A Demon In Human Form: The Van Winkle Murders At Fairport

Harry Jones

“Sometime during the night,” reported the Muscatine Journal, “a demon in human form visited the home of Mr. and Mrs. Will Van Winkle.”

By daylight on December 4, 1907, Fairport knew they weren’t exaggerating. William and Anna Van Winkle lay dead on the bedroom floor, beaten until their skulls gave way. Blood soaked the bedding, streaked the walls, and pooled darkly on the floorboards. It wasn’t a clean kill. It was violence that left nothing to misunderstand.

The Van Winkles were young, broke, and new to married life. William, 23, was a section hand for the Rock Island railroad, one of dozens of men who spent their days swinging tools along frozen track. Anna was twenty. They’d been married four months and lived in a drafty little home that barely deserved to be called one. They had no money, no enemies, and no business dying the way they did.

People knew almost immediately who’d done it. Or who they thought had done it.

William Van Winkle

Harry Jones was a drunk who drifted from town to town. When he was drunk, he picked fights and made threats that hung in the air long after he staggered away. He talked about killing the way other men talked about the weather. Folks learned to keep their distance. Lawmen knew him. So did bartenders, railroad workers, and anyone who’d crossed his path after he’d downed a few beers.

On the day of the murders, Jones was drinking again. By nightfall, he was looking for a place to sleep. He tried Glen Brewer, but Brewer knew better. Even if there’d been room, he wouldn’t have let Jones through the door. Jones was mean when he drank, unpredictable, and carried his grudges like weapons. Brewer turned him away without apology.

Jones walked on.

William and Anna Van Winkle didn’t have the luxury of being picky. There was a spare bed in the house. Jones said he planned to stay the night. More than one person heard him say it. After midnight, someone entered that house. By morning, two people were dead.

When William failed to show up for work, Brewer was sent to check on him. He arrived around 7:15 a.m. There was no smoke coming from the chimney. Inside, the kitchen looked wrong. The kindling for the morning fire sat untouched on the table. Brewer walked toward the bedroom and looked in. At first, all he saw were dark shapes and rumpled sheets. Then, his eyes adjusted.

Two bodies lay on the floor, face down, surrounded by blood that had seeped into the cracks between the boards. The walls were smeared. The bed was soaked through. Brewer backed out fast and went for help.

 

The coroner figured the killings happened between two and three in the morning. Both victims had been struck over and over on the head. There were no defensive wounds, no bruises on arms or hands. They hadn’t fought back. William likely took the first blow and fell from the bed. Anna was dragged into the corner and finished there.

Nothing else in the room was disturbed. Chairs weren’t overturned. Drawers hadn’t been opened. This wasn’t a burglary gone wrong. The weapon—a thick wooden club nearly four feet long—lay on the bed. One end had been shaved smooth for grip. It was heavy. Crude. Purposeful. Someone had carried it into the house knowing exactly what they planned to do.

Mrs. William Van Winkle

Witnesses fingered Harry Jones. George Fuestel ran into a drunken Jones around eight o’clock that night and pointed him toward the Van Winkle place. Adam Brossart Jr. had given Jones a ride earlier in the day and said Jones had been carrying a club even. When asked why, he said he was afraid of dogs.

Nobody bought that.

Robbery was ruled out right. The Van Winkles had nothing worth taking. Nothing was missing. Whoever came into that house came for something else. Anger, maybe. Or impulse. Or the violence that comes when a man drinks himself hollow and looks for a place to spill it.

Within days, the Van Winkle house turned into a spectacle. People crowded outside, staring at the bloodstains still visible. The beds and bedding hadn’t been removed. Bloody footprints marked the floor. Folks whispered, pointed, and craned their necks. It was gruesome, and they couldn’t look away.

Fear settled in fast. Families in Fairport and Muscatine slept together at night. Someone stayed awake with a gun while the others tried to rest. During the day, men searched the woods. Guards walked the streets like soldiers. Everyone was sure Harry Jones was close, hiding, and waiting. Maybe ready to kill again.

Law enforcement flailed. Tramps were arrested and released. Railroad men were questioned. A man buying cocaine in Tracey was hauled in because his handwriting looked like Jones’. Two men were jailed for giving him food. A drifter in Coalville, Illinois, spent time behind bars because he looked about right.

Nothing stuck.

A pair of socks kicked the panic back into motion. Jones had been given clean socks the day of the murder. A washed pair turned up in a Fairport barn where they hadn’t been before. That scrap of evidence sent a hundred men into the field. Another report put Jones on Geneva Island near Muscatine, and sharpshooters lined the shore to keep him from swimming away.

He slipped through anyway.

Newspapers pointed out that Jones had terrorized people for years. It took two bodies before anyone would act. Now there was a manhunt, and maybe, they warned, a lynching waiting at the end.

Jones stayed gone for nearly thirteen months. In January 1909, authorities finally caught up with him in a railroad camp near Wellington, Kansas. He didn’t fight. He didn’t run. Just said he wasn’t guilty. He admitted being in the Van Winkle house that night but claimed he left before anything happened. He changed his mind about staying there and walked to Muscatine, where he caught a freight train.

The trial started in February. It didn’t finish.

On March 10, Deputy George Sherburger found Harry Jones hanging in his cell. He’d torn his bedding into strips and made a rope. In a letter, Jones said he was innocent. The sheriff was framing him. Prison was all he had to look forward to, and only death would end it.

Prosecutors called it a confession. Jones had been set to testify that afternoon. The jury, oddly enough, still took a vote and returned a guilty verdict after he was dead.

The next day, papers printed Jones’ photograph. He looked like what people expected—a big, strong laborer in work clothes, suspenders hanging loose, mustache heavy on his face. It wasn’t hard to picture him swinging that club. Another article joked he could’ve used his suspenders as a noose instead of tearing up his bedding.

The joke fell flat. Because when it was over, the blood was still on the floor; the questions were still there, and the only man anyone blamed was swinging lifeless from a cell door.

Harry Jones died swearing he didn’t do it. The Van Winkles were buried without answers. Fairport was left with an uneasy feeling that the truth might have slipped away in the dark.

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