Vintage Vermont Villainies — True Tales of Murder & Mystery from the 19th and 20th Centuries by John Stark Bellamy II of Corinth; published by The Countryman Press in Woodstock in 2007; 226 pages; soft cover; $13.95.
Reviewed by Jennifer Hersey Cleveland
Those drawn to the more macabre history of Vermont need look no further than John Stark Bellamy’s Vintage Vermont Villainies.
With gruesome detail, Mr. Bellamy has created a wonderfully grisly account of 12 Vermont murders or vanishings.
It may surprise some readers that law enforcement officers of long ago used seemingly modern forensic technologies such as bullet trajectory, the presence or absence of powder burns, fiber comparison, and blood spatter. Mr. Bellamy gives those officers their full due.
Mr. Bellamy begins with the “1880 Meaker Tragedy,” in which a nine-year-old girl is pulled from the swamp that became her watery grave after an evil adoptive mother decides she wants her gone. This chapter ends with a juicy scandal.
A lover who spills his guts to anyone who will listen is the undoing of a wife accused of the murder of her husband in “The Murder of JosephFelch.” Well, that and the fact that she was no criminal mastermind. The conclusion of the court case will leave readers amazed.
Mary Mabel Rogers was the last woman to be executed by hanging in this state, but don’t let that spoiler keep you from the sordid details of this tale of a wanton woman who uses a love-sick boy to do her bidding. The end of this one is particularly disquieting.
There is a tale of an intentional misidentification of a corpse, apparently for insurance money, and another about a “community affair” in which not a single townsperson will say what happened to one of their own.
One tale contains a local note. Convict Donald Demag, before gaining notoriety for brutally killing an innocent woman, escaped from prison in Windsor and ended up “wandering aimlessly” in Derby Line. He was captured by immigration policeman J.J. Fell.
“The 1926 Cecelia Gullivan murder” is about Clarence Darrow’s brief foray into Vermont law to help a “repulsive brute.” What is even more interesting is that the courtroom theatrics were far worse before Darrow came into the case. I will spare those readers faint of heart the details, but let it suffice to say one piece of evidence was a severed human head.
“The 1897 Wheeler-Brewster Tragedy” is a woeful tale of unrequited love that ends, as you might have guessed, in tragedy. Mr. Bellamy begins the story of Mildred Brewster, Anna Wheeler, and John Wheeler: “Their story remains as fresh as yesterday’s broken heart and as shocking as, well, a bullet to the head.” How’s that for foreshadowing?
Paula Welden’s vanishing act in 1946 and the Barre Labor Hall murder of 1903 lead up to the most terrifying tale included. “The Thetford Terror” has it all — love, deceit, stalking, theft, sadism, and, of course, murder.
Not one to generally include the remarks of other reviewers in a review, I must say Howard Frank Mosher best described the book: “Well-written, insightful, wise and lovely, it’s a narrative of murders and mysteries from the dark underside of Vermont’s pastoral farms and postcard-perfect villages…. Be warned, though. Vintage Vermont Villainies is flat-out, drop-dead terrifying.”
