I MET LOUIS WAGNER (continued)

Wagner, in keeping with his calculating Teutonic scientific disposition, went to Portsmouth and at half-past seven was at 25 Water Street. He went to the boarding house of Mary Johnson where he ate, changed his clothing, and soon was out of the house again. He sauntered down into the town, purchased some food, and then decided to take a train in to Boston. Reaching Boston, he tried to locate a ship that would take him on and out but this failing as no ship was going out at that time, he again began to walk about. He went to a barber and had his hair trimmed, then to Jacob Todtman, at 39 Fleet Street, where he bought a pair of shoes. From there he went, at about four in the afternoon, to a sailor's boarding house kept by Katharine Brown and her husband at 295 North Street. He held conversation with an Emma Miller in a barroom, and returning to Mrs. Brown's he sat down by the stove and took a nap.

While he was loitering his time away, marking each step of his progress for identification and evidence against him later, the "Clara Bella" had reached the mainland with John Hontvet on board her. The police were notified immediately and, through the information that Hontvet gave the police of Wagner's hide-outs, they telegraphed to Boston, and that same evening the police were at Brown's and Wagner was arrested on the charge of murder.

The next day, with crowds of Boston curiosity seekers which followed him everywhere the officials took him, for the murder was so gruesome in its details that the full feeling of the people was aroused to anger, he was taken back to Portsmouth by train. At Portsmouth there was another large delegation of angry men from the Shoals to greet him and to try to kill him, my father among them. They were stopped only from accomplishing their purpose by a detachment of Marines who had been called out to prevent a riotous hanging.

Several days later, when they were about to transfer Wagner to Saco, Maine, for Smutty Nose was under the jurisdiction of the Maine courts so that Wagner was to stand trial there, my father and two hundred men from the Shoals, Portsmouth, and vicinity, went into Portsmouth again to try to lynch him and to give him the fishermen's personal hanging, but because of the force of the law they were again unsuccessful. Hooting and yelling, wild ejaculations dinned the ears of Wagner way into midnight, the fishermen, in their clumbering fishing boots and waving their old tar ropes, followed the officials to the trains and whenever possible tried to aim at Wagner with a stone or so.

Like all other prisoners or victims of murder mania there were all sorts of theories connected with the murder. While in prison, Wagner acted the usual part of the religious innocent who has been unjustly wronged and he blamed the whole affair on Maren. He claimed that Maren, in a fit of jealous hysteria, had murdered her sisters in cold blood. The courts quickly disposed of this theory with the necessary data of evidence which Wagner had scattered all about him. He was given a fair trial in every manner, and, on June 18th, he was found guilty of murder in the first degree and a year later he was hanged.

Karen and Anethe were buried side by side in the old South Cemetery. A year after the murder of his wife, Ivan Christensen went back to Norway, alone. John and Maren Hontvet moved into Portsmouth, taking the dog with them, and from there on John Hontvet took up his fishing trawls again, only this time he set out from the mainland where he remained until he died.

When I was a baby, Louis Wagner used to come in and out of our house. My mother has often told me that more than once he held me in his big, brawny arms and cuddled me with his broken English. She always said that he could swear more than any man she had ever heard. His commiting the murder was a surprise to most of the Shoalers, for they had liked and respected Wagner in many ways. While we were living in the house, strangers from the mainland and the cities, looking for souvenirs of the murder, would come and be allowed to cut out pieces, which were still bloodstained, and of the room where the murders were committed. Lem Caswell refused to repair any part of the house, claiming that he was able to make more money by allowing the people to come and see it and by selling the pieces of the house as souvenirs.

Excerpted with permission from the publisher from "Sprays of Salt: Reminiscences of a Native Shoaler," by John W. Downs, Gosport Publications

© 1944 John W. Downs/

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