Ep. 14 The Reverend's New Bride
The children of Reverend William Christy, a traveling preacher from Ohio, were flabbergasted. Their father hadn't mentioned anything about marriage, and so when they learned that he had tied the knot in January of 1926, they were left speechless. William's wife had died three years earlier, and his children, though stunned, were happy for the 56-year-old preacher, even though they knew nothing about his new 48-year-old bride, Laura.
Not even William's son, Carl, knew much about the love affair. Carl was also a preacher, and the two men often traveled throughout Ohio together as members of the United Christian Missionary Workers, spreading the Gospel to anyone willing to listen. It was during one of their trips through southern Ohio when William purchased a house in East Liverpool, making an offhand remark that he was thinking about marrying a woman from Toledo. But Carl hadn't expected his father to go through with it; he first learned of Mrs. Christy on a radio broadcast, reporting that she was suspected of causing his father's death.
William Christy and Laura Elsie Whippler had been married only nine days when the reverend fell ill after eating breakfast on Tuesday, January 12, and was taken to the hospital the next day, where doctors believed that his illness had been caused by arsenic poisoning. The reverend soon died in intense agony, and East Liverpool Chief of Police Hugh McDermott immediately suspected Laura Christy, who readily admitted to giving poison to her husband. According to Mrs. Christy, William had been suffering from indigestion. Arsenic, in minute quantities, was once commonly prescribed as medicine for stomach ailments, but exactly how much arsenic did she give the reverend?
Until an autopsy could be performed, the police began to search for clues, and learned that Laura had withdrawn $200-- the equivalent of nearly $3600 in today's currency-- from her husband's bank account while he was in the hospital gasping his final breaths. After buying luggage, jewelry and new clothes, she moved into the rooming house where she was arrested in connection with her husband's death.
"The bank money was withdrawn the day Reverend Christy became ill," said State's Attorney Robert M. Brookes.
"Mrs. Christy has the brains of a child," stated Chief of Police McDermott. "This is shown in the purchase of a necklace, a bracelet, silverware, a trunk, and other things on Wednesday, while her husband was dying in the hospital. It won't take long for a lunacy commission to judge her mentally unbalanced. She should be committed to the state hospital for the criminally insane."
While county officials considered what steps to take next, Laura was held in the Columbiana County jail pending the results of the chemical analysis of Reverend Christy's vital organs. She steadfastly maintained her innocence. "The charges are false," she insisted from her cell. "It is absurd to say that I murdered William. Yes, I did give him arsenic, but only for his stomach troubles. It was only three doses. I didn't mean to cause him any suffering."
Meanwhile, residents of southeastern Ohio debated whether the middle-aged housewife really had the mental capacities of a child-- or if she was really a calculating, cold-blooded killer. The story spread like wildfire, and within days, the arrest of Mrs. Christy made newspaper front pages from coast to coast.
The public clamored for more information about the mysterious widow, who had seemingly emerged from thin air to sweep a traveler preacher off his feet. Who was she? Where did she come from? And what dark secrets might she be hiding?
It was soon revealed that Laura had been living in Newell, West Virginia, shortly before her marriage to Reverend Christy. She moved to Ohio after the death of her previous husband, John Ebert, who died the previous November after a short illness which had been chalked up to congestion of the lungs. They had been married for only a short time. And then, on Saturday, January 16, Chief McDermott received a visit from a Mrs. John Densmore of East Liverpool, who informed him that her nephew, Charles O'Neill, had been married to Laura Christy about 13 years earlier. After the wedding they moved to Cincinnati, where Charles O'Neill died one month later. After his death, Laura sent a letter to the Densmores, telling them that she had shipped the body back to East Liverpool.
"She told us that he had died of pneumonia and that his death had been very sudden," said Mrs. Densmore to Chief McDermott. "When someone suggested that the body be opened and a post-mortem examination made, she flew into a rage and told us that she'd had him embalmed."
At the county jail, detectives and State's Attorney Robert M. Brookes interrogated Laura Christy relentlessly, demanding to know just how many men she had taken as husbands, and, more importantly, how many of them she had buried.
To their astonishment, she began to rattle off their names: There was Jesse Sears and George Holt; Jacob Barnhart and Charles Graham-- and those were just the ones from East Liverpool. There was Isaac Lewis Randle of Blissfield, who had taken Laura for a bride while she was already married to Charles Graham. This led to her arrest for bigamy. There was also Frederick Harmon of Athens, New York. Of the eight men Laura had married, Harmon and Randle were the only ones who were still alive. Laura told State's Attorney Brookes and Chief McDermott that she had left Harmon upon discovering that they were cousins.
Frederick Harmon was eventually located and questioned, and he denied this claim. According to Harmon, he was the one who had run out on Laura. Apparently, shortly after their wedding, he became deathly ill. When he recovered, he headed for the hills and never looked back.
Laura's matrimonial history was confirmed by her brother, Charles Whippler, who told reporters that neither he, nor Laura's father, Jacob Whippler, would lift a finger to help her. According to Whippler, his sister had been nothing but trouble since her childhood in Steubenville. "Laura had caused us trouble all her life," declared her brother. "She was only three years of age when mother died, and when she was 17 she was sent to the Ohio Reformatory for a minor offense."
After several grueling hours of questioning, Laura broke down and confessed to the murders of Rev. William Christy and John Ebert, claiming that she had poisoned them because they were "mean" to her. She explained that she had administered the poison to Ebert in a capsule which she substituted for prescription medication. As for the reverend, she gave it to him on a knife blade, telling him that it was baking soda for his indigestion.
She insisted, however, that she had nothing to do with the deaths of her other husbands.
State's Attorney Robert M. Brookes petitioned the court for a lunacy commission, and on January 20, 1926, Laura Christy was declared insane by a panel of psychiatrists. She was immediately taken to the Lima State Hospital-- where she made quite an impression on Dr. Charles H. Clark, superintendent of the institution. Clark insisted that Laura had been perfectly sane at the time of the murder.
"She had no active mental trouble, but is feeble-minded," stated Dr. Clark. "I made a thorough examination of the woman, traced her history, checked up on the story of her marriages and gave her an intelligence test. She has the mentality of a child between 9 and 10 years of age. She is feeble-minded now and probably will be until she dies."
Dr. Clark said that he would not release Laura Christy, however, as she was incapable of caring for herself. She had developed diabetes and other health problems due to a lifetime of poor diet and poor hygiene. When she entered the institution, all of her teeth were rotted and loose, and had to be extracted.
Nonetheless, a second murder charge still loomed over Laura's head, for the poisoning of John Ebert in West Virginia. But on March 8, 1926, a Hancock County grand jury elected not to take any action against Mrs. Christy.
Dr. Clark had predicted that Laura would never leave Lima State Hospital, and he turned out to be correct. She remained there for the next eleven years, until September of 1937, when she died from complications from diabetes at the age of 58. A wooden cross marks her final resting place at the hospital cemetery.
Whether or not Laura Christy played a role in the deaths of more than two of her husbands, it seems quite clear that her unhealthy relationship patterns stemmed from some manner of abandonment, possibly the trauma of losing her mother at an early age. Perhaps she felt the need to feel attached to someone, and so she attached herself to any man who drifted into her life, only to find out that marriage didn't quite fill the gaping hole. She grew tired of her husbands, and so she discarded one for another-- resulting to murder, if need be-- in a futile but uncontrollable attempt to find a part of herself that had been missing for 45 years. While it's easy to view Laura Christy as a villain, perhaps even a serial killer, it's not fair to judge her until you've walked a mile in her shoes. But, if you do decide to walk that dark, lonely mile, don't be surprised if the road leads to 15 minutes of infamy.
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