembered for his military and political career, the role he played in establishing temporary insanity and "the unwritten law" as legal defenses for murder can't be underestimated.   Both defenses would play a role in numerous murder cases as husbands would use the defense to escape punishment.  Never mind that many of these outraged husbands were often guilty of infidelity themselves, the "unwritten law" made murder perfectly legal so long as it was for the "right" reasons.  

But it only applied to men.   Any woman murdering under similar circumstances would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.   This became abundantly clear in the case of Kate Southern, a Georgia housewife charged with murdering a rival for her husband's affections in early 1878. 

According to the lurid news coverage,  Kate had married her husband, Bob Southern, despite the active opposition of Narcissa Fowler (frequently described in the newspaper coverage as a "woman of notoriously lewd character"), who had been sexually intimate with Bob before, and after,  his marriage.  Though Kate knew about the affair and had been "unsettled and annoyed by the knowledge," she seemed determined to keep Bob and Narcissa as far apart as possible.    On the other hand, Narcissa actively tried undermining Kate's marriage, including starting scandalous rumors about her and saying that "they would have no peace or satisfaction as long as (Narcissa) lived."  

A few months after Kate and Bob were married, Narcissa confronted Kate at a party where, under the influence of the whiskey she had been drinking, she began insulting Kate using what one witness later described as "epithets too vulgar and obscene to be written or spoken."   After finally provoking Kate into a fistfight, Kate's sister, Amorelli Hambrick, got involved.   Though Narcissa likely had no idea that Kate was armed with a knife, she learned this quickly enough when Kate stabbed her repeatedly. 

The newspaper coverage fails to mention whether Narcissa died at the scene or later, but Kate promptly fled.   Joined by her husband and other family members, she became a fugitive until a posse eventually tracked them down.   After being returned to Pickens County where the stabbing occurred, Kate Southern was charged with murder.  Her sister was also charged as an accomplice, while her husband was charged with helping her escape.

Kate's legal defense at her trial was far less spirited than what Daniel Sickles managed to arrange.  Many observers accused Kate's lawyers of mismanaging her defense, but their legal options were fairly limited.  There was no question of seeking any kind of defense based on the "unwritten law."   Though husbands could claim that a wife's infidelity was an attack on their "personal honor," wives were expected to endure the extramarital affairs of their husbands in silence.   Women could claim self-defense if they were being raped but killing an unfaithful husband or the other woman typically led to a criminal conviction.  Presumably, the courts didn't feel comfortable giving wives the same "license to kill" that husbands enjoyed.

And so it was with Kate Southern.  It probably didn't help that her defense attorneys failed to launch much of a defense on her behalf.   Many newspaper reporters commenting on the trial openly criticized the lawyers for not calling any witnesses on Kate's behalf or their failure to cross-examine many prosecution witnesses.    All they could come up with was a half-hearted insanity defense that failed to convince the jury.  Her conviction hardly came as a surprise to anyone though the penalty handed down by the judge certainly was.   Kate Southern was sentenced to death by hanging.

Almost immediately after news of the sentence got out, her attorneys mounted an appeal to Georgia's Governor to commute the sentence.   This included numerous depositions from Kate's family members (including her husband), which attempted to show that she was provoked into killing Narcissa.   It also helped that Kate had recently given birth, and descriptions of Kate in prison with her baby while she awaited her execution generated enormous sympathy.  Petitions with thousands of signatures (primarily from women) were sent pleading for clemency.

The campaign worked.   Kate's sentence was changed to ten years in prison to be spent in a Georgia prison camp.  Her sister, Amorelli, was sent to the same camp to serve her sentence.   Thousands of supporters later watched the train taking Kate to prison.  As one newspaper description I found reported, "at all the towns through which the train passed, the people (ministers, gamblers, women, and all classes) crowded to the depots to see and express their sympathy for her, and at Atlanta, where a large purse was collected for her benefit, the excitement was so great that the car windows were broken."    Her husband found work near the prison and was even granted conjugal visits (Kate had two more children during her time in prison).    After serving only three years of her sentence, she was granted a full pardon and allowed to return home.

Kate Southern largely faded into obscurity after she was released, but her case continued to generate controversy.  In the years that followed, more conservative newspaper editors accused Kate's supporters of allowing her gender to save her from execution and argued against granting clemency for women committing murder. 

And there would be no more clemency.  When Emma Simpson shot her estranged husband in 1919, believing that "the new unwritten law, which does not permit a married man to love another woman, will be my defense,"  even Clarence Darrow couldn't save her from being found "insane but guilty."  

While the number of cases claiming the "unwritten law" became less frequent by the 1920s, husbands committing murder  to defend their "personal honor"  still used the defense well into the 20th century.  In many U.S. states, the law allowing husbands to kill "interlopers" was formally enshrined into legal statutes (thus making it the "written law").  When and where the law could be used became a central sticking point for many judges who insisted that husbands could only kill in the "heat of passion."  If the husband allowed time for his anger to cool and to become more reasonable, then any homicide committed afterward became "deliberate revenge," and he could be prosecuted.

In Texas, for example, one statute held that "Homicide is justifiable when committed by the husband upon one taken in the act of adultery with the wife, provided the killing take place before the parties to the act have separated. Such circumstance cannot justify a homicide where it appears that there has been, on the part of the husband, any connivance in or assent to the adulterous connection."    In other words, the couple had to be caught in flagrante delicto for the killing to be legal (it was eventually repealed in 1974).  Other states, including Georgia, New Mexico, and Utah, passed similar laws, almost all of which would be repealed by the end of the 1970s.

These days while husbands are no longer so free to kill to avenge "personal honor", the "temporary insanity" or "diminished capacity" defense is still around in one form or another.  Perhaps fittingly, these days, it is more likely to be used by women on trial for murdering their husbands due to domestic abuse (a.k.a. the "battered woman defense") than vice-versa.   Whatever the status of the "unwritten law" today, however, defense attorneys are still known to use it during murder trials simply because it might work.  There is often no telling what a sympathetic jury might decide to do in cases where they regard the husband (or wife) as being fully justified in murdering in the heat of passion.

And so, the legacy of Daniel Sickles and Kate Southern remains with us even today.

Crystal Cube: Forecasting disruptive events.

Disruptive events within a country can have global repercussions, creating a need for the anticipation and planning of these events. Crystal Cube (CC) is a novel approach to forecasting disruptive political events at least one month into the future. The system uses a recurrent neural network and a novel measure of event similarity between past and current events. We also introduce the innovative Thermometer of Irregular Leadership Change (ILC). We present an evaluation of CC in predicting ILC for 167 countries and show promising results in forecasting events one to twelve months in advance. We compare CC results with results using a random forest as well as previous work. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

 

For the abstract

Who Was Kasper Hauser?

On May 26, 1828 (Easter Monday), two men were talking together in the Unschlittsplatz near Nuremberg's New Gate when they were approached by a teenage boy.  By all accounts, he was a fresh-complexioned boy of about seventeen years of age and dressed like a peasant.  Although remarkably short for his age, there was nothing else notable about him except for his dusty clothing and general appearance of having walked a long way.  After asking for directions to New Gate Street, he pulled a letter out of his pocket addressed to "the Captain of the Fourth Squadron of the Schmollischer Regiment, Neue Thor Strasse (New Gate Street), Nuremberg."  One of the men, a shoemaker named Weichmann, offered to take the boy there as he was heading in that direction.  Along the way, they chatted briefly, and Weichman assumed he was just a stable boy based on the Low Bavarian dialect he used to speak.  Introducing the boy to a regimental corporal, Weichmann went on his way.

After being taken to Captain von Wessenig's house, the boy gave his name as "Kaspar Hauser,"  and the groom allowed him into the house to await the Captain's return.  Asked where he came from, Kaspar replied that he "must not say" and then burst into tears.  He claimed that he had been forced to travel day and night and the groom, touched by his story, offered him food and a place to sleep.  When the Captain came home, he opened Kaspar's envelope containing two unsigned letters.  The first letter was by a "poor day-laborer with ten children of my own," who said that Kaspar Hauser had been brought to him as an infant on October 7, 1812, by a woman who asked him to raise the child.  The letter further stated that he had raised the boy as best he could, teaching him reading and writing and finally sending him off to become a soldier (the woman had said he was a soldier's son).  The second letter was apparently written by the boy's mother and simply stated that he had been baptized and given the first name of Kaspar.  Except that the boy was the son of a Schmollischer trooper, there was no other information.  The Captain couldn't find anything more from the boy and, not particularly interested in his story, sent him to the police as a runaway.  The police, not knowing what else to do with him, threw him into a prison cell.

The boy was treated relatively well for the next two months in prison.  Although he could write his name, "Kaspar Hauser," he had difficulty responding to many of the questions he asked due to his limited vocabulary.  Although his jailors noted that Kaspar was more sharp-witted than he appeared, rumors grew about the "half-wild man" imprisoned in the local castle tower. Along with curiosity seekers who wanted to see the "wild man," Kaspar received visits from doctors, scholars, and groups of women bringing him toys and other presents.  Since Kaspar was assumed to be an idiot, these visitors had no hesitation about discussing his case in his presence, along with all sorts of fanciful theories about his origins.  Whether or not hearing these stories inspired Kaspar in his later claims is anybody's guess. 

As Kaspar became more at ease with his imprisonment and frequent visitors, he related a fantastic story.  He said he had spent his entire life in a cell six or seven feet long, four feet wide, and five feet high.  The cell was so small that he couldn't stand upright, and he lived in almost perpetual darkness since the cell's two small windows had been boarded up.  He had been in the cell for as long as he could remember and had only learned to write his name by tracing the letters on paper that had been left in his cell.  Eventually, the man who had first left the paper in his cell brought him a prayer book and taught him how to read a few words.  He was later released and told that he would be taken to be a soldier like his father.  Based on his story, he somehow learned to walk and understand what the man said to him surprisingly quickly despite having little previous exposure to the language.  The envelope that he later gave the Captain was placed in his hands, and he was eventually sent on his way to Nuremberg. 

In November of that same year, Kaspar Hauser repeated his story before a specially appointed Commission of magistrates in Nuremberg (but not under oath).  The fact that he was able to walk and speak despite having been kept in one cell all his life with no exposure to language or physical exercise was hardly questioned.  In fairness, some of his defenders explained the inconsistencies and suggested that Kaspar had been confused in some of the details in his story.  During attempts to cross-examine him or get him to expand on his story, Kaspar often complained of headaches or denied that he had ever said what he had been heard to say. 

Kaspar Hauser's story became widely believed and made him an object of sympathy throughout Germany.  Although some skeptics questioned the case details (and suggested that the letters in his possession were written by the same person), they were discredited.  Doctors who examined him concluded that he was an "animal man" who had been shut away from other people and was only now learning to live as a human being.  Although cases of feral children were relatively well-known,  Kaspar Hauser's case seemed unique.  Not only were his eyes acutely sensitive to light, but loud noises, including thunderstorms and regimental bands, upset him greatly.  He also had a fantastic sense of smell and was repelled by the scent of any kind of flower.  His body was covered with old scars on his head and legs, which were believed to be the marks of early physical abuse, and he preferred to drink only water (he never learned to enjoy drinking wine or beer).

In the meantime, police scoured the country to find any trace of Kaspar's origins.  Nobody matching his description was ever found, and no missing person's reports that might have established his true identity ever turned up.  By July 1828, Kaspar Hauser was formally adopted by the city of Nuremberg, and an annual pension was approved for his maintenance.  Kaspar Hauser was formally placed into the care of George Friedrich Daumer,  a schoolmaster and philosopher who tried to educate him.  Daumer had already begun educating Kaspar in his cell and had noted his fantastic progress in learning to read and write.  This education didn't go smoothly, though, and Daumer complained about the steady influx of visitors interfering with his pupil's lessons.  The visitors were stopped, but Kaspar was still free to go out and socialize, especially since he had become the darling of Nuremberg society. 

The rumors of Kaspar's true identity began to fly. The most persistent story was that he was a son of Grand Duchess Stephanie of Baden, who had somehow been stolen away as an infant (several people commented on the resemblance). Although Kaspar didn't encourage the stories, he began acting more like a prince in exile and adapted quickly to his new social role. Whatever enjoyment Kaspar had in all the attention he received faded as it became apparent that people were becoming less interested in him. He stopped being such a novelty, and stories describing him as deceitful and manipulative began to spread. This was when the "attempts" on his life started.

On October 17, 1829, Kaspar was found crouching in the cellar of the house where he lived.  He was bleeding from a cut on his forehead, which kept him bedridden for two days, though slight.  He later said that he had been attacked by a man with a black handkerchief across his face who struck him with a knife and told him that he would be killed.  Kaspar said that he recognized the man as the one who had first held him, prisoner.  Despite questions over how someone could have entered the house without anyone else noticing, a police investigation found no trace of the mystery attacker. Given the implausible nature of the story and questions about Kaspar's credibility, skeptics accused him of making up the attack.

Kaspar was placed under police observation and was watched by two officers regularly whenever he left the house. Professor Daumer asked that Kaspar be sent somewhere else to live.  Not only was Daumer tired of the scrutiny, but he had also come to believe that Kaspar was a compulsive liar.  In one letter, Daumer stated that "Kaspar Hauser's nature had lost much of its original purity and that a highly regrettable tendency to untruthfulness and dissimulation had manifested itself."  He also added that he and Kaspar had quarreled on the same day of his supposed attack because he was neglecting his studies.  After leaving the Daumers, Kaspar became the official ward of Baron von Tucher and was placed in the home of a Nuremberg trader named Biberbach.

His stay with the Biberbachs didn't last long since they became even more disgusted by Kaspar's lies and laziness than the Daumers were.  On April 30, 1830, after a particularly nasty quarrel with the Biberbachs, police guarding the house was startled by the sound of a gunshot.  Kaspar was found bleeding from a wound on the right side of his head.  Although he passed it off as an accident, the circumstances seemed implausible, and the Biberbachs asked him to be removed from their house.  He was returned to the von Tucher household, where he lived for another eighteen months.  Increasingly disenchanted with Kaspar, von Tucher accused him of being "morally corrupted" by the attention he had received when he was first discovered.  

During this time, Kaspar's case also began attracting international attention.  A series of pamphlets about "the remarkable Nuremberg foundling" was published, some skeptical of his claims while others speculated on his origins. An English nobleman, Lord Stanhope took a formal interest in Kaspar and arranged to meet him in 1831.  Despite his skepticism about some of the inconsistencies in Kaspar's story, Stanhope posted a reward for information on whoever had imprisoned Kaspar (it was never claimed).  In 1832, legal scholar Paul Johann Feuerbach published History of a Crime against a Human Soul, which eloquently described the tragedy of Kaspar Hauser's story. Feuerbach became a fervent supporter and, later, one of Kaspar's guardians.

Stanhope followed up every lead and even took Kaspar to Hungary based on his vague memory of a few Hungarian words.  Kaspar enjoyed the attention, and von Tucher wrote a letter to Stanhope complaining that his ward was becoming more vain and conceited than ever.  The burghers of Nuremberg canceled Kaspar's annual pension and hinted that Stanhope should take charge of him instead.  They were undoubtedly delighted when Lord Stanhope agreed to make Kaspar his ward and placed him in the care of a schoolmaster named Meyer.  While Kaspar enjoyed this new status, his hopes of going to England were short-lived when Stanhope returned home alone.

The search for Kaspar's birth family continued, and he began claiming that he was the son of a Hungarian countess.  When Stanhope returned to Nuremberg, he launched a new investigation and sent agents to Hungary, but, like before, no proof was found that Kaspar had ever been there.  Stanhope also became exasperated by reports from Professor Meyer that Kaspar wasn't studying correctly and new complaints of lying.  Stanhope arranged to have Kaspar become a clerk since he didn't seem capable of any other profession.  On December 9, 1833, Kaspar had a terrible argument with Meyer and openly dreaded what Stanhope would say when he arrived a few days later.  

Five days later, Kaspar rushed into the room where Meyer and his wife were sitting.  He was out of breath and pointed to a wound in his chest where someone had stabbed him.  He dragged Meyer to the nearby public gardens and gasped, "went-Hofgarten-man-had knife-gave bag-stabbed-ran as hard as possible."  Meyer took him back home to be treated.  Although doctors initially believed the wound to be shallow, his condition worsened drastically. Police questioned him, and he told them that he had been lured to the Hofgarten with a fake message and stabbed. Aside from an odd note found in a silk bag near where Kaspar was found, no other clues to the attack were ever found.  Kaspar Hauser died on December 17, 1833. 

An autopsy raised questions about Kaspar's attack and his version of events.  The medical experts who examined the evidence were split on whether Kaspar's wound was self-inflicted or whether he had been killed by an unknown assailant.  Although some supporters suggest that Kaspar had been assassinated to prevent him from proving his royal origins, skeptics speculated that Kaspar had stabbed himself to stir up public interest in his story (while misjudging the depth of the knife wound).  The knife was never found (and may have been thrown into a nearby brook).  A formal investigation concluded that no murder had occurred and that Kaspar had stabbed himself.  Lord Stanhope later wrote that he agreed with the findings and stated, "I may be the only man that ever wrote a book to prove himself in the wrong."  

The controversy dragged on, with supporters insisting that Kaspar had been assassinated to prevent him from discovering his true origins.  Pamphlets denounced Stanhope and accused various people in Kaspar's life of covering up the murder.  Years later, Professor Daumer wrote a book in which he insisted that Stanhope had masterminded Kaspar's assassination.   Stanhope's daughter, Catherine Powlett Cleveland published a book on the case in 1893, which vindicated her father.  Long after his death, Kaspar Hauser's story continues to inspire movies, books, and plays based on his life, and questions about his origins and the strange circumstances of his death are still being raised.

But what can we say about Kaspar Hauser?  Even though certain aspects of his story can be dismissed as an exaggeration (he learned to talk and walk suspiciously quickly, given his claims of growing up in a cell), there is little question that he suffered from abuse and neglect in his early childhood.   The scars on his body and the psychosocial dwarfism he experienced (still known as "Kaspar Hauser syndrome") seem testimony enough.  DNA studies have ruled out his being part of the Baden royal family, although questions remain about his true identity.  This continuing mystery may be a fitting legacy for a   strange foundling who enjoyed tattention.

References

Douglas Keith Candland:  Feral Children and Clever Animals, Oxford, New York, 1993

Philip Henry Earl Stanhope: Tracts Relating to Caspar Hauser. Hodson 1836

Catherine Lucy Wilhelmina (Stanhope) Powlett, Duchess of Cleveland: The True Story of Kaspar Hauser from Official Documents, Macmillan, London, 1893

Michael Scott and authentic leadership: What we learn about leadership from The Office.

A new study published in the Journal of Leadership Studies examines the actions of Michael Scott, self‐proclaimed “World's Best Boss”, to determine how he communicates leadership on The Office. Using Northouse's (2020) definition of leadership, Scott's behavior is content analyzed to establish his particular message transmission tendencies. Further, given Scott's unique management style, George's (2003) dimensions of authentic leadership are used to code Scott's behavior as Scranton's regional manager. Based on a quantitative coding of shows, two main findings are advanced. First, Scott's leadership prioritizes verbal over nonverbal messages. Second, Scott's approach to leadership emphasizes the authentic dimensions of close relationships, clear purpose, and a caring heart most often with his employees. Scenes from The Office are identified that validate these findings and feature authentic leadership theory in action. Pragmatically, the current research offers trainers, managers, and teachers a resource for educating trainees and students on the role of verbal and nonverbal messages in leadership as well as a tool for developing authentic leadership in others. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

For the abstract

Massacre at Sea

Another story from my recent book, True Crime Stories You Won't Believe: Book Two.

 It must have seemed like a scene out of a horror novel.

When the trading schooner Mary Russell left port out of  Cobh Harbor in Cork, Ireland, on February 8, 1828, it was a routine voyage to Barbados.  Though the harbor master and his crew were surprised to see the ship return on June 25 escorted by another ship, the Mary Stubbs, the pilot still went out to guide the two boats into the Harbor as usual.  After being instructed to board the Mary Stubbs first, the captain of that vessel, Robert Callendar, warned that the Mary Russell had been brought into port by his crew members. There was no immediate sign of the Mary Russell's captain, William Stewart, or his experienced crew, and when the harbor master and his team boarded the ship, they quickly learned why.

In the Mary Russell’s main saloon (another name for ship's lounge) lay the bodies of seven crew members, all of whom had been tied up hand and foot and pinned to the floor.  The men had been killed by vicious blows to the head, and the saloon floor was still sticky from their blood.   Given that the murders had occurred days before, the decomposition of the bodies added to the horror of what the harbor crew saw.   As for Captain Stewart, secured onboard the Mary Stubbs, he freely confessed to killing the seven men he accused of plotting against him.   

The only surviving crew members were four apprentices, an eleven-year-old passenger, and two seriously wounded crew members who had survived the massacre by remaining in hiding until the Mary Stubbs arrived.   Though Captain Callendar had initially believed Stewart's claim that the murders were justified due to mutiny, the testimony of the surviving crew made him reconsider.  Captain Stewart's bizarre speech and behavior quickly demonstrated how deranged he was.   He had even thrown himself overboard at one point though seamen from the Mary Stubbs managed to save him from drowning. 

 News of what had happened on the Mary Russell spread quickly, and families of the dead crew members, most of whom still lived in Cobh Harbor, were devastated at what had happened.  But the hardest hit of all was Captain Stewart's wife, Betsy.  She had been waiting patiently for his return along with their four children (she was also pregnant at the time), only to learn that her husband was now a murderer, not to mention completely insane.  But what could lead a formerly respected sea captain to murder his entire crew?   

Despite the fantastic rumors spreading about the "ship of seven murders" (as the Mary Russell had become known),  the bare facts of the case seemed straightforward enough.  The Mary Russell had set sail from Cobh Harbor in early 1828 to bring a cargo of mules to Barbados.   Along with Captain Stewart was an entire crew, including first and second mate, the ship's carpenter, able-bodied seamen, and three apprentices.  There were also two stable hands to look after the mules and an unaccompanied eleven-year-old passenger named Thomas Hammond.   Given the experienced crew and lack of foreseeable problems, nobody expected anything to go wrong.

As for the boat captain, William Stewart was a God-fearing Protestant and a respected Cobh Harbor nautical community member.  Still, for reasons never made clear, his mental state deteriorated rapidly after the ship left Barbados on May 9 to return to Ireland.  As survivors would later report, Steward had become convinced that his crew was planning to kill him and take over the ship.   Though it was hardly unheard of for crew members to mutiny to steal a ship and turn pirate, a schooner like the Mary Russell seemed like an unlikely choice for that.  Still, Stewart's paranoia became so strong that he decided to protect himself from this non-existent threat.

Knowing he was outnumbered, Stewart hatched a devious plan to eliminate the crew members he assumed were plotting against him.   And so, under the pretext of discussing the voyage, he called each suspected crewmember up to the main saloon. One by one, Stewart would tie and gag them before beating them to death with a crowbar or an ax.  He even shot some of them to death with a harpoon.   As for the apprentices, Stewart simply tied them up as he was not entirely sure of their guilt.   Two other crew members, who had managed to escape the massacre, had been in hiding and likely only survived because of the timely arrival of the Mary Stubbs.  Captain Callendar had spotted the Mary Russell flying the distress signal and had brought in his ship to see if they needed assistance.  

During the coroner's inquest held in Cork on the day after the Mary Russell's return, the jury heard testimony from all the survivors and the witnesses who had first boarded the ship after she returned to Cobh Harbor.   One of the most important of these witnesses was former explorer William Scoresby who later wrote an account of the case.   Scoresby's description of what he had seen on board the ship remains the best-known account of the Mary Russell murders, the coroner's inquest, and the trial that followed.

As for the coroner, Dr. Thomas Sharpe, his testimony regarding what he had seen onboard the ship seemed graphic enough:

There were seven human beings with their sculls so battered that scarcely a vestige of them was left for recognition, with a frightful mess of coagulated blood – all strewed about the cabin, and nearly a hundredweight of cords binding their bodies to strong iron bolts. … Some of the bodies were bound round about six places, and with several coils of rope round their necks.

Based on the evidence and the fact that their primary suspect was too deranged to testify on his behalf, the coroner's jury quickly ruled that Stewart had killed seven men while in a fit of madness. All that would remain was the criminal trial itself.

On August 11, 1828, Captain William Stewart stood trial by an Admiralty Court convened in Cork.   While murder on the high seas was ordinarily a capital crime, the prosecution and Stewart's defense counsel's consensus argued that he was insane.   Based on the judge's recommendation, Stewart was declared "not guilty having committed the act while laboring under mental derangement.”  Under the Criminal Lunatics Act, which was in force at the time, he would be kept "in close confinement during life, or during his Majesty's pleasure."   

After a brief period of imprisonment in the Cork City Gaol, William Stewart was transferred to the Cork Lunatic Asylum.   He was a violent prisoner who often tore his blankets to shreds and incoherently spent much of his time muttering to himself.   During his more lucid periods, he would continue to justify his actions in killing his mutinous crew.  When the Dundrum Asylum for the Criminally Insane opened in 1850,  Stewart became one of the first inmates to be held there.   He died in 1873 after more than four decades as an asylum inmate.  

 As for Cobh Harbor,  there seems virtually no trace of those long-ago murders.   Still, visitors to the Kilmurry Graveyard in Cork can find the tomb of one of Stewart's victims, Timothy Connell, with the haunting inscription:  

You gentle reader that do pass this way/attend a while adhere to what I say/By murder vile was I bereft of life/and parted from two lovely babes and wife/by CAPTAIN STEWART I met an early doom/on board the MARY RUSSELL the 22nd of June/Forced from this world to meet my GOD on high/with whom I hope to reign eternally. Amen/Aged 28 years