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Most may think serial killer Edward Ruloff is just about the only dark blemish in the history of the Finger Lakes region. However, there is a new book that reveals more sinister stories from the Finger Lakes’ past.
Murder & Mayhem in the Finger Lakes explores lesser known crimes that took place in the 19th and 20th centuries in the counties that surround the Finger Lakes. Author Rikki Marcin said she came up with the idea of writing the book from her archival work for her job with the Watkins Review and Express.
“My job was to go through the papers from 125, 150 years ago, and often the old newspapers would include a short paragraph about a murder that took place in another county,” Marcin said. “It piqued my interest. I noticed that there really aren’t any resources about these murders other than the old newspapers. So I thought it would be a good idea to assemble these into a book once I gathered enough information on the subjects.”
The book highlights 11 different individuals across different counties, including Seneca and Tompkins County. The first chapter centers on George Chapman from Waterloo, a white tailor who in 1828 was convicted and executed for murder Daniel Wright, a mixed-race hostler.
“The Chapman case was the oldest one for which I could find a substantial amount of material,” she said. “What I found really striking about the case – first of all, it’s one of the very rare times in our country’s history that a white person was executed for killing a person of color, and this was a mere two years after New York State abolished slavery.”
What also hooked her attention was the size of the crowd that viewed the execution. “The crowd that turned out for it, it was the largest that had ever assembled in Seneca County to that date as far as anyone knows,” she said. “They discussed how people would walk from Pennsylvania and Ithaca and all over the eastern part of the state. At least 10,000 people gathered on Oak Island, possibly more.”
“They were talking about how people would climb trees to get a good view, and even decades later people were recalling the phenomenal size of the crowd and people’s reactions to it. As you can see, it kind of had the atmosphere of a Roman holiday – people would go out drinking afterwards and get in fights. It was like a carnival atmosphere.”
The seventh chapter highlights Richard Barber, a Ulysses resident who in 1888 set the house of Richard and Ann Mason on fire and murdered Ann.
“This case stood out to me … mostly because of the great extent his defense team put into asserting that he was mentally incompetent by reason of epilepsy,” she said. “I was contrasting this with another case in Livingston County where the defendant [James Williams], who was African American, was given a similar plea, which the jury totally rejected, and he ended up being sentenced to death at Auburn.”
“Barber’s sentence was eventually commuted into life in prison, but he was portrayed quite sympathetically in the press. They commented about how his inoffensive appearance contrasted with the brutality of the crime. For example … the scene in the jail, they described the prisoners smoking cigars and sitting around in their socks playing checkers; Barber was invited to play checkers with a one-armed inmate. That’s such a vivid picture that I didn’t want to leave out.”
Marcin described the press throughout each of the cases in the book as a “Greek chorus.
“For example, they were lecturing the public about the dangers of intemperance in the Chapman case, actually quoting verbatim passages from the bible,” she said. “Nobody really examined the motives of the murderers. They thought maybe they did it for material gain, for example. The psychological aspect was largely ignored.” Marcin said there were several other cases that she wanted to write about, but could not fit into the book, and that she plans on writing a sequel to this book on those cases. With this book, she said it illuminates the “ordinariness” of that collection of individuals.
“Our culture is so focused on serial killers … I think that it obscures the fact that most of these murderers are not deviants or monsters,” she said. “They’re people who found themselves in circumstances that spun out of control. They’re motivated by very relatable emotions such as jealousy and grudges that were held for years.”
https://www.ithaca.com/entertainment/books/local-author-explores-finger-lakes-dark-murderous-past/article_028a666e-56b0-11eb-9207-97edb1515e7f.html
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