“I Have Killed Pete”: Maud Lewis Murders Her Lover

About 2:45 a.m. on Monday morning, May 13, 1895, two shots rang out in the vicinity of Elliott Avenue and Wash Street (now Cole Street) in St. Louis. Tracing the shots to a boarding house at 2719 Wash Street, officers found the dead body of State Senator Pete Morrissey lying in the bed of 28-year-old Maud Lewis, madam of the house. Blood was oozing out of a bullet hole in the victim's head.

Maud was in a state of hysteria, but two young women who boarded with her and their gentlemen callers (who were physician friends of Morrissey) gave testimony implicating Maud in the shooting. Albert Andrews, porter at the Lewis house, was highly excited and unable to give an intelligent account of what had happened.

The doctors said they'd been at Senator Morrissey's saloon about midnight when Maud Lewis, who was generally known as the senator's mistress, came in. Accompanied by one of the women who boarded with her, Maud tried to get Morrissey to go back to her place. Morrissey finally agreed, and he took his two friends along with him. The drunken entourage left for Maud's place and got there about 2:30 Monday morning.

Morrissey's doctor friends and their female companions were upstairs, while Maud was entertaining Morrissey in a downstairs room when shots rang out, only about fifteen minutes after the group arrived.

According to the doctors, when they raced downstairs to investigate, Maud came out of her room crying, "I have killed Pete." Andrews, the porter, said, however, that just moments before the shots rang out, he heard Maud say, "Don't Pete. Don't." He said he rushed into her room, saw Morrissey lying dead, and picked up a .38 caliber revolver that was on the bed beside the body.

At an inquest held over Morrissey’s body on Monday afternoon, the coroner’s jury reached a verdict that the senator had come to his death from gunshots fired by “one Maud Lewis.” Maud was arrested, and when a newspaperman visited her in her cell later that evening, she was "very nervous" and "had a wild look in her eyes." She said her real name was Fay O'Neil, not Maud Lewis, but she refused to go into further details about her background. The next day, however, she told a different newspaper that her maiden name was Laura Lucas.

Maud said Morrissey had treated her badly ever since she'd known him but that she still loved him. She admitted she must have killed him, but she didn't know how because she had no recollection of pulling the trigger. She said both she and Morrissey had been drinking heavily leading up to the incident.

At Maud's preliminary hearing, Albert Andrews, the man she supposedly employed as a porter, tried to shield her by claiming he'd seen a stranger running from the house immediately after the shooting. A newspaper investigation revealed, however, that Andrews was more than just Maud's porter. The two had actually been married at one time. So, Andrews's story was given little credence. Pleading self-defense, Maud testified that she and Morrissey had argued just before the shooting and that he had choked her. However, she was held on a second-degree murder charge at the end of the hearing.

While Maud was still awaiting trial, Albert Andrews signed a written confession that he, not Maud, had killed Morrissey, but his latest story was met with at least as much skepticism as his previous claim of having seen a stranger running from Maud's house.

At Maud’s trial in October 1895, the defendant was found guilty of second-degree murder, and she was assessed a punishment of fifteen years in prison. Despite the verdict against Maud, there was considerable sentiment in her favor. Senator Morrissey had been thrice indicted for fraud, had a reputation for debauchery, and was known to abuse Maud with regularity. So, there were many people who were “not prone to judge too harshly her who cut him short in his career.”

Denied a new trial by the trial judge and later by the Missouri Supreme Court, Maud was taken to the state penitentiary at Jefferson City in November 1896. Within just a few months, though, her friends and relatives began petitioning for clemency, citing, among other things, Andrews's reiteration that he was the real killer of Morrissey. The governor finally pardoned Maud in early January 1901 after she served about four and half years of her fifteen-year term. 

My latest book, Gangster Queen Bonnie Parker and Other Murderous Women of Missouri https://amzn.to/4bVZq0d, contains a much more detailed account of Maud Lewis's story. 

One Good Poke Deserves Another

The first chapter in my latest book, Gangster Queen Bonnie Parker and Other Murderous Women of Missouri https://amzn.to/4sc3ZtR, is about a Black woman named Mary Ball. Late on the night of December 11, 1867, a man giving his name as Charles Rannells and a companion called at a house of ill repute in downtown St. Louis where Mary was an inmate. 

While another woman of the night entertained Rannells's companion, Rannells wandered into an adjoining room occupied by Mary. After a while, Rannells told Mary to knock on the door to see whether his companion was finished with his "business" and was ready to leave. When Mary refused, saying she didn't make it a habit of knocking on other people's doors, Rannells grew angry and started hitting and choking her.

About that time, Rannell's companion opened the door separating the two rooms, and Rannells started to leave. As he was walking away, Mary picked up a poker and hurled it at him with such force that the pointed end stuck in his head. 

Rannells removed the poker himself and then sought medical aid at a nearby pharmacy. He told what had happened, but he refused to identify exactly where it had happened or to give the name of the woman who had struck him. No doubt he didn't want it known that he had patronized a house of ill repute, particularly one occupied by Black women. 

When he left the pharmacy, Rannells seemed not to be gravely injured, and he and his companion returned to the sporting house they had recently left. The madam allowed them to spend the night, since they'd been locked out of the boardinghouse where they'd been staying. However, Rannells and Mary did not see each other on this return visit.

The next morning, Rannells woke up feeling bad, and he was taken to the City Hospital, where he lingered a few days before dying from his head wound. The investigation into his assault was hampered by the fact that, in a strange coincidence, two men in St. Louis had been hit in the head with pokers by women on the very same night and also by the fact that Charles Rannells was an alias. The victim's real name was Charles Ross, and Mary Ball was finally arrested and charged with first-degree manslaughter.

She was convicted in the fall of 1868 of fourth-degree manslaughter and sentenced to two years in the state prison. After serving three-fourths of her term, she was released and given a full pardon, based at least partly on her good behavior while incarcerated.

This is a condensed version of Mary's story. For a fuller account, please check out my new book. 

 

Murder-Suicide or Double Murder? (The Sensational Story of Lillie Colcord)

About 1:15 p.m. on Saturday, August 17, 1878, a woman's scream issued from Room 4 of the Girard House in downtown St. Louis, and then four shots rang out. The hotel clerk, occupants of the place, and officers who were nearby on the street rushed to Room 4 and found the door locked. Breaking it down, they entered and found a young woman, initially identified as Lillie Smith, lying dead on the floor and Josiah Colcord, a 34-year-old St. Louis lawyer, lying mortally wounded beside her. By the time a doctor arrived, Colcord was also dead.

Colcord had his jacket off and his vest unbuttoned but was otherwise fully clothed, while the young woman was clad only in a chemise and a short, loose-fitting gown, with "no stockings, even, covering her feet." 

Investigators quickly concluded that Colcord had shot the woman three times and then turned the weapon, a .38 caliber revolver, on himself, and that's how St. Louis newspapers would report the incident later that day and the next morning. From the very beginning, however, there were those who questioned the official version of events, suggesting instead that the couple had been the victims of a double homicide.   

Josiah Colcord at one time had been an up-and-coming attorney with a bright future. He had even served a term in the Missouri legislature. He had married "an estimable young lady" from Greenville, Illinois, and had three children, but according to the St. Louis papers, he had fallen prey to the demon alcohol and had lost his way. The couple had separated about 1875, and Colcord had taken up with Lillie. In recent months, he had reportedly tried to straighten out his life but had relapsed in recent days. 

Reporters who hurried to the scene of the double fatality remarked that, despite the bloody circumstances now attending Lillie's death, she was a woman of uncommon beauty. She had a face that could only be described as "of exceeding attractiveness." She had "large brown, dreamy eyes, an oval face, nose slightly retroussé but delicately chiseled, large mouth, fine teeth and a figure voluptuous in the extreme."  

Little was known in St. Louis about Lillie, except that she had a reputation as a "woman of the town" who often drank to excess. She had claimed to be married to Colcord, and the couple had registered at the hotel as man and wife. In addition, love notes that the couple had written to each other in which they addressed each other as husband and wife were found in the hotel room. At an inquest held later the same day of the deaths, contradictory testimony was given as to whether the couple was actually married and as to whether they had argued in recent days. The St. Louis newspapers sided with those who believed Lillie to be Colcord's mistress, as they could find no record of the supposed marriage. They seemed to blame the whole unfortunate affair on the "seductive wiles" of the "cyprian" who had led Colcord astray. 

It was left to the Bloomington Pantagraph of McLean County, Illinois, where the 24-year-old Lillie was originally from, "to cast light upon her history," as the Pantagraph itself phrased it. Lilah "Lillie" Gibbons was the daughter of a well-known citizen of Heyworth, McLean County. When she was "a growing girl," she attracted "universal attention" with her "rare, rich beauty and grace." When she was only about 16 years old, Lillie, who was said to have a passionate nature, ran away with a young man from Heyworth named John Harrold and lived in New Orleans with Harrold for a year or more as his mistress. 

After her time in New Orleans, Lillie returned home and stayed with her parents for a while. Then, in 1872, she met and married a man named Davis from Bunker Hill, Illinois, but they divorced after just a short period. In fact, she and Colcord first met when he represented her in the divorce proceeding, and they became infatuated with each other at that time, while he was still married to his first wife. After her divorce from Davis was final, Lillie once again returned home for a while before moving to St. Louis. When she next returned to Heyworth about 1876, she brought Colcord with her and introduced him as her husband. In fact, she and Colcord, who was now divorced from his first wife, were living together without the benefit of matrimony at this time. However, they did wed in the spring of 1877, with a St. Louis justice performing the ceremony, and the couple had a child together.

Around the first of July 1878, just weeks prior to her death, Lillie came back to Heyworth and stayed there throughout July and into August, but she also spent time in Bloomington. Colcord occasionally visited her, coming and going as his business dictated. 

Just a couple of weeks before the tragedy in St. Louis, Colcord went to Bloomington while Lillie was not there to investigate rumors he had heard of her unfaithfulness. He confronted several men "whose names had been connected dishonorably with the name of his wife," but he supposedly became convinced of his wife's honesty and fidelity and vowed to a friend that he was going to make the rumormongers face Lillie and the men who had been dishonorably connected to her. Yet, it was apparent to the people Colcord talked to in Bloomington that he was not only angry but also consumed with jealousy. The Pantagraph allowed that it was not uncharitable to the dead to say that there were some grounds for Colcord's jealousy.

Despite the fact authorities were able to establish jealousy as a strong motive for Colcord's alleged crime, there were still those who doubted that he had killed his wife and himself. Foremost among these were members of Colcord's family. 

Then, in 1887, a man named Henry Morrison walked into a St. Louis police station and asked to be locked up for murdering the Colcords nine years earlier. He said he'd killed them because he was in love with Lillie and that he fled the hotel before anybody saw him. All the evidence, though, still pointed to a murder-suicide, and Morrison's claim was dismissed as the ravings of a lunatic. Thus, he was sent on his way. 

A few days later, authorities in St. Louis received a letter from Colcord's sister in Illinois saying that Morrison should have been held because the Colcord family had found letters among Josiah's personal things that seemed to point toward Morrison as a bitter enemy of Josiah and a rival for the affections of his wife.
According to the sister and her father, Morrison was one of the men whose name had been "disagreeably connected" to Lillie in the weeks leading up to her death. 

St. Louis authorities, however, placed little stock in either the opinion of the Colcord family or the confession of Henry Morrison, and the case was not re-opened.