The Starch Box Mystery

The Saxtons River flows east off the hills near Grafton to meet the Connecticut in Westminster. In 1895 Guild & Wetherbee’s paper mill sat at the rivers’ forks, drawing water off the Saxtons through a narrow raceway or flume.

Henry Beumond worked at Guild & Wetherbee’s. Late in the afternoon of June 12, 1895, he descended to the mill-race to rake out the debris and spied a starch box caught up on the racks. He fished it out and was surprised to find the lid was nailed shut. He pried it open.

A baby was inside, a newborn boy. The infant curled up on itself, face-down, a woman’s apron-string fastened round its throat. Also inside the box was a fragment of Brussels carpeting, soiled with blood.

Beumond notified the mill’s owner, who contacted Charles Spaulding, a town selectman in Westminster. Spaulding arrived shortly and took charge of the box, but there was to be no investigation, no inquest. The town had decided against it, citing costs, and besides, cases of suspected infanticide were nearly impossible to prosecute in an era when stillbirth occurred in up to 19% of pregnancies.

Spaulding took the infant’s body home with him and stored it in his cellar overnight. The next morning, he dug a hole in his garden and buried them together, the baby and the box. 

The matter was settled, then, or so he thought, at least until seven o’clock that evening, when Spaulding received a visit from Arthur H. Thompson, chief of police in neighboring Bellows Falls.

At that time Bellows Falls was something of a boom town. The Connecticut River meant industry, meant jobs, and the village prospered as men and women moved there from the surrounding farm country, finding work in mills and rail-yards, at hotels and hack-stands. By 1891, the village was large enough to warrant a small police force of “special call” or part-time policemen under the direction of Chief Thompson.

Though Thompson spent much of his time enforcing Vermont’s strict prohibition laws, he was generally respected in the community, esteemed for his “tact and good judgement” and for the kindness he showed to “those who had strayed from the straight path” as well as “those who had suffered.”

Thompson himself was acquainted with suffering, knew it well. In June 1894, his younger son Harry died of “membranous croup,” or diphtheria, aged 6, and it was around one year later that Thompson learned of the discovery of a male newborn at Guild & Wetherbee’s.

He traveled to Westminster and called on Charles Spaulding. He told the selectman he intended to investigate the case and asked to take possession of the infant’s remains. Spaulding assented, doubtless glad to be rid of them. The two men dug up the grave and Thompson returned to Bellows Falls with the starch box.

* * *

Stella Maria Green was born in 1872 and raised on a farm in Rockingham. In her teens she left home to take a job at the hotel in Grafton and later she worked as a domestic servant in the village of Saxtons River. 

In 1894 she accepted a position as a live-in maid at the home of grain merchant F.M. Willson on Henry Street in Bellows Falls. Willson was a successful businessman and a figure of some prominence in town. As a household servant, Stella was obliged to rise early and prepare breakfast at around six o’clock before working through the day, changing beds and ironing shirts, starching collars. 

After work she was often seen about in Bellows Falls. She was apparently quite attractive, described in contemporary accounts as “rather prepossessing in appearance.”

Bellows Falls barber George Spaulding later recalled a conversation with the hackman Charles Rice in which Spaulding described Stella as “a good looking girl” and remarked that he “wouldn’t mind being intimately with her himself.” Rice, who was married, told Spaulding he “had been and intended to be in future.”

Because Charles Rice was Stella’s secret, if poorly kept. He was around 35 in 1894 and worked as a hackman — essentially, a taxi driver — for Lewis C. Lovell, a local livery owner. Rice was married and lived with his wife at Lovell’s residence on Atkinson Street. 

It’s unknown how Rice and Stella became acquainted but witnesses placed them together on multiple occasions as early as August 1894. Late one night, around 1:00, special call policeman Edward Stapleton spotted them together on Canal Street “walking along in the road” and Charles with his arm around Stella’s waist. Adultery was common enough, then as now, but in 1894, it was also illegal. Stapleton, however, did nothing. It turns out he knew Rice and not only by sight. At that time, they both served the village of Bellows Falls as part-time police officers under Thompson’s direction.

So the affair continued, lasting around a year. On June 22, 1895, Stella and Rice were known to have attended Scribner & Smith’s circus in North Walpole, New Hampshire. The show was reportedly “a very good one for the price asked for admission” and featured tumblers, acrobats, performing dogs.

By then Stella had left the Willsons’ employment, taking a job as a kitchen girl at The Rockingham, a nearby hotel, where she also lived. But the work didn’t agree with Stella, it seems, for she sickened somehow and lost her figure, her complexion. Townspeople no longer described her as “healthy” or “stalky” but “emaciated” and “ghostly pale.” 

This sudden change in her appearance didn’t go unremarked. Chief Thompson noticed it as well and became suspicious. He visited the Willsons on June 26, a Wednesday night. Stella had left the family’s employment around two weeks prior. They had parted on good terms. The Willsons viewed her as a respectable girl from a good family, a regular church-goer who had given ten days’ notice before moving out.

No doubt they told as much to Chief Thompson, but he wasn’t satisfied, at least not fully. He asked to see Stella’s old room, and they agreed, showed him upstairs.

Stella’s room was furnished with a Brussels carpet. Thompson would have noticed it straightway. He examined the rug and observed it was damaged, a piece cut out. He produced the bloodied piece of carpeting from the starch box and placed it alongside the Willsons’ rug. They matched.

Later that evening, around midnight, Thompson called at The Rockingham and spoke with the hotel’s proprietor, who summoned Stella to the kitchens. She arrived and found Thompson waiting for her, ready to pounce. “Now I have got you just where I want you,” he said. 

Stella was tired, scared. She told him everything. How she became pregnant the previous autumn. How she told no one, not even the father. An illegitimate child meant shame, ruin, a stain she couldn’t erase. 

In early June, she gave the Willsons notice, ten days. She thought, perhaps, it would give her enough time. To move home. To make some other arrangement. 

It didn’t. At around 11 pm on June 11, she went into labor in her room at the Willsons’ home. She labored alone and in total silence, delivering the baby onto the Brussels carpet. It was a boy, she said, but born dead. Motionless. Its eyes shut. 

She hid the body in her dresser and slept a little, not long. She had to be up before six to prepare breakfast for the Willsons, and she was. No one suspected anything. That day, June 12, passed the same as any other. She saw to her chores as usual, and at four o’clock, she left the house carrying the starch box. She walked the “long half mile” to the iron bridge where she waited until she was unobserved then dropped the box over the railing.

All this she told to Thompson, but still he pressed her. He was relentless, intimidating. He had lost a son and she had thrown hers away. 

What of the apron-string? he asked.

She said she feared the baby would cry out. That was why she had tied the string, to keep it quiet.

But wasn’t the child born dead?

Stella didn’t reply, or couldn’t.

Thompson placed her under arrest to be held in custody at The Rockingham. Then he went after the father.

In her confession Stella had identified Charles Rice as the baby’s father. This was likely no surprise to Thompson, who had witnessed the two lovers together on one occasion near Rice’s hack stand. And, of course, Thompson knew Rice from his time as a police officer as well as a recent arrest for transporting beer into Vermont, which was then a dry state. 

Thompson enlisted the assistance of police officer Edward Stapleton, who placed a telephone call to the Lovell house at around three in the morning. He told Lovell a family was in need of a hack to Alstead, New Hampshire. 

Rice dressed and came out to ready the carriage and Thompson and Stapleton were there. They placed him under arrest, led him away.

Lewis Lovell was also present and urged his hackman to say nothing. Sound advice, as it transpired, but Rice didn’t listen. He readily admitted to the affair but disavowed any knowledge of the baby, stating he “didn’t believe she had had a child, but if she had it was his and he wouldn’t deny it.” 

Later that same morning, June 27, Chief Thompson returned to The Rockingham in the company of Dr. E.S. Albee. Thompson asked Stella Green to repeat her earlier statement in the doctor’s presence and she did. In her words: “I told him all I knew about it.” 

Around this time, Stella’s mother Maria joined her at The Rockingham. Word of the arrest was beginning to spread, the scandal too. The Vermont Tribune describes Maria Green as “heartbroken” by the news, but she didn’t abandon her daughter as many, even Stella herself, might have expected. Instead the Greens procured the services of an attorney on whose advice Stella retracted her earlier statements to Thompson and Albee. She now denied all knowledge of Charles Rice, the stillbirth, the starch box.

A few days later, Stella made bail and returned to her parents’ farm near Chester only to be arrested again in September following indictment by a grand jury. Charles Rice was arrested as well. The lovers were to be tried separately at the Windham County Courthouse in Newfane in November. Charles was charged with adultery while Stella would face trial alone “for the murder of her bastard child.” 

Stella’s trial began on Tuesday, November 5. The state argued she had concealed the birth of her illegitimate child in such circumstances as to warrant a presumption of murder, while the defense sought to show the baby was, in fact, stillborn as Stella had always maintained. 

The trial lasted the rest of the week. Henry Beumond and Charles Spaulding gave evidence concerning the discovery of the starch box, and a man named John Shuttleworth testified he had noticed Stella’s pregnancy on June 10 while he was at work in the Willsons’ home. 

Shuttleworth was engaged in “varnishing and shelacking about the house,” which led the defense to suggest Stella may have miscarried due to Shuttleworth’s use of turpentine. This suggestion was countered in turn by multiple witnesses who confirmed the infant had appeared to be full term.

Dr. J.S. Hill provided expert testimony for the state. Hill had conducted a rather cursory autopsy of the child’s remains not long after discovery. Based on his findings he argued the child was born alive, though the state of decomposition made it impossible to determine a precise cause of death. The apron-string was, obviously, suggestive, but he believed it was also possible the child had died due to smothering or internal hemorrhage. Dr. Albee echoed these conclusions.

Drs. Campbell and Ketchum testified on behalf of the defense. They argued the child was most likely stillborn and pointed to the presence of meconium in the baby’s body, as this is typically expelled after birth, as well as the absence of air in the stomach, among other factors indicating “suspended animation” or stillbirth. 

Stella’s confessions were also examined. Her defense counsel claimed her statements to Chief Thompson and Dr. Albee were given under duress and couldn’t be admitted as evidence. While the judge agreed her statement to Chief Thompson was inadmissible, given the circumstances, he chose to allow Stella’s statement to Dr. Albee as “she had then had time to think it over and could not be said to be under duress.”

Stella took the stand herself and repeated much the same story she had told to Thompson and Albee. Again she couldn’t account for the apron-string except to say she feared the baby would cry out, that the Willsons would wake. 

Maybe the child was stillborn. Maybe it wasn’t. The experts disagreed, but either way, Stella had to hide the body. She was an adulteress and had birthed a child out of wedlock. The shame would follow her for years: she would never be free of it. 

The next day, she placed the baby into a starch box and dropped it in the river. Nine months of hell, and her ordeal was at an end, finally, all of her terror and anguish nailed into a box and swept downstream with the rest of the town’s garbage — until a few hours later, anyway, when the box washed into the flume at Guild & Wetherbee’s and caught up on the racks, waiting.

* * *

Stella’s case went to the jury, who reached a compromise verdict. In 1895 cases of infanticide were difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. For this reason, Vermont state law permitted conviction for “statutory infanticide” with a reduced sentence, where there existed only a strong “presumption” of guilt. 

On Saturday, November 9, Stella was convicted of statutory infanticide and sentenced to four years in the Rutland House of Correction.

The following week saw Charles Rice’s trial for adultery. 

In court, numerous witnesses confirmed they saw Rice and Stella together in Bellows Falls during 1894-95 while Edward Stapleton and Chief Thompson testified to Rice’s own statements from the early hours of June 27.

The case might have ended there but for Rice’s employer Lewis Lovell, who took the stand for the defense. In his testimony he detailed the circumstances of Rice’s arrest and implied he didn’t trust Stapleton and Thompson. For this reason he’d advised Rice to say nothing. 

Attorney Fitts, representing the state, sought to discredit Lovell by pointing to Rice’s earlier arrest for transporting beer in Lovell’s hackney carriage. He implied that Rice’s prosecution had placed Lovell “under peculiar obligation” to his employee — presumably because Lovell himself, as the carriage’s owner, had arranged for the transportation.

Lovell responded by alleging police corruption in Bellows Falls. He claimed Rice had transported the beer on behalf of various parties, including “the very officer who had testified.” 

From The Windham County Reformer:

Rice was prosecuted at the time for transporting this beer which it now appears went to the very men who caused or were instrumental in the prosecution.

The jury wasn’t swayed. They deliberated overnight and returned to court in the morning with a verdict. Guilty.

But Lovell wasn’t finished. After the verdict, he approached Rice’s lawyers with suspicions of juror misconduct. As far back as September, Lovell said, he had overheard a conversation between John H. Albee and the juror Levi Derby in which Derby remarked of Rice that “there was no question but what they would convict him easily enough.” Prior to trial, during jury polling, Derby had claimed to know nothing of Rice’s case apart from what he had read and to have formed no opinion concerning the defendant’s guilt. 

Derby denied these accusations, but the judge agreed to suspend sentencing while Rice’s lawyers collected affidavits from Lovell and John Albee as well as John Albee’s wife. In their written statements the Albees claimed Derby had said he “hoped he should be drawn on the jury on Green’s case, he would like to convict, he knew Rice was guilty, and that he should be hung.” 

Unfortunately for Rice, John Albee was ill and unable to appear in court on November 21. Mrs Albee was present but her verbal statement proved “more vague” than her written affidavit. Lovell remained firm but also conceded that “Rice had worked for him and [...] that he took a great interest in him and in the case.”

The judge considered the evidence as presented and ruled in favor of the state, denying the defense’s motion for a retrial. He described the allegations as “improbable” and certainly not substantial enough to warrant a new trial. Rice was sentenced to four years in the state prison. 

Four years: the same sentence for adultery that Stella had received for infanticide. 

Charles Rice was released from prison in May 1899. He returned to Bellows Falls, as reported in the Montpelier Evening Argus, but afterward, he becomes more difficult to trace. The name “Charles Rice” was relatively common at that time, while his middle initial was inconsistently rendered in newspaper reports as either “D” or “S.” The 1900 census shows a Charles Rice of roughly the right age as an inmate at Windsor State Prison, suggesting he may have returned to prison after his 1899 release, but this is far from certain.

Arthur H. Thompson served as Chief of Police in Bellows Falls for another fifteen years. During this time he made hundreds of arrests for drunkenness and investigated two other suspected cases of infanticide.

In 1897 a baby’s body was found in the river near the Fall Mountain Paper company’s log drive. This was likely a murder case but further investigation was deemed impossible as it couldn’t be determined where the body had entered the water. 

Five years later, in 1902, Thompson investigated the discovery of two newborn girls in the race of a paper mill on the Saxtons River. The bodies had been tied up in a potato sack then thrown into the water, only to become caught up on the racks in the raceway. Thompson identified the babies as twin girls who had died in childbirth. Their parents, presumably, couldn’t afford the costs of burial.

In February 1910 the trustees of Bellows Falls declined to re-appoint Thompson as Chief of Police. The vote was three-to-one with the trustees offering no reason or justification for their decision. In response to this development, The Brattleboro Reformer published an editorial ostensibly in praise of Thompson that also hints at his failings:

Chief Thompson made mistakes, and who does not? He has enemies, and who has not? With all the faults that can be charged against him he was a pretty good man for the job.

Among these “enemies” was presumably Lewis Lovell, who had accused the Bellows Falls police of illegal trafficking in alcohol. It’s unclear how far these allegations can or should be credited but Thompson’s dismissal is certainly suggestive, as is the tragedy that followed.

On Sunday, July 10, 1911, Thompson took dinner with his family at his house in Bellows Falls. He was reportedly in his “usual good humor” and his family took no notice later of his absence at supper, as it was “his custom to go out of town at times without notifying the home folks.”

But as the hours stretched, and Thompson didn’t appear, the family grew concerned. His son Daniel, 28, made a search of the house, and at 10 pm, he found his father hanging in the cellar, a suicide. 

From The Deerfield Valley Times:

[Thompson] had been in charge of the Bellows Falls police department for twenty years. It is said that he was deeply disappointed when he failed of re-appointment and that this may have contributed to his despondency. He was 55 years old.

Stella Green survived Thompson by 25 years. In September 1898 she was released from the Rutland House of Correction and returned to her parents’ farm. In February 1902 she married Albert J. Emery, who subsequently left her. A divorce was granted in 1907 on grounds of desertion and she went on to marry Ellsworth E. Wilder of Ludlow, a farmer. They were together for twenty years until Ellsworth’s death in 1927 at which time Stella moved to Acworth, New Hampshire. 

The 1930 census records her as living in Acworth at the home of her cousin Mrs. Frank Eddy. Not long afterward the Eddys relocated to Townshend, Vermont, and Stella moved with them. In Townshend she fell ill with measles and died on March 26, 1936, aged 65. 

From The Brattleboro Reformer:

Mrs. Stella Wilder, widow of Ellsworth Wilder of Ludlow, died about 8 o'clock Thursday morning at the home of her cousin, Mrs. Frank E. Eddy, with whom she has made her home for the greater part of the past five years. [...] Her only near relatives are a brother, Erwin E. Green of Grafton; an uncle, Bert Fairbank of Chester, and several cousins. The funeral will be held at the Baptist Meeting House Sunday afternoon, March 29, at 2 o'clock and burial will be in Oakwood cemetery.

No mention is made of her arrest or trial or even of her maiden name. 41 years later, and she is no longer the adulteress Stella Green but “Mrs. Stella Wilder,” widowed and respectable.

A Vermont death record was filed for the baby born on June 11, 1895. Under “Disease Causing Death” the town clerk has written “Murdered.” A state birth record was filed as well. It lists the baby’s name as “Green, No Name (Illeg.)” 

He was her only child.

* * *

This episode was sourced from public records and from newspaper accounts of the time appearing in The Bellows Falls Times, The Windham County Reformer, The Brattleboro Reformer, and The Vermont Tribune, among others.

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