Belle Plaine Witch Murder

John Geyer killed his mother with his bare hands because he thought she’d hexed his cattle. That’s what he told the sheriff. “She bewitched the herd. The voices told me to do it.”

 

Neighbors said he’d been off for months. Muttering about curses. Watching the barn at night. One man at the feed store told a reporter, “He talked about the cows like they were possessed. We thought he’d just lost money on bad hay.”

 

He was broke. The cattle were dying. His head wasn’t right.

 

One November morning, he took a lamp into the old woman’s room. The farm was quiet and cold. She was whispering spells in her sleep. The light flickered and told him to strike.

 

When the neighbors found him, he was standing over her, calm as Sunday. “It’s done,” he said.

 The Cedar Rapids Gazette called it “The Witch Murder.” Geyer claimed the Devil lived in the barn. Another paper said, “A son driven mad by witchcraft fears slays his aged mother.”

 

People in the town didn’t talk about it much. They just said, “John heard things.” One neighbor told a deputy, “He’d go out at midnight and listen to the cows breathe.”

 

The sheriff hauled him in. Geyer didn’t fight. Admitted the whole thing. “She cursed the milk. I had to save the herd.” Just asked for his hat before they took him away, like it held all the answers.

 

The county doctor wrote “hopelessly insane” on the papers. The judge agreed. No trial. They took him straight to the Mount Pleasant asylum.

 

Mount Pleasant was the state’s dumping ground for the broken—men who talked to ghosts, women who screamed at walls. Geyer went in quiet. He died there years later, still talking about the voices.

 

That’s all the record says. No redemption, no mystery novel ending. Just a farmer who snapped under the weight of weather, debt, and something dark crawling around in his skull.

 

The locals buried his mother on a hill outside Belle Plaine. No more mentions of witches.