The Highland Park Murders Des Moines Iowa

 

Lena and Thomas Peterson

Thomas Peterson, 13, and his sister, Lena Peterson, 16, were “slaughtered” on Madison Avenue, a half-mile northeast of Highland Park College, on the evening of Sunday, April 13, 1902.

 

The children were on their way home after attending evening services at the First Methodist Church. After leaving the church, they stopped at Watt’s Restaurant, purchased some candy, and continued home. That was at about 9 p.m.

 

Based on the distance they traveled, detectives assumed they reached the scene of the attack at about 9:40 p.m. 

 

Mrs. Edward Dubey lived a quarter of a mile away from the murder scene. She heard screams coming from the road about that time, but did not give it much thought. Her neighbor was a loud, obnoxious drunk, and she assumed he was arriving home after having too much to drink.

 

The attackers could not have picked a better spot for a murder. The children were killed on a lonely, isolated hill, with the nearest house nearly a quarter mile away.

 

Ralph Peck and Naomi Spear rode by the murder scene minutes after it happened.

 

“I heard the Peterson boy cry out,” said Peck, “and saw something at the side of the road. I called ‘Hello,’ and got no response. It was making a noise like a puppy or a child. I thought it was someone hurt, but it occurred to me that someone might be fooling me.”

He drove to his uncle Wesley Day’s house to get help.

When the searchers returned, they found Thomas Peterson alive—but unconscious. His body had been thrown into a shallow ditch by the side of the road. 

Lena Peterson’s body was discovered lying in a ditch on the opposite side of the road. Her clothes had been pulled over her head, and her undergarments ripped to shreds.

 

The Des Moines Leader speculated that “Thomas seemed to realize the motive for the attack and fought for his sister with a desperation and splendid heroism which only death extinguished.” The attackers beat him over the head repeatedly—possibly with the butt of a pistol, shattering his skull in three places.

 

“The girl’s head was so crushed that when an attempt was made to raise the body, the fingers of the man who grasped her head entered the brain, and a large section was lifted out.” The coroner’s report said Lena Peterson was ravaged [raped] before she died.

 

The tracks of two men were found in the fields leading away from the murder scene. After they traveled about two hundred feet, the men split up and went in separate directions. One headed south, and the other took the road toward Highland Park College. Chief W. T. Maitland believed the men met up further on and headed for the Northwestern railroad tracks.

 

The Des Moines Leader reported that the nature of the crime led police to suspect it was negroes, and detectives played that angle. The police threw out a dragnet after the attack and brought in upwards of twenty-five suspects—all black, in the days following the murder.

 

Detective Yeager arrested John Hutchinson, a black miner from Saylorville; after learning Hutchinson had pawned a suit of clothes. He thought the man might use the money to beat it out of town.

 

When Yeager found him, Hutchinson looked like he had just butchered a pig or a small child. He was wearing a bloodstained pair of overalls and blood-splattered shoes.

The police brought in hound from Cedar Rapids, but the chase went nowhere

Hutchinson’s roommate, J. N. Duke, said Hutchinson arrived at the mining camp at about 7:30 Sunday night. He saw him again at 9 p.m. before he went to bed. Fannie Young, who lived in the other half of the building, heard Hutchinson talking with Duke at 9 p.m. Several other miners alibied Hutchinson. Still, the police held him until a university chemist verified that the blood found on his clothes was not human.

 

Two other black men were picked up for questioning in Colfax. Their only crime was that they were seen riding the bumpers of a Rock Island freighter headed toward Mitchellville, close to the time the murder occurred.

 

Three days after the murder, the police were still in the dark. They had brought in hounds from Waterloo, but all the dogs could tell them was that the men had run off through the nearby fields. The dead bodies of the children were the only clues the police had to work with. Whatever they turned up after that would take good detective work and a bit of luck.

Detective Brothers arrested James Leonard and M. Robinson on April 23. The only thing he had on them was that they were vagrants, but Chief Brackett decided to arrest every man in town “who does not work. For the next thirty days,” he said, “We intend to make it interesting for this class of fellows. They will have to find employment or leave town.”

Another black male named Timms remained in jail, even though detectives had long since decided he had nothing to do with the murders. The papers said he had the “misfortune to look suspicious to some wild-eyed people,” so detectives kept him locked up.

The investigation turned on April 21 when it was learned that Lena Peterson had not been raped. Detectives found themselves searching for an additional motive for the murders.

Now it was suspected that the murderer knew his victims and lived close by. If that were true, it narrowed the suspects to the residents of twenty-five homes who lived within a quarter-mile radius of the Peterson home.

Maybe it was a lunatic?

Or perhaps it was someone in the Peterson household. Thomas Pennington had been working on the case for some time. On the Tuesday after the murder, he discovered tracks that made a circuitous route back near the Peterson home.

Suddenly, the focus of the investigation turned from a black man to a white man—possibly Peter Peterson, the children’s father.

Chief Maitland said, “The suspicions we have are directed against people who would not be suspected of murder. I would like to go and make an arrest now, but I dare not do it because a mistake would be doubly dangerous.” A mistake could lead to the suspect fleeing the area or committing suicide.

The chief emphasized that Peter Peterson was not a suspect, but people had doubts.

Detectives arrested Tom Lewis, a twenty-eight-year-old black miner, in early September.

A preliminary hearing was held in Judge Aylesworth’s courtroom to determine if the state had enough evidence to bring Tom Lewis to trial.

The evidence they collected was pretty-thin. Two men said Lewis told them he was on the road the Peterson children were killed on at about 9:12 p.m. The state found footprints heading in a southwesterly direction and intended to connect them to Lewis.

Coroner J. Beck testified Lena Peterson’s body was found lying in a ditch along the Madison Street Extension. The girl was lying on her back. From the condition of the clothes and body, he did not think the attackers had raped her.

City Physician Smith assisted Beck in performing the postmortem. “We found the hymen absent,” he said. “I cannot state how recently it had been gone. Her underclothing was torn.”

Tom Lewis

A. B. Caldwell visited the murder scene early the next morning. He said Tom Lewis was there, and they talked for a bit.

“We were talking about the time the children were killed,” said Caldwell. “We thought it must have been about 9:15. Tom Lewis spoke up and said: ‘It must have been later because I left my buddies on the bridge about 9:15.’”

After hearing the testimony, Justice Aylesworth dismissed Tom Lewis. He did not think the evidence warranted sending him to the grand jury.

In April 1904, Mayor James Brenton announced that the two men who killed Thomas and Lena Peterson were incarcerated at Fort Madison for other crimes. One had been arrested in Des Moines for stealing chickens, the other in the eastern part of the state for stealing a cow.

Mrs. E. A. Bickford, a blind woman who lived in Washington, Iowa, overheard a conversation between the killers. Detectives suspected the men lay in wait on the lonely hill near Highland Park College and attacked the Peterson children as they walked by. They thought the boy would run off as soon as they jumped out. When that did not happen, the assault turned murderous.

Even as he said this, Brenton did not name the murderers. Only Chief Hardin knew who they were, and he was not talking—would not talk until the time was right.

Twenty years later, the murder of Thomas and Lena Peterson was back in the headlines. Their mother, Mary Peterson, age 73, accused her son Willis of killing them. She said he “so covered his tracks that he was not suspected.”

Sheriff Robb rode out to Peterson’s farm in Blairsburg to investigate. Willis returned to Des Moines with the sheriff and met his mother. It turned out Mary Peterson had “been suffering from an illness” that “affected her mind.”

No charges were pressed against Willis Peterson. The accusation against him proved to be another dead end in the search for the killers of Thomas and Lena Peterson.

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