There are other conspiracy theories, all equally unsatisfying. One points to a ghostly schooner seen around the Shoals the night of the murder. A local cruise ship still recounts the silly theory that Karl Thaxter, son of poet Celia Thaxter, may have done the deed. Karl, who was mentally challenged, reportedly had angry fits as a child and lived on Appledore with this mother. This wild fiction is absolutely unsupported, but is repeated endlessly to titillate summer tourists. Simply by acknowledging it here, the myth lives on.

It was Wagner’s seductive personality, more than anything, that made 19^th century reporters wonder. From beginning to end he proclaimed his innocence. Wagner talked freely with reporters and took to reading and carrying a bible. Compared to the angry mob that threatened to lynch him before the trial, Wagner seemed more victim, than killer. Throughout his trial Wagner sat straight and calm, sometimes looking sad, sometimes smiling. One Portsmouth reporter who interviewed Wagner on March 11, described him sympathetically:

"He is a young, blue-eyed, fair-haired man, with a very mild expression of countenance, and easy assured manner. He possesses one of those faces to which you would naturally take a liking, though there is about it a weak appearance, which grows upon you the more you look upon him. … I came away certainly not impressed with a conviction of his innocence, but still cherishing a reasonable doubt and feeling much kinder toward him that on entering the cell."

The trial was no slam-dunk. The evidence was circumstantial. The spotty transcript indicates that Wagner’s attorney did a poor job of defending his client, adding to his reputation as an underdog. In the end, Louis Wagner went to the gallows bravely, unrepentant and holding his bible.

The case against Louis

"So what makes you so certain that Wagner is guilty?" my interrogators ask with a tinge of suspicion, as if I am the one railroading an innocent man. My conviction that the authorities got the right man seems to take all the fun out of their armchair detective work.

"Only Wagner had the means, the motive, and the opportunity," I tell them. What more is required?

Even the conspiracy theorists admit that Wagner’s behavior is odd. The night before the murder he was penniless and unkempt. The day following the murder Wagner shaved his beard, hopped a train to Boston and was apprehended wearing brand new clothes. His purchases, according to one account, roughly equal the $15 found missing from the Hontvet home. When arrested, Wagner went along without protest, never questioning his captors. A button reportedly belonging to Maren was found in his pocket. His boots matched bloody prints found on the island. A shirt covered in human blood (Wagner insisted it was fish guts) was later discovered tucked inside the privy at his Portsmouth boarding house. Catching a train out of town, Wagner reportedly told a passerby that he was in a hurry because he had just killed two sailors, and had to kill one more.

What tightens the noose for me is Wagner’s total inability to account for his whereabouts on the night of the murder. Three times Wagner asked John Hontvet if the women would be alone on the island. He did not show up at the dock to bait trawls, Wagner said, because he went to a saloon and got drunk. No one saw him there. No one saw him lying in a public street where he said he passed out. He did not show up at his boarding house on Water Street.

As soon as she was discovered wandering barefoot in her nightclothes Marne Hontvet identified Louis Wagner as the killer. It was a risky statement. If even a single witness had seen Wagner in Portsmouth at one of the many locations he swore he visited, his innocence was assured. Instead, Wagner was spotted in a rowboat near New Castle the next morning and later walking from New Castle back to Portsmouth. There he shaved, disposed of his bloody shirt, and bought new clothes for a sudden and inexplicable trip out of town. Every homicide does not require a trick ending and sometimes, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, justice is served.

FURTHER READING: "A Memorable Murder," by Celia Laighton Thaxter (1875); Murder at Smutty Nose and Other Murders by Edmund Pearson (1938); Moonlight Murder at Smuttynose by Lyman V. Ruttledge (1958).

© 2008 J. Dennis Robinson. All rights reserved. Robinson is editor of SeacoastNH.com and a summer steward of Smuttynose Island. His latest book is Strawbery Banke: A Seaport Museum 400 Years in the Making.