COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL • OCTOBER 10, 2018 • 9A
Off beat Oregon: 1895 holiday murder season started early, ended late
By Finn J.D. John
For The Sentinel
R
esidents of Linn County
probably had a bit of an
edgy time over Th anksgiving
in 1895. Th e county jail in Al-
bany had played host, for the
previous month and a half, to
not one but two of the most
notorious murderers in the
history of the state.
Linn County’s murder sea-
son kicked off in the tiny com-
munity of Jordan on Sept. 26,
when mild-mannered house-
wife Emma Hannah took a
hat, fake mustache and glass-
es, and a fi ve-shot .32 revolver
next door and assassinated a
dangerously dishy neighbor,
whom she suspected of being
overly friendly with her hus-
band.
Th en, on Nov. 19, 18-year-
old Lloyd Montgomery, black-
sheep son of the Montgomery
family of Brownsville, fl ew
into a rage and murdered three
people (including his parents)
with his old man’s Winchester
hunting rifl e.
It has to have been a holiday
season to remember in Albany
and the surrounding areas, as
both of these cases came up
for trial and sentencing right
around Christmastime.
Emma Hannah was an or-
dinary farm wife, or so she
seemed. She’d started late —
she was 29 when she married
John, her husband, in 1875 —
but she’d fi lled their farmhouse
with four children over the
following two decades.
But something seems to
have happened in the course
of the birth of her last daugh-
ter that caused her to be in
chronic pain and unable to
function, as a wife, the way she
felt she should. Th is apparent-
ly caused her to feel deeply in-
secure about her position vis-
à-vis John.
Her fears, which deepened
to the point of outright pa-
ra-noia, centered around Lot-
tie Hiatt, a younger woman
who’d divorced her fi rst hus-
band and now was estranged
from her second and living
with her mother and three-
year-old son a mile or so from
the Han-nah house.
To Emma Hannah, the fact
that Lottie was a divorcée
meant she must be a woman
of easy virtue, and therefore
a threat to her marriage. Jeal-
ousy and paranoia simmered
quietly inside her until, on
the evening of Sept. 19, 1895,
she decided she could bear no
more.
She borrowed her son’s hat
and her husband’s overcoat,
put on a fake mustache and
glasses, pocketed her other
son’s fi ve-shot .32 Smith &
Wesson, and headed on over
to Lottie’s place.
When she got there, she
knocked on the door. Lottie
opened it, and the disguised
Emma pushed her way into
the kitchen, pulling a leath-
er-bound book out of the
pocket of the coat.
“I was wondering if you
would be interested in buying
a book?” the visitor said, push-
ing it into Lottie’s hands.
“I’m sorry, but I’m really
not interested,” Lottie replied,
handing the book back.
Th e stranger’s response was
to pull out the .32 and, mutter-
ing, “You should have bought
the book,” clobber Lottie over
the head with it.
Lottie, a little stunned but
not badly so, turned and ran.
Th e stranger fi red aft er her,
nicking her neck. Lottie’s
mother, Elizabeth Holman,
took advantage of the dis-
traction to clock the strange
“man” across the side of the
head with a piece of fi rewood,
sending the hat, glasses and
mustache fl ying; the stranger
turned and smashed the pistol
across her face, sending her
fl ying to the fl oor, momentari-
ly unconscious.
Th en Emma chased Lottie
down, put the gun to her tem-
ple, pulled the trigger, and left
the house.
No one had gotten a very
good look at the killer, but
Lottie’s little boy, Lofa, testifi ed
that the killer had had long
gray hair done up in a bun.
Suspicion naturally fell
upon Emma, whose enmity
for Lottie was well known; and
when the sheriff went to ques-
tion her, her answers made it
clear that although she was
denying hav-ing killed Lottie,
she was very, very glad she was
now dead.
During the investigation, it
came out that someone in the
neighborhood had been leav-
ing little notes on Emma’s gate
— notes claiming that John
had been having an aff air with
Lottie and would soon be run-
ning away with her.
No one ever fi gured out who
was leaving them; but who-
ever it was probably was just
making trouble for the sake of
making trouble — if John ever
did have an aff air with Lottie,
everyone involved was unusu-
ally discreet about it, for no
evidence of such a thing was
ever found.
Th e trial started on Nov. 25,
and the outcome was never
much in doubt. Emma was
convicted of second-degree
murder and sent to prison,
where she was moved back
and forth several times be-
tween the penitentiary and
the insane asylum until her
death in 1930.
By the time her trial had
started, though, an even more
heinous murder had pushed
her case off the front pages
of newspapers statewide: the
double-parricide of Lloyd
Montgomery.
oyal “Lloyd” Montgomery
was the oldest son of John
and Elizabeth Montgomery,
who owned a big prosperous
farm near Brownsville. Lloyd
was their oldest son, and he
had just turned 18; he was
a hulking, surly youth, very
stubborn and with a bad tem-
per.
For the previous few years
his smaller, frailer father had
been afraid to discipline him,
and consequently he’d devel-
oped an attitude of entitlement
and a disinclination to consid-
er the feelings of others. He
was, in short, something of a
bad seed.
Th ere isn’t really any way to
know for sure what happened
on that day, Nov. 19, when
Lloyd shot his parents. Lloyd
was a very good shot, and he
left no survivors. But the most
believable of his several con-
fessions was that his father
had slapped him across the
face in the presence of a fam-
ily friend, a mill owner named
Daniel McKercher, and he had
been so furious that he’d gone
back in the house, retrieved
his father’s Winchester .40-86
express rifl e, and shot his fa-
ther through the head with it.
McKercher had then fl ed
around the side of the house
with Lloyd in hot pursuit, try-
ing to take cover by dashing in-
side. Just as he gained the front
steps, Lloyd got a clear shot,
and McKercher’s body landed
with a crash in the middle of
the sitting room fl oor.
Th is, of course, greatly
alarmed Lloyd’s mother, who
ran for the back door scream-
ing. Lloyd fi red twice more:
once through the mid-dle of
his mother’s back, and once in
the back of her head.
In the stillness that followed,
Lloyd’s thoughts naturally
turned to the question of how
he might avoid being hanged
for the crime he had just com-
mitted. Laying the rifl e down
next to McKercher’s body, he
hustled off to the fi eld that his
brother Orville was plowing,
hoping to establish an alibi.
Th is might have worked,
L
Michili Monroi, LCSW
Counseling Services
ill out the form below to have your organization's
holiday bazaar included in the bazaar listing in the Cottage
Grove Sentinel each Wednesday during the holidays. Cost for this
service is $45.00 for a 1x3 advertisement, 50 words or less. Please
enclose check or money order if mailing in this listing.
Call us at 541-942-3325 for more information.
Deadline is NOON, Thursday for the following week’s publication.
Must be pre-paid to be accepted.
ORGANIZATION:
DATE OF EVENT:
LOCATION:
TIME:
FEATURED ITEMS OR ATTRACTIONS:
S entinel
C ottage G rove
116 N. Sixth Street · P.O. Box 35 · Cottage Grove · 541-942-3325
541-255-8822
1450 Birch Ave
Cottage Grove, OR 97424
• Individual and Family Counseling
• Insurance and Sliding Scale
• Accepting New Clients
• Weekend and Weekday Appointments Available
but he met his younger sister
and brothers on the way. Th e
youngest boy asked him if he
knew what all the shooting
had been, and he claimed — in
front of four witnesses — that
he hadn’t heard a thing.
Lloyd then followed the oth-
er kids back to the house, and
when the youngest came out
hollering that there was a dead
body in the sitting room, Lloyd
leaped on McKercher’s horse,
raced to an uncle’s house,
and reported breathlessly that
someone had murdered his
parents and McKercher.
Suspicious eyes were on
Lloyd immediately, and he was
promptly arrested. He had lots
to say about the murders over
the following few months, but
he never was able to explain
how he’d known his parents
were dead when the only body
he supposedly knew was in the
house was McKercher’s.
Also, his reputation as a
bad seed didn’t help his cause
much ei-ther. “Be sure and
have a strong guard over him,”
his grandmother told the ar-
resting offi cers, “or he will be
back and murder a lot more of
the family.”
Probably the most interest-
ing thing about Lloyd’s case
was his behavior in prison, and
the public reaction to it. He
fi rst claimed McKercher had
murdered his parents and he’d
killed McKercher in self-de-
fense — a claim that nearly got
him lynched, as he’d seriously
misjudged McKercher’s popu-
larity in the community.
Th en he confessed, retract-
ed his confession, reconfessed,
and told story aft er story.
When some of his old child-
hood pals were arrested and
put in the cell next to him he
had a high old time with them,
and seemed to have not a care
in the world.
Meanwhile, of course, he
had been convicted and sen-
tenced to hang. Each time his
story was in the paper, a pic-
ture of his strong, boyishly
handsome face appeared, and
his “fan club” grew.
Governor William Lord was
deluged with pleas from wom-
en around the state begging
him to pardon the young rake.
Lord, though a kind-heart-
ed fellow, didn’t bite, and
just before Candlemas — on
Jan. 31, 1896 — Lloyd was
hanged for the murder of his
parents.
By then, of course, the
1895 holiday season had
been over for several weeks.
But (with apologies to Dol-
ly Parton and Kenny Rog-
ers) Lloyd Montgomery and
Emma Hannah had certainly
made this a Christmas to re-
member for Linn County.