Sacrificed by a Cult: The Story of May Irene Smith

 

There are many strange ways to die, some more common than others, but few are as rare as being sacrificed by a group of religious fanatics. Yet, this is exactly the tragic fate which befell one five-year-old girl from Northampton County in April of 1908.

In April of 1908, a house in the hills near Nazareth was the scene of a bizarre religious gathering. Led by a tall, lanky, out-of-work cement mill worker named Robert Byron Bachman, a small group of Christian zealots who called themselves "The Devil Chasers" began a strict purification ritual intended to drive out demons from their own bodies by denying themselves food and water for a period of three days. The location of this peculiar gathering was the home of Henry Smith, who was regarded as a devout Christian and a pillar of the community. In this home lived Henry with his wife, Mabel (who was also Robert Bachman's sister), and their only child, May Irene Smith.

The Smiths had recently joined Bachman's religious sect. Having no church of his own, Bachman conducted prayer meetings in the homes of his members-- much to the chagrin of neighbors, who found the constant singing and loud chanting to be quite a nuisance. After he had lost his job at the Dexter Portland Cement Company, Bachman's religious fanaticism only intensified. One of the core beliefs of the Devil Chasers was the belief that everyone had a personal demon, and this demon must be driven out at any cost.

 
The ritual began on the afternoon of Saturday, April 25, when Bachman, armed with a sacred "staff" (which was a branch he had torn from a nearby tree), and his wife traveled to the Smith home on Cherry Hill Road for the sect's weekly services. The purification ritual lasted all day Sunday and stretched into Monday. By six o'clock that evening, all members had returned to their homes, including the Bachmans, who were joined the Smiths. After they had eaten supper at the Bachman home, they resumed their religious services and worked themselves up into a frenzy, running from room to room of the house chasing the "devil" and throwing books, dishes, furniture, and pretty much anything else they could grab, at the invisible demons whom Bachman claimed had taken possession of the house. As for little May Irene Smith, she was locked inside an upstairs bedroom.

"Drive them forth, every last one!" shouted Bachman. "Drive them forth!" he picked up one of his chairs and smashed it on the floor, claiming that he had spotted one of the demons crouching underneath it. Then he said there was a demon hiding under the dresser. The Smiths and Bachmans proceeded to break the dresser to pieces with their own hands. Bachman shouted that the demon was now sitting on his wife's shoulder, and he and the Smiths punched and shoved the woman out of the house. Next, the Smiths demolished every remaining piece of furniture inside the house, and finally broke down the ceiling and smashed the windows before going outside.

This sort of thing was par for the course for the Devil Chasers, and, as usual, the mayhem attracted the attention of neighbors. They gathered around the outside of the house, but, fearing personal injury, dared not approach the maniacal religious zealot. Robert Bachman assured them that the situation was under control, but he declared that he must return inside the house, where May Irene was still locked in her room. He demanded to be left alone.

Witnesses told authorities they saw Bachman re-enter his wrecked house, while his followers resumed their chanting and dancing outside. When Mabel Smith heard the scream of her frightened, half-starved daughter about thirty minutes later, she ran inside. But it was too late.

After a few moments, some of the neighbors worked up the courage to enter the destroyed house, unsure of what they would find. What they found was Robert Bachman sitting atop the nude body of May Irene Smith. "Bachman did it!" cried Mabel. "He said he had cast out the devils from her." According to Mrs. Bachman, her husband said that he needed a sacrifice and that it was necessary that the blood shed be "as pure and innocent as a child's". The Smiths took May Irene's body to Undertaker Keck and told him that they harbored no grudge against Bachman, as "it was God who had killed their child and taken it to Heaven". 

Four Arrested

On Tuesday morning, April 28, Officer Edward Bates was placed on guard at the Bachman home and remained there until noon, when Constable William Rolling and Chief of Police Edgar Schmidt took the killer into custody. Bachman, however, put up a fight. He was eventually subdued and taken to the borough lock-up. After a short nap, Bachman began to rant and rave and repeatedly punched the wall of his cell. He was taken to the Northampton County Jail in Easton later that afternoon. A few hours later, Bachman confessed to the child's murder. The Smiths and Mrs. Bachman were promptly arrested by County Detective Johnson as accessories.

On April 29, Undertaker Keck delivered May Irene's body to the Nazareth Inn, where doctors W.F. Cope and R.H. Beck held a post-mortem examination. The doctors found that the child had been strangled. They also found a clot of blood almost covering the brain and bruises on her forehead, nose and shoulders. Coroner Fetherolf held an inquest that afternoon at the office of Justice of the Peace Kostenbader, where the coroner's jury ruled that death had been caused by strangulation at the hands of Robert Bachman. During the inquest, Mabel Smith declared that she never really believed in the teachings of the Devil Chasers, but played along to keep peace in the family. Henry Smith was taken back to jail, though Mabel Smith posted bail and was allowed to go home with her father-in-law.

When asked if there was going to be a murder trial, District Attorney W.W. McKean couldn't give a definite answer, hinting that everyone implicated in the tragedy seemed to be insane, and he would consider asking the judge to form a lunacy commission to determine their sanity. But the story gets stranger. Much stranger.

Was Revenge the Motive?

A few days after the inquest came a startling development, when County Detective Johnson revealed that he'd had a private conversation with a well-known resident of Nazareth who was convinced that authorities were dealing with a case of premeditated murder.

"Are you sure that this religious frenzy idea is not all a fake?" the man had asked the detective. "Do you know that the killing of this child was a premeditated murder by Bachman in revenge for the death of one of his own children? He was the father of a little girl nineteen months old and it was taken to Smith's house on the Cherry Hill Road where it contracted pneumonia from May Irene, the little girl who was murdered. Bachman got it into his head that the Smiths were responsible for the death of his baby daughter and he began exercising the marvelous hypnotic power he possessed to bring the Smiths into the belief he had adopted. 

"He conceived a terrible hatred for the five-year-old daughter of his brother-in-law and displayed it so openly that she became afraid of him... Bachman knew perfectly well what he was doing. That is the real fact, Mr. Johnson. Bachman has confessed his crime two times, once to you and once to the district attorney, but he has skillfully avoided revealing the real motive for his crime."

The Devil Chaser Declared Insane

The commission appointed to examine the mental condition of Robert Bachman met at the county jail on June 3. Comprised of Dr. Richardson of the Norristown Insane Asylum, Dr. Moulton of Kirkbride's Insane Asylum of Philadelphia and Hugh Eastman of the Bucks County Bar Association, the commission examined Bachman and quickly decided that he needed to be placed into an institution after the Devil Chaser declared that he'd kill May Irene all over again if God instructed him to do it. He was committed to the Norristown Asylum. It appeared that there would be no murder trial after all.

Attorneys for the Smith family immediately initiated proceedings to have the charges dropped against Henry and Mabel. The attorneys for Mrs. Bachman did the same. "I believe that he must have had me hypnotized," wept Henry, just days after absolving Bachman of any wrongdoing. Charges against the Smiths were eventually dropped, and the Smiths responded by refusing to pay their attorneys. They argued that since there wasn't going to be a murder trial, they could not be charged as accessories to murder, so why should they have to pay anybody?

Reversal of Fortune

Robert Bachman was out of the asylum in under three years. He was released on Feb. 6, 1911, after posting a $2,000 bond and promising that we would "keep the peace." His wife, Mamie, died of heart failure in October of 1915 at the age of 36 after a brief and suspicious illness. No inquest was held. Interestingly, less than four months later, Robert married his 16-year-old housekeeper, Corna Kindt.

 It's unclear why Corna had become so infatuated with Bachman. Perhaps it was his charisma, or the fact that Corna was an orphan, or perhaps it had something to do with the fact that Bachman became quite wealthy after murdering May Irene Smith. In a perverse twist of fate which seems to mock the very idea of karma, Robert was the younger brother of Dr. Irving Bachman, a self-made cement millionaire who had a large stake in Standard Cement of Napa (California) and the Atlantic Portland Cement plant in Stockertown, Northampton County. At the time of May Irene's murder, Irving had offered his younger brother a job as superintendent. It is unclear if he ever accepted the position. 

On February 11, 1916, less than four months after the sudden death of Robert's wife, Irving was found dead at the age of 51  inside his Philadelphia apartment, seated in a chair. A gas jet was turned on, leading authorities to conclude that it was a clear case of suicide attributed to a combination of financial troubles and his estrangement from his wife. At the time of his death, it was reported that his $1.5 million fortune had dwindled to just $1.39. Oddly, one month earlier, Irving had been arrested at Easton for attempting to kidnap the four-year-old son of his wife's married niece, with whom he was having an affair. Just as odd was Irving's funeral; during the procession to the Zion Stone Church Cemetery, the hearse carrying his body skidded into a ditch and had to be pulled out with the help of horses borrowed from local farmers.

Robert Bachman, the "Devil Chaser" who earned only a slap on the wrist for brutally murdering May Irene Smith in 1908, passed away in November of 1949 at the age of 74. While the full truth behind the premature deaths of his wife and brother may never be known, it is an astonishing coincidence how, in a span of just 122 days, Robert went from a penniless unemployed widow with a shadowy past to a wealthy newlywed-- while his brother went from a married millionaire to a lonely, impoverished pariah. In a strange way, it's almost as if he had sold his soul to the devil.

Sources:

West Chester Daily Local News, April 29, 1908.
Hazleton Standard-Speaker, April 30, 1908.
Allentown Democrat, April 30, 1908.
Allentown Leader, May 4, 1908.
Allentown Leader, June 4, 1908.
Perkasie News Herald, July 2, 1908.

Allentown Democrat, Feb. 7, 1911.
Allentown Morning Call, Oct. 15, 1915.
Allentown Leader, Feb. 7, 1916.
Allentown Democrat, Feb. 12, 1916.
Harrisburg Daily Independent, Feb. 24, 1916.
Allentown Morning Call, Nov. 16, 1949.