Killing Mary Mabel Rogers

Mary Mabel Rogers’ final sunset dipped below the grey and cheerless hills to the west, shadows swallowing the prison walls around her. Ink-darkness cascaded over Mary’s porcelain skin, her delicate fingers gripping the bars of the grated cell door—eagle-eyed on the fading glints of sunlight.

Tears cascaded down her cheeks when she turned to the prison matron, Mrs. Loukes.

For the first time since her arrest Mary allowed emotion to get the better of her.

“I know it must be and I am prepared to die.” She whimpered. “You don’t think they will hurt me?”

“No, Mary, they will not hurt [you] and it will not be long. I will go with you as far as the guard room door.”

Neither could’ve predicted the horrors awaiting Mary.

Being born illegitimately to two alcoholic parents wasn’t easy for young Mary Bennett (maiden name). But trying to escape her father’s murderous rage was even harder. Not once but twice Charles Bennett, her ruthless dad, tried to kill her. The first time occurred shortly after her birth, when Charles tried smothering Mary in the crib. Later, he tried again. When that didn’t work, he attempted to poison his daughter with Laudanum (an opium tincture of morphine and codeine). All three times, Mary survived.

What do you think that might do to a child’s psyche?

No one expected Charles’ actions would trigger warped fantasies in young Mary, but that’s exactly what happened. Tragic childhoods are often a contributing factor in building a killer.

At fifteen years old, in 1898, Mary married Marcus Rogers, a man twelve years her senior, and moved from Hoosick Falls, New York to Shaftsbury, Vermont. In the spring of 1901, Mary gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, Helen Alice Rogers. Marcus could not have been more overjoyed, but motherhood wasn’t part of Mary’s plan.

Immature and restless, Mary hungered for excitement and bedeviled conventional Marcus with her material demands.

Six months later, Mary sprinted out the house in tears. At a neighbor’s home she cried out that she’d accidentally dropped baby Helen. When the neighbor returned to the house with Mary, the infant lay dying of a fractured skull.

As Mary Mabel Rogers was the sole eyewitness, authorities forwent an inquiry. But Marcus’ relatives believed Mary had murdered the baby. Their suspicions gained traction several months later when Marcus became violently ill after drinking a cup of tea prepared by his wife. Not long after, Mary moved out of the house.

Marcus, however, clung to the hope that they would reconcile.

The couple had only been married a few years when Marcus returned to Hoosick Falls, New York to work at his brother’s farm. He begged Mary to join him, but she refused to leave Vermont.

Truth was, Mary’s wandering eye searched for someone new and exciting.

In the spring of 1902, Mary lived at the Spaulding Rooming House on East Main Street. There she met Estella “Stella” Bates. Both girls loved the nightlife a little too much, with parades of men calling at all hours. In June 1902, Mary met three young men that would forever change her life’s trajectory.

Twenty-one-year-old Morris Knapp lived with his family on Birch Street and worked as a laborer. When not at work, he fulfilled his duty with the Vermont National Guard. Shortly after meeting Morris, Mary moved out of the Spaulding House and boarded at the home of Emmett and Laura Perham on Beech Street, where she became much too acquainted with their two sons, Levi (28) and Leon (17).

Leon made the perfect patsy.

Unlike Morris Knapp and Levi Perham, who thought of Mary as nothing more than a sex toy, young Leon fell head-over-heels in love with her by the middle of July. Since Leon was immature, shy, and not very shrewd, Mary took her time to draw him into her web.

On Sunday, August 10, pillow talk led to a conversation about the slow murder of her husband, Marcus. For Leon’s services Mary promised to pay “$500 clean dollars” from the life insurance. The next day, Leon agreed to help, even though Mary made it clear that her primary objective was to marry Morris Knapp.

Much to the dismay of her husband, Mary indulged in sexual pleasures with all three men: the Perham brothers and Morris Knapp. Those long, hot summer nights cooled a bit from her second-floor bedroom’s revolving door.

During Marcus’s next trip to Vermont on August 12, 1902, Mary convinced him to meet her at the Spaulding House.

As the couple strolled through the streets of Bennington, Marcus pleaded with Mary to move to his brother’s farm, but Mary still refused to leave Vermont.

At about 6 p.m., the couple parted ways with plans to meet later that night. An hour later, Marcus arrived at his cousins’ home, but said nothing about his marital discourse. He left about 8 p.m., they said, to meet his wife. On the way Marcus dropped in on Frank Shaw, another relative, at his home on Congress Street. He left about 10 p.m.

Marcus would would never see his family again.

Leon was sleeping when Mary barged into his bedroom and shook him awake. “Are you ready?” She urged him to get dressed. Time was running out!

The two tiptoed down the back stairs, into the night lit only by the golden smolder of street-lamps. Soon, they arrived at Morgan’s Grove, a wooded area by the Walloomsac River. Stella Bates met them there. Thirty minutes later, Marcus arrived. Oddly enough, he showed no concern about the added company.

The four friends sat on a stonewall, chatting, when Mary turned to Marcus. “Stella did some tricks today with a rope,” she said. “Let me show them to you. Leon, give me that rope.” When Leon passed Mary the rope, she told Marcus, “Give me your hands.”

After allowing him to escape the first couple of knots, Mary challenged Marcus to try and break free from a knot tied by Leon. Once Leon bound Marcus’s hands, Mary pounced, grabbing his head, shoving a chloroform-filled handkerchief over his mouth and nose. “Hold his legs!” she screamed. “Hold his legs!”

It took 20 minutes for Marcus to die, all the while “she clung to him with the fierceness of a tigress.”

Before rolling Marcus’s lifeless body into the Walloomsac River, Mary swiped his hat from the ground and secured it to a nearby tree with the very rope that had bound his hands. To the front of the hat she pinned a fake suicide note, carefully composed several hours earlier.

blame no one as i have at last put an end to my miseberl life as my wife nows i have every threatened it, every nows i have not enything or no body to live for no one can blame me and so blame no one as my last requst.

Marcus Rogers

p.s. Mary i hope you will be happy

Mary’s poor spelling and grammar would be her undoing.

Thirty-four hours later, Samuel Jewett found the hat tied to a tree on the river’s edge, hustled to a nearby store, and showed the note to the storeowner, Mr. Bassett, who bolted down to the riverbank.

Marcus lay facedown in the mud.

Two sheriff deputies and a selectman dragged the body from the water and laid the remains out to dry on the stonewall. Undertaker Walbridge took control of the body and wheel-barreled the corpse to the Perhams’ house for identification. Levi admitted, Mary had offered to pay him to kill her husband, but he hadn’t taken her seriously.

Zings of nerves shot through Leon’s body as he broke down and confessed. Yes, he knew the dead man. He also knew how he died.

On Saturday evening, Aug. 16, Mary, Leon, and Stella Bates stood before the court, arraigned on first-degree murder charges. All three pleaded not guilty. Although competent lawyers defended Mary, her trial was more a formality than anything else. Leon testified against her. Even with an overwhelming amount of circumstantial evidence, Mary’s lawyers never called a single witness. For the first time in Vermont history, a homicide defendant relied solely on discrediting the prosecution.

What hurt Mary’s case the most was her cold-blooded demeanor.

A journalist who attended the trial described Mary as having a look of “brutal don’t care.”

Just after Christmas in 1903, the jury returned a verdict of death, with an execution date of February 3, 1905. Only one woman had ever been executed in Vermont (Emeline Meaker, whose story I included in Pretty Evil New England), so Mary’s chances seemed favorable. Reverend D. J. O’Sullivan, a Catholic priest from St. Albans, led Mary’s fight for mercy.

But Reverend D. L. Hilliard, a Congregational minister from Cabot, opposed the argument. “Gentleman, you dare not vote to commute this woman’s sentence!” he shouted. “You dare not do it! I swear to you, gentlemen, before my God, if she was my own sister, I would vote to hang her!”

Rebuffed by Vermont Legislature and Governor Charles J. Bell, Mary’s supporters turned their attention to the appeals process.  

Using affidavits collected by Mary’s lawyers, supporters tried to sway the court. The most important affidavit contained the testimony of Dr. Leroy D. MacWayne, who swore he’d examined Mary in his Hoosick Falls office on Sunday, Aug 10, 1902 and had determined Mary was pregnant. As a result, she must’ve suffered from “puerperal insanity” at the time of the murder.

Windsor Prison Superintendent Wilson S. Lovell testified, he’d witnessed an interview with Leon Perham, where he admitted to perjuring himself at Mary’s trial. On May 19, 1905, the Vermont Supreme Court justices heard Mary’s appeal based on the affidavits, yet on May 30, they denied the appeal by a vote of 5-2.

Governor Bell granted a reprieve to allow Mary’s appeal lawyers to seek a writ of error from the United States Supreme Court.

On November 6, 1905, Mary’s lawyers argued technical issues in the case. Three weeks later, on Nov. 27, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Mary’s last hope for salvation. The court rescheduled her execution for December 8, 1905.

No one could save her now.

Mary whiled away the time by crocheting aprons as gifts to those who had given financial and moral support during her two-year imprisonment.

A later investigation of the Windsor Prison in 1905 revealed that a convicted rapist, Vernon Rogers (no relation), had procured a key to the front locks of Mary’s cell. Prison officials denied gossip that they’d deliberately given male prisoners sexual access to Mary in hopes of her becoming pregnant, thereby cheating the hangman of her neck.

To the public, the Vernon Rogers escapades confirmed rumors that Mary was “an unrepentant, scheming slut,” rather than the moronic damsel in distress championed by her supporters. The scandal may have been the critical element in the failure to save her from the gallows. But the efforts to save Mary’s life continued.

Petitions from all over the United States papered Governor Bell’s desk—stop this execution before it’s too late!

“If ever a person deserved hanging, this wretch did, and I thank God the law has been vindicated,” wrote Brattleboro attorney James Hooker. The praise of second-year Harvard Law students, Carroll M. Perkins and John B. Roberts, boasted they took “honest pride as citizens of New England” in Bell’s steely implementation of the law.

After a good night’s sleep, Mary Mabel Rogers woke at 5 a.m. in her prison cell, and then labored over a final note to Superintendent Lovell.

Dear Mr. Lovell,

As I am not much in speaking, I pen you a few words as an expression of my extreme gratefulness for your extreme friendness [sic] bestowed upon me since in your care. Mr. Lovell, I may not always have done as well as I might have done, perhaps, but my only means of atonement now for what is past is to tell you that I am sorry and heartily sorry. I know that you have a very kind heart and I am bound to think that I may obtain from you forgiveness.

You know that Jesus tells us, “If thy brother trespass against thee and turn again to thee saying I repent, forgive him. Be ye tender-hearted and forgiving, even as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven you in his name.” 

Mary

More than 50 spectators gathered in the court at Windsor Prison to watch this young woman hang.

Mrs. Loukes assisted Mary into the black dress and shirtwaist made for this “special” occasion. She skipped the corset and collar. The one treasure Mary asked for was her gold chain and locket, which Mrs. Louke clasped around her neck.

Six deputy sheriffs arrived at the cell door—the death procession led by Matron Durkee.

“I am ready to go, Mrs. Durkee, and I thank you for what you have done.”

The cell door creaked open and Mary Mabel Rogers slipped in between the line of deputies, three in front, three in back. Matron Durkee marched alongside Mary, accompanying her down three flights of stairs to the guard room, where Mary bid farewell to Mrs. Loukes.

When Mary descended the short flight of steps to the enclosed court, she caught a glimpse of the “instrument of death,” and winced. Her gaze lingered for a moment before rotating toward the spectators.

In forty more feet she stepped on the gallows’ first tread. There a deputy tied Mary’s hands behind her back and assisted her up a short flight of stairs.

“The courage of the woman was magnificent,” one eyewitness noted.

Without a falter, Mary reached the scaffold floor, though the color in her face drained away. Deputy Sheriff Kiniry motioned toward a seat on the scaffold, and Mary sat, her vision locked on the crowd of onlookers as though this grand event had nothing to do with her.

Deputy Sheriff Kiniry leaned over and asked Mary if she had any last remarks.

With a shake of the head, she uttered a soft, “No.”

A second officer, Deputy Sheriff Spofford, ordered her to stand and walk to the trapdoor. When she did, he veiled a large black sack over her from head to foot, tied it at the neck, along with the noose. Intense silence fell over the arena as Spofford stomped the foot pedal, releasing the trapdoor.

Mary dropped. But the ¾” hemp rope stretched. Shrouded in black, Mary’s toes hit the ground below.

Chaos erupted.

Her neck hadn’t snapped in the fall.

The deputies strained to yank the rope, holding Mary off the ground a few inches while she writhed in pain, slowly strangling to death. Other than a half-smothered gasp, silence encompassed the cloth bag.

All the spectators jolted to their feet. Waited. Watched. Some had to look away.

It took fourteen full minutes for Mary to die. At exactly 1:28 p.m., the doctor pronounced Mary Mabel Rogers’ official time of death. But could the State of Vermont ever recover from the horror of her botched execution? Even in death, the case of Mary Mabel Rogers continued to haunt communities across the nation.

A deputy involved with the execution said, “I had to turn away my head. May I never be commanded to take part in another such undertaking.”

The case of Mary Mabel Rogers caused a major upheaval, with some believing “a life for a life” was just and right, while religious groups spouted scripture. “Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.” Christians called public executions “repulsive” and believed it a greater wrong to hang the guilty than the innocent, “for they are not prepared to go in blindness stark into the silent, unknown dark, whereon Hope’s moonlight never lies.”

Another female would never swing from the gallows in Vermont. Killing Mary Mabel Rogers forever scarred the state, and the case became instrumental in abolishing the death penalty.