Occasionally I come across a story so heinous that I can’t believe it has become largely unknown. Much falls away from public awareness over the passage of a century. The Stouchsburg murder on the evening of July 3rd, 1901 and subsequent trial and conviction played out over thirteen years, and became one of Berks County’s most sensational unfolding of events. The following is a recounting through newspaper coverage at the time.

Around 9pm on July 3rd, 1901 quarryman John Edwards laid passed out drunk on the porch of his home near Stouchsburg when his wife and children retired to bed. The next morning he would be found in a cistern on their property; head bashed in and blood running down his face. A trail of blood led to the spot on the porch he had been sleeping the night before. His corpse showed signs of struggle – lacerated hands and tufts of black hair clenched within. Due to the state of the body, as well as the opening to the cistern being less than two feet wide, responding detectives were certain this was a case of murder. Two of the seven blows to the head reached the brain; either of which were enough to kill a man.

Within a week, wife Kate Edwards and daughter Mary would be arrested for the crime and sent to Berks County Prison which at the time was located in City Park. The handle of a brick layer hammer was found in the fireplace of their home. It would be the suspected murder weapon. Kate, who was 36 years of age and had been married to John for 18 years, insisted she knew nothing of the murder and the she and her five children were asleep when it occurred. She was described in the Reading Times as having, “piercing black eyes, black hair and her complexion is very dark. She speaks entirely in Pennsylvania German.” Daughter Mary was 15 years of age with similar physical features as her mother. One striking detail to this story is that Kate was very pregnant at the time of the murder and gave birth to a daughter in prison on July 13th, just 9 days after her husband’s body was found. The baby was described in the Reading Times as, “white, fully developed and vigorous.” Kate named her Alma.

In the same article that described her newborn daughter, new developments arose. Two black men from Lebanon were arrested as well; Charles Rollins on the account that unsigned love letters, believed to be from Kate, were found in his home. The other, William Jones, who was seen with Mary around the Edwards home about a week before the murder. A month later a third black man was implicated; 45-year-old Samuel Greason, who was arrested based on a statement by daughter Mary founded on admissions she claimed came from her mother.

Kate walked into the court room holding her 8 week old baby the day her trial began on September 12th, 1901. It produced a level of scandal never quite publicly revealed before in Berks County. The prosecution alleged that Kate Edwards brutally murdered her husband because she feared her intimacy with Charles Rollin’s would be discovered once the child she was carrying was born. The Reading Times article described the child this time as, “dark-skinned and covered with a white veil“. Kate pled not-guilty. She was further accused of hiding or destroying the evidence – her bloody dress buried in a potato patch, later cleaned and burned. The hammer handle sawed in two pieces and burned. Allegedly, she buried the metal head of the hammer somewhere in the Welsh Mountains.

Samuel Greason also took the stand that first day. He was also accused of receiving unsigned letters from Kate. The contents of one asked him to help her kill her husband in the exact manner that it happened. Daughter Mary delivered the letter to Greason and testified as such. Greason admitted to frequently visiting the Edwards home on Saturday evenings, and the occasions of intimacy between he and Kate in the house after the husband was drunk. Charles Rollins testified to a similar experience with Kate Edwards. Rollins was eventually let go due to a lack of evidence.

On September 16th Kate Edwards was convicted of murder in the first degree. Her lawyers instantly made an appeal for a new trial. Greason was also convicted of murder, based on later testimony of Kate’s in which she claimed Greason helped her. Both were sentenced to be hanged in April of 1902

Greason was committed to his innocence. In March of 1903 a bill was passed in the state of Pennsylvania for cases like his, where evidence of his innocence came to light after a conviction. Previously, the convicted would be hung anyway. This, however, gave him an opportunity at a new trial.

After a new trial and the passage of two more years, both were still found guilty and ordered to be hung. Shortly after new year 1905, both were read their death warrants, and their date of execution was set for February 16th. Kate, who was reportedly stoic throughout the entire process of her condemnation, finally broke down at the end of January as her execution loomed. It was at this time that Alma was taken from her and sent somewhere in the southern states. Despite her apparent guilt, support for Kate was rallied from all over the state and country. 250,000 signed a petition to keep her from the gallows. Turns out, even back then people didn’t like the prospect of the death penalty, especially when it pertained to women. Almost a century had passed since the last woman was hung in Berks County – she was Suzanna Cox, convicted for the murder of her illegitimate infant in 1809. It was said that citizens were so upset after Suzanna’s death that they beat the executioner and ran him out of town for doing the deed.

At the last minute before their set executions, the death warrants were withdrawn, and the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania was again appealed to reopen the case against Kate Edwards and Greason. In March, Kate Edwards gave testimony, recounting the events in such a way that exonerated Greason as opposed to her earlier account of implication. She admitted she alone attacked her husband with the hammer that summer evening in 1901 while he lay drunk on the porch. She enlisted the help of daughter Mary to fetch the hammer and move the body into the cistern. On June 17th, 1905, Greason was finally acquitted, and became a free man after nearly three years under the treat of death by gallows.

Kate, however, due to admittance of her guilt to free Greason, was again sentenced to death. Her lawyers then pivoted and claimed Kate was “feeble-minded” and suffered from epileptic seizures. Doctor Barton Hirst who under oath testified on her behalf, “Even in a woman with a normal mind, the existence of pregnancy has been known to excite morbid and even criminal desires, and has led to the commission of crimes for which the individual could not be regarded as fully responsible, for the impulse was beyond her control“. Kate’s conviction stuck, but a death warrant was never sent. For any execution to be carried out, the Governor of Pennsylvania must sign their name to the death warrant. Three consecutive Governors were elected and served their terms, and all of them refused to sign it.

Kate sat in Berks County Prison for 13 years before her pardon was finally accepted in Harrisburg. She walked out of prison at dawn on February 14th, 1914, somewhat of a celebrity in the city that held their breath as her story played out publicly. For years afterwards, as those involved in the case died, often the headlines around their deaths mentioned her as context into who they were.

Samuel Greason died in 1917, of what the Reading Times described as, “over-exertion from pitching horseshoes“. Mary Edwards moved west, and in 1912 it was reported that she had also married a black man in Chicago, and was wanted for kidnapping his daughter; her step-daughter. That was the last she was locally reported on.

After her release from Berks County Prison, Kate disappeared. No record of her life after incarceration, or death can be found. The only hint lies in Greason’s obit, which mentions that she was given into the care of a family who promised never to reveal her whereabouts.