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Wicked Women of Ohio
Jane Ann Turzillo
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Wicked Women of Ohio
Jane Ann Turzillo
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About This Book
True crime with a Midwest twist. The a ward-winning writer recounts the stories of Ohio's most notorious vixens, viragoes, and villainesses.
The Buckeye State produced its share of wicked women. Tenacious madam Clara Palmer contended with constant police raids during the 1880s and '90s. Only her death could shut the doors of her gilded bordello in Cleveland. Failed actress Mildred Gillars left for Europe right before World War II. Because she fell in love with the wrong man, she wound up peddling Nazi propaganda on the radio as "Axis Sally." Volatile Hester Foster was already doing time at the Ohio State Penitentiary when she bashed in the head of a fellow inmate with a shovel. The sinister Anna Marie Hahn dosed at least five elderly Cincinnati men with arsenic and croton oil and then watched them die in agony while pretending to nurse them back to health.
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1
DOUBLE MURDER AT AXTEL RIDGE
Inez Palmer (1926â27)
Inez Palmer and Arthur Stout shocked the small Vinton County community when they murdered Arthurâs stepmother and tried to burn the evidence, then killed his father and stuffed the body down the well. The lovers might have gotten away with it had it not been for Sheriff Maude Collins.
Maude was sworn in as sheriff of Vinton County in October 1925, just two days after her husband, Sheriff Fletcher Collins, was gunned down while serving a warrant during a traffic stop on the Coalton Pike half a mile north of Jackson. Until her husbandâs death, the thirty-two-year-old mother of five children, ages three to eleven, had been the jail matron. When the coroner, who lawfully would have succeeded Fletcher Collins, refused the office, the county commissioners appointed Maude as head law enforcement officer. She put on the badge, took up a gun and became the first female sheriff in Ohio history.
Maudeâs most shocking case began in the spring of 1926 after Arthur, thirty-three, brought Inez, nineteen, from Moundsville, West Virginia, to Vinton County to live with him and his two boys a few miles outside of Dundas. Newspapers of the time reported her age as twenty-four, but census, prison and orphanage records show that she was born on December 4, 1907. Supposedly, Inez was hired to keep house, since Arthurâs wife, Amelia, died. The two took up residence down a one-lane dusty road in a small cabin on Axtel Ridge on the rolling farmland owned by William Bray âBillâ Stout, Arthurâs father. Because they lived âwithout benefit of clergy,â and maybe because Inez was actually much younger, countryside tongues began to wag.
Bill Stout was a sixty-five-yearold father of three grown sons. He was a respected, well-to-do farmer who had lost his first wife, Almira, sometime after she appeared in the 1900 census and before 1906, when he married Sarah Pearce. Sarah was a God-fearing woman, mindful of the familyâs morals and reputation. The illicit âlove nestâ a couple miles down the road upset her to no end, and she let her stepson Arthur know it. He paid her no heed, so she went to the justice of the peace and had Arthur arrested in mid-November for âliving in an illicit relationship.â Bill, being less rigid than his wife, hired a lawyer for his son and bailed him out of jail.
Maude Collins, Ohioâs first female sheriff. Courtesy of the Vinton County Historical Society & Genealogical Society.
A few days after Arthur got out of jail, Sarahâs badly beaten body was discovered by a neighbor boy. Gertrude Perry sent her fourteen-year-old son, Manville, on an errand to Bill Stoutâs house, possibly to borrow sugar. When Sarah did not answer the boyâs knock at the kitchen door, he went to the sitting room door, which stood open a crack. He was confronted by a grisly scene when he peered inside. Sarah Stout was sprawled facedown on the floor in front of the stove, her hair matted in blood, according to the newspapers. A horrible smell of something burning hit him in the face.
Manville ran to find his father, William Perry, and Wesley Christian where they were working at the hillside coal mine. Perry called the sheriff âs office; Christian went to find Bill Stout.
By the time âSheriff Maudeâ (as folks called her) got the call, it was toward evening. She and her chief deputy, Ray Cox, went out to the Stout farm. It was dark when they arrived, but Maude could see that Sarah had been severely beaten then doused in kerosene and set afire. The flames had burned Sarahâs clothing but had died out either for lack of air or because the flooring was not flammable. It was obvious the fire was meant to destroy the evidence. During an autopsy, coroner Walter Swain found that Sarah had been choked to death.
After her husbandâs death, Maude Collins was left with five children to support. Courtesy of the Vinton County Historical Society & Genealogical Society.
East Main Street, McArthur, Ohio. Courtesy of the Vinton County Historical Society & Genealogical Society.
Maude asked the neighbors if they had seen any strangers around the farm. No one had. Deputy Cox walked around the outside of the house looking for anything suspicious. Nothing turned up.
Bill Stout sat on the steps of the house, weeping. He told Maude that Sarah had packed him a lunch early that morning. After that, he left the house to work in the north field, and he had not seen anyone around the house. Arthur later corroborated that alibi. He had seen his father in the field.
Maude tentatively marked Bill off the suspect list, but Arthur rose to the top of her list. There are a couple of different stories as to how Maude investigated the murder and wound up arresting Arthur. One version claims that Sarah told her neighbor Lucy Gibbs that she was frightened that Arthur would kill her because she caused him to be arrested. Gibbsâs name appears on the trial witness list. Perhaps she was going to testify to Sarahâs fear.
Another version was written by an unknown author and reprinted in a July 1992 article, âTwin Horror of Axtel Ridge,â in True Detective, a magazine published in the UK. It purports to be an interview with Sheriff Maude Collins at the time, in which she tells of calling in tracking dogs from Pomeroy forty miles south along the Ohio River.
Before the dogs got there, Maude asked Arthur for an accounting of his time. He claimed to have chopped wood most of the day. Later in the afternoon, he used his horse to drag a wagon tongue he had borrowed from his father back to the older manâs farm. She asked him if he had gone in the house. âYou didnât even drop in to pass the time of day with your stepmother?â
Arthurâs answer was awkward. âNo, we havenât been on speaking terms for some time. I guess you know why.â
After the tracking dogs arrived, the sheriff set them to work. They sniffed the path Arthur took with the horse and wagon tongue from his cabin right up to Bill and Sarahâs kitchen door. Presented with the dogsâ finding, Arthur admitted going to the kitchen door but swore he never entered the house.
Sheriff Maude gave the evidence some thought and decided it all pointed toward Arthur. She and her deputy went to prosecutor John E. Blake and asked him to get a warrant from Justice of the Peace George W. Specht. Within a short period of time, the sheriff and deputy had their warrant and went back out to Axtel Ridge to arrest Arthur for the murder of his stepmother. As they were taking him away, Inez Palmer rushed out the door to give him an ardent kiss on the lips. Apparently, it was the first time Maude ever laid eyes on the pretty, dark-haired âhousekeeper.â
Bill Stout was astounded at his sonâs arrest. âI canât believe Arthur did it, but if he did, I want him punished.â
A newly minted attorney named William J. Jones took over as prosecutor of the case. After graduating from The Ohio State law school the previous June, he decided to go to McArthur to gain experience. Little did he know that the experience would include a scandalous murder case.
Jones wanted Arthur held until the next session of the grand jury convened in January. Arthur was lodged in the county jail. Jones denied him visitors, perhaps because the jail was in the sheriff âs home. Inez disregarded the rules and made her way six miles through the cold at least once a week to see her lover. Sheriff Maude caught her talking to him through the window many times and sent her off.
On February 17, 1927, the grand jury indicted Arthur for the first-degree murder of Sarah Pearce Stout.
Sometime during that winter, Bill moved into Arthurâs cabin with Inez and his two grandsons, William H., nine, and Arthur Jr., thirteen.
And then Bill came up missing. On Thursday, March 10, Maude received a phone call from a clerk at the general store in Oreton. Inez Palmer had asked the clerk to make the call. Bill Stout had âleft the country. He said he was going west and he wasnât coming back.â This was problematic because the elder Stout was supposed to testify in Arthurâs trial.
Axtel Ridge homes of the Stout family. Courtesy of the Vinton County Historical Society & Genealogical Society.
Suspicious, Maude and Deputy Cox went out to the cabin to talk to Inez. The young Palmer woman said she was worried because Bill had left the night before and threatened to never return. She claimed he had been out all day mending fences. Maude must have wondered why he would be outside mending fencing in the cold winter weather. She and Cox followed the fences until they found Billâs lunch bucket under a tree. Inside the bucket was a handwritten will, leaving both farms to Arthur. It struck Maude as strange for him to cut off his other two sons. âBut maybe it was his way of making up for accusing Arthur,â she said, apparently not believing it.
Cox remarked that the will would not be lawful, because it was not witnessed.
The two law enforcement officers began looking around at the ground and saw footprints in the cold mud. They were curious to see if they belonged to Bill, so they went back to the cabin to get a pair of Billâs boots to see if they fit the prints. While there, they carefully went through the room where Bill had been staying. As best they could tell, none of the older manâs clothing was gone. While searching, Maude laid eyes on a pad of the same paper as the will had been written on. She tucked the pad away to take back to the office.
They showed Inez the will. She seemed overjoyed and commented that it was as good as a confession. âCan Arthur come home now?â she asked.
A neighbor gave Maude and Cox a key to Billâs house. They carefully looked around to see if anything had been disturbed. They noted that wherever Bill had gone, he had not taken anything with him. He had even left his car behind. During their search, they looked for a sample of his handwriting but found none.
Back on the fence line, the boots fit the tracks perfectly. But âSheriff Maudeâ noticed something peculiar. The print impressions that were supposedly Bill Stoutâs were not very deep. She determined that Cox was approximately the same height and weight as Bill Stout and compared Coxâs prints to those in question. They were not equal in depth.
Maude slid Billâs boots onto her own feet and walked around. Then she compared her impressions with the ones supposedly left by Bill. Hers were almost equal in depth. She and Cox knew then that Bill had not made the footprintsâeither a woman or one of the boys had.
They took the handwritten will to the bank in McArthur where Bill Stout had an account and showed it to the manager. He confirmed what they already knew. It was forged. The will was a fake. Evidence was mounting. And they suspected that wherever Bill Stout went, he probably did not go voluntarily.
That evening, Maude got a visit from Billâs closest neighbor, Lettie Camp. According to an undated article at the Vinton County Historical Society, âThe Axtel Ridge Murders,â by an unknown author, Camp told Maude that Inez had a piano.
âYou see, that Palmer woman used to bang away on her piano all the time.â Camp said she could hear the music, as her house was on a slope that overlooked Arthurâs cabin. âSoon after Bill Stout moved there she quit playing.â One of the boys told her their grandfather made Inez stop because it was disrespectful to the memory of Sarah. âWell, about noon yesterday, I was in my kitchen getting lunch ready when I heard her again, playing and singing at the top of her voice.â She figured Bill would put a stop to it when he came home. âBut he hasnât come back, has he?â
The next day, Sheriff Maude and Deputy Cox were on the road to Arthurâs cabin when they saw Arthur Jr. and young William carrying buckets of water. They stopped and asked the boys why they were carrying water. After all, they had their own deep well in back of the house. The boys told them Inez had said not to drink the water from their well.
Maude and her deputy must have looked at each other with the same thought. Inez had something to do with Billâs disappearance. They took her back to McArthur for questioning.
After Inez was installed in the same jail where her lover was held, Maude and her deputy went back out to the cabin with the county coroner, ropes and grappling hooks. Bill Stoutâs body was found in the well, caught on a ledge twenty feet u...