The Hall-Mills Murder Case: The Most Fascinating Unsolved Homicide in America

Abstract

he jacket blurb on William Kunstler's recently reissued book on Hall-Mills case dubs it the most fascinating unsolved homicide in annals of American crime.1 For once, such promotional hype is not hyperbole, although I admit to some prejudice in this view which I will explain in a moment. There was national, even international sensation in September 1922, when bodies of an Episcopalian rector and of a choir singer from his church in New Brunswick were discovered under a crab apple tree off a well-known lovers' lane just outside town. The pair had been missing for two nights and a day when a young working-class couple stumbled across grisly tableau which had been staged by murderer or murderers. Edward Wheeler Hall and Eleanor Reinhardt Mills lay on their backs, side by side, she with a scarf draped over her neck and her head resting on minister's outstretched arm, he with his glasses resting on his nose and his face partly covered by a Panama hat. Effusive and incriminating love letters from Mrs. Mills to Reverend M r . Hall were strewn about bodies; and minister's calling card with his name printed in gothic letters was carefully propped up against his lifeless foot. The forty-one-year-old minister had been shot once in head; and thirty-four-year-old soprano had three bullets in her skull. The woman's throat, moreover, had been slashed with such violence that head was nearly severed. To this day, local residents still regale newcomers to New Brunswick with rumors that victims' bodies were also sexually mutilated; there is no credible supporting evidence for such claims.