It was Maren Hontvet who pinned the crime on Louis Wagner. Critics often point out that Maren did not see Wagner clearly through her open bedroom window. Maren testified that she heard Anethe crying "Louis! Louis! Louis!" as her sister-in-law ran outdoors, only to be followed and killed just below Maren’s window. Maren very likely had to step over Anethe’s bloody body as she herself escaped. Wagner waited for her to return, even making himself a meal in the kitchen, before rowing back to the mainland.

"Okay, there was a Maren theory," I admit to my interviewer. "But do you know where it came from?"

I keep a Xerox of a Portsmouth newspaper clipping from September 23, 1873 to illustrate my point. "Wagner’s latest dodge," the article reads, "Is to accuse poor Mrs. Hontvet of the murder of the two girls." Desperate and sentenced to death row, Wagner also suggested that John Hontvet spent $500 hiring witnesses to frame him for the crime and take suspicion off his wife.

The dollar amount is significant. Louis Wagner believed John Hontvet had $500 or $600 stashed in a trunk at the house on Smuttynose. Wagner had worked as a fisherman for Hontvet and had lived briefly with the family at the Shoals. He knew his way around the island well, even in the dark. Wagner’s intention was robbery, not murder. His bloody fingerprints throughout the house indicate a desperate search for something. Wagner never found the $135 John Hontvet had hidden, but he did empty a wallet containing $15.

He did not know that Karen, who he thought was working at the hotel on nearby Appledore Island, was staying with the Hontvets and sleeping in the kitchen near the stove. When he surprised her upon entering the house, the killing spree began.

The trial record shows that, before rowing to Smuttynose, Wagner bumped into his former employer in Portsmouth on the evening of March 5. John Hontvet told Wagner he and Ivan planned to spend the night on the mainland, leaving the women alone on Smuttynose. Hontvet asked Wagner to help him load the bait when it arrived. Wagner said he was broke, agreed to take the job, but never showed up.

Sympathy for the devil

"But how could a man row ten miles to the Shoals and back in one night?" my interviewer always asks. The question gets me crazy. Wagner was a dory fisherman, I remind people. As a summer steward on Smuttynose Island, I see kayakers who make the trip all the time. A powerful man in a sturdy wooden craft could easily get to Smuttynose and back in fair weather under the cover of darkness. It is not a Herculean task. Witnesses reportedly saw Wagner rowing near New Castle in the morning. A rowboat owned by a local man was stolen that same night, and later found abandoned.

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