The Murder of Perry Russell

The moon was in the window. The bedroom swam silver in its light. 

Half-past eight o’clock on October 3, 1868, and Hannah Russell lay awake, her husband Perry beside her. He slept deeply and didn’t stir, though wind shook the roof-slates and rattled the shutters and somebody rapped at the side-door. 

Hannah and Perry were in their seventies, the children long since grown. A hired man helped Perry about the farm but lived elsewhere, while the maid was off that night, visiting family. The Russells were alone in the house.

Hannah woke her husband. There’s someone at the door, she said. 

Perry threw back the blankets, said he’d better go and see. 

Be careful, Hannah urged him. Find out who’s there before you let them in.

This wasn’t the first time such a thing had happened. Eighteen months previously in March of 1867 the Russells were roused by a knocking at the door. Perry had grabbed his gun and raised the door-latch, but no one was there. This time he didn’t take his gun but crossed the dining room in his nightclothes and spoke through the closed door.

“What do you want?”

A man’s voice answered.  “Want to come in.”

“Who are you?” Perry asked.

“Joe Bushey,” the voice replied.

Bushey was 16 and had worked for the Russells the previous summer. 

“What do you want?” Perry asked again.

“Want to come in.”

* * *

Perry lifted the latch, opened the door. 

The first blow struck him across the face and broke his nose. “O Lord!” he cried and staggered back, bleeding, as the man pushed into the house. Perry grappled with his attacker, or tried to, but the man was younger, stronger. He threw Perry to the ground and beat him unconscious.

Hannah crawled from the bed. A stroke three years before had left her partially paralyzed but she managed to limp into the dining room. In the moonlight she saw her husband sprawled on the floor, groaning, with his attacker standing over him, swinging what appeared to be a metal rod. He loomed in the doorway, black night behind him so she couldn’t make him out.

The same dark saved her, or so it seemed, for the man took no notice of her and made no attempt to pursue her as she staggered out the front door and through the farm-fields in her nightdress with the moon lighting her path and a sky of stars above her head. 

The Russell farm was among the largest in Hinesburg and it was a distance of around ⅓ mile to the home of their nearest neighbor Jerome Coleman. Hannah woke the Colemans who accompanied her farther south to the Walston Farm, where the general alarm was raised. The doctor was sent for, as was the town constable, and Coleman gathered together a group of armed men before returning to the Russell farmhouse.

They reached the house at around 9:00 and found Perry lying in the doorway. Beside him was an old barn door hinge, sixteen inches in length and matted with blood and hair. The men tried to wake Perry but he proved unresponsive so they dragged a straw bed into the dining room and lifted him onto it, making him comfortable til the doctor could arrive. 

Dr. John F. Miles reached the house around an hour later and performed an examination. Perry’s nose was broken, Miles observed, and the old man had suffered eight blows to the head with a heavy object, presumably the door hinge. The injuries were almost certainly fatal. 

An inquest would follow. Like other towns of its era, Hinesburg had a constable and justice but no real capacity to conduct a criminal investigation. For this reason authorities resolved to send for Noble Flanagan. In those days the telegraph lines tended to follow the railroads so it’s likely a rider was dispatched to Shelburne and news of the attack wired from there to Burlington.

Flanagan, 56, was Burlington’s Chief of Police as well as a deputy US marshal and a former sheriff of Chittenden County. In 1868 he was perhaps the preeminent investigator in the Champlain Valley, having come to prominence three years earlier following the Griswold murder in Williston. 

Of equal importance, perhaps, he was also a Hinesburg native, having grown up in the village and married Amanda Love, also of Hinesburg. In 1842, his daughter Martha Salome died, tragically, at the age of 2, but the Flanagans remained in Hinesburg until 1857 or thereabouts when Noble was elected Chittenden County Sheriff.

At around 3 in the morning on October 4, 1868 a messenger came to Flanagan’s Burlington residence. There had been an attack, he was told, probably a murder. He was wanted in Hinesburg. Flanagan left directly and arrived at the Russell farmhouse in the hours before dawn. 

Perry Russell lay on the straw bed in the first room of the house. He was alive but fatally injured and his family had washed and cleaned the wounds so there was almost no blood to be seen. Flanagan spoke with Hannah Russell, who told him of the man at the door, the conversation she’d overhead.

But was it actually Joe Bushey she had seen?

Hannah couldn’t be sure. 

Flanagan examined the crime scene. The door-hinge was obviously the murder weapon and he took it into his possession as evidence. From the Russells he learned the hinge had been stolen from a barn on the property along with a broken pitchfork that was found by the door, as though discarded.

The attacker was disorganized, unprepared. He hadn’t brought a weapon but settled instead for what he could find: a broken pitchfork, an old door hinge. In the Russells’ barn he had snapped the horse-whip and slashed through the harnesses, indicating the man had feared pursuit and probably came and went on foot. 

He must have watched the house and waited for the Russells to retire. The last lamp was extinguished at around eight. Some minutes later, the man approached the house. Perry let him in and was immediately attacked. The man battered Perry with the hinge but let Hannah go. It was of no account: he knew what he was after, didn’t need much time.

From the doorway the attacker went to the Russells’ bedroom and took down a leather-bound trunk from inside the clothespress. Until recently the trunk had contained around $5,000 in US bonds, though Perry had deposited the money at a bank in just the last year. Plainly the attacker was unaware of this fact, however, for he had taken the trunk and nothing else. 

This provided a motive as well a murder weapon. Flanagan even had a suspect. The man at the door had identified himself as Joe Bushey, a local boy, who lived with his father on Buck Hill around four miles south of the Russell farm.

Flanagan drove down there in the dark. Joe wasn’t home but he spoke with his father. From him he learned Joe had accompanied his mother on a visit to Burlington and would have been in town at the time of the attack. The boy had stayed with his mother in Burlington overnight but was expected back soon. 

Bushey was in the clear, then, but Flanagan didn’t return to the Russell farm, not yet. Instead he left Joe Bushey’s place and drove back downhill to the Welcome farm. 

Henry Welcome was only 17, but already had a reputation as a drinker, a liar, and a petty criminal. The previous year, aged 16, he was implicated in a break-in at a Hinesburg store and fled to Massachusetts. In Boston he had stolen a watch and received a six-month sentence for theft. In August or September of 1868 he was released from the house of correction and returned to Vermont.

In Waterbury he hired a horse and cart to take him to Milton where he attempted to sell the carriage as his own. The scheme didn’t come off: Welcome was arrested by Washington County Deputy Sheriff Milo Stewart and committed to trial in Montpelier where he was acquitted, ultimately, on account of his youth, though his lawyer’s fees left him deeply in debt.

Flanagan knew Henry as a small child and was familiar with his recent history. The boy was unstable, spiraling, and what’s more, he was seen in Hinesburg as recently as October 1. Flanagan spoke with Henry’s father Levi, who confirmed Henry had stopped by on the 1st but only briefly. The boy needed money to settle his debts and Levi gave him $5. Afterward Henry walked across town to Lyman Partch’s farm, where his sister lived, presumably to ask her for money. From there it was his stated intention to take the train to New Haven to visit with another sister, but Levi hadn’t heard from him since. Flanagan bid him good morning.

He returned to the Russell Farm and found a house in mourning. Perry had died at around nine o’clock and his family had laid his body out in the parlor, as was the custom. They bandaged his head to hide the worst of his injuries but the wounds to his face were clearly visible to the townsfolk passing through, nearly 200 in all. Some, surely, were motivated merely by curiosity, but many came to pay their respects or to offer assistance. 

Flanagan put them to work. A search of the property that morning found boot-prints leading away from the house in a northeasterly direction. The prints were widely-spaced, as of a man in flight, and Flanagan dispatched a group of townsfolk to follow. The men crossed the town line into Shelburne where they found the trunk discarded in a farm-field, upside-down with its bottom smashed in and contents strewn about.

October 4 was Sunday, a day without work, and excitement in the village was general. Flanagan listened to the gossips, asked after Henry Welcome. A witness placed Henry in Shelburne Village on Saturday morning while others indicated they had seen him -- or someone like him -- near the Russell farm in the hours before and after the attack. 

Joe Bushey came back from Burlington and talked to Flanagan. Yes, he had seen Henry. This was at the Welcome Farm on Thursday afternoon. The boys were neighbors, if not exactly friends, and they had spoken only briefly.

Henry was hard-up. He asked Joe where he’d worked the previous summer and Joe told him he’d worked for Perry Russell. Henry mentioned the debts he’d accrued and showed Bushey $6, including the $5 he had received from his father. This was all he had in his possession, Henry said, but he’d get the money, knew a way.

It also emerged that Henry had visited the Russell farmhouse on at least one occasion previously. In March of 1867 Levi Welcome sold Perry Russell a colt for $55. Russell had only $50 in his possession at the time of transaction but agreed to pay the remaining $5 upon receipt of the colt. Levi sent Henry over with the horse. Perry invited the boy inside then took down the trunk from the clothespress to pay what was owed. 

Not long afterward, a man came to the Russell house in the night and pounded on the door. Perry grabbed his gun. He opened the door, but all was quiet, no one there, snow on the ground like faint stars glittering.

* * *

News of the murder appeared in the papers the next morning. The October 5 edition of the Burlington Free Press reported on the circumstances of the attack as well as Flanagan’s suspicions of young Henry Welcome. 

Copies of The Free Press were delivered to the Post Office in Essex Junction early on Monday morning. William White, a shoemaker, read the paper at the PO and soon afterward chanced to encounter a man there named Noble Irish, who was Hannah Russell’s nephew.

White was an acquaintance of the Welcome family and mentioned to Irish that he had put up Henry’s brother Philip the night before. That evening, Sunday, the Whites came home from church and found Philip outside their door. He was taking the 6:55 am train, he explained, and asked if he might spend the night with them. White agreed and thought nothing of it, not then, of the bloodstains on Welcome’s clothing. 

Irish heard this story and was confident “Philip” Welcome must in fact have been Henry. He wired ahead to Waterbury with his suspicions and asked authorities to detain Henry Welcome aboard the 6:55 to Montpelier.

Deputy Sheriff Milo Stewart received the telegram and met the train in Waterbury. He went aboard and recognized Henry at once. The boy slouched in his seat, as though to escape notice, but Stewart himself had arrested Henry for theft only a few weeks earlier. “I want you,” Stewart said, and Henry nodded. He didn’t speak or struggle though Stewart fastened the manacles about his wrists and escorted him off the train.

Afterward the deputy took the boy to his own house in Waterbury where he provided Henry with a change of clothes. The bloodstained garments he took as evidence. Stewart asked Henry if he was responsible for the killing but Henry denied it and blamed a nosebleed for the stains upon his clothing.

There would have to be a hearing. Stewart enlisted the help of two others, including one George Arms, and the four men set out by carriage, arriving in Hinesburg Village around noon. Legal proceedings began immediately. A preliminary “examination,” similar to an inquest, was held in the town hall with Justice Elmer Beecher presiding.

Proceedings began with Hinesburg’s Grand Juror charging Henry Welcome with the murder of Perry Russell. Henry listened, stone-faced, and “with utmost indifference,” as the newspapers reported. He pled not guilty. When asked if he would like his father to be present Henry replied “he that he should like well enough to have him present,” but at this point, “several citizens said the father had requested not to be sent for.”

Various witnesses were called and questioned, including Joe Bushey, who repeated much of what he had told to Flanagan previously. 

The examination lasted two days. George Arms later recounted a conversation with Welcome that took place on the evening of the first day.

From The Burlington Free Press:

After the first day’s examination at Hinesburgh I had a conversation with [Welcome] and said if he could show where he was that night he was all right. He then said he wished to God daddy was there and he could make it all right; he saw his brother and requested me to go and call him; I went to do so but could not find him; he said he must see his father, and importuned me to go and see him, and request him (his father) to come and see him […] I returned and told him his father was not coming […]

Henry wanted his “daddy,” needed him to “make it all right.” Probably he hoped his father would provide him an alibi. But Levi didn’t come and the hearing concluded the next day. Henry was to stand trial for murder at the county courthouse. Until then he was remanded in Stewart’s custody to be transported to the jail in Burlington. 

Again the men set out in two carriages. Henry, manacled, rode up front, with Stewart in the second carriage following. The party took the Shelburne Road northbound and were two miles northwest of the village when they met the hearse with Perry Russell’s body. 

The funeral had been held that morning at the Russell house. Now the mourners traveled in procession to the village cemetery for the burial, a line of nearly 100 carriages following behind the hearse.

Stewart ordered his men to pull off that the procession might pass. Henry remained in the open carriage, sitting quite upright. The mourners drove past, meeting his eye. They knew who he was, of what he was accused, but Henry said nothing. He showed no shame or guilt, no feeling whatsoever, and didn’t look away until after the procession had passed.

Noble Flanagan was in Rutland during the hearing but resumed his investigation upon his return to Chittenden County. He had previously found witnesses who placed Welcome near the Russell farm on October 3 and went on to gather new evidence providing a fuller picture of Henry’s movements at the time of the murder.

On October 1, a Thursday, Henry had left his father’s house on Buck Hill and walked to the Partch farm in Hinesburg, where he spent the night. The next day he traveled to New Haven by train to see another of his sisters before returning to Shelburne on Saturday, October 3. He disembarked from the train at Shelburne Village and walked back toward the Russell farm.

The attack occurred at half-past-eight in the evening. Welcome fled the house with the trunk and afterward smashed it open, only to find there was no money inside. He was in a panic: he wandered in the moonlight, slept in a hay barn.

The next morning, Sunday, he attempted to wash his clothes but the blood was dried and wouldn’t come out. At around 2 pm he was spotted in an orchard in Shelburne, and later that afternoon, he was seen on the bridge to Winooski. From there he followed along the railroad tracks until he reached Essex Junction, where he passed himself off as his brother Philip and stayed with William White.

Flanagan interviewed Henry in jail. Another prisoner had warned the boy to be on guard against “Old Flanagan” but it seems Henry admitted to the murder under questioning, though he later recanted. As a consequence his statements to Flanagan were deemed inadmissible at trial.

He was tried over three days in April 1869. Flanagan and Stewart gave evidence in the case and Hannah Russell testified to the circumstances of the attack, the brutality of it, and of the man she’d glimpsed in the doorway, his shadow looming. 

“Henry, was that you?” she asked. “Oh! Henry was that you?” 

The boy didn’t reply. Indeed he remained quiet throughout the three days of his trial as numerous witnesses were called to testify against him. Among these was a former cellmate named Jerome Dumas who testified that Henry had admitted to the crime. 

“Guilty,” Henry had told him. “Guilty as hell.”

Closing arguments were presented on Thursday, April 22, with the jury taking only twenty minutes to return a guilty verdict. Henry was impassive, unemotional. He was returned to jail and was later reported as playing cards with his fellow inmates. 

Henry’s legal counsel appealed to the state supreme court, which delayed his sentencing until the court’s next sitting. During this time Henry was confined at the state prison in Windsor until January 1870 when he was transported to Montpelier for sentencing. Again the papers described him as detached, indifferent. The clerk ordered him to stand and asked if he had anything he wished to say before sentence was passed. “I have not,” he replied.

Judge Barrett addressed Henry directly. He urged the boy to “examine himself” and reflect upon the state of his soul, and the court was hushed, as at a deathbed, when Barrett read the sentence aloud:

It is ordered by the Court that on Friday the 21st of January, A.D. 1871 between the hours of eleven o’clock in the forenoon and two o’clock in the afternoon, respondent be hanged by the neck till dead at the State Prison in Windsor…

Henry, it is reported, listened closely. He watched the Judge, his expression unchanging. The correspondent for The Burlington Free Press remarked that Henry must possess either “the utmost hardihood” or “an unusual amount of brutish indifference,” but either way, he wrote, the prisoner’s detachment was “terribly painful to witness.”

But if Henry’s silence was dreadful to behold it would be as nothing to what came afterward, when all petitions for clemency failed, and Henry was led in irons into the courtyard of Windsor State Prison. It was 12:30 in the afternoon on January 21, 1871. 

Prior to the execution he had made a full confession to a reporter. Along with his confession the papers had carried his final declaration in which Henry expressed remorse for his crimes and warned other young men against drink. “But tears will avail nothing for me now,” he wrote, “May the blood of Christ wash away my sins! This is my last and only hope.”

Executions in Vermont were not at that time public events. A permit was required to attend but even so a crowd of around 50 was present in the courtyard, including numerous state and county officials. Welcome wore mulberry pantaloons with a black shirt and no tie or collar. His open coffin was on display. The Sheriff led him past it and then onto the platform where a selection from scripture was read. Afterward Henry was allowed to address the crowd.

“It is hard for me to speak,” he began, “but I want to say a few words.” He warned other young men against drink and “low associates” before concluding, “I have confessed my crime to the world and I believe God has forgiven me. I can say no more.” He trembled on the platform. He looked up then, as if toward heaven, or perhaps only at the gibbet overhead. 

“I am ready,” he said. 

The hood was secured, the noose fastened. The trapdoor opened and Henry fell through. He didn’t struggle. A doctor was in place beneath the scaffold to monitor the prisoner’s heartbeat. The pulse grew faint, fading, and six minutes later, it was over.

Noble Flanagan was there. He watched Henry die. Perhaps he remembered Henry as he once was, a small child, innocent as the daughter he’d lost. He might have wondered at the years that had passed, that made Henry into a murderer and turned Flanagan into the instrument of justice, his executioner: he may not have tied the rope or pulled the lever but could have had no doubt he was responsible for the boy’s death. 

And Henry was, in truth, little more than a boy. Nineteen when he was hanged and barely seventeen when he killed Perry Russell. At the hearing he wanted “his daddy” and begged George Arms to fetch him. But Levi wouldn’t come. Not then, not now. Henry was dead and his father didn’t want the body. The boy was to be buried in the prison yard. The men untied the noose and Flanagan looked on as Henry was carried to his coffin. 

The next year Flanagan stepped down from his position as Burlington’s Chief of Police. By that time he was perhaps the most prominent detective in Vermont and continued for some years to work as a private investigator before entering the livery business in the final years of his life. He died in 1882, aged 70. He is buried with his wife and daughter in the Hinesburg village cemetery. Hannah and Perry Russell are buried together in the next plot.

151 years later and the murder of Perry Russell has largely passed from memory. The old Russell house floats on a sea of flowers, ringed with gardens where once there was wheat or corn, the fields through which Hannah Russell fled by moonlight, ghost-like in her nightgown, and through which Henry Welcome, aged 15, led his father’s colt. 

* * *

This episode was sourced from public records and from newspaper accounts of the time appearing in The Burlington Free Press, The Burlington Times, and The St. Johnsbury Caledonian, among others.

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