A century ago today...
This is where BLOOD & INK begins: the morning of Saturday, September 16, 1922. At this very time exactly 100 years ago, two young people had just stumbled upon the corpses of Edward Hall and Eleanor Mills. Officials, journalists, and throngs of curiosity-seekers were beginning to descend upon the abandoned farm where the carefully-staged bodies lay just outside of New Brunswick, New Jersey. The rest of the story unfolds over the next 284 pages of my book, which I hope you will enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed writing it. To mark this morbid, mysterious, and utterly fascinating anniversary, I wanted to share what is undeniably the most chilling bounty I unearthed over the course of my four years of research. It belongs to the evidence unit of the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office, carefully stored in a number of blue plastic flip-top totes: the objects recovered from the murder scene, as well as other key pieces of physical evidence. I was permitted to comb through this historical treasure trove when I visited the evidence unit in February 2019. Here’s some of what I found.
The stockings of Eleanor Mills. I was told she was wearing these when someone shot her in the face three times and proceeded to slit her throat.
The eyeglasses worn by Reverend Hall when a single bullet ended his life.
A pair of handkerchiefs found nears the bodies.
The keys to St. John the Evangelist, where Reverend Hall met his illustrious wife, Frances Noel Stevens Hall, and later began his love affair with Eleanor, leading soprano of the church choir.
The day calendar of star witness Jane Gibson—aka the Pig Woman—which became a key piece of evidence in the case.
The keys to Gibson’s home, on a pig farm up the road from where the killings occurred on the night of September 14, 1922.
Downstairs from the prosecutor’s office, in a corridor leading to the adjacent Somerset County Courthouse, you can view the clothing that Edward and Eleanor wore on the night of the murders. Above are Eleanor’s shoes and scarf. Below are Edward’s shoes, and the Panama that that the killer (or killers) placed over his eyes.
One of my goals with BLOOD & INK was to honor the victims with a rich, vivid, and respectful portrait of their lives—the good and the bad. I hope that comes across in the book. I’ll be thinking of them today.