Almon and Emeline (Alice Meaker, Part 3)

The fall of 1927 was unusually mild, a season of gray skies and scarlet maples, constant rain. The soil brimmed with it, overflowing, and on November 3, a tropical storm turned southwest at Newfoundland to collide with a cold front sweeping north across New England.

The warm air stalled then cooled and dropped its load of rain, six inches in three days. Power lines came down. Streams and rivers burst their banks, pushing houses from their foundations and sending them downstream, their windows blazing with oil-lamps, like shore-lights set to drifting in the roaring dark.

Livestock drowned, people too. Nine at Duxbury Corner. Eleven in Waterbury. North of the village, along River Road, the Little River swelled to a muddy torrent, gorged by Cotton Brook and thundering downriver. It smashed into Barber’s Bridge, collapsing the supports and tumbling the span, destroying the last traces of what happened there, 47 years earlier, when the Meakers drew up inside the bridge with Alice, and Emeline covered her mouth. Shh, she said, a sound like the river.

* * *

Three nights later, half-past-two in the morning, and Deputy Sheriff Frank Atherton drove south over the same bridge with Alice’s body beside him, wrapped in sackcloth, her covered head resting on Almon’s shoulder. 

They reached Waterbury at around 3 am where Atherton called at the house of Dr. Henry Janes, a prominent local physician described as “Waterbury’s foremost citizen.” A girl was dead, Atherton told him, poisoned, and Janes consented to oversee the postmortem examination. He would need help, however, other doctors, and the two men arranged to meet again in the morning at the Somerville Farm. 

Atherton went there next. He could have taken Almon to jail, had every cause, but thought of his promise to Horace, maybe, or of Eber Huntley keeping watch the family, and drove Almon home instead. They pulled up outside the farmhouse at around 3:45 AM. Atherton carried Alice’s body into the family’s parlor. He laid her on the floor, didn’t remove the wraps. 

 From The Argus and Patriot:

The old man [Horace] was completely overwhelmed at the sight of the dead girl. He sobbed like a child, and his wife and daughter wept with him. The old woman could not bear to look upon her victim, and completely broke down. 

A family in shock, shaken by terror and grief. Emeline wept for her son or more likely herself while Nellie cried for her brother and Horace mourned them all: Almon, Emeline, Alice. As recently as the 22nd, the day before the murder, he’d arranged a place for Alice with George Turner but it seems he’d acted too slowly because his half-sister was dead, murdered, and his wife and son were soon to be lost to him. Almon and Emeline were placed under house arrest pending their arraignment and Atherton settled himself to wait for daylight.

Morning came and Dr. Janes arrived as promised as did Drs. Fales, Washburn, and Kingsbury. They conducted their examination in the Meakers’ parlor. They removed the wraps, cut away her clothing. Concerning the condition of the body, Janes testified:

“The body was on the floor, clothed in calico dress, etc.; hair filled with mud, as was also her mouth; lips retracted and tongue forced up with mud; rigor mortis well marked; skin livid, no bruises except one artificial one on right buttock; body well nourished, but small [...] The retraction of the lips was a sign of convulsions and common in poisoning by strychnine [..] The symptoms were consistent with strychnine poisoning”

They autopsied the body and examined the stomach in which they found a quantity of undigested white powder. Probably this was strychnine but Janes didn’t possess the expertise to test for it. Instead he removed the stomach which they sectioned into jars to be sent on to Dr. Witthaus in Burlington. Their work finished, they sutured the chest cavity and entrusted the body to Minta Huntley and “the women” to be prepared for burial. 

The case, plainly, was one of murder, and Almon and Emeline were taken from the house and driven across the river to Waterbury and the offices of Palmer and Dillingham. 

By now it was around 2 pm or little more than 18 hours since Palmer undertook to assist Deputy Atherton in his inquiries into Alice’s disappearance. Now he agreed to represent the Meakers at their arraignment. His reasons aren’t known, though he might have disapproved of Atherton’s methods, how the deputy had pushed the boy to confess, leaning hard upon him until at last he broke. It’s also possible he was the only lawyer available as his partner William Dillingham had already agreed to represent the state at the hearing. 

Whatever his reasons Palmer accepted the brief and accompanied the Meakers across town to the Congregational Church, where Almon and Emeline were arraigned in the basement, possibly in the same room where Almon attended Sunday School.

Proceedings were brief. Waterbury’s Grand Juror read out an indictment for murder, the defendants pled not guilty, and the case was continued until May 10 to permit additional time for investigation and for chemical analysis of the poison. 

Emeline cried throughout the hearing, inconsolable, though for terror or exhaustion it’s hard to know. After all, she hadn’t slept, Almon either, and they clung to each other with a devotion as strange as it was touching, as if mother and son might somehow protect one another from the horror that awaited them: a trapdoor opening, the long drop.

From The Argus and Patriot:

The mother and son seem to be devoted to each other. They [spent?--illeg.] all the afternoon holding each other’s hands and a large part of the time her head was in his lap. Both cried, and the mother at times fairly moaned with anguish. Almon in response to all inquires, says “Mother is innocent; mother is innocent.” 

Such closeness was thought unusual, even unnatural, and there were rumors of incest between Almon and Emeline. Alice had found out, it was thought, and had threatened to expose them, prompting them to kill her. 

Another rumor told of a dispute between Alice and Nellie. Folks whispered that Nellie had left home and refused to return for as long as Alice remained in the house. 

There is no evidence to support either rumor and neither was ever presented in court. After all, the state didn’t need to prove a motive, only that a murder had taken place, and in this respect, Almon’s confession alone gave reason to proceed. Following the hearing, Almon and Emeline were remanded in custody and transported by train to the county jail in Montpelier, while Horace and Nellie remained at the Somerville farm.

From The Argus and Patriot: 

In the kitchen the father sat, broken with grief, holding his daughter in his lap, who was weeping with him, and laying her head upon his shoulder. They seemed utterly oblivious of the presence of the crowd, and to be wrapped only in themselves and their misfortune. 

By now, news of the murder had spread throughout the Watebury area, prompting a crowd to converge on the Meakers’ parlor where Alice was laid out, ready for burial. A reporter for Montpelier’s Argus and Patriot describes the scene as follows:

There she lay in the parlor, her face as calm as if she had never known the harshness of brutal guardians, the agony of poison, the terrible pangs of dissolution. Death had at last given her peace, the peace which passeth understanding. Unloved and abused in life, in death she had many a sympathizer, and few that entered the room failed to drop a tear to her memory. 

Unloved and abused. 

Half her life she’d spent at the poor farm in Charlotte. For years she was beaten, likely starved, the victim of an attempted sexual assault. The town sold her to Horace Meaker where the abuse continued in full view and no one would help her. Not Willard Atkins, or Frank Atherton, or the neighbors who watched it happen and who came now to “drop a tear” over Alice’s coffin, as though to hide their collective complicity behind the pretense of grief. 

The next day, April 28, Alice was buried in the cemetery at Duxbury Corner but the community’s guilt festered, becoming hatred, rage. 

From The Argus and Patriot: 

Of all the murders which have darkened the annals of Vermont none have been more coolly diabolical, none more utterly unprovoked, or more deliberately carried out, than the terrible crime whose discovery yesterday filled the breasts of the peaceful and law abiding inhabitants of Duxbury and Waterbury with thrills of horror, and made them for once impatient of the law’s slow course, and anxious to invoke the swift, retribution of Judge Lynch. 

Two weeks later, on May 10, Almon and Emeline returned to Waterbury for the hearing. They found a mob waiting for them, their anger undiminished. The day was hot -- hellish, even -- reportedly 100 degrees in the Waterbury hotel where men and women crowded the halls and staircases for a glimpse of the accused. Almon and Emeline arrived at the hotel and were escorted under guard through the “seething” throng. 

“Hang them!” a voice cried out.

E.F. Palmer appeared again for the defense and informed the court that Almon had chosen to withdraw his earlier plea of “not guilty.” The reason for this became clear once Frank Atherton was called to testify and Palmer argued that Almon had withdrawn his guilty plea and that his confession of April 23 therefore could not be admitted as evidence against Emeline. A compelling argument, but the judge ruled against Palmer and Atherton’s testimony was allowed to proceed.

Also testifying on May 10 was Dr. R. August Witthaus, Professor of Chemistry at the University of Vermont, who confirmed the presence of strychnine in Alice’s stomach. The white residuum turned violet, he said, following “the application of certain chemicals,” consistent with the presence of strychnine, while the substance produced “titanic” muscle spasms when “introduced into the body of the frog.” 

The hearing took two days. More than fifteen witnesses testified to the beatings Alice had endured at the old Deline farm as well as the events of April 23. 

A young man named Charles Thompson testified he was walking home from Waterbury village at around 9:30 pm on April 23 when Bates’ horse and buggy passed him on the road. Thompson recognized the horse, the driver too. Almon Meaker. Thompson’s witness statement proved critical as it placed Almon in the buggy that night with two female passengers. Two women, Thompson thought, or maybe a woman and a girl.

Alice’s mother appeared on May 11. 

Mary Germain was newly married and living in Burlington when she learned of Alice’s death and resolved at once to fetch Hilie home. Charlotte’s Overseer Joseph Barton learned of Mary’s intentions, somehow, and wrote to Horace, advising him to hold to their arrangement and to keep the boy in his care. Barton also spoke with newspaper reporters and expressed his low opinion of Mary and of her daughter as well. Mary was abusive, Barton claimed, while Alice, mere weeks in her grave, was “below par in matters of intelect [sic] and obstinate, cunning, mischievous, and disobedient.”  

His efforts came to nothing. Mary prevailed and brought Hilie home to South Burlington, and days later, returned to Washington County to give evidence at the hearing. They showed her the found near Barber’s pasture and Mary confirmed it belonged to Alice.

She was among the final witnesses to be called. The hearing concluded and Almon and Emeline were committed to stand trial together in November. Until then they were to remain incarcerated and were taken by train to Montpelier and entrusted into the custody of High Sheriff Tuttle and D.W. Dudley, who had charge of the jail. 

Dudley employed a handful of young women to look after his female prisoners, including Mary Holt. According to Holt’s later testimony, Emeline passed the early days of her imprisonment in a fever of letter-writing, scribbling messages to Dudley which she dropped through the bars of her cell to be found by the servants. Dudley later estimated he’d received around 50 letters from Emeline between May and November of 1880, though he kept only two.

From the first letter:

Mr. Dudley can I gained frinds with you   I am innsent as eny one can be from murdin and My boy will tell you so   will you be so kind when Mr. Meaker comse to day talk this over And ask him how much he would give you to help me out her   I will give you tow hundred dollars and he will be will for I dont lye to you [...]

From the second letter:

plese Mr. Dudley [...] plese cant you help me   not wanter hang me when I am innosent Dont think I am lyen to you for I dont   it is God truith it seems oful queer to me when I think you goin to hang me   I am so clear from it I haint lyen to you eny thing I say I dont think it is any hurt   I am innosent pleas I dont lye one word if you wont help me eny I got to be hung for it [...] I haint lyen   I dont mean any hurt in Askin you to help me I ar sorry I done wrong her

This last statement appears to be an admission of guilt, if only in part, but the remainder of the letter is blotted out and illegible. Dudley ignored this letter as he did all of the others and Emeline grew increasingly desperate even as the weather turned gray and cold. On October 26, she was allowed a coal-fire in her cell for warmth. Dudley testified he was downstairs when he smelled smoke and heard the crackle of flames from overhead. He took the stairs at a run and burst into Emeline’s cell where he discovered she had set a fire behind the bed. 

Dudley dashed water over the flames before running out again, meaning to fetch the hose, but he didn’t close the door behind him. Emeline was left alone in the cell with only Mary Holt and another servant-girl, Maggie Kelley, to hold her back. She ran for it.

The younger women caught hold of Emeline, attempted to restrain her. Mary lunged for the door-lock as it swung free off the door and struck at Emeline’s head with it, hitting hard. The blood ran down the old woman’s face but she wouldn’t yield. She pushed toward the door and was halfway through it when Dudley arrived and subdued her.

No more fires, no lights in her room in the evening. Dudley allowed Emeline her pipe, though he insisted on lighting it himself, and she was likewise handcuffed to her cell-door whenever a fire was in the stove.

Mid-November. Her trial date drew near and so did the winter so that she must have spent hours chained to the door. Perhaps unsurprisingly, her mental state deteriorated. Emeline moaned and wept and carried on like a small child and Dudley punished her in much the same way, taking her pipe whenever her sobbing disturbed the other inmates.

Almon was among them. Unlike Emeline, he’d taken to life in custody. He ate well, put on weight, trusted in God and his lawyers to see justice done. The day, indeed, was at hand, but the nights were long and he could hear his mother wailing in her cell. Her anguish tormented him and he pleaded with a servant to bring a letter to Emeline.

The girl brought the note to Dudley, who looked it over and allowed Emeline to read it, provided she returned it to him afterward. In time the letter came back to him, but in altered form, where Emeline had added a few lines below the signature. “Mother,” she wrote, “I wish I never had put her you dint have anything to do with it.” 

Almon’s letter was later presented in court. It reads as follows:

DEAR MOTHER. --please don’t cry for it only makes you feel worse and at the same is wareing you out and still does no Good. I can hear you cry and it makes me feel bad to, But it is no use fro me to cry though ti is hard to keep from doing so some times. Mother I shell stand by you jist so long as God givith me Breath, and will speak aword to help you when I know it will do some Good. you must remember that our Lawyers know what is best for us. Now don’t you believe that your Boy has gone back on you for he has not    Good By         yours truly            Almon L. Meaker

His trust in his lawyers wasn’t misplaced. E.F. Palmer, in particular, worked tirelessly on the Meakers’ behalf, devising an “elaborate and learned argument” in favor of separate trials for Almon and Emeline. While evidence against Almon was overwhelming, the case against Emeline was comparatively weak, informed primarily by Almon’s earlier statements in which he’d implicated his mother. A separate trial for Emeline would render these statements inadmissible and possibly secure her conviction on a lighter charge if not an outright acquittal. 

Legal proceedings commenced at 11:00 am on November 22, 1880.

From The Vermont Watchman:

The accused were brought into court and were seated in chairs inside the bar, back of the counsel. Mrs. Meeker is fatter and not so haggard as she appeared at the time of her arrest. She was neatly dressed, wore gloves, and surveyed the court-room with interest. Almon wore a new suit, his hair was nicely brushed, and his comely but weak face seemed pleased with the scene. He and his mother sat, just as they did during the court of inquiry at Waterbury, hand in hand, and now and then she seemed to lean her head on his shoulder for consolation, which he administered in a few whispered words.

Almon and Emeline were accused of murder in the first degree with State’s Attorney Frank Plumley and William P Dillingham representing the State. The indictment was read aloud while Emeline was provided a written copy in view of her disability. The Meakers pled not guilty and here Palmer presented his “elaborate” argument for separate trials. Dillingham, Palmer’s legal partner, countered on behalf of the State. Judgment was deferred until the afternoon session at which time the judge confirmed he was ruling for the prosecution: Almon and Emeline would be tried together.

Jury selection commenced and took around two hours, at the end of which Almon appeared to engage his defense attorneys in “earnest conversation.” Palmer requested permission to consult with his client in private. His request granted, the defense withdrew briefly before returning to the courtroom. Palmer addressed the bench. 

From the Vermont Watchman:

"Your Honors, the young man wishes to withdraw his plea of not guilty and to plead guilty." [...] That such an unprecedented step was contemplated by Almon was known to very few. It fell like a thunder clap on both the bar and the spectators. The boy himself seemed to be the least concerned of all. His beardless face, which hardly shows his nineteen years, exhibited little emotion while he stood up, and he pleaded "guilty" with as firm a voice as when he asserted his innocence in the morning. Not till he sat down and clasped the hand of his mother did he break down, and both clung to each other and cried together for some time. 

In 1880 the charge of first degree murder in Vermont carried the death penalty. The state legislature possessed the power to commute a sentence of death, but a confessed murderer couldn’t expect such mercy, so that Almon had, effectively, condemned himself to hang. This change of plea was understood as an act of self-sacrifice, described in the papers in nearly heroic terms as a devoted son’s attempt to save his mother. 

The boy was dismissed to await sentencing while Emeline remained to stand trial alone. In their opening statement the prosecution described a year-long pattern of escalating abuse culminating in murder, while the defense argued that Almon alone was responsible, that Emeline knew nothing of the killing until the evening of the 26th.

The trial took seven days. Again, as at the hearing, numerous witnesses gave evidence concerning Emeline’s history of abusive behavior and testified to the presence of a woman with Almon in the buggy on April 23. Crucially, Mrs. Susan Pickett of Waterbury testified she had seen Almon with the buggy at around 9:15 pm and that Alice and Emeline were with him. 

Frank Atherton was also called and questioned. His testimony differed little from previous accounts, though at one point, he produced the clothes in which Alice was found: skirts and chemise, a calico dress. He had kept the garments in his possession since the morning of the postmortem, and they were reportedly unwashed, soiled with mud and decay. Emeline couldn’t bear to look at them.

E.F. Palmer cross-examined Atherton on behalf of the defense. His aim, it seems, was to undermine the deputy’s credibility. To this end he forced Atherton to admit under oath that he wasn’t concerned by Richard Thorndyke’s allegations of abuse. That he was aware of the beatings and hadn’t stopped them. 

The defense also called Atherton’s father as a character witness. Newton Atherton had lived down the road from the old Deline place prior to selling the farm to his son. He described Emeline Meaker as “a hard working woman” and said he’d never heard a word against her, though he also admitted he didn’t know the family especially well and had visited their farm on no more than five occasions. 

George Turner also testified for the defense, confirming his offer to take on Alice as a hired girl. This would seem to remove Emeline’s motive for the murder, but if this evidence had any impact on the jury, it was likely obscured by what followed. 

Because Emeline took the stand in her own defense. Her lawyers advised against it, but Emeline insisted. It didn’t go well. Questions had to be put to her in writing, which slowed proceedings considerably, while her responses were reportedly difficult to understand.

She told the court of her childhood in Barre and of the transient, unrooted life to which marriage had condemned her. The loss of her baby. The war and her husband’s enlistment. How she’d spent those years working her father’s farm, spreading manure and hauling sap. 

Her statements comprise a remarkable testament to the hardships she’d endured as a farmer’s daughter, and later, as a farmer’s wife. Presumably this line of questioning was intended to elicit sympathy from the jurors but seems to have had the opposite effect. 

From The Vermont Watchman:

She stated, in a rambling manner, and with the greatest minuteness, her housework during the day preceding and the three days following the murder--how she made butter, washed pans, warmed the skimmed milk for the calves, fried doughnuts, made sweet-cake, and sewed a bed-spread. But in regard to Alice’s disappearance her memory was very faint.

Emeline’s own account of the events of April 23 contradicted sworn testimony by other witnesses and was shown to contain numerous inconsistencies. In itself this might have been enough to secure her conviction but it was her daughter Nellie who provided the most damning evidence of all by corroborating Frank Atherton’s account of events on April 26:

Mr Atherton came back to the house with Almon; mother begged Frank not to take Almon away; he said he would bring him back in a short time; she said to take her, for she was the guilty one [...]

Closing arguments were presented. The jury was dismissed and returned less than two hours later with a unanimous verdict, finding Emeline guilty of murder in the first degree. The foreman informed the court of the jury’s decision but Emeline couldn’t hear him, or didn’t understand, and no one would tell her what was happening. 

The judge took pity on her. He asked the clerk to provide Emeline with the jury’s verdict in writing. She glanced this over but failed to take its meaning, forcing her attorneys to attempt to explain.

From The Vermont Watchman:

He wrote something to her, which she evidently understood, for with a loud moan of anguish she broke down and cried bitterly. [...] She was conducted to the jail by Mr. Atherton and Mr. Dudley, and was put into the second cell on the third tier of the common jail. [...] Soon after her confinement it became evident from her behavior that something was wrong with her. Mr. Dudley went up to her cell and she attacked him, and endeavored to crowd him out of the cell. Mr. Atherton went to help control her and a lively tussle ensued, during which she bit and scratched like a wildcat. 

Disease and disability. Poverty, grief, and endless toil. The world’s indifference like a breaking wave. Emeline was 22 the first time it smashed her, killing her son then taking her youth in its retreat. 18 years later, it came back, forcing “that thing” upon her household and making of her a murderess. Now the wave withdrew once more, dragging her out to sea. They placed her in irons, locked her in a cell.

* * *

From the County Jail in Montpelier, Emeline was transported to the House of Correction in Rutland and eventually to the state prison in Windsor, arriving in 1881. Almon was there already, awaiting execution, but two years passed before they met in person by which time his sentence had been commuted.

The bill to commute was introduced by Eber Huntley, Almon’s old neighbor, now serving in the state legislature. Huntley had known Almon prior to his arrest and argued the boy was “mentally deficient,” not fully responsible for his actions. 

His opinion likely echoed that of E.F. Palmer, who had vigorously defended Almon at the hearing and was soon to become Huntley’s son-in-law after marrying his daughter Myrtie in 1894. 

Of greater importance, however, was the support of Frank Plumley. As state’s attorney for Washington County, Plumley had prosecuted the Meakers and secured their convictions. Now he argued eloquently in favor of Almon’s commutal. 

The bill passed, helped along by Plumley and Huntley and by Almon’s own published confession that appeared in the papers in October 1882. In this confession Almon directly implicated his mother before concluding:

I agreed with my mother after we were arrested (which she urged me to do) to take all the blame on myself and clear her; which I have done, until I feel it a duty to tell the facts as above stated. No other person, or persons, had knowledge of the affair but my mother and myself. I had no motive in committing the act, and only did it -- what I did do -- at the request and advice of my mother. I did not realize what I was doing, nor consider its consequences.

Undoubtedly he’d saved his life by this confession but those who knew Almon believed his motives were genuine. The boy was always religious by nature and increasingly preoccupied with damnation, fearing the judgment of what he described as “a God of long suffering and great mercy [...] able to make us most wretched according to the way we leave this world.”

He confessed not to preserve his body but to save his soul and maybe his mind as well. He published his account and afterward felt “enough better to pay for the pain it cost me to tell.” At least that’s what he told his mother in a letter he wrote from his cell. He begged her to admit to her involvement in the murder that they might “meet in that better land beyond where there is no sorrow nor sadness.” 

But Emeline maintained her innocence, saying nothing, as though unwilling to give the world the satisfaction of an ending. She couldn’t escape her prison cell but by her lies and silence she would revenge herself upon them all: the newspapers who despised her, the officials who imprisoned her, the family who’d abandoned her.

Horace wouldn’t attend the execution, Nellie either. Her daughter wrote to plead ill health but Horace made it clear he wanted nothing to do with his wife, refusing even the costs of burial alongside their infant son Cecil. Her husband had betrayed her, as had so many others, but the worst of her anger Emeline reserved for Almon when she was finally allowed to see him on the eve of her execution.

From The Vermont Tribune:

The mother was engaged in reading Almon’s letter and confession, as he entered her cell. They met with the cold formality of strangers. During the reading of the confession, she showed anger and contempt, alternately. Several times she stopped reading and gave unmistakable knowledge of the crime. 

“Do you want I should tell all?” turning to Almon, and then checking herself.

Again, to Superintendent Rice: “Do you want I should tell you just how it happened?” [...] But, recollecting herself, said no more in that strain, but began to upbraid Almon, looking him straight in the face:

“Almon Meaker, you know you lie when you tell a story such as that.”

Again she said: “I could tell a pretty good story, if I wanted to, but people would not believe it.” 

She accused Almon of having brought her to this strait by his lying, and denied [his confession’s] truth in toto. 

Almon’s confession includes at least one misleading statement. The poison, he said, was administered on Henry Hill in Waterbury with Alice’s convulsions beginning “about twenty minutes later.” They’d planned to bury Alice in Stowe but she “died so soon” that they were forced to stop in Little River. The wording suggests she died quickly whereas Lina Foster’s testimony indicates Alice was alive and conscious ninety minutes after the poison was administered.

The Vermont Tribune continues:

Almon begged his mother to confess all, and not keep anything back. She showed her naturally ugly disposition all through the interview.

    She asked Almon who asked him to make such a confession.

    He replied: “God did.”

    After about an hour’s talk, Almon asked to kiss her good-bye.

    She replied: “What for?”    “Because you are my mother.”

    They kissed each other for the last time on earth, and Almon was taken away to his work.

This final meeting occurred on March 29, 1883 even as dozens of journalists, or “quill-drivers,” were arriving in Windsor. Emeline would be the first woman executed in Vermont and a considerable crowd was expected. Hangings weren’t open to the public, but the prison had issued around 150 permits to members of the press as well as state and county officials. 

Frank Atherton visited with Emeline on the morning of her execution. Their meeting was surprisingly amicable. Three years earlier, Emeline had attacked him with the ferocity of a “wildcat,” but now she shook his hand and attempted to make up.

“I felt hard against you,” she admitted, “for I thought you had something to do with Almon’s confession.” Her son, she said, “would have to answer for this on his dying bed,” but her attitude toward Atherton displayed a bizarre tenderness. She fumbled for his hand, taking it in hers and kissing it as she wept.

“Good-by,” she said, “good-by.”

The hour approached. At twenty-five minutes past one, Emeline was escorted from her cell and led to the northwest corner of the prison. Spectators jammed the offices and galleries overlooking the courtyard but the crowds parted at her approach to afford her a view of the gallows. 

She walked unaided to the scaffold, mounted the steps, surveyed the crowd. “God bless you all,” she said. 

The chaplain knelt with Emeline to pray and afterward the Sheriff informed her she had the opportunity to speak. Did she wish to make a final declaration? 

“No,” she said, “I have nothing to say. May God forgive you for hanging an innocent woman.” 

Minutes later, she was dead, and the crowd dispersed. They’d hoped for spectacle, perhaps, a last confession, but Emeline gave them neither. Instead she blessed the crowd from the platform and prayed for their forgiveness. She would trouble their conscience, force them to live with the possibility they’d hanged an innocent woman.

It didn’t work. Few at the time harbored any such doubts, and 140 years later, Emeline’s guilt appears all but certain. Multiple eyewitnesses placed her in the buggy on April 23rd and three nights later, she begged Atherton to take her instead of Almon, “for I am the guilty one.” 

Her motives, however, remain obscure. In prison her behavior was erratic, alternating between fits of sobbing and violent rages, and it’s likely she suffered from undiagnosed mental illness, in which case she needn’t have had a motive at all. Hatred alone might have sufficed.

But the timing is curious. Emeline despised her sister-in-law, resented her husband for taking her in, but she didn’t kill the girl, not until the spring of 1880, when it appeared that Alice was about to leave. As though she had to be silenced. As though Alice might tell the Turners aught of what she knew, or had seen, or had suffered.

Incest is one such possibility. Following the murder it was widely believed that Emeline and Almon were unnaturally close, but these rumors were later dismissed as idle speculation, and the hints Emeline dropped at their final meeting suggest, perhaps, a different motive. 

In 1879 Almon was 18 and unmarried while Alice was 8 or 9 and terribly vulnerable. Supposing Almon abused her sexually. Supposing Emeline found out. 

She blames Alice for what happened, for “tempting” her son. Beats her savagely but Almon continues to abuse Alice even after the family moves to Duxbury Corner. Horace puts an end to it, or tries to. He has a word with George Turner and makes plans to send Alice away, but the risk to Almon is too great: Emeline can’t allow it. 

She plans the murder to protect her son and compels him to help carry it out. Alice comes up missing the next day, but they tell the neighbors she’s run off. They’ve got away with it, she thinks, until Frank Atherton comes round asking questions and Almon breaks down. He admits to the killing but cannot keep his mother out of it and Atherton arrests them both. The boy pleads guilty to save his mother’s life, but it makes no difference, and they are sentenced to hang.

Then Almon publishes his confession. He blames his mother for the killing, but makes no mention of the abuse, and the legislature intervenes to commute his sentence. He writes to Emeline in prison, pleads with her to confess and save her soul. 

“I could tell a pretty good story,” she tells him, “if I wanted to, but people would not believe it.” 

Maybe not, but we’ll never know the truth: what they did, why they did it. Emeline died without confessing and Almon followed in 1893, succumbing to tuberculosis at the age of 32. He is buried near his mother in the potter’s ground at Windsor.

Horace wouldn’t pay for his burial, either. While Almon’s father is commonly described as “sickly,” he married again after Emeline’s death and went on to outlive his second wife. He died in 1904, aged 72. He’d become blind and deaf in his old age and his death was attributed to Bright’s Disease, a disorder of the kidneys that can result from syphilis. He is interred in Barre’s Elmwood Cemetery in an unmarked grave.

Possibly Nellie couldn’t afford a stone. Or perhaps she just wanted nothing to do with her old family. 

She’d married Lewis Boodry in 1883, but her husband battered her regularly, and on one occasion, had even attacked his aging in-laws. After a similar incident in 1898, Nellie sent her son to stay for a time with family friend B.F. Atherton -- Frank Atherton’s son. Lewis Boodry was institutionalized around 1899 and Nellie moved with her son to Burlington.

That’s where she was living when her father died. In the years that followed Nellie changed her name and moved to Boston where she died in the Free Home for Consumptives in 1911. Her Massachusetts death certificate correctly lists her place and date of birth but records her name as Nellie “Mansfield,” instead of Boodry, while her parents’ names are given as “Horace Mason” (instead of Meaker) and “Elenor Baxter” (instead of Emeline Bates).

Her husband’s name is listed as “Louis Mansfield” rather than Lewis Boodry, though he was, by then, long dead, having died at the State Hospital in 1903. Coincidentally his time in the insane asylum coincided with that of Alice’s brother Hilie, who suffered a mental breakdown in October 1900 while living in South Starksboro. According to the papers Hilie “became insane” and was institutionalized “for safe keeping.” His release wasn’t reported but he was out by 1904 and returned to Chittenden County, eventually settling in Huntington.

He lived into his sixties. Long enough to witness the floods of 1927 when rivers rose throughout the state and swept away the old covered bridges, including Barber’s Bridge over the Little River, where his sister had endured the final agonies of strychnine poisoning. He never married or had children. He drank heavily and died of alcohol poisoning in 1934.

The next year, the Army Corps of Engineers and Civilian Conservation Corps established a camp in the hills above Waterbury with construction of a large earth-fill dam across the Little River commencing in April 1935. The project employed two thousand men, lasted three years. The Little River slowed then deepened to form the Waterbury Reservoir, spreading from itself to cover an area of 860 acres. 

River Road is underwater now as is Barber’s pasture and portions of John White’s farm. No one remembers the landscape as it once was, as it would have appeared to Alice that evening in April 1880, silver and shining before the fall of dark. Her grave is in Duxbury Corner. Horace paid for a headstone but the epitaph is worn away, illegible after 140 years, and Alice sinks for the earth that’s piled over her, black as deep water, a weight like our forgetting.

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Episode 12: Alice Meaker Part 3 was sourced from public records and newspapers of the period, including The Vermont Watchman and The Argus and Patriot.

Music by Jon Mills. Researched and written by Daniel Mills.