The Suspicious Slaughter of Mary O'Keefe

 

The tiny borough of Hawley, in Wayne County, was the scene of horror on March 4, 1904, when the body of an elderly widow was found drenched in a pool of blood on the floor of her candy shop on Marble Hill. Although a veteran of the Spanish-American War was later arrested and tried for the crime, the evidence against him was flimsy at best, and the suspect was eventually acquitted. To this day, the heinous murder remains unsolved, although many residents of Palmyra Township insisted that they knew who the real killer was-- a mentally unbalanced man who lived next door to the victim.

Mrs. Mary Ann O'Keefe lived on Marble Hill, where she operated a small candy store on the first floor of a house she rented from Thomas Broderick. Being on the route to the local schoolhouse, Mrs. O'Keefe's store was a favorite place for local children to spend their pennies and nickels. On the afternoon of Friday, March 4, fifteen-year-old Mary Broderick found herself with five cents to spend after school and had just approached the door to the candy shop when Mrs. O'Keefe's dog, Uno, ran up to her, whining and tugging frantically on her dress. 

The door was slightly open, and the teenager could hear the sounds of someone moaning inside. She entered the store and found Mrs. O'Keefe on the floor near the counter. Thinking that the beloved old widow had fallen and hurt herself, Mary Broderick rushed to where she had fallen, but her concern turned to panic when she saw the puddle of blood beneath the old woman. Mary ran to the neighbors for help.

Mrs. Louisa Wallace and Miss Mary Corcoran were the first on the scene, and upon their arrival found Mrs. O'Keefe sitting upright against the wall with her arms folded on her lap, one of her eyes missing, her life not yet extinct. Uno, her loyal and beloved dog, stood guard over the bloodied body. A carpenter's claw hammer was found atop the counter, slickened with blood. The widow's pocketbook was also found on the counter, open and empty. It was evident that a robbery had taken place just moments earlier.

Justice of the peace J.H.  Thompson soon arrived and conducted a thorough search of the premises, but found no clues identifying the attacker. He then telephoned Sheriff Branning. A closer examination of the candy shop revealed a bloodstain on a corner of one of the curtains. The shopkeeper's desk and account books appeared not to have been disturbed. The stove, which had stood near the wall opposite the spot to where Mrs. O'Keefe had crawled, had been tipped over onto its side.

Dr. Andrew S. Fritts, a local physician, was summoned to the scene. With the aid of a dentist, Dr. L.P. Cook, and three other men, Mary O'Keefe was lifted her onto the counter. After Dr. Cook sedated the victim with chloroform, Dr. Fritts began dressing her wounds. His examination revealed eleven fractures of the skull. Her right eye had been ripped out, presumably by the claw of the hammer, and the bones of her face crushed to shards. Yet Mary O'Keefe clung to life. She had always been the tenacious sort; one newspaper described her as "a large woman, weighing nearly 200 pounds, muscular and strong as a man." It was written that Mrs. O'Keefe was not one to shrink from a confrontation. "Should anyone start a fight Mrs. O'Keefe could stop it herself, there was no need for the assistance of a man," remarked the Scranton Times-Tribune. "Her great strength was generally known and respected."

Though she was alive, Dr. Fritts pronounced her case hopeless and a deathbed was made up for her in one of the upstairs bedrooms. She drifted in an out of consciousness, and an effort was made to find out the identity of the guilty party. But Mrs. O'Keefe could only answer "yes" or "no" or "I don't know". When asked if she wanted a drink of water she said yes, and drank from the glass that was offered to her. The sheriff concluded that Mrs. O'Keefe had been in the cellar of the house when the burglar entered the store, and had emerged in time to catch the thief rifling through her pocketbook. Due to the overturned stove, it seemed likely that the brawny old widow had tussled with her attacker before he grabbed the hammer and dealt her a dozen or more powerful blows to the skull. The bloody hammer was taken by justice of the peace, J.H. Thompson, as evidence.

 

Downtown Hawley as it appeared in early 1900s

 

The Following Morning

District Attorney Herman Harnes, along with Squire Thompson, Dr. Fritts, G.C. Robertson and F.J. Tolley, visited the O'Keefe place at 9:30 the following morning and questioned the widow's 20-year-old daughter, Nellie, who had been at work in the Hawley Silk Mill when the attack occurred, but she could not provide the names of anyone who might've harbored a grudge against her mother. Next, they questioned the neighbors, but, remarkably, no one had seen anyone entering or leaving the candy shop, though it was broad daylight. This seemed rather odd, since there were houses on all three sides of the O'Keefe property on Marble Hill.

William Huff, who lived in one of the houses next to the candy shop, said that he thought he'd heard loud voices from inside the shop while walking home from work, but didn't think anything of it at the time. Daniel Kirby, who lived across the bridge over the narrow Lackawaxen River, said he saw a man walking past his house in the direction of the O'Keefe place at around three in the afternoon. His wife saw the same man returning around 4 o'clock. According to Mr. and Mrs. Kirby, the man was average height with a red mustache, and was wearing a black derby hat and a black coat. Since Mary Broderick had found Mrs. O'Keefe at around 4:15, this detail interested authorities, although it seemed impossible that this man-- if he had been the guilty party-- wasn't splattered in blood from head to toe upon his return.

Because nothing of any value had been taken, and because Nellie O'Keefe informed authorities that her mother didn't keep much money in her pocketbook, they began to disregard the robbery motive. Sheriff Branning, Deputy Sheriff Roadknight and Mayor Spencer, of Honesdale, made an examination of the candy shop later that afternoon and questioned additional residents of Hawley. A warrant was made out for the arrest of Martin Nee, a neighborhood ruffian whom Mrs. O'Keefe had once testified against in court. While Nee was being detained, Sheriff Branning searched his home but found no evidence that could be used against him. After providing a solid alibi for his whereabouts on Friday afternoon, Nee was released from custody. With no other leads to go on, their hope hinged on the unlikely possibility that Mrs. O'Keefe would regain consciousness long enough to identify her attacker.

Unfortunately, this would not happen. Mary O'Keefe passed away in the bedroom on her Marble Hill home shortly after midnight. Her body was taken to her nephew's home in Canaan Township, where her funeral was held. Sheriff Branning immediately printed posters offering a $300 reward for information leading to the arrest of Mrs. O'Keefe's killer.

 

The Hawley Silk Mill, where Mrs. O'keefe's daughter worked.

 

An Arrest is Made

The following week, a man named Thomas McDonald came forward and declared that he had been inside O'Keefe's store on Friday with a co-worker named John Steltz, who remained behind inside the store after McDonald had departed at around 1:30 in the afternoon. It was alleged that Steltz told his foreman at the glass factory the day after the murder that he had to leave town at once, though he refused to provide an explanation other than he was "in trouble". Steltz was so anxious to leave town, in fact, that he did not even wait around long enough to pick up his paycheck on Friday afternoon.
Although he had served honorably in Company E, 13th Regiment, of the U.S. Army during the Spanish-American War, Steltz had developed a reputation for drunkenness and belligerence around Hawley, and his sudden disappearance prompted Detective Spencer to hop on the first train from Honesdale to try to track him down and bring him in for questioning.

 

 

However, it was Detective Frank Kelly of the Erie Railroad who succeeded in arresting Steltz three weeks later, in the tiny New York hamlet of Pond Eddy, near Port Jervis. Sheriff Branning traveled to Pond Eddy and transported Steltz to the Wayne County Jail in Honesdale. The accused killer was given a hearing on March 29 before Squire W.H. Ham, with Mary Broderick and Nellie O'Keefe in attendance. At the hearing, Steltz claimed that after resigning from his job at the glass factory, he took a job from as a farmhand in Parker's Glen, across the Delaware River from Pond Eddy, under the name of John Smith. Upon learning that the authorities were looking for him, he turned himself in to the first man in uniform he saw, which happened to be Detective Kelly of the Erie Railroad. Although there was no evidence linking Steltz to the crime-- a search of his home had failed to produced a drop of Mrs. O'Keefe's blood-- the accused was charged with murder and held without bail for trial.

Steltz was indicted by a Wayne County grand jury on April 27, 1904, after twenty-five witnesses had been called to offer testimony against the accused killer. His trial began the following week, with Judge George S. Purdy presiding. On May 5, the trial came to an abrupt conclusion when Judge Purdy ordered the jury to find Steltz not guilty, insisting that it would be a miscarriage of justice to convict Steltz on evidence that was so flimsy it could hardly be called circumstantial. The jury didn't even leave the jury box-- they acquitted the defendant on the spot.

A New Suspect Emerges

On May 27, the Marble Hill section of Hawley was once again thrown into an uproar. Shortly after six o'clock that morning, a tragedy was enacted in a home next door to the house where Mary O'Keefe had been bludgeoned to death with a hammer just weeks earlier. Stephen Haggerty, a 26-year-old who was said to have the mental capacity of a child, went violently insane and smashed in the heads of his two sisters and two brothers with an axe as they lie sleeping in their beds.

According to neighbors, Stephen Haggerty had been acting strangely for weeks-- even before the gruesome murder of Mary O'Keefe. They had attempted to warn Stephen's parents, but to no avail. The Haggerty home was steeped in pre-dawn darkness when something compelled Stephen to get out of bed, grab a hatchet, and go room to room on a spree of violence against his siblings. The first one he attacked was his sixteen-year-old brother, Anthony. After creeping into the bedroom Stephen awakened Anthony with his mumbling, and when Anthony stopped down to grab his shoes from beneath the bed Stephen produced a hatchet from under his coat and dealt him a blow to the top of the head. The blow was inflicted with the dull part of the blade, rendering Anthony unconscious.

Next he went into his mother's room, and although she heard him enter the room and lean over the bed, he mumbled something incoherent and left. Then he went to the room where his sisters Winifred, aged 18, and Bridget, aged 23, were sleeping. He struck Bridget a single blow, fracturing her skull. This aroused Winifred, who tried to escape. Stephen followed her and gave her two blows with the axe as she was part-way through the door. The first blow chopped her collarbone in half, the second left a deep gash on her head. 

Winifred's screams aroused the rest of the family, and as fourteen-year-old Eugene stepped into the hallway and tried to rub the sleep from his eyes Stephen shattered his skull with the hatchet. James Haggerty, the father, and another son, Patrick, wrestled Stephen to the floor and disarmed him, but not before Stephen had sunk his teeth into their hands and arms. He was restrained for half an hour before he came to his senses, at which point he became quiet and rational, and spoke as if nothing had happened.

Constable Watson took Stephen to the county jail in Honesdale, but the young man was not the least bit violent or angry along the way. He could offer no explanation for what had happened. Meanwhile, Dr. Fritts had arrived at the Haggerty home. For the second time in three months, Dr. Fritts entered a property in Hawley that resembled a slaughterhouse more than a family home.

Dr. Fritts was soon joined by other local physicians, Drs. Rodman, Ely, Powell, and Conville. Their quick actions saved the lives of the victims, though it appeared that Eugene and Bridget would succumb to their injuries. Bridget Haggerty's condition was so precarious that Dr. Rodman and Dr. Fritts had to perform emergency surgery on the scene.

By daybreak, many of the residents of Hawley were convinced that it could only have been Stephen Haggerty who had murdered Mrs. O'Keefe on March 4. There were just too many similarities; the Haggertys lived next door to the O'Keefes, divided only by a vacant lot, all victims had been bludgeoned on the head, and Mr. and Mrs. Haggerty had been told for weeks that something was just "not right" with their eldest son.

While the victims survived the attack, records indicate they never fully regained their health. Winifred, who suffered a deep gash in her skull, would pass away from epilepsy just a few years later, dying at the age of 23. Eugene, who sustained a fractured skull, died at the age of 21 from tuberculosis. Whether their untimely deaths were hastened by their harrowing ordeal is impossible to say. However, Stephen Haggerty's health never recovered.

Although he was never formally implicated in the murder of Mary O'Keefe, he was arrested for his crimes against his family, though it was clear he would never stand trial because of his insanity. While in jail at Honesdale, he attempted to starve himself to death. When that failed, he begged a relative who had come to visit him for a revolver, and when that failed he begged Deputy Sheriff Roadknight for a pair of scissors. The deputy refused, knowing that the result would be fatal. On Thursday, June 25, the deputy left the jail early to attend a ballgame, but when Mrs. Roadknight went to the jail to check on the inmate she pulled back a sheet which Haggerty had affixed to the door of his cell and discovered him on the floor in a pool of blood, deathly pale, with a large, gaping hole in his skull.

According to the deputy's wife, Haggerty had removed an iron bar from the toilet closet of his cell, about six inches in length and three inches in diameter, and had hit himself repeatedly over the head until he fell to the floor unconscious. Her screams attracted Dr. Voight, who closed the wound with eighteen stitches. On August 9, a court-appointed lunacy commission ordered Haggerty removed from jail and taken to Danville State Hospital. It appears Stephen Haggerty spent the remainder of his life inside the walls of mental hospitals; his last known home, at least according to census records, was the Allentown State Psychiatric Hospital. His date of death and place of burial are unknown.
 

The O'Keefe Mystery Endures

Stephen Haggerty never spoke a word about the murder of Mary O'Keefe. Did the slaying of the Marble Hill candy store proprietress inspire his own savagery against his brothers and sisters? Or was Stephen the real killer, as many believe?

As for John Steltz, the man who was arrested and eventually acquitted for the crime, history shows that his lawlessness continued long after Mary O'Keefe was laid to rest. In March of 1906 he was arrested for larceny in Honesdale, and eventually relocated to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where he took up residence in a cabin with a man named Henry Theodore Sothmann.  On the morning of March 16, 1908, Sothmann was found dead in his bed with his head literally blown off with a revolver. Steltz denied having any knowledge of Sothmann's killing at first, but was arrested after being identified by a witness. He confessed to the crime, plead guilty, and was sentenced to life at the state penitentiary in Sioux Falls on April 27.

The motive for the killing was robbery and Steltz believed that Sothmann, who had just returned from the bank after receiving a check for $70 earlier that day, was flush with cash. Sothmann, however, ended up depositing the check instead of cashing it, and upon rifling through the dead man's pockets, Steltz was surprised to find only three dollars in cash. If Steltz was the one who murdered Mary O'Keefe, this means he killed two victims with the intention of robbing them, and only earned five or six dollars-- and a life sentence-- as his reward. 

 

Sources:

Scranton Times-Tribune, March 7, 1904.
Wayne County Herald, March 10, 1904.
Scranton Times-Tribune, March 12, 1904.
Wayne County Herald, March 17, 1904.
Scranton Times-Tribune, March 30, 1904.
Scranton Tribune, March 31, 1904.
Scranton Tribune, April 28, 1904.
Pittston Gazette, May 6, 1904.
Scranton Times-Tribune, May 27, 1904.
Philadelphia Inquirer, May 28, 1904.
Wayne County Herald, June 2, 1904.
Pike County Dispatch, June 9, 1904.
Wilkes-Barre Record, June 28, 1904.
Wayne County Herald, June 30, 1904.
Philadelphia Inquirer, Aug. 10, 1904.
Pike County Dispatch, April 5, 1906.
Mitchell (South Dakota) Capital, May 1, 1908.
Wayne County Herald, May 12, 1908.