A new view of the 1884 Roxy Druse murder case

 

Roxy in her cell at the Herkimer Jail

The Raven Review has been kind enough to publish my short fiction based on the notorious Roxy Druse murder case of 1884, entitled:

My Mother Killed My Father

An imagined witness at the Druse trial,  Jacob Timmerman gives his theory of the case. He is convinced that Roxy took responsibility for her husband's murder in order to save their daughter Mary from the consequences of her act. Although in that era, even the hint of incest or sexual abuse would never be mentioned in a courtroom, Timmerman is certain that was what drove the seventeen year old girl to take an axe to her father in their isolated farmhouse in Jordanville, NY.

As the trial unfolded in 1885, it drew wide attention in the newly sensation-seeking national press, notably The Saturday Globe, based in nearby Utica. On the one hand, Roxy was depicted as a monster for killing and butchering her husband Bill, and then feeding his remains to the family's pigs. On the other, she was defended by many early feminists and anti-capital punishment activists who petitioned the governor to commute her death sentence. Nonetheless, she was hung at Herkimer in 1887 and her daughter served ten years before being released.

In 2011, I published an historical novel inspired by the Druse murder, entitled:

Roxy Druse & The Murders of Herkimer County

In that much longer fiction, the narrator W.H. Tippetts visits Roxy and Mary in their cell act the Herkimer County Jail and eventually comes to a similar conclusion about Roxy's sacrifice of her own life in order to save that of her daughter. Tippetts, as I picture him, is not the most perceptive character and is involved in many mysteries and adventures before reaching a somewhat muddled understanding of what happened. He is based on an actual journalist who interviewed the Druse women and wrote the short history of the county's murders included in my volume.

Here is a link to my much more detailed article from 2011 on the Druse case:

Roxy Druse: Female Fiend or a Woman Wronged?

and here are some sources and suggestions for further research:

The Herkimer County Historical Society maintains extensive files on the Druse case, as well as on the even more notorious case of Chester Gillette, who was executed for the murder of Grace Brown in 1908. The Society also owns the old jail which is occasionally opened for public visits. It is a grim place and after Roxy’s death,  her spirit was said to haunt its dark corridors.

The Little Falls Historical Society holds a vast scrapbook collection compiled by my grandfather,  which includes numerous local articles on the Druse case.

The author of  The Forgotten Central New York Murder Case maintains  that the botched nature of Roxy's hanging led to the invention of the electric as a more "humane" method for taking a life. That instrument made its debut at the state prison in Auburn, NY in 1889, and Chester Gillette was one of its most famous occupants. Gillette was tried at Herkimer for the murder of Grace Brown  and held in the same jail occupied by Roxy a few years earlier.

A search of the New York Times archive under Roxalana Druse will yield several articles from the period of the trial.

The New York State Library has a comprehensive collection of local newspapers from the years of the trail and  appeals.The case attracted many opponents of capital punishment.