Murder of the Hall Family and Hanging of Joseph Howell

On Saturday night, January 19, 1889, Minnie Hall’s home about five miles southwest of Brookfield, Missouri, was discovered on fire, and R. N. Vorce and other neighbors who rushed to the scene found the structure almost completely engulfed when they arrived. Vorce saw the lifeless bodies of Minnie Hall and her five-year-old daughter, Nettie, inside the burning structure, but only Nettie could be pulled from the blaze before the house collapsed. Although she was dead, the body was not burned beyond recognition, and it was positively identified as that of Nettie Hall. After the fire died down, four other bodies were retrieved from the smoldering rubble. One was almost certainly Minnie Hall, and the others were presumed to be Nettie’s three siblings.
Footprints in the snow of the person who’d set the fire led away from the Hall property toward Brookfield, and a posse followed the tracks to a hotel in Brookfield, where Joseph Howell was taken into custody on the early morning of the 20th. When accused of setting a fire, Howell responded that he hadn’t been out in the country, even though he was not told where the fire was. The suspect’s pant legs were wet, as if from tramping through snow-covered grass. The tread of his overshoes appeared to match the tracks that had been followed from the fire, and a search of his clothing turned up some matches.
The twenty-four-year-old Howell had come from Ohio to Missouri in the fall of 1886. He met Henry Smith in St. Louis, and they traveled several places together before coming to the Linn County area in the spring of 1887. Howell stayed at first in neighboring Chariton County with his aunt Sarah Brooks, who was Minnie’s mother, while Smith began working on R. N. Vorce’s farm less than a mile from Minnie. After staying with Mrs. Brooks a while, Howell came to Minnie’s house and stayed with her and her husband, Ansel, for about a week. He then lived with Ansel’s father, working as a farmhand throughout the summer of 1887. From there he went to a neighbor of the Halls and continued as a farmhand until he took a teaching job at Prairie Mound for the 1888-1889 school year.
Ansel had died in the meantime, and Howell started paying regular visits to the thirty-one-year-old widow and her kids about the time school began. He boarded at the school during the week but often spent the weekend with Minnie, whose house was midway between Prairie Mound and Brookfield. Howell claimed that he looked upon Minnie as a sister, but they quickly became something more than kissin’ cousins.
And now he was accused of killing her.
After daylight on Sunday morning, a coroner’s inquest was held at the scene of the crime. The charred bodies were closely examined, and it appeared their skulls had been split open with a sharp instrument. In the cellar beneath the burnt house a human fetus about six or seven months old was discovered. The fetus had been buried in the dirt floor of the cellar prior to the fire and had escaped serious defacement. A broken chamber pot, in which it was thought the fetus had been carried, was found a few feet away on the floor of the cellar. The only entrance to the cellar was from the exterior of the house, and the door had been taken off and laid aside. When investigators lifted it up, they saw snow on the ground where the door had lain, showing that it had been removed after it started snowing early Saturday evening. The coroner’s jury concluded that Howell had induced an abortion on Minnie, and, when it looked as though she would not survive the procedure, he had killed her and her children and burned their bodies to cover up the first crime.
Excitement ran high in Brookfield as word of the brutal crime spread, and Howell was taken to the Linn County jail at Linneus on Sunday afternoon for safekeeping.
The remains of Minnie Hall and her children were buried on Monday.
Howell was indicted for first-degree murder in the deaths of all five victims, but prosecutors tried him only for the murder of Nettie Hall, since her body was the one that could be definitely identified. His trial began at Linneus in late July of 1889.
The most damning state witness was Henry Smith, because his testimony clearly established motive. Smith said that, a few weeks before the murder, Howell asked him to accompany him to Minnie’s house. After they arrived, Smith overheard Howell and Minnie arguing. When Minnie told Howell that no one except him and her deceased husband had ever “meddled with” her (i.e. had sexual intercourse with her), Howell didn’t believe her and said there were “other parties running after” her. After Smith and Howell left Minnie’s, Howell confessed that Minnie was pregnant and that she claimed Howell was the father. Howell inquired whether Smith knew where he might find a doctor from whom he could procure a drug to induce an abortion.
The defense tried to set up an alibi, claiming Howell was already in Brookfield at the time of the tragedy, but Howell was found guilty and sentenced to hang. His appeal to the Missouri Supreme Court, however, was sustained at the April 1890 term. Howell was then granted a change of venue to Grundy County, where his second trial in the spring of 1891 ended in a mistrial. At his third trial in October of 1891 Howell was again found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to hang in December 1891. After several more appeals and stays of execution, Howell was finally hanged on August 4, 1893, at Trenton.
This post is condensed from a chapter in my book Yanked Into Eternity: Lynchings and Hangings in Missouri.