The Hill Family Axe Murders

June 9th, 1911 brought a giant shock for the tiny community of Ardenwald, OR. A highly regarded family—William and Ruth Hill, and Ruth's children Philip and Dorothy Rintoul—who had just moved into the area were massacred in a most brutal way in their tiny cabin in the middle of the night. The detectives scrambled to find justice for this family for years but every lead fell flat.

A botched investigation saw an innocent man charged for the crime. Listen while Monica fact checks every libelous story printed about Nathan B. Harvey in the 1911 newspapers! Then we take a look at a few other suspects that were on law enforcement's radar. Finally, we look at a few other characters that probably should have been on their radar. We go deep into the life of Corwin S. Harvey to see just what he was up to for the rest of his life.

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Transcript

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What do dogs, neighbors, and salacious stories have in common? You're about to find out on this episode of Forgotten Felonies! Welcome back to Forgotten Felonies. I'm Monica. And I'm Olivia. And this is where we take you back in time to rediscover the crimes of vintage villainy that time forgot. This episode is a doozy. But then again, aren't they all? This one takes us back to the year 1911 and this case is still unsolved. This one has left law enforcement and armchair detectives baffled for more than a century. Yes. So I first found this case in the old newspapers on a university website several years ago before I even had a newspapers. com subscription. And I have been consumed by it. Ever since we started the podcast, I've been wanting to cover this one. And I had 12 pages of facts that I'd put together before we even started recording episodes— all laid out. So I was really excited when you finally agreed to do this one next. Yes. And speaking of newspapers. com subscriptions, I've got to throw this in. We have exciting news, you guys. We are now officially affiliates of newspapers. com. We have a promo code. So if you want a six-month subscription, you can get 20% off by using the code FORGOTTEN20. So F-O-R-G-O-T-T-E-N-2-0. Use that and get 20% off a six-month subscription. So do that and then do it. We do search for stuff like, 'Oh, it's so much fun it is so addicting but anyway, so back to this. So yes, Olivia has been wanting to do this. She keeps saying, 'We should do this one,' and 'We need to do this one.' Do this one. So I finally caved. Honestly, I was a little intimidated because The way she's been talking this one up, like, she's got 12 pages of notes. It's like, 'Oh my gosh,' she knows this case so well, right? So I'm just like, 'Ah, I don't know anything about it.' But honestly, after the Hans Schmidt case, like if you haven't listened to that one, guys, you need to listen to that one. But start with part one. After that case, I figured. Nothing could be as daunting as that, seriously. So I was like, bring it on. So since this one is Olivia's favorite case, Olivia's going to tell you all about the crime itself and how it first blew up in the media. And then I'm going to completely pick it apart and I'm going to drop some bombs. So take it away, Olivia. Okay, we must start with Ruth Frances Cowling. She was born on March 26th of 1878 to Thomas and Abby Cowling in Missouri. got married to a man named James Philip Rintal Jr. in 1900 in Portland, and they had two children. Philip Cowan Rintal was born in 1902, and Dorothy Callie Rintal was born in 1905. Unfortunately, Ruth's husband was a terrible drunk, and they wound up getting divorced in 1907. After the divorce, Ruth and the kids moved up to Marysville, Washington, and her ex-husband wound up relocating to Salt Lake City, Utah. Ruth had been a nurse in the year 1900 when she got married to James, and when she moved to Washington after the divorce in 1907, she started a millinery business. So I looked up what a millinery business is, and it turns out that Ruth was making hats and other headwear. So she was crafty. Now, to be completely clear, I'm not sure if she if this means that she was like making all of the hats herself or if she just opened a business. And was like, you know, purchasing other people's hats that they made. So I really don't know. But back in this time, a lot of women were like, you know, going to school to be dressmakers, you know, and making all of these things themselves. And so I think she probably was making hats, but it's possible that she was just also buying hats that other people made so she could sell them. But the newspapers said... That even though her family was wealthy, and truth be told, her father and at least one of her brothers were very prominent lawyers in Portland, she insisted on taking care of herself and her kids and didn't want to be dependent on her family after the divorce. Well, she didn't have to be self-sufficient for very long. She met William Hill while living in Washington, and they got married on April 1st of 1910 in Seattle, at her sister's house, actually. William was working as a plumber. Eventually, they moved back to Oregon where William worked for the Selwood Gas Company. Right around Christmas of 1910, they bought a one-acre parcel of land in an area called Ardenwald, which was a little suburb of Portland. It doesn't exist anymore and is now just a part of Milwaukee, Oregon. There wasn't a house on the land, and William Hill most certainly planned to build a house for Ruth and the kids, but he needed some time. So they must have been staying temporarily with Ruth's parents or maybe one of her siblings. But it wasn't until the beginning of May 1911 that William was able to... to get a very crude little cabin built for the four of them. He'd had a big pile of lumber delivered for when construction could begin on the real house, and the little cabin was erected not too far from that pile of lumber. The cabin was a very small frame building with a roof sloping to the south. And we will actually post a picture of this. There was an illustration in the newspapers. On our social media, we'll have a picture, but this cabin was so small that it didn't actually have like full walls inside. So from what I I read, they were half-height partitions inside the cabin and the sloping roof made the ceiling very low at the backside of the house, you know, where the roof was sloping. So the center part of the cabin had a small sort of bedroom for William and Ruth Hill. And then, just outside of the entrance to their bedroom, was another partitioned area where eight-year-old Philip slept on a cot. And then there was a sort of living room area where six-year-old Dorothy slept on a sort of sofa. So again, we'll have a picture and you'll be able to see it for yourself. Yes, so this little community of Ardenwald was right by what's called Ardenwald Station, which was like a stop on a city rail line. Every day, there was a... schedule where a train would come through, kind of like the city bus, and pick people up and drop people off. The Ardenwald station was about a mile from the hill cabin. Right next to the hill cabin was the home of an older woman named Sarah Matthews and her husband, and then on the other side of Sarah Matthews was her son's cabin, Clarence W. Matthews, and his wife Fern, and their two very young sons. Clarence Matthews and William Hill had become good friends in the five weeks since the Hill family had moved there at the beginning of May 1911. Each morning, they would take the same train, or car as they called it, out of the Ardenwald station. They took the 7 a. m. car to take them to Portland to go to work. Clarence and William and their respective families were typically all awake at least by 6 in the morning, and the kids would be outside playing. Clarence would be out milking his cow, which was often staked on his mother's plot of land and over near where the Hill family's cabin was located. On the morning of June 9, 1911, Clarence Matthews got up at 6 a. m. as usual to go tend to his cow, and he noticed that the Hill family wasn't awake. He called out to them to try to wake them, and then he went back into his house to finish his own morning routine. When Clarence walked out to leave because he had to walk the 20-ish minutes to Ardenwald Station, which was a mile from his home, he noticed that the Hill family still was nowhere to be seen and William wasn't coming out to go to work. Clarence called to his mother, Sarah Matthews, and asked her to see that the family woke up. Then, Clarence started walking to catch the 7 a. m. car at the Ardenwald station. Sarah Matthews waited a while in case the family was just sleeping late, but it did seem strange when she saw no movement in the little cabin as the sun continued to rise. Finally, around 8 in the morning, she went to the kitchen door of the crude little cabin and noticed that it was closed but unlocked. She opened the door and could see Dorothy on the sofa in the living room area adjoining the kitchen. Dorothy was completely covered by the blanket aside from her little feet. Sarah Matthews walked over to Dorothy and touched her feet. They were cold, like death. Then, Sarah noticed the bloody axe on the floor just about a foot away from Dorothy's cold little feet, and she was overcome with the reality of what she'd just discovered. Sarah Matthews ran from the house and went to get her nephew, Walter Bartholomew, who had just arrived the day before from Chicago for a visit. She told him something was wrong with the neighbors, and he went into the cabin to further explore. After searching the house, he came out and exclaimed, 'They're all dead!' The police arrived around 9 a. m. to examine the scene. It was determined that the axe belonged to a neighbor, Mr. J. T. Delk, who lived about a quarter mile from Ardenwald Station and three-quarter miles from the Hill Cabin. The axe had been left leaning against his front steps the night before, and the killer must have walked past his house, seen it shine in the moonlight, and picked it up on his way to the crime scene. family had all been killed in their sleep. And while they can't know for sure in what order the victims were killed, what follows is their best guess. William Hill, age 31, had been killed first. His head had been chopped beyond recognition with the axe. Ruth Hill, age 33, had been killed next. She had a chop with the axe straight into her forehead. Another one on the left side of her face. Her upper teeth were knocked out and her lower jaw was fractured. Little Philip, age eight, was next. His cot was just outside the entrance to the room that his parents were sleeping in. The details of his death were just that they were similar to that of Dorothy's, but they do say that she was the last victim. Dorothy, age six. She had been struck over the left eye with the blade of the axe after the first blow had glanced off. Then her body had been turned over on her stomach, and the back of her head was struck repeatedly with the pole of the axe, which is just the opposite side of the blade—either the side that could be used as a hammer, the counterweight. Wow, that is so brutal. Well, it gets worse. After they were dead, the killer raped Ruth and Dorothy. Oh my gosh. Ruth and William's bed was up against a wall, and Ruth- had been sleeping on that far side by the wall. After they were dead, the killer grabbed her by the legs and pulled her up and over William's body so she was physically on top of his dead body while he raped her. And he had covered her upper body and William with blankets, so when the bodies were found, they initially didn't even know William was in the bed. So what gets me is that he raped her over her husband's dead body. Like, literally. Yeah. That's like, that is insane to me. When I first read that, I was like, 'You've got to be kidding me.' And I thought, like, 'I saw that in the papers' and I was like, 'Come on, like that has to be a misprint or they're making that up.' And I texted you and I was like, 'For real,' thinking you'd be like. 'What? No, I didn't see that anywhere,' but you were like, 'Yep.' That's insane. Yeah, so both the kids were covered with blankets except for their feet as well, and he had covered the windows with clothes. Eventually, a clock was found in the corner of the living room. It had fallen on its back and stopped ticking. They found that, whenever it was upright, it would tick, and when it was on its back, it would stop ticking.

It had stopped at 12: 11:43

52 a. m.

the time of the attack on Dorothy in the living room at 12: 11:46

52 a. m. on the morning of June 9th, 1911. As was customary back in 1911, the coroner gathered a coroner's jury and held an inquest. Do you want to explain a coroner's jury? Sure, I would love to. So they used to do this thing where a coroner would gather 12 to 24 men who were considered qualified. So, depending on what the circumstances were or how they died or whatever, to help them determine the cause of death. So they would look at the body, like they would have these people come in, look at the body, look for signs of violence on the body, even question witnesses, maybe even have them suggest who some suspects might be. And all of this would ultimately lead to the coroner's decision in whether it was a natural death, a suicide, a homicide, or whatever. So coroners, apparently, I looked this up, they can still impanel juries today if they find a sufficient reason to do so. But as of 1977, a coroner's jury no longer has the power to indict or actually like charge people with crimes anymore. Hmm. That? It's wild. I know. Yeah. I wonder why that changed. Well, okay. Well, one person that the coroner in this case asked to be on the coroner's jury was one of the neighbors, Nathan B. Harvey. His home was just 300 feet south of the Hill family cabin. Nathan B. Harvey did not want to be on the coroner's jury and he outright refused. This made the coroner and his jury a little suspicious and suddenly all eyes were on Nathan B. Harvey. And one thing that really caught the attention of the detectives was that Harvey matched the description given in another unsolved murder of a child from about three months earlier, little Barbara Holtz. Just five years old, was lured to an apartment that had been rented out by a middle-aged man at 107 Russell Street. She was raped and strangled to death. The landlady, Bertha Nelson, had given a description— a tall, thin, middle-aged man with a dark mustache. This fit Nathan B. Harvey to a T. Here's some backstory about Nathan B. Harvey. He was born on December 17, 1859, in Pilot Grove, Iowa. He had 11 full siblings and one half-brother. He moved to Oregon in 1881 and ultimately settled in the Milwaukee area. He spent one year in Alaska to seek gold. But he made a fortune in Oregon as a nursery man, growing and selling plants to people and businesses throughout the Portland and surrounding areas. Now, back to the story. The detectives got Bertha Nelson to come along and sit in their car at a time that they knew Harvey would be driving by with his employees. They asked her if she'd ever seen him before, and according to the newspapers, she felt pretty certain that he was the man she'd rented the apartment to, and thus, he was the man who had murdered Barbara Holtzman. Now, the detectives were watching him like a hawk. He must also be involved in the Hill murders. They put a private investigator, L. L. Levings, on the case. Levings found out that, just five days after the murder, Nathan B. Harvey went to a law firm in Portland and asked if they would represent him if he were to be charged in the Hill murders. He pledged a fee of $20, 000 to pay them for representing him against these murder charges, just in case he were to be charged. That was equivalent to about $680, 000 in today's dollars. That is a lot of money. Yeah. That's a lot. And that seems like a pretty odd thing for an innocent man to do, just to be like, 'Hey. Just in case they were to charge me out of nowhere, will you guys represent me?' You kind of made the coroner mad. Here's $680, 000, so... Yeah, seems a little bit weird. Yes. And in questioning Harvey, it was learned that he'd been in Portland all day on June 8th, collecting money for bills owed to him, visiting some friends. keeping some appointments, attending the Rose Festival Parade, which still happens, by the way.

And he took the 11: 15:58

30 p. m. car home to Ardenwald Station and got off.

on the platform at 12: 16:03

25 a. m. He would have had to walk past J. T. Delk's house where the axe was taken,

and this would have put him right by the hill cabin around 12: 16:10

45 a. m. The detectives really honed in on Nathan B. Harvey at this point, and of course, they were updating the families of William and Ruth Hill all along. They had not arrested Harvey yet, and on December 1st, 1911, Ruth's brother, Thomas F. Cowling Jr., showed up at Nathan Harvey's house and asked to speak with him. He went into Harvey's office and demanded that Harvey go with him to the Hill cabin and tell him the exact position that he had left each of the bodies in after he had murdered them. Harvey refused to go with him to the cabin, so Thomas pulled a revolver out of his pocket. A scuffle ensued in the small office, and then the gun went off. Twice. Harvey's wife and an employee were nearby and came running to his aid. And luckily, nobody was hurt. Harvey called the police to report the attempt on his life the following day. And this is what prompted the police to act quickly and hastened his arrest— 17 days later on December 19th. After Harvey was arrested, the newspaper reporters caught wind of the whole investigation into Nathan B. Harvey, and it dominated the news. Stories surfaced about Harvey having wanted to buy that land that William Hill had purchased. He had made threats before and after the sale. Stories surfaced about all of the horribly inappropriate things Harvey would say to women in the Ardenwald neighborhood, and how the men were so afraid of him, they didn't dare stand up for their wives. One detective is quoted as saying that he had at least one woman who would testify that Harvey had threatened to kill her if she ever told her husband that he had propositioned her. There were tons of stories published about his short temper, his horrible reputation, and his history of violence. Stories mentioning how he often attacked his neighbors with stones in clubs. And then... All the details surfaced about all the violent crimes that Harvey had been suspected of in the preceding years. They were all over the news and Harvey was as good as cooked. His wife believed in his innocence. She told the newspapers that he wouldn't have dared come into the house that night after committing such a crime. His 17-year-old son, Corwin,

also made a passionate statement: 18:11

'I don't see why we should be put to this terrific expense just because these detectives are trying to earn blood money.' They won't be the only ones to talk. We have a few things to say about the detectives, and we shall be able to prove what they have been trying to do. Corrin was so upset that his mother had to calm him down. Here's what was revealed in the newspapers. When his father died, Harvey's brother had sent him a telegram saying he needed to get back to Iowa right away because their father was in poor health. Harvey headed over there and didn't go to his father's house, but met with his brother Dan first. The next day, the father mysteriously died, and suddenly these two brothers— Nathan and Dan, who were the only two the father had never provided for— produced a document showing that their father had deeded all of his land in Iowa to them. The coroner said that their father's body showed signs of having been poisoned. 17 years prior to this 1911 murder, a 14-year-old girl, Mamie Welch, was raped and murdered in a strawberry patch right next to Harvey's house. The body was dragged across the road where it was found the next morning. Papers say it was his brother-in-law who did it. Two years after that, Nathan's mother was shot to death by his brother, Dan, who was a quote unquote moral pervert in that very same house that Nathan Harvey was living in when he was arrested. And then his brother committed suicide as well. Neighbors who saw the bodies thought it was odd that his brother Dan had been shot in the back of the head. They weren't sure how he pulled that off, and they thought it was strange that Nathan stood over the bodies with a watch to see whether his mother or brother would die first because it would impact which inheritance he would get. But that left him and his brother, Willard, to split the money, and then, oddly enough, Willard mysteriously drowned in the mill pond near Milwaukee, in just two feet of water, and Nathan B. Harvey got all the money. All the inheritance that had trickled down from his father's estate to his brother's, and now it was all his. For people who suffer from chronic trouble of any kind, we offer a cure at a price within reach of all. We have no drugs to sell you. The remedy we offer is electricity. That's nature's medicine. It is impossible to cure any chronic ailments by doping the nerves and vitals with stimulants or poisons. Your body needs new life and strength. Our Electra Vita gives that. Electra Vita is a scientific device that delivers a steady, unbroken current of electric life for hours at a time while you sleep without the least shock or unpleasant sensation. Electrovita builds up vitality and strength and gives to every weak or inactive organ the power to do its work properly as nature intended. It is curing men and women every day after all other methods of treatment fail. Electra Vita. Nature's remedy cures while you sleep. Wow. Nathan B. Harvey. Guilty as sin. But I mean, is all of that true? If you know anything about me by now, you know I had to look up each and every one of those stories. So let's rewind a bit for a closer look. As I was reading article after article, I noticed some discrepancies. Do tell. Stories of the terrible crimes Nathan was tied to were repeated, you know, in all these articles, but details were changing and even names were changing. So that was a bit of a red flag for me and I wanted to get to the bottom of it. On December 23rd of 1911, after he was arrested,

there was an article with the headline: 21:57

'Murder Suspect in Hill Tragedy Seals His Lips.' From the Clackamas County Jail, Nathan Harvey made a statement saying, 'There seems to be a conspiracy to show me up in a way that will make it impossible for me to escape conviction. I've seen my attorney and will say nothing more until my trial. Good for him. Yeah, so that is smart. That is very smart.' So the article then goes on to detail even more things. Like, right after he says that, it goes on to talk about Tell more stories like Nathan getting $12, 000 when his brother Willard drowned in two feet of water and how he stood with a watch over his mother. Brother and watched as his brother died first, so that his brother Dan's money went to his mom upon his death and then, five minutes later, when his mother died, the money went from his mother to himself. So, basically, this article has him saying, 'They're telling a lot of stories about me.' And then it goes on to tell stories about him. And even more detail than previous articles had told. So it was crazy. So, let's visit these stories and see just what a villain Nathan B. Harvey really is. So first... Let's take a look at the death of Nathan's father. You know, the one that was so mysterious. The father he supposedly poisoned with his brother Dan. Nathan B. Harvey had moved from Iowa to Oregon in 1881 when Nathan was around 22 years old. His father, Issam, passed away over in Iowa of natural causes just one year later. Now, it is true that Issam deeded his land to Nathan and his brother, Dan. A former neighbor from Iowa named Oscar H. Ratliff later explained this. The Harveys, he said, were an old Quaker family living in a Quaker community, and they were very respected in the district. Oscar Ratliff knew the older children mostly, he was their age, and Nathan was actually the youngest of the 12, or 13 if you count the half-brother. Oscar said that, when Nathan and Dan had both finished high school, like at 17 years old, they had both gone straight into teaching school and they saved up their money. The older sisters had gone on to college straight out of high school rather than starting work. And when they finished college, they wanted to build a house on their father's farmland. But their father had no money at the time to give to them, like to build the home for them. So Dan and Nathan gave their sisters the money, and in return, their father deeded his land to them in the event of his death. That is why the two of them inherited their father's land when he died of natural causes in 1882. So we can cross that off the list of potential crimes that Nathan B. Harvey committed. He didn't drop a phony document and then poison his father after all. That was on the up and up. After his father died, Nathan's mother, Mary Ann, and his brother, Dan, moved to Oregon. Nathan's mother eventually remarried a man by the name of Charles Bunnell. Back in the year 1890. Dan Harvey owned the very same house that Nathan Harvey eventually owned and lived in with his family later in 1911. Dan owned that home. His name was on the deed. And he lived in it with his mother and her husband. But in April of 1890, and I really don't know why he did this, Dan Harvey decided to sell the home. And it was a farm, honestly. It was 35 acres. But he sold it to a man by the name of F. H. Page. So this farm on 35 acres had cherry trees, a strawberry patch, beautiful flowers in the front yard, an orchard. I mean, it was just wonderful. It was beautiful. And so again, I don't know why he sold it. Because Marianne, her husband Charles Bunnell, as well as Dan Harvey, they were still living in it. It was just now owned by Mr. Page. But Dan Harvey, at the age of 35 at that time, he was having seller's remorse. And it sounds like he was also having some mental health issues as well. He had some kind of anxiety disorder, possibly OCD with psychotic delusions. He became completely preoccupied with the thought that he was going to going to be homeless eventually because he had sold the house and he thought he was going to wind up starving and that his mother as well was going to wind up starving. And the crazy thing is that he now had $12, 000 in cash because he had sold the farm, which in 1890 was equal to about $460, 000. So he was not going to starve. Now, he actually tried to buy the farm back from Mr. Page. But apparently, Mr. Page was not willing to sell it back to him. Now, in the article from 1890, it says that Dan had always been a morose and, you know, sullen guy. Like that was just his temperament. And it said that he had been particularly despondent and downhearted since the sale of his home. In the middle of May, he started making comments about doing away with himself. and saying how the community would soon be stirred by a sensation. My home. Yeah, and he didn't explain what it was. He just said, you know, 'something big's going to happen.' He had always been quiet, and he didn't cause a lot of trouble, so nobody really paid attention to what he was saying. But there was a deeper meaning, so they probably should have paid attention. On the morning of June 11, 1890, Dan Harvey left his bedroom around 6 o'clock in the morning and walked into his mother and stepfather's bedroom. His mother was 64 years old, and her husband, Charles, was 84 years old. Now, Dan had a newly purchased Smith & Wesson revolver with him. Both Marianne and Charles were sound asleep. Dan put the muzzle of his gun to the right temple of his mother's head and fired. He then walked around to the foot of the bed, put the gun up to his own head, and fired the gun a second time. Charles, at 84, his hearing not what it used to be, did not wake up from the gunshots. What woke him up was the sound of his wife groaning. Which is... A lot quieter than a gunshot. But. Well, she was probably continually groaning. And so after a while, it probably stirred him. It was enough, like, you know. Um. So it was shortly after six o'clock when he woke up. So he tried talking to her first, like, you know, honey, what's wrong? You know, he tried talking to her first and she wouldn't respond. So he got up and got out of bed and then he saw Dan lying on the floor at the foot of the bed. So at first he thought. You know, well, that's weird. He must have fallen asleep down there. What's going on? So he bent down and tried to wake him up, and that's when he saw all of the blood. And the reality of the situation dawned on him. So he rushed over to his wife and he saw all of the blood on her face and he just started yelling for help. Now, the husband of one of Marianne's daughters happened to be walking by outside. So her son-in-law and his name was Frank Wilson. So Frank, you know, he hears Charles yelling for help and he ran inside and, you know, he sees what's going on and he was able to alert the authorities. Neither Marianne nor Dan had died immediately. But both were mortally wounded. And so they were taken into the living room and they died within about five minutes of each other, with Marianne dying before Dan.

Both dying around 9: 29:38

30 in the morning on June 11th, 1890. Now, if you were paying attention, the newspapers in 1911 said that Dan died before his mother, which simply was not true. The papers in 1890 also make no mention of Nathan even being present, though they do mention that many community members gathered in the home. So I would assume Nathan was there. You know, they probably would have called him. And... If they knew that they died around half past nine, then certainly someone had a watch, you know, or there was a clog or something. They would have recorded the time of death on their death certificates. Now, the newspaper in 1911 said that after Nathan made sure Dan Harvey was, you know, out of the way, he only had to contend with his brother Willard for the money. Now, the money from his father's estate was just split between the two of them, right? And then wouldn't you know, Brother Willard suspiciously drowned in Mill Creek in just two feet of water. Well, let's talk about that. Let's talk about Willard drowning. Looking back at the story of his drowning. He drowned in 10 feet of water. While he was bathing in the creek alone, and it was an accidental drowning. 10 feet is much deeper than 2 feet. Also, he drowned in 1877. This was 13 years before Dan Harvey committed the murder-suicide, and actually five years before their father even died. And it was four years before Nathan even moved to Oregon. Nathan was in Iowa. Nathan had absolutely nothing to do with Willard drowning. And Willard's death had nothing to do with anyone trying to get at their father's money because he had not even died of natural causes yet, so... You can scratch that one off the list too. This is ridiculous. Now, the last violent crime tied to Nathan in the papers in 1911 that we have to pick apart is that brutal rape and murder of 13-year-old Mamie Wall. That happened in the strawberry patch right next to his house. The papers say his brother-in-law did it, dragged her body across the road. The papers also say that Nathan... Harvey's brother, Dan, who committed that murder-suicide, had spent a night in jail with the killer of Mamie Walsh, and then the following night, the killer hung himself in jail. So, of course, I had to dig into this one. The crime took place, the murder of Mamie Walsh, in 1892. And the man who did it is named Charles Wilson. So, you know, I texted you. I'm like, okay, can you find Charles Wilson, find a brother-in-law? So we look to see if Charles Wilson is indeed a brother-in-law. Well, there is a brother-in-law named Frank Wilson. That's the same Frank who showed up to help when Dan and Marianne were dying. So I thought, did he go by Charles? So I look more things up and... You know, sure enough, this Charles Wilson, who killed Mamie, hung himself in jail in 1892, while Frank Wilson, who is a brother-in-law, lived until 1924. So Charles Wilson, who killed Mamie Walsh, is not Nathan Harvey's brother-in-law. What I later found was that Charles Wilson was the brother of Nathan's brother-in-law. So the newspapers were just, you know, fudging the facts a little to make the connection closer than it actually was. Yeah, that was a lot of clicking on siblings' names. Looking at their spouse's siblings. I wonder, though, if... They called, like... if he would have been considered a brother-in-law at the time. Yeah, I don't know. I'm not sure. By today's standards, he was not one. Yeah. Well, not only that, but Mamie Walsh was not even in Nathan's strawberry patch. She wasn't even on Nathan's farm. She was not on his property. She wasn't even picking strawberries. She was picking blackberries on the Llewellyn farm. And it was just in the same general Milwaukee area. How do they mix up blackberries and strawberries? Don't know—I mean, because probably because Nathan Harvey did not have blackberries on his farm, so they had to change it. Seriously. And then, did you guys catch the date discrepancy? The newspapers in 1911 said that Dan Harvey, the brother that committed the murder-suicide of himself and his mother in 1890, had spent the night in jail with Mamie's killer the night before he committed suicide in 1892. That is two years after Dan Harvey was already dead. Okay, so the papers twisted those facts to make him sound very guilty. But why did he go to lawyers five days after the murders? Innocent people don't randomly pay $680, 000 in today's money to criminal lawyers when they haven't even been charged with a crime. Well, apparently, as soon as he had declined to be on that coroner's jury, that raised the suspicions against Harvey, like you said, a Detective Mitchell. Alerted Harvey right off the bat because, contrary to what everybody was reading in the paper, Nathan B. Harvey was a very respected, upstanding member of the community for about three decades by that time. So Detective Mitchell told him, 'You know, the police were suspecting him and were looking to arrest him soon.' So this really shook up Nathan Harvey. And he was like, 'Oh my gosh, like this is freaking me out.' So that is why he went to the lawyers right away to retain them just in the event that he were to be charged. He didn't do it out of the blue. He had been given a heads up. Good on Mitchell. Yeah. Also made him look even more guilty. Yeah. So, I mean, I see where Nathan Harvey was coming from when he said there was a conspiracy in the media to make him look guilty and he was just going to keep his mouth shut until it went to court. So after doing all of this fact checking, at this point in my own investigation, I was convinced Nathan B. Harvey was innocent. Now, on December 26th of 1911, the district attorney was able to get the case against Nathan B. Harvey dismissed, and he gave quite a tongue-lashing to Sheriff Mass and private detective L. L. Levings in front of a judge for having completely railroaded Nathan Harvey and not producing a single shred of evidence that could hold up in court. Basically, the only thing that they had against him was the fact that he would have walked past the Hill home. At the time the crime was committed. How rude. I know, it's ridiculous. And the state knew they didn't have anything. It came out that Detective Levings went to one of the members of the grand jury twice before they had even been called into session and tried to get him to promise he would indict Harvey on murder charges, no matter what the evidence was. So it was all really shady and dishonest. Leving is scummy. Yeah. So when Harvey was let go, like they said, 'okay, it's dismissed.' You can go home. Half the crowd erupted in cheers, and the crowd was 300 people. The room had been packed. Um, several of them rushed up to him, shook his hand, hugged him. And they even gave his wife the same reception. They were like, 'just so happy.' And there had even been a petition before this where 500 people signed and said, 'Drop the charges. Let him go.' This is ridiculous. Mm-hmm. I know. This wasn't added in— in my story, but they... He at one point was like, 'I talked to her once. She was passing by and I was on my horse. Like, Ruth Hill, because they thought that he was, like... wanting to sleep with her.' He's like, 'I talked to her one time while she was on her horse. I don't know. Yeah, she had asked him where she could buy a cow. Like, that was the extent of it. Yeah, they weren't very neighborly to each other, but then again, they weren't super close. Well, I guess they were. 300 feet? I'm surprised I didn't talk more. Well, I mean, he was a busy guy. He was working a lot on his nursery and everything. He had, I mean, so many acres, you know, 35 acres, unless Mr. Page had like sold some before he sold the land back to Nathan. Yeah, I wonder... If some of it... The Hills Bot. Yeah, maybe some of that, maybe that land. had originally been part of that big plot that Dan had owned. Mm-hmm. After that, after it was dismissed, Nathan Harvey turned around and sued a ton of people for libel. As he should. He sued people left and right because so many people in the community had contributed to those salacious stories. Saying that he was violent. That he beat up his neighbors with stones and clubs, that he made all of these inappropriate advances toward all the women in the neighborhood, and so on. Now, Nathan Hart... was worth $75, 000, which is about $2. 4 million in today's money. He could afford tons of lawsuits. He was getting even. I mean, this was bad for him, you know, for his reputation, for business, for everything. And he went after the newspapers for years. Anytime an article would be published about the Hill murders and mentioned his name, he would file a lawsuit against the newspapers like the next day. Like. Like, don't you dare tie me to this ever again. And so, in August and September of 1915, four years after the murders, the Portland... Daily News published three articles about the Hill murders. They vaguely referred to the report that a confession had been made to someone in authority and the one in September. mentioned Harvey's name as someone who had been arrested. So Harvey filed a suit against the Portland Daily News for $75, 000. Thousand for each article, which comes to a total of two million, three hundred ninety-eight thousand, eight hundred seventy-one dollars and 29 cents in 2025. Dollars and the judge ultimately dismissed the case, but then, right after it was dismissed, The Portland Daily News wrote up an editorial about the whole thing and about the case being dismissed, which resulted in the refusal of many of Nathan's customers refusing to pay their bills, amounting to a sum of $5, 000. And so he sued for the $5, 000 in unpaid bills, and then he wanted an additional $10, 000 for exemplary damages. Plus $100, 000 for general damages. So he sued them for $115, 000. And that lawsuit was filed in November of 1915. And that is equal to $3, 678, 369. 31. So I imagine that one got dismissed as well, but I didn't see a follow-up article, and I think the papers were terrified to print anything having to do with Nathan Harvey after that. I mean, I would be terrified, but he also should have won. Yeah, you should have gotten something. It was just funny. It's like, oh, there's nothing about Nathan Harvey anymore. What's going on? So if Nathan Harvey didn't kill the Hill family, who do you think did it? Well, of course I had to look at everyone else that they were looking at. And it was really frustrating because they put all of their eggs in the Nathan Harvey basket. It and ignored everything else. And I think that's probably why the case didn't get solved. But the detectives weren't fully giving up. I mean, they did have some other leads that they did look into. There was a fairly young man named John G. H. Searx that was suspected for a while, and he had actually confessed to murdering a woman named Daisy Wehrman and her three-year-old son up in a cabin in Scapoose, Oregon in September of 1911. Now this is just a few months after the Hill family murders and it's a 28-mile distance. John was mentally ill, he had a history of violence, he used to threaten to kill his family members all the time, and he had previously attacked Mrs. Wehrman. And also, the murders were done very similarly. So Mrs. Wehrman's head was beaten in with a hatchet. And she was also shot three times in the head. She had not been raped, however. They had reason to believe that the killer was planning to rape her, but was scared away before the act could be completed. So maybe, like, her skirt was pulled up or something. I don't know. And then, Little Harold's head was also beaten in with a hatchet. A man named J. A. Pender was convicted of the Wehrman murders and Sirks later confessed in 1915. He then recanted his confession and said that he had only confessed to try to save Pender from the gallows, but a lot of people think that Sirx actually was guilty. Sirx was a neighbor, and it was Sirx's mother who had found the bodies. There was never any evidence placing Sirx in Ardenwald, though. Now, there was another suspect named Ed Ramsey, also known as Frederick Alexander, who caught my eye. He was homeless, and he lived in the woods literally 100 feet away from the Hill Cabin. He was mentally ill and he had been charged with sex crimes against children, mainly little boys. And he'd been charged with these like around the time of the murders. The day of the Hill murders, he was on the road between Ardenwald Station and the Hill home, making threats to women. Now, just seven days after the murders, he was arrested and questioned about his whereabouts in the preceding days. He said he couldn't remember. And he had a bad memory because he was a San Francisco earthquake refugee. Which there had been a really bad earthquake there in 1906. Now, he was identified by Deputy Sheriff Schultz of Selwood as the man who had been terrorizing the Ardenwald neighborhood by prowling at night and in the early morning hours. So this is sounding pretty good, right? Mm-hmm. Now, they didn't hold him or look more into him because it was obvious to them that he was weak-minded, and they had a hard time believing someone who was that feeble-minded could be dangerous or could commit a terrible crime. Fools. I know. They're like, 'Oh, he's a little too crazy to be. You know, that evil.' Um, so on June 20th, they sent him to the insane asylum in Salem. They didn't tell the hospital that they suspected that he could possibly be tied to the Hill murders. So after five weeks, he was released, and that was that. Yeah, but later in July of 1915, he was arrested again and he was investigated for the Hill murders. Criminologist George A. Thatcher told the officials that he had conclusive evidence connecting him to the Hill murders. But then that evidence never materialized and nothing more came of it. Get it together, Thatcher. I know. It's funny because they always back then would say, 'We've got more evidence,' though. We just haven't told you yet. And then. They have nothing. Because they even said that about Nathan B. Harvey. Well, we just haven't even presented all the evidence yet. Where's the evidence? You know? We just haven't shown you. We have it though. No, you don't. So anyway, then I found an article from February of 1915 that said they were trailing a suspect. Who they knew had killed a man 20 years prior, and they were pretty sure he had killed that five-year-old girl, Barbara Holtzman, who had been murdered three months before the Hill family, and they were pretty sure he probably also killed the Hill family. And he might have even killed Mrs. Wehrman and her son. They weren't releasing his name yet in February of 1915, but they were getting really close to capturing him, and then they would release all the details. They had the evidence. Yeah. And then later it came out that this person was an elderly doctor named O. C. Hyatt. Now, apparently, the detectives had gone undercover and befriended the man, just like got to know him. So he, you know, met them and thought they were just his friends. Now, whenever they would go and talk to him, they'd always give him a bottle of liquor to get him drunk and get him talking. And they were trying to get him to confess to the murders. Now, the thing is, the landlady who had rented out the apartment where five-year-old Barbara was killed, she had already said Dr. Hyatt was absolutely, definitely not the man she had rented the apartment to. When Dr. Hyatt saw that article in February, like they had given just enough information that he knew they must be talking about him. And so he was like, 'Wait, these friends of mine. Are clearly the detectives that they're talking about.' Um, but he had never killed anyone. He had told them about a fight he had gotten into 30 years prior, not 20, with a really big man who had attacked a much smaller man. This was like a big bully. So Dr. Hyatt had stood up against this bully who then tried to kill him with a lead slingshot. And in fact, it was like this huge brawl. So Dr. Hyatt stood up to this big bully and he had two brothers with him. One of the brothers took Dr. Hyatt's side and the other brother took the bully's side. So the four of them were fighting and it was like this big, like massive fight. So then the bully used a lead slingshot and got Dr. Hyatt right in the forehead with it. I know. And so Dr. Hyatt, he said he used the word 'jabbed.' He jabbed him with a pocket knife to, quote, make him stop. So he stabbed him to end the fight. But he said the bully didn't die. He was like, as far as I know, he's still alive and well today. But he still had the scar on his forehead from where he had gotten him with the lead slingshot. So, yeah. But anyway, he was not, you know, he was like, 'I would like these detectives. You know, this was so shady how they went about investigating me.' I would really like them to be investigated because I feel like that was not appropriate. But yeah, he did not kill anyone. And the murder of Barbara was very different from the murder. From the murders of the Hills and the Wearmints, honestly, she was chloroformed with a towel. Like there was no ax involved. Like it was completely, completely different. But yeah, so it seems like every lead the detectives had just fell flat. So then I had to think, well, what did they miss? And I mean, there seems like there's so much stuff that's so obvious. I'm like, what is wrong with you guys? What was wrong with them back in 1911? Like, it's just driving me crazy because you guys. Guys, what about Joseph T. Delk, who owned the axe? Did they even look at this guy? It was his axe. Like, you guys, how more obvious can this be? I mean, and I'm not even settled on Joseph T. Delk. Just FYI, there's another bomb to drop. You would think he'd be one of the first people they would look at. For some reason, they decided early on that he was completely innocent. Well, a week after the murders, you guys, you guys. Two bloodhounds with well-established records of accuracy were taken to the Hill family cabin. They had them circle the cabin outside to get the scent of, you know, someone. Who'd been outside the cabin. And then they tracked the scent from the cabin back to the Delk home and stopped exactly in front of the Delk's gate where a bloody rag had been found on the morning of the murders. And that is where the trail stopped. Now, this would seem like a good sign that they ought to look deeper into Delk. But the article that I read just said that it was very odd and somewhat disappointing that the dogs would lead them to the home of a non-suspect. There was still no suspicion on Delk or his sons, and the police were not giving up hope. I feel... That it was very foolish not to look more closely at Delk or his sons, because the axe came from that house, and the bloody rag was left in that house when the killer returned there. And so it seems really suspicious. Because you would think, if it was not someone from the Delk house, then the person had to have the person who owns the scent that the dogs are tracking had to have gone to the Delk House, you know, to get the axe, and then go to the Hill House, and then go back to the Delk House to drop the bloody rag, and then have left the Delk House to go, I don't know, to the woods or wherever they went. So the trail would not have stopped at the Delk House. Unless it originated and ended at the Delk House. It just— You have crazy eyes right now. It just seems so obvious to me that you should say maybe— you are a suspect. And so I went and looked at Find a Grave. Mr. Delk was in his early 50s, clearly capable of swinging an axe, and he carried that axe every day to work because he worked at Nathan Harvey's house. He worked for Nathan Harvey and walked past the hill house twice a day with the axe on his shoulder. Said the papers—um. And his son, he had a son in his early 20s. And then he had another son who was 10 years younger than him. So young, teen. Mm-hmm. I think they should have looked more at the Delks, but... What do I know? I don't know, you're just a 21st century gal. Right. I don't know anything. Anyway, also, so I'm like, let me look more at Joseph Delk. And I search his name. And later. Nine years later, in the year 1920, Joseph Delk went before the grand jury on charges of, wait for it. threatening to murder a female neighbor of his. Isn't that something? So, you'd think in 1920 they would have been like... You know, this guy. Owned the act. That murdered a whole family. Um, and also the bloody rag was found in front of his house. Maybe we should reopen this investigation. I don't know. But they didn't. We should be on the cold case team. We should send this to the Cold Case team, this episode. I wonder if they still have evidence that they could test. Now, what about Clarence Matthews? The neighbor of the hills, right? He's the one who was like, 'Hey, these guys should be awake.' What's going on? He told investigators that he had awoken in the wee hours of June 9th, 1911. The sound of his dogs barking, he said that they were just going crazy and he got out of bed to look out the door but he couldn't see anything now. Keep in mind his mother's house was between his house and the Hill's cabin. So he couldn't, from his door, he couldn't see the Hill's cabin. Then he looked out the window. He could see part of the... hill cabin from his window, but he said he couldn't see anything, you know, over there. Now he checked the time and he said it was around 1245. He got... back into bed and the dogs continued to bark for another you know he guessed six or seven minutes he said whatever they were barking at it sounded like it was in the direction to the north toward Ardenwald Station which makes sense that is toward the um the Delk house because Delk lived three-quarter miles away from the Hill Cabin toward Ardenwald Station. But when the detectives had questioned Nathan B. Harvey about his walk home from Ardenwald Station that night, he said he did not hear any dogs barking at all. He got off the platform around 12 . 30 a . m. and walked home, which was a mile away, and that would have put him by the hill cabin around 12 . 50 a . m. 12 50 a . m. or so. Now, if it was at night, which it was, it was silent. The only sound would have been his footsteps and dogs barking. If those dogs had been barking. Nathan B. Harvey would have heard them. And I mean, if they were barking for at least, you know, six or seven minutes straight. Going crazy. I'm sure he probably would have noticed. He would have been like, what is going on with these dogs? Why are they going crazy? Right. Um, And we know, and we're pretty darn sure, he didn't kill the Hill family. We know the neighbors made up all kinds of things for the papers to make the story. Such salacious stories. Yeah, I mean, they just made up stories and just made it bigger and bigger. But why would Clarence make up the story about the dogs, right? And this really got me thinking. You know, those dogs weren't barking. There was a house between Clarence Matthews' house and the Hill House, you know, where his parents lived. His nephew was even there on a visit from Chicago. If his dogs were barking so wildly for such a long time, wouldn't everyone in that house have heard it as well? And with Nathan Harvey's house being 300 feet to the south. And his wife, his teen daughter, and his son being there, wouldn't they have likely been aroused by barking that was so wild and lasted for so long, if indeed it happened? Good questions. Mm-hmm. If by chance everyone aside from Clarence W. Matthews was in very deep REM sleep, right? Like everybody. And if the walls were really thick and have. heavily insulated, and if there were lots of trees and bushes between the homes, then perhaps they would have slept through the barking. That's possible. But we do know for a fact that Nathan B. Harvey was wide awake, outside, walking right past the hill in Matthew's houses, and would have been within earshot of the dogs and their barking. You know, in their frenzy, probably for the entire time that it lasted. I think that's something he would have noticed if it had actually happened. So now my question is... If the dogs were indeed outside that night, how could this crime have been committed without the killer sending them into a wild frenzy? Maybe if the killer wasn't a stranger to the dogs? Exactly. So I started looking closer at Clarence Matthews. He was married and had two very little children. Boys. All I could find in the news about him is that he and his wife got sued a lot for not paying bills and for foreclosures. He worked at a bank. So you'd think he'd be more on top of things financially. And he actually moved a few months after the murders and said that there were prowlers around his window. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, for sure. Well, maybe it was Ed Ramsey, the homeless man who lived in the woods, who was prowling. It's very likely because that is something he was doing a lot of. And maybe Ed killed the Hill family. I don't know. It's, you know, it's possible. He was too weak-minded. True, true. He was very weak-minded. Who knows? Now, I also thought that perhaps the nephew, Walter Bartholomew, was suspicious. He arrived in town just the day before and then, bam, out of nowhere, the neighbors wind up murdered with an axe and raped. That seems a little bit weird to me. I don't know. But what about Clarence Matthews' father? And were there any other adults living with Clarence's parents? Like, all of these people would have been known to the dogs and wouldn't cause a ruckus if they were up and moving around in the middle of the night. That is true. Yeah. But there's one more suspect I really think the police should have checked out, and I think they should check out right now. Drop it. Drop it. I like to call this one the Corwin bomb. Oh, and this, oh my gosh, you guys, this one just gets me so excited. Okay. When I first thought of this, I threw it at you as a joke. You did. I totally did. I sent a text and just said, 'What if Harvey's kid did it?' I was kidding. I was. I was just kidding because Nathan B. Harvey had a 17-year-old son, Corwin, and they lived just 300 feet away from the Hill Cabin. Now, remember... the Hills had built that little cabin at the beginning of May of 1911. So they'd only been living there for about six-ish weeks, like five and a half weeks. But Ruth and the kids... had been out there quite a bit for a few months before that because Ruth had planted a garden on their acre plot of land. So you've got to start planting stuff in like April, right? Depending on what it is, maybe March. I don't know what they planted. But they'd spent quite a bit of time out there, and the kids had played with the Matthews kids, and Ruth had talked to the neighbors, including Mrs. Harvey. And let me just add, for the record, Ruth was absolutely gorgeous. It's true. She was absolutely just so beautiful. Not that it matters, but... But she was, just for the record. And we will post pictures on the socials and you will see. So...

I just throw out this mostly joking remark: 59:51

what if Harvey's kid did it? And honestly, I had not even done the math yet to see how old he was. I knew that there was a 14-year-old daughter, but I wasn't sure how old the son was. So I went to his find a grave memorial and check his date of birth so I could do the math. And I see that there's a picture of him there. And you guys, the guy just looks creepy. So, still in a mostly joking way, I sent Olivia the screenshot of his face. And I said, 'He has the face of a demon.' And I put 'demon' in all caps. And I mean, honestly. It is a creepy picture. If someone were to be making a movie and they were like, 'We need demons,' they would make them look like Corwin Harvey. I'm not kidding. I feel like... Eww. He was handsome, but then his activities... Before I even knew his activities. I was like. This guy looks like a demon. I don't know. He looks very angry in the picture. I feel like he's handsome, but also it's like a... There's potential, I guess. I don't know. Tall, dark, and demonic? Yeah. Instant, instant creepy vibes. Anyway, you can go look up Corwin, C-O-R-W-I-N. We'll post his picture, too. Yeah, and just look for the creepiest picture, and then that's him. All right. So, yeah, I was just joking. Just joking. Find that. Send the picture. And I'm like, 'Ooh, face of a demon.' And then I did the math. I saw he was 17 at the time of the murder. And I'm like, 'Okay, this is possible.' And then I happen to see there's a note on his memorial that says he died while he was in the Oregon State Penitentiary. In 1944, and that's when my joke was no longer a joke and it became a possibility. He was actually stabbed to death by another inmate. Now I needed to find out why Corwin S. Harvey went to prison. And this kicked off a deep dive that sent me through the historical newspapers in Washington, Oregon, and California. And ladies and gentlemen, we may be a lot closer to solving this case. A beautiful face. It's what all women desire. Miss Dora Hanson writes that a beautiful face is what all women desire but what woman can be beautiful with her face covered with pimples and blotches— you ask what can we do to prevent the pimples and blotches appearing on our faces. Take Hood's sarsaparilla. It will soon give you a clear, soft skin. My mother and brother have taken it for impure blood and can't speak too highly of it. Get Hood Sarsaparilla today in liquid or tablets called Sarsatab. Corwin Satterthwaite Harvey was born January 7th, 1894, making him just about 17 and a half on June 9th, 1911. Typically in those days, kids finished high school between the ages of 17 and 19 because first grade started when they were between 5 and 7. Kindergarten didn't exist at the time. We know that his father, Nathan, had finished high school and become a school teacher promptly at the age of 17. He earned enough money to help his older sisters build their own home once they finished college. So Corwin's father definitely valued a good education and probably would have wanted the same for his son. But Corwin wasn't finishing high school at 17. I don't know how Corwin was spending his days when he was 17, actually, because Corwin's high school graduation announcement doesn't show up in the newspapers until 1916, when he was 21 years old. What was he doing all day as a 17-year-old in 1911? Was he home? Did he see Ruth Hill when she and five-year-old Dorothy came by the property to work in the garden in March and April before the home was built and eight-year-old Phillip was in school? Did he overhear Ruth's conversations with his mother when she stopped by to introduce herself? When he graduated from high school in June of 1916, he went on to become a school teacher rather than going to college. He registered for the military draft for World War I on June 5th of 1917, and then he was drafted into the National Army on March 31st of 1918. Corwin reported for duty on April 1st, 1918, first as part of the Depot Brigade at Camp Lewis, Washington, then transferring to the Laundry Exchange, and then to the Ear, Nose, and Throat Clinic as a surgical assistant. He met a young lady named Magdalene Falk, from Tacoma, Washington, and by September of 1918, they were married. He was discharged from the National Army on April 2nd, 1919, exactly a year and a day after reporting for duty. Two months later, in June, Corwin graduated from the normal school in Tacoma, the College of Puget Sound, with an elementary diploma. The ceremony was held at the First Methodist Church, and for the 1919-1920 school year, he was a 6th grade teacher at McKinley School in Tacoma, Washington. In September of 1920, he resigned and did not take another teaching position, so I guess sixth grade was a little too much for him. The next time Corwin's name comes up in the news, it's down in California. On April 1st, 1921, Nathan B. Harvey signs over a land deed to Corwin S. Harvey in Paradise Heights, California. Corwin and his wife, who goes by Magda, had moved down to Paradise, California with their baby boy, Howard. Howard had been born in Milwaukee, Oregon in August of 1920, so the couple had obviously made a pit stop there before relocating to California. An article in the Sacramento Bee in November of 1922 states that Corwin S. Harvey was a nurseryman, which means he was no longer a schoolteacher, and he had instead taken after his father, Nathan Harvey, up in Milwaukee, Oregon. But that's not why that article was printed in November of 1922. You see, things had gone really, really bad in California. At least that's when Corwin couldn't hide it anymore. That November, Nathan Harvey was down in California visiting his son and his little family. Nathan, just about to reach his 63rd birthday, and Corwin, age 28, got into an argument. And Corwin started beating on the old man with his fists. How rude. Magda tried to break up the violent brawl, which Corwin didn't appreciate one bit. So, having beaten Nathan into submission already, I assume, he turned his attention to Magda. He landed several uppercuts to her jaw, and after she was down on the floor, he picked up a pot of boiling mush from the stove and dumped the thick, sticky substance all over her head, shoulders, and chest. The sticky substance stuck to her flesh and left severe burns. Magda ran to a neighboring home and the police were called. By the time they arrived, Magda could barely speak because of the damage done to her face from the repeated blows that Corwin had landed to her face before throwing the boiling mush on her. Now, just to be clear. Some of the articles said it was a bowl of mush. Others said it was the pot of mush. Only one said it was dumped over her head. Others just said, you know, he threw it on her. But she did have burns on her shoulder and her breast, it said. So he was arrested immediately and taken before a judge in Butte County on November 20th. When the judge asked him for an explanation, Corwin explained that his wife had, quote, meddled in his private affairs, and the only way to teach her to, quote, mind her own business was to give her something, quote, to remember it by. The judge said he would give him three months to think it over. So he was sentenced to 90 days in jail. Magda announced that she was returning to her parents in Tacoma, Washington, and would file for divorce immediately on the grounds of cruelty, which she did. And she also reported that the violence had actually been going on for the entirety of their marriage, and they had been married in September of 1918. Poor gal. Yeah. So now, if you recall, when Corwin's father was first arrested, Corwin and his mother both made a statement to the news reporters about Nathan Harvey's innocence. And when Corwin made his statement. He got very angry and his mother had to calm him down. And it was enough of a show of like aggression and anger that it was actually commented on in the article that his mother had to like calm him down. So when I first read that, it seemed like, you know, a kid who was upset about it. His dad being arrested. But now that I know that he has anger issues and likes uncontrollable violent impulses, that early article from 1911, just a few months after the Hill murders, takes on a little different meaning. But that's not where Corwin's story ends. It is just getting started, you guys. Corwin had been a boy scout. Not just that, but he was a scout master at the time he brutally attacked his wife. While sitting in jail for three months, the national director of of the Boy Scouts over in New York revoked his title and certificate and removed him from his post as a Scoutmaster. So that was good. Yes. And that was in 1922. But wouldn't you know, in 1924, back in Multnomah County, Oregon, Corwin Harvey was convicted on December 11th. in the Court of Domestic Relations on a charge of raping a 14-year-old boy. The paper said he would be sentenced the following Monday, but there was no follow-up article. And then two years later, in 1926, Corwin was in the paper as being included in a school fundraiser. being placed with kids to help with education and fundraising. But unlike the other volunteers that were listed, he was not being placed in a school. He was being put with the kids in the Mountain View Sanitarium. where they put kids with chronic tuberculosis, so... I don't know if they did that on purpose. Those kids got the short end of the stick both ways. Yeah, so yeah, that was January of 1926. In February of 1926, he filed an appeal in Multnomah County, Oregon, for his conviction on a rape of a child. I don't know if it was the same child or if this was a different case. But the conviction was upheld by Judges Brown and Kendall. In September of 1926, so a few months later, he filed an appeal from a conviction for the rape of a child in Clackamas County, Oregon. So there was another one that just didn't make it into the papers. This conviction was upheld by Judges Koshow and Campbell. He had remarried at some point and was divorced by his wife in 1928. And this was granted as a default divorce, and I assume it's because he was in prison. We can hope. At that time, I believe so, because on December 4th of 1928, he was charged with lewd and lascivious conduct with a child down in California. And he had just gotten out of prison in Oregon, paroled, but still on probation for basically the same charges as he was just charged with, you know, in California. He pleaded guilty to this in California. And on December 21st, they sentenced him to life in prison. In California, but then they found out that he was actually on parole for the same thing in Oregon. So they contacted Oregon to see if Oregon wanted him sent back. To finish out his sentence there. Oregon said, 'Nope, you can keep him, put him in prison for life, that's fine.' So on February 22nd of 1929, California sent him to Folsom Prison. To start serving his life sentence. In May of 1938, he was paroled. So he served 10 years of that life sentence in California before they let him out. And about eight months later, his father, Nathan B. Harvey, deeded some land to Corwin in Glen County, California. By 1941, Corwin was back in Oregon and charged yet again with some kind of, quote, morals charge. The paper didn't detail what it was exactly, but I googled, 'what does that mean?' It has something to do with a sex crime. Along the same lines as what he's been doing. He was convicted on January 22nd and ultimately sentenced to 30 years in the Oregon State Penitentiary. Bring him back to court on February 3rd to face the charge of being a habitual criminal, but he argued, 'I'm not the same Corwin S. Harvey that's named in those records that the DA just brought into court, which, you know, that didn't work out.' He was the same one. So anyway, off went Corwin S. Harvey back to prison yet again. He was a habitual criminal. He was a violent man. He was a sexual predator. He raped children. He battered women. He even battered old men. He battered his father. He sought out occupations like teaching and volunteer opportunities like Boy Scouts and school fundraisers that would put him in close contact with potential victims. And he showed no remorse whatsoever for his crimes, giving plenty of hints that he was likely a sociopath. I'm just shocked that his dad deeded him land in California again after he beat him. Yeah, yeah, it's... Weird. It's weird. So here's... My theory. Pray tell. Could the Hill family have been Corwin's first experience? Corwin may have been plagued by dark desires, troubling thoughts, all of these things at the age of 17. He may have seen Ruth Hill, you know, vibrant and beautiful, coming to the property to plant and tend the garden in the spring of 1911, and even Dorothy, if Dorothy was with her, before the cabin was even built. Ruth was gorgeous. Dorothy was absolutely adorable. Did he watch them through the windows? Did he peer at them from behind fruit trees, you know, on his dad's property? His home was just 300 feet from the Hill cabin, from where it was eventually built. But the garden, it could have been anywhere on that acre that the Hills had purchased. Ruth could have been much closer to the property line. Or farther away, like who knows? But I mean, did he see her? You know? Corwin would have wanted to try some things out for his first time with a woman, but Ruth would have said no, obviously. Dorothy obviously would have. screamed, you know, she wouldn't have been a willing participant. So Corwin would have had to take them against their will. That's, that's a given. He would need them to be immobilized. He would need victims who couldn't say no and couldn't fight back. And, you know, I'm guessing he wasn't in school and he was full of hormones at 17 years old. And there was Ruth coming to the property to work in the garden. With him probably not in school and being around all day, just 300 feet away, his own property bordering the Hill and Matthews properties, the dogs on the Matthews properties would have been familiar with Corwin. The Matthews' dogs would not have barked had Corwin come walking through as he undoubtedly had done so many times before, possibly even during the night, with nowhere to be in the morning. Joseph T. Delk was the owner of the axe that was used to murder William and Ruth Hill and Philip and Dorothy Rintel that night. Joseph T. Delk was an employee of Nathan B. Harvey. Every single day, he walked from his own house, a quarter of a mile from Ardenwald Station, down past the Hill Cabin and the Matthews Homes, to the Harvey home and nurseries. It is noted in the newspapers that Delk carried his axe on his shoulder when he made this walk twice a day. Corwin would have seen him. Delk worked for his father for years. Was Corwin out and about? in the Ardenwald neighborhood at night. Was he someone prowling around, peering in windows from time to time? Did he take the axe from the delk's yard that night and let himself into the hill cabin to murder all four of them? Did he plan on returning the axe? But in his heightened... state of adrenaline and fight or flight, he arrived at the delks only to realize he didn't have the axe in his hand, but instead he had the bloody rag that he'd used when he cleaned his hands? That's possible. If the killer was Corwin, I don't think he was a necrophile. I don't think he killed them because he wanted to have sex with dead bodies. I think the goal was just to have sex. He covered up their heads while raping them because he was focused solely on the sexual assault. Death was not the goal. Corwin, if he was the killer, was learning about himself that night. I think he learned that he was not a killer per se, but he was a rapist. Statistically speaking, murder is one of the least likely offenses to be repeated. Recidivism for a new homicide is exceptionally rare compared to other crimes. So for those of you thinking, you know, it couldn't have been Corwin because he would have killed again. Well, you're wrong because for most murderers, the act is a life-changing experience that they are unlikely to repeat. But what we see with Corwin S. Harvey is a continued pattern of horrific and brutal violence against women, a continued pattern of sexual violence against children. A pattern of positioning himself in environments where he has access to vulnerable victims, and we see that he has problems with controlling his aggressive and violent impulses. Yeah, because he's a psychopath, and I bet he only went back to high school after the murders because he wanted to become a teacher so he could be around little children. That's honestly what I'm thinking as well. That's really what I think. So, I mean, we can't say that we solved the case or anything, but I think we've made a good argument as to why they should probably do DNA testing if any of the evidence still exists. I think that Corwin could very possibly be the killer. But also with the dog search thing, it could be the Delks. It could be something. But yeah, so on October 10th of 1944, Corwin S. Harvey was stabbed by another inmate in the Oregon State Penitentiary. The wounds were bad, and he eventually died on October 31, 1944. So. That's the story. And I do think that maybe Corwin did it. They were looking at the wrong Harvey. Yep, I think so. For shame. Yep. But this case, ugh. It gets me. Yeah. It's so fascinating. Very crazy. It's wild how they just, like... It'd be like, we want it to be this guy. Do whatever you can to make it be this guy. Mm-hmm. And L. L. Lemmings. Curse him. I wonder how many people actually did get away with murder just because the detectives were like, 'Let's just pin it on this guy' so we can solve the case. Yeah. They were all corrupt. Mm-hmm. Or shame. Well? Shout out to newspapers. com and use our promo code 'forgotten20'. Shout out to FamilySearch and Ancestry and the University of Oregon Newspaper Archives and Find a Grave. And Christian for doing the quotes and our commercials. Yes. Follow our socials. Our Instagram is at 'Forgotten underscore Felonies'. And our Facebook page is 'Forgotten Felonies'. You can also email us at Forgotten Felonies at gmail. com. Yes. And please do share with your friends if you like the podcast. Maybe share your favorite episode. Share it on your social media or something. Leave us a review. Heck yeah. We only have two on Apple Podcasts. Two people reviewed. Loved it. Thank you to those two. But ugh. I feel bad for Nathan, but at the same time... If it was Corwin, I wonder if Nathan knew. Yeah. Like, you would, I mean, he would have had to suspect after Corwin started, like. committing crimes like this, you'd think he would have been like, 'Oh my god. Was it you?' This paper article was like, they have such a good track record, like check this out, you know, these guys who were lost for a week. Up in the mountain, the dogs found them, and like, I mean. All of this, how great they are. And then they're like, but they sure missed on this one. They just tracked it to the delks. He's not even a suspect. Which is like, are you kidding me? We're right there! How can you miss this red flag blowing in your face? It's not just a flag, it's a red sheet. With fireworks shooting off of me. Look here! I mean, he owned the axe! How do we even know the axe was sitting outside? He could have just said that to me, like... That's how it must have wound up around their house. I did read something saying that it had just been sharpened. Yeah, he sharpened it the day before. This story has been haunting me since one o'clock this morning. I told you it's a good case. I mean, no, I mean this part about the dogs. I'm just like, 'Oh, it's like.' This is insane to me. This is insane to me! Come on, 1911. Come on. You're letting me down. There's no Scotland Yard. My goodness. Oh, my gosh. Like, I'm just like, I just want to reach back in time and choke someone. Just shake them. They're like, 'What are you thinking? Okay. You can take over.' I know, like, guys— just sit down. I got this. Oh my gosh, okay.