FROM AMERICAN HAUNTINGS INK AND TROY TAYLOR

THE 1898 MURDER OF THE NEWTON FAMILY

WHY PAUL MUELLER IS LIKELY NOT THE SO-CALLED “MAN FROM THE TRAIN.”

In 2012, I published a book called MURDERED IN THEIR BEDS, which was the story of not only the ax murders in Villisca, Iowa, that claimed the lives of the J.B. Moore family and the Stillinger sisters in 1912, but also an examination of a series of *other* ax murders that occurred in Illinois, Kansas, and Colorado at the time that I believed were the work of the same killer. This wasn’t a theory that I took lightly. I put countless hours of research into it – digging through newspaper files, visiting sites, and checking records. When I had finished – and published the book – I felt reasonably sure that my theory held up. The signature of the killer matched in each of the SIX murder scenes, the murders all occurred near railroads by which I believed the killer traveled, and then the killings came to an end since no other scenes matched these six.

The only thing missing was the identity of the killer – there was no way to know who had committed the murders. I dubbed the murderer “Billy the Axman” – based on a newspaper article from 1911 – and believe the murders stopped because the man was either killed in a rail accident, committed to an insane asylum, arrested, or simply died from some unknown cause.

The Midwest Ax Murders — as I think of those six murder scenes — is a compelling story from yesterday, proving that the “good ol’ days” weren’t all that good and are a look at how rural law enforcement dealt with a “serial” killer before anyone even knew what serial killer was.

In 2017, a book was published called THE MAN FROM THE TRAIN — which delved into the same murders that I did, including Villisca — pursued the theory that the killer traveled by train, and noted the similarities between the six murders. It’s a quality book, by great writers, but in addition to the six murders for which the killer’s method matched EXACTLY, they also blamed DOZENS of OTHER murders on the same killer, despite them being very different methods of killing.

Ax murders were VERY common in the nineteenth and early twentieth century for the simple reason that an ax was a “weapon of convenience.” Everyone had one. They were necessary for cutting firewood, clearing farmland, butchering chickens, and many other necessary tasks on farms and homes in small towns. And because they were so common, it seems obvious that they weren’t ALL committed by the same person. The six Midwest Murders were very different than those that occurred in Louisiana and Texas a year or so earlier. I wrote a separate book on that string of serial murders called VICTIMS OF THE AX FIEND.

The fact that there were other murders, some nearly overlapping, makes it unlikely that all the murders credited to the “Man from the Train” in the book were truly committed by the same person. Even so, the book blames the same killer for scores of ax murders across the United States and even in Germany.

Another thing that makes the book different from mine is that they name the killer – they pin over 100 murders between 1898 and 1922 on a man named Paul Mueller. The first murders credited to him occurred on January 7, 1898, in Brookfield, Massachusetts, so I wanted to look closer at that murder case and see how it compares with the six cases — leaving 28 people dead — that I feel convinced were committed by the same man.

THE NEWTON FAMILY MURDERS

Francis D. Newton and his family – wife, Sarah, and daughter, Elsie -- lived on a farm outside of Brookfield. He was a respected and well-liked man in the neighborhood. After he and Sarah had purchased the farm, they had made considerable repairs to the outbuildings and barns and to the house, an old-fashioned colonial that had been built in 1768. The newly renovated property earned Francis the admiration of his friends and neighbors and brought many buyers for his cattle business to the area.

By all accounts, the Newton family was happy. Francis was not wealthy but was not in debt. He had good relationships in town and on neighboring farms. His closest friend was Arthur Rice, who often came to the Newton home so the two men could examine and curate Francis’ antique coin collection.

Francis was happily married to his wife, Sarah, and his daughter, Elsie, was beloved. Mother and daughter were particularly close. It was widely known that Elsie was adopted, but her parents considered her a blood relative and were fiercely protective of her. Her birth mother, Eugenia Peterson, was pregnant when she emigrated to the United States and Elsie’s birth records show she was born in the nearby town of Spencer. When Eugenia gave up her baby, she was adopted by the Newtons, and they became the only parents she ever knew.

Thanks to how busy the farm and cattle business were, Francis frequently hired farmhands to work for him. Many of these men were drifters, larger uneducated, and they lived with the family as part of the room and board that came with their small weekly salary.

One of his farmhands was a man named Paul Mueller. Mueller had recently left the prestigious Point of Pines country club on bad terms. He’d walked off the job one day and had gone straight to the Newtown farm to ask for work. Knowing that Mueller had more experience than most of the men who worked for him, Francis hired him, not knowing about Mueller’s hot temper or the bad reputation he'd had with his last employer.

In fact, the owners of the country club were deathly afraid of him.

Mueller spoke only broken English but claimed that he’d once served in the German army, which is where he learned his skill with horses. He did manage to explain that he had once been a sailor and -- at a time when mostly only sailors had tattoos – Mueller had several examples of nautical ink on his arms. These tattoos would have served as identifying marks for Mueller, but he always kept them covered, wearing long sleeves even in the summer heat.

Mueller could be “a trifle cranky,” as he was once described, but he never drank. He was short, stocky, had a long dark mustache, and almost always wore a checkered golf cap that he’d picked up from the country club. While most called him “sullen and disagreeable” and said he was feared for his temper, Francis Newton got along with him quite well. He was an agreeable man who’d had many farmhands work for him over the years. If they showed up and did their work, Francis always seemed to find something worthwhile about them. Paul Mueller was no exception.

Mueller helped finish a lot of the repairs and renovations the family had started on the house, and he also handcrafted a fine snow sled for the family one winter. But, at some point, Mueller found himself criticized by his employer. He’d slacked off on his work, and Francis spoke to him about it. With a language barrier in place, it’s likely that Mueller took the complaints more seriously than Francis meant them. Mueller’s understanding of it was that if he didn’t do better work, then he needed to “get out.” It seems doubtful that Francis was this harsh. He had a reputation for being an agreeable man and had kept Mueller in his employ longer than anyone else in the area had.

The last visitor to the Newtown farm on January 7, 1898, was Joseph A. Upham from Brimfield. He stopped by the house to collect on a $1 debt that was owed for this business. He later reported the cheerfulness of Sarah and Elsie but mentioned a “coolness” between Francis and his farmhand. He said goodbye to the Newtons and went on his way.

A few days later, neighbors were alerted to the strange behavior of the cattle at the Newton farm. The dairy cows had not been milked in several days, and the rest of the herd hadn’t been fed. Earlier in the week, Francis had gone to Worcester – about 20 miles away – with Paul Mueller to buy a horse, and neighbors assumed he was still away. But why had he not returned and cared for the cattle?

As it happened, Francis had looked at the horse but decided not to buy it. He returned home with $100 cash in his wallet, which is about $3,000 today. This was later said to be unusual to friends, saying that he never kept more than $40 on his person. He was frugal, good with money, and usually careful with any sort of cash.

Neighbors knocked on the door and circled the house, not seeing any signs of lights or activity inside. Finally, they broke open the front door and went inside to see the house had been ransacked.

And the three Newtons had been killed in their beds.

The farmhand, Paul Mueller, was gone. It’s speculated that his disagreement with Francis caused his bed temper to erupt. The two men shared a suite – with separate sleeping rooms – in one part of the house, and on the night of January 7, someone took an ax and beat Francis’ head with the blunt side of it until he was unrecognizable. The killer – assumed by everyone to be Mueller – pulled the bloodstained sheets up over his employer’s face and left the room.

No one knows what happened next, but the police speculated that Mueller then went downstairs and killed Sarah and Elsie next. It was assumed that Elsie was killed last because of the defensive wounds on her hand – that she’d been awakened by the noise before she was murdered. The bodies of the two women showed signs of torture, there were long gashes on their abdomens, and their genitals were mutilated by the sharp side of the ax. Instead of covering the bodies – as he had done with Francis Newton – Mueller pulled the bedclothes and nightgowns up over the heads of the two women with their nakedness on full display. According to the autopsy that followed, neither woman had been raped. All three had their skulls violently beaten and all were drugged with laudanum – an opiate of the era – before their deaths. It was later discovered that all the horses on the farm had been poisoned.

The killer had then robbed the house, taking all the cash he could find, along with the coins from Mr. Newton’s collection. Other valuables, like the Newtons’ gold watches, were left behind. Mueller, again presumably the killer, then used kerosene to try and set the house on fire and hide the evidence of his crime. The fire had gone out, though, leaving everything intact.

After the arrival of the police and the shocking news of the murders spread, townsfolk rushed to the scene to see the carnage. Nothing like that had ever happened in their small town before and they wanted to be part of history. Many of them, friends of the Newtown, assisted the police in whatever way they could. Some were interviewed and one man claimed to have seen Mueller late on January 7, heading towards the train station, and though they called his name, Mueller ignored him.

An hour or so later, train station employees also saw a man who seemed to be trying to avoid the well-lighted parts of the platform as he wanted for the 1:20 AM train to arrive. One employee recalled selling a 75-cent ticket to the man and he paid in part with a rare 1836 half-dollar coin. Arthur Rice later identified it as part of his friend’s coin collection.

A funeral was held for the family in their home a few days later and it was said that the sermon offered by Rev. E.B. Blanchard “didn’t leave a dry eye in the house.” The Newton family were buried in the New Braintree cemetery. Elsie’s birth mother, Eugenia, attended the funeral and wept openly for her little girl and the two people who had cared for her.

As for Paul Mueller, he was never seen again. Despite the offer of a large reward, there were no positive sightings of him, even though a multitude of false reports continued until 1904. After that, the trail went cold, likely because no one had a good likeness of him that could be shared, he had no known identifying marks, his description widely varied from one account to another, and no one even knew what his real name was since it turned out he’d been variously known as “Paul” and “Saul” and his last name had been “Mueller,” “Miller,” or “Muller,” depending on his mood and what newspaper was printing a story about him.

Most believed that after the crime, Mueller left Massachusetts and sailed for Europe. There are no clear indications about why this became such an accepted theory among law enforcement officials, but it did.

Mueller was never located and after 1905, the national demand to find him faded away and Mueller was forgotten – until he was revived as the “Man from the Train” in 2017.

paul mueller vs. billy the axman

When I began researching the Villisca murders that occurred in 1912, I also discovered the four earlier murders – plus one after Villisca. It was plain to see that each murder had a solid signature, identical in almost every way. This was the reason that I believed them to be committed by one man.

Those murders were:

* Colorado Springs, Colorado: September 17, 1911
* Monmouth, Illinois: October 1, 1911
* Ellsworth, Kansas: October 15, 1911
* Paola, Kansas: June 5, 1912
* Villisca, Iowa: June 9, 1912
* Blue Island, Illinois: July 5, 1914

In each case, there were certain signs the killer left behind:

* The entire family was killed with the blunt side of the family’s own ax, which was left at the scene, covered in blood.

* The faces of the victims were covered with some kind of cloth.

* The windows of the house were covered, either by the curtains or the drapes or by clothing, blankets, or anything else the killer could find.

* After each murder, an oil lamp was found, its chimney removed, and the wick turned down very low. There was only one time when this didn’t happen, and a flashlight was discovered at the scene.

* The killer remained behind in the house for an unknown length of time before leaving. Occasionally, he would eat but he always cleaned up, washing his hands or the murder weapon.

* Nothing was stolen. Robbery was never the motive.

* The body of at least one of the females – adult or child – was touched or posed in a sexual way. In some cases, it was obvious – for example, leaving a smear of blood behind – but in others, it was the positioning of a body.

These things were found at ALL six murder scenes that I believe are linked to the single killer — the one I’d dubbed “Billy the Axman.”

As you likely already realize, this is not the case with the Newton murders. Some of the signatures are there – I believe by pure chance – but not all of them. Regardless, the ones that were found are likely what led the authors of the book to choose the mysterious Paul Mueller as the culprit in so many other murders.

Mueller DID strike the skulls of the Newtons with the blunt side of the ax – as did the killers in the majority of ax murders that occurred during this period. He also covered the face of his employer. In addition, he posed the bodies of Sarah and Elsie in a sexually suggestive manner and even went so far as to mutilate their bodies.

But what Mueller didn’t do that matches the cases of the other six murders is a longer list. He didn’t cover the windows of the house, he didn’t leave the tell-tale oil lamp behind, plus he drugged the family, robbed them, and tried to set the house on fire, something Billy the Axman never did.

There might be a case to be made that this was Mueller’s first murder, so he was still escalating, and he hadn’t yet formed the signature that would become part of the murder scene. I could agree with that, but then would have to ask — wouldn’t he have left his signature behind at the scene of the next murders he allegedly committed 13 years later? He should have, but didn’t. If he’s the “Man on the Train” and he committed all the murders the author believe he did, then why did these signatures not appear at the crime scenes that were discovered between 1898 and 1911?

After Massachusetts, Mueller was supposed to have resurfaced in the summer of 1911 in Ardenwald, Oregon, and Rainier, Washington. Before that, the authors speculated that he might have had something to do with the murders I mentioned in Louisiana and Texas. He didn’t. While there were some similarities, those murders were very different and focused on victims who were mixed race only. There was also a religious element to the murders, which rules out anything connected to the Midwest murders.

But let’s get back to the Paul Mueller theory. He vanished completely after the January 1898 murders on the East Coast and then shows up again in the Pacific Northwest in summer 1911.

The murders in Ardenwald happened on June 9, 1911. It’s an eerie date to be sure since the murders in Villisca occurred one year later. The victims were William and Ruth Hill, and Ruth’s two children from a previous marriage, Philip and Dorothy Rintoul. All four were in bed sleeping when they were killed in their beds with an ax, which was left at the scene. The bodies of Ruth and Dorothy were moved after the crime. Dorothy had bloody fingerprints on her body and Ruth's body had been pulled down toward the end of the bed. The killer had washed at the crime scene.

The murders in Rainier happened one month later, on July 9. The victims were Archie Coble and his wife, Nettie. They lived in a small house on the edge of the town. Both were struck while sleeping by the blunt side of an ax. The killer covered Archie’s face after the murder and Nettie had been pulled down toward the edge of the bed. Several suspects were investigated in this case including a Swedish railroad worker and his foreman, George Wilson. Both implicated themselves during questioning, but Wilson was arrested, tried, and convicted of the murders.

Were these murders committed by Paul Mueller, or at least by the same killer that would strike in Colorado Springs in September? I don’t think so. Even leaving out the fact that not all the elements of the crime scene – windows, oil lamp, face covering – are present, it seems odd that there are fewer of the killer’s signatures in the second murder in the Pacific Northwest, instead of the other way around.

If he was building the signature that would mark the other scenes, then it should have been closer to the killings in Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, and Iowa. But it wasn’t – even though two months later, the signature appears fully formed and stays the same through six murders, before the murders stops.

I do believe that Paul Mueller murdered the Newton family in 1898, but there is no evidence of any kind to suggest that he committed any of the others – not the crimes in the Northwest, the Midwest murders, or any of the scores he’s credited it for after that. There’s no evidence of any kind that shows he was even still in the United States after he got away with robbery and murder.

So, this means there is nothing that proves Mueller was the “Man from the Train.” His connection to all the cases but the Newton murders is pure speculation.

But there is no question the “Man on the Train” existed. I believe that and I also believe that — as “Billy the Axman” — he killed 28 people between September 1911 and July 1914. There was a serial killer at work in the Midwest during those few short years and his bloody work came to an end for reasons that we’ll never know.

We don’t know why he quit. Did he die? Was he locked up? We’ll never know. How and why the murder spree ended will always be a mystery — just like his identity, no matter how many clever books that I, or anyone else, writes about him.

Troy Taylor / Winter 2024