The McGreggor Murders--Andrew Thompson

Andrew Thompson dragged Marie Haggerty and her
children across eastern Iowa and Wisconsi for over a week

The river keeps secrets until it’s ready to spit them back.

 For almost six months, the Mississippi held its tongue about what Andrew Thompson did on a frozen December night in 1868. It kept quiet while the ice tightened, the slush thickened, and the current dragged four bodies along its dark ribs. No one in Iowa or Wisconsin knew a thing. Thompson went home, fed his livestock, slept beside his wife, and pretended his hands weren’t stained.

 

Love—or whatever twisted thing he felt—had pushed him there.

 

Maria Haggerty. Thirty-six. Pretty, dark-haired, sharp-eyed. She ran the Bull’s Head Saloon after her husband left for the Union Army. Thompson was a regular. A big, soft-bellied farmer from Monona Township with money in his pockets and hunger under his skin. When Maria poured the whiskey, he fell hard and stupid.

 

People whispered. John Haggerty came home from the war and didn’t even try to fight it. He divorced her, turned the saloon over to her, and headed west.

Andrew built his mistress a little house right on the edge of his farm—close enough his wife could see the chimney smoke from the porch. His eight children learned to look the other way. For a few years, the two families braided their lives together like it were normal. Sleigh rides. Fieldwork. Laughing children. Then Mrs. Thompson snapped. “Get rid of her, or don’t come home.”

 

December 7, 1868. Andrew caved.

 

He moved Maria and her children—Anna, Jeremiah, and Johnnie—to a rented room in McGregor. She told neighbors she was headed to Illinois. Maybe Michigan. She didn’t know. She probably believed Andrew would follow her. She didn’t know he’d already decided.

 

He rolled up in a sleigh that night and took them away.

 

For the next nine days, Thompson dragged the Haggerty family across the bitter Midwest. They crossed back and forth between Iowa and Wisconsin, through sleet that sliced skin and wind that clawed at their lungs. Anna grew sick—feverish, delirious.

 

Witnesses remembered the girl’s cough. The mother’s worry. Thompson’s impatience.

 

Then the family disappeared. Thompson showed up again several days later—alone. No sleigh. No luggage. No, mistress. No children. Just a man with a story no one asked for and silence he hoped would hold.

 

Spring came. The river loosened. A fisherman near Prairie du Chien snagged a shawl and a pair of women’s shoes. Someone recognized them as Maria’s.

 

Toward the end of May, another fisherman dragged up two trunks. Inside were pictures of Maria and her children.

 

Then June arrived, and the river began confessing.

 

Bodies bobbed up one by one: a boy in a red flannel shirt, another wrapped in decay, a girl tangled in tree roots, a woman stripped naked. Their skin waxy. Limbs loose. Ice damage. River damage. Human damage.

 

Someone finally connected the dots.

 

On June 2, Sheriff Warren arrested Andrew Thompson. The man barely blinked. Didn’t want the warrant read to him. “Just tell me what it says.”

 

“Murder,” Warren said.

 

Thompson exhaled like he’d been expecting it. “If I’d known that,” he said, “I wouldn’t have been here.”

 

“Where would you be?”

 

“In some sinkhole by now.”

 

The inquest drew half the county. They hauled Jeremiah’s preserved body to Specht’s Ferry in a barrel packed with carbonic acid and willow leaves. Men gagged when it was opened. Reporters called Thompson “a fiend.” They guessed poisoning, strangling, drowning. No one knew yet how close they were.

 

The coroner’s findings were grim:

 

Mrs. Haggerty was found in Swift Slough, naked except for a shawl and hood. Pregnant. A thick cord tied around her head. Anna’s body was recovered near Jaco Island. The boys were pulled from nearby sloughs, scattered like discarded cargo.

 

Locals had seen the family alive on Beetown Road. Another group witnessed their stopping to make a fire opposite Jaco Island. Investigators later found buttons, a locket, scissors, and hammered remains of Thompson’s sled in the ashes.

 

The river wasn’t the only thing giving him up.

 

The trial opened June 21, 1869, in West Union. The courtroom stank of sweat, wet wool, and dread.

 

Witnesses paraded through:

 

A landlord from McGregor saw Maria leave with “a man in a sleigh.” A hotelkeeper fed them breakfast the next morning and shivered remembering the cold.

 

Laborers noticed the way Thompson and Maria behaved like a strange, blended family. A farmer found a fire’s remains and recognized sled bows as Thompson’s.

 

The reporter from the North Iowa Times kept watching Thompson, noting the nervous flick of his eyes, how he scanned the room and then dropped his gaze like the air burned.

 

Jurisdiction was the only thing the defense argued—Wisconsin vs. Iowa. Wisconsin had no death penalty, so they wanted the murders pinned there. The prosecution didn’t care where it happened. They cared four people were dead and Thompson had last been seen with them.

 

The worst blow? A witness who’d seen Thompson traveling alone near Jaco Slough on December 16. Without the Haggertys.

 

The jury debated five hours. Guilty. Judge McGlathery sentenced him to hang.

 

Locals started selling souvenir photographs of him and the murdered family. Nothing sells like horror.

 

Years later—maybe out of guilt, maybe out of desperation—Thompson cracked.

 

Late September 1870, he confessed everything.

 

He’d met Maria in 1858. Hired her in 1861. Slept with her in 1864. She bore his child in 1866 and—according to him—killed the infant rather than let people know.

 

He tried to break things off. She threatened him. Threatened his wife. Threatened scandal that would scorch his whole life.

 

By December 1868, he panicked.

 

He moved her to McGregor. Regretted it. Took her and the kids on a frantic trip through the cold while he tried to figure out what to do. Anna’s illness got worse. Maria accused him of wanting to run back to his wife. The fight exploded.

 

“Maria struck me on the neck and shoulder with a hammer,” he said.

 

Then, something inside him split.

 

He grabbed the hammer. Hit her twice. Maybe three times. The kids screamed. Maria screamed louder.