In February 1891, newspapers carried the story of a brutal murder committed in a small village near Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. The victim was a woman of about 50 whose name the published account did not even bother to record. She was identified only as the wife of Edward McMullen, the man accused of killing her.
According to the report, the couple had spent payday drinking and quarreling inside their home. Their neighbors heard the argument continue throughout the evening but apparently considered it unremarkable. It was not until around midnight, when screams gave way to groans, that anyone ventured inside.
What they discovered became the material for an exceptionally graphic newspaper story.
The account described McMullen attacking his wife with a fireplace poker before repeatedly heating the implement and pressing it against her body. A pair of bloodied fire tongs was also found at the scene.
McMullen fled but was discovered about half a mile away, lying along the road in a drunken stupor. When told that his wife was dead, he reportedly confessed without hesitation.
The newspaper blamed what it called the family’s “almost lifelong drunkenness” for the crime. It strengthened this judgment by recounting another tragedy in the same house: two years earlier, the couple’s 20-year-old daughter and her infant had reportedly burned to death while the family was intoxicated.
Seared and Scorched
WILKES-BARRE, Pennsylvania. — In a village located 5 miles from this city, was the scene of a horrible murder about midnight. Edward McMullen killed his wife with a red hot poker, wounding and mutilating her in a shocking manner.
McMullen is about 50 years of age and so was his wife. They had been drunk all day, as was their custom after payday.
In the evening they were alone in the house and were heard by the neighbors quarreling all the evening. No attention was paid to this, but about midnight, shrieks were heard coming from the house which were soon followed by groans.
Soon after, McMullen came running out of the house shouting and cursing like one insane.
Horribly Burned and Mutilated
When the neighbors ventured in they found the woman lying on the floor, with every particle of clothing torn from her body, which was burned and mutilated in a horrible manner. McMullen had evidently taken a red hot poker, beaten her on the head and thrust it into her body and pressed it into her flesh in dozens of places.
Justice of the Peace Scanlon was awoken and a constable was sent in search of McMullen. He found him lying in a drunken stupor on the road about half a mile from his house.
Drink Caused Their Misery
When aroused and told that his wife was dead, he said, “I know it. Didn’t I kill her myself?”
He was brought to this city and lodged in the county jail. The crime is the outcome of almost lifelong drunkenness. Not only ave McMullen and the murdered woman been drunkards for years, but their children have inherited the vice.
Two years ago, in the same house, their only daughter, a girl of 20 years, was burned to death with her infant child while lying in bed in a drunken stupor, while her father and mother were in the next room in the same condition.
A Scene of Awful Horror
The scene, as described by the neighbors who first entered the house was horrifying. The woman, with some fragments of clothing around her waist, was lying on the floor, and around her a great pool of blood had collected. The walls were splattered with it, and the few bits of furniture were daubed red.
The murderer was probably half an hour about his butchery, for the poker must have been heated again and again. The house was filled with the odors of burning flesh.
It is believed that the drunken ruffian was stirring the fire with the poker. The couple had been quarreling, the woman said something that angered him and he wheeled around and struck her on the head with the poker, knocking her down. He struck her again while she was prostrate.
Stupefied with liquor and the blows, she only laid there and shrieked. A fiendish determination came in his head. He thrust the poker into the stove, and when it was red hot, turned to the woman on the floor, tore off her clothing and laid the glowing iron on her flesh.
Then must have come the piercing shrieks the neighbors heard, but she could not stir.
A Drunkard’s Inhumanity
The blood burst in streams from the wound and perhaps the awful agony brought another shriek from the dying woman’s lips. Again the poker was heated and again and again applied to her quivering form. But she was probably then far beyond feeling pain.
He then discarded the poker and took up a pair of tongs.
They were found covered with blood to the handle. The fiend made them red hot, too, and then plunging them into the gaping wounds he had already made, tore and mangled the sizzling flesh with his new implements of torture.
What motive impelled him to this horrible mutilation no sane brain can imagine. From every wound blood had streamed. Everywhere around the room where he had laid his reeking hands on walls or furniture they left red stains.
When at last his fearful work was done he turned and fled from the house reeling in his drunkenness and frenzy.
Source: Evening Journal. Wilmington, Del. February 16, 1891.
