Delaware & Montana: What the River Knows

Season 40: America's 250th -- fifty true crime stories from fifty states. Delaware, 1891. A headless body in acommercial canal, the head never recovered. Montana Territory, 1889. A drifter murders five settlers on the openprairie, dumps them in a river, and dies before trial. His coffin, when checked, was empty.Two waterways. Two states. Two historical murders where the water held the dead and refused to give themback.The Victims**Noah Benson** was pulled from the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal in 1891 -- a headless body floatingin one of America's busiest commercial waterways. In an era before fingerprints, dental records, or circulatedphotographs, the human face was the only reliable means of identification. Benson's had been taken from him.That investigators identified him at all, through physical markings or recognition by people who knew him, speaksto the determination of a county with no state police force and no forensic capability beyond what constablescould see with their own eyes.**Edward and Lucina Crowell Biggs**, **Joseph and Sarah Ellen Jolliff Kurtz**, and six-year-old **Ida Schauss**were settlers heading northeast from Helena toward the gold-mining town of Maiden in the Judith Mountains.Ida had been formally adopted by the Kurtzes in January 1889, just months before the journey. Her biologicalfather, Julius Schaus of Helena, recently widowed, had placed her in the couple's care through a formal adoptiongranted by Judge Howey. Sarah Kurtz, a farmer's wife of fifteen years from Iowa, knew what it took to start over.She did not know that the man offering to guide them through the Judith Basin was planning to kill them all.The CrimesIn Delaware, the canal that ran fourteen miles through the flatlands of northern Delaware -- connecting theDelaware River to the Chesapeake Bay since 1829 -- gave up Benson's body but kept the one piece that matteredmost. His head was never found. A murder trial followed, drawing weeks of coverage from the *Every Evening*,the *Morning News*, and the *Evening Journal* out of Wilmington. The prosecution had to prove who Bensonwas, prove he had been murdered, and prove who did it, all without the single piece of evidence that could havesimplified everything.In Montana Territory, **James Wilber** -- also known as Jack Gilding -- met the five settlers in Helena and offeredto guide them to Maiden. The last person outside the party to see them alive was John Beck at Castle Butteon June 7, 1889. That evening or night, Wilber shot all five with a Winchester rifle. He loaded the bodies intothe wagon, drove through open country in daylight, and dumped them in the Judith River at Samples Crossing,roughly twenty miles south of Lewistown.The InvestigationsDelaware's law enforcement in 1891 relied on county constables and local sheriffs. There was no state police force(Delaware State Police would not be founded until 1923). Investigators worked without fingerprinting technology,forensic pathology, or the victim's head. The trial reportedly concluded with a verdict, but the details remainburied in the Delaware state archives and on microfilm at the Wilmington Public Library -- waiting for whoevergoes looking.In Montana, a cowboy from the Moccasin roundup found a woman's body in the Judith River on June 15. Withindays, all five bodies had surfaced. The *Fergus County Argus* declared on June 20 that never in the history ofMontana had such a crime been committed. Sheriff Clary traced Wilber through a horse trade at James Wood'sranch near Stanford. Deputy Jo. Hamilton and Sheriff Downing of Cascade County tracked him to Great Fallsand arrested him. On the night of Friday, June 21, 1889, Wilber hanged himself in his cell with his own belt. Therewas no trial.Historical ContextDelaware in 1891 maintained one of the harshest criminal justice systems in the nation. The whipping post,known locally as "Red Hannah," was still in active use -- disproportionately against Black defendants -- and wouldremain so until 1972. The canal corridor was a place between identities: Major Philip Reybold and his five sonsha