This week, we meet William Udderzook, a criminal mastermind who might've gotten away with the perfect murder... if only his victim hadn't practiced such fantastic oral hygiene.
On the night of February 2, 1872, the cottage known by the name of Yorkhouse burned brightly and briskly, attracting the residents of the Baltimore neighborhood of Waverly. Among those who stood helplessly and watched the fire burn was Andrew J. Lowdes, the owner of Yorkhouse. The inferno had been raging nearly an hour when a man elbowed his way through the crowd.
"I think my brother-in-law in inside that houseI"
"What?" gasped Lowndes. "Who? Who's inside the house?"
"Winnie Goss."
"You say Winfield is inside the house? Good God! If you thought Winnie was in there, why didn't you say something? We might have saved him!"
"I wasn't certain, Mr. Lowndes. I couldn't let you endanger your life on a whim."
"For heaven's sake, Billy, you would've been justified in alarming the whole neighborhood! It's too late to do anything about it now."
The Billy in question was William Udderzook, a 35-year-old blacksmith who had supplemented his income by teaching the art of penmanship. William's brother-in-law was a 37-year-old inventor by the name of Winfield Scott Goss, a Tennessee native who had invested his life's savings into improving the process of manufacturing rubber. It was Goss who had rented Yorkhouse for use as a laboratory for his rubber experiments.
Earlier that afternoon, Goss and Udderzook had met in Baltimore. It was around 3:30 when the men reached the cottage, having stopped first to borrow an axe from a friend named Gottlieb Engel. At the cottage, Goss and Udderzook had chopped wood before filling a lamp with kerosene and having a few drinks in front of the fire. Around six o'clock, William Udderzook returned the axe, and remained at the Engel home for supper. After they had finished eating, Udderzook suggested they go over to Yorkhouse to see how his brother-in-law was making out with his experiments.
At the cottage, the three men engaged in friendly conversation, although Winnie Goss left the room several times, carefully closing the door behind him.
"Where's he going this time?" asked Engel.
"What can I say?" replied Udderzook. "You know how peculiar and secretive inventors are."
It was around this time the lamp began to smoke. Engel suggested reversing the wick, but Goss and Udderzook thought that might be too dangerous. Goss asked Engel if they could borrow one of his and Engel nodded. William Udderzook said that he would go along with him. They were gone for less than twenty minutes, and when they returned, they found the cottage in flames. When the fire had died down, a neighbor, John C. Smith, stepped into the smoldering ruins and retrieved a body, which was removed to the stables of Andrew Lowndes. The coroner determined that Goss had burned to death after the kerosene lamp exploded.
Later that evening, William Udderzook related the story of the tragedy to Officer James McFarland of the Baltimore city police, and suggested contacting a newspaper editor to report on the death of the up-and-coming inventor, Winfield Scott Goss.
In the morning, John Smith combed the ruins of the cottage in search of Goss' watch, jewelry and other personal effects but emerged from the ashes empty handed. But, a week later a brother of the victim, Alexander Campbell Goss, found Winnie's watch, chain and keys near the spot where the body had been found. This rankled Smith, who made a business of finding, salvaging and re-selling odds and ends. How could he have missed them? After all, he was the one who had pulled the body from the ruins.
Meanwhile, Goss' wife, Eliza, had already notified the various companies who had insured the victim. Four years earlier, Goss had taken out a $5,000 life insurance policy. He took out a second $5,000 policy just one year before renting the Yorkhouse cottage. Five months before the fire, he had taken out a $10,000 accident insurance policy, and less than two weeks before the fire, he took out a third $5,000 life insurance policy with yet another company.
This seemed quite peculiar to the investigators working for the insurance companies, as Winfield Goss, up that point, had never found much success as an inventor. In fact, his annual income was less than $1,200. Their investigation found that Winnie and his brother Alexander, had been seen in Waverly on the afternoon of February 2. They had a hunch that Alexander was the key to the mystery, and after checking around they learned that Alex had hired a horse and wagon that evening using the name of "A.C. Arden". After learning that Winnie Goss had withdrawn from the bank every penny he had to his name the day before the fire, investigators went to the authorities with their suspicions-- that Winfield Goss had faked his own death.
As the insurance companies resisted Eliza Goss' attempts to collect on her husband's policies, she filed lawsuits, but attorneys representing the insurers demanded from Mrs. Goss an exact physical description of the deceased. Mrs. Goss told them that Winfield possessed a perfect set of teeth, and that his front teeth were quite straight and regular. She reluctantly gave permission for the body to be exhumed and examined. The examination, which was conducted by three physicians and a dentist, revealed that the man dragged from the smoldering cottage and buried as Winfield Goss was missing all but two teeth from his front jaw, and seven from his lower jaw.
Mrs. Goss, however, was undeterred. The insurers decided to let the matter go before the court, and the first of the lawsuits came before the U.S. Circuit Court in May of 1873. Testimony was provided about the fire, the horse and wagon rented by Alexander Goss, and Winnie's abrupt decision to close out his bank account. There was expert testimony about the missing teeth, and, finally, they heard testimony from one of William Udderzook's co-workers at the firm of Thomas & Company, a man by the name of Thomas D. Loudenslager.
According to Loudenslager, on the morning before the fire an express wagon had delivered a wooden crate to their workplace on York Road-- a crate about five feet in length and a foot and a half in width, addressed to William Udderzook. It was left on the sidewalk. A few hours later, Goss and Udderzook loaded it onto a wagon and prepared to drive away. When Loudenslager asked his co-worker about the contents of the box, Udderzook explained that it was some equipment for his brother-in-law's laboratory.
The defense suggested that the crate really contained the human remains which were later found at Yorkhouse, which the insurance companies believed had been purchased from a Baltimore firm specializing in the sale of cadavers to medical schools. However, there was no way to prove this claim, and after five hours of deliberation, the jury ruled in favor of Eliza Goss. The insurance companies, however, refused to pay up and appealed the decision.
As the investigation into the human remains deepened, William Udderzook left Baltimore, proceeding first to Philadelphia. At the William Penn Hotel he met a man who had checked in under the name of Alexander Campbell Wilson. Wilson was a well-dressed, educated man in his late 30s with a charming smile, which revealed a perfectly straight set of teeth.
It was this hotel guest Udderzook drove to Jennersville, Pennsylvania, on June 30. Udderzook had grown up in Jennersville and still had many friends and relatives there. While Alexander Wilson remained in seclusion at a local hotel, Udderzook made his rounds, explaining to anyone who asked that Wilson was an old friend from the city who was in poor health. He had brought him out to the country because Wilson's doctor thought the fresh air would do him good.
On July 1, Udderzook traveled to nearby Penningtonville, where he rented a horse and buggy from a farmer named Albert Baldwin. Although he had told Baldwin that he'd be back by nightfall, he didn't return the horse and buggy until 11:40 that evening. In the morning, a stablehand noticed that the buggy had been returned in poor condition; the dashboard was cracked and the bow irons were broken. Two blankets were missing, and there appeared to be bloodstains on the floor. Nothing more was said until the following week, when a farmer named Gainer P. Moore discovered a dismembered body in a patch of woods. It was noted that the teeth were in excellent condition, and it wasn't long before the victim was identified as the sick friend Udderzook had brought with him from Philadelphia.
William Udderzook was arrested on July 15 in West Chester and charged with the murder of Alexander Campbell Wilson-- at least until an insurance company detective came forward and identified the victim as Winfield Goss.
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| Illustration of the Udderzook trial |
The case came to trial on October 23, 1873. Udderzook plead not guilty, but the prosecution was easily able to prove that Goss hadn't died in the cottage fire. Detectives had tracked Goss to a boarding house in Camden, New Jersey, operated by Mrs. Elizabeth Toombs, where he had lodged under the alias of Mullins. One of Mrs. Toombs' boarders testified that Mullins had confided in him that he was expecting a $15,000 insurance payout. But the most damning testimony against the defendant was the testimony of his own brother-in-law, Samuel Rhoades, who said that Udderzook had offered him $1,000 to help him commit a murder. Even worse, Udderzook had made the fatal mistake of putting the offer in writing.
Not surprisingly, William Udderzook was convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to death by hanging. The sentence was carried out on November 12, 1874, but not before the condemned killer penned a letter detailing his peculiar last request: That I be buried in Baltimore, if not in the same lot, at least in the same cemetery, with Mr. Winfield Scott Goss, a friend ever dear to me, that our bodies may return to the mother earth, and our spirits may mingle together on the bright sunny banks of deliverance, where pleasures never end.
Unfortunately for William Udderzook, this request was not carried out; his body was laid to rest not in Baltimore, but at Rosedale Friends Cemetery in Chester County, Pennsylvania. And while neither he nor Winnie Goss may have mingled on the sunny banks of deliverance, their spirits did mingle on the dark shadowy shores of infamy.