Dark Downeast - The Disappearances of William Sanborn and Alphonse Cote Jr. (Maine)

Episode Date: March 8, 2021

MAINE MYSTERY, 1924: When Lottie reported her first husband, William Sanborn, missing from their home in North Gorham, Maine, the Sheriff took her word for it. But when Lottie's second husband Alphonse Cote Jr. disappeared under mysterious circumstances, it was time to pay a visit to the Cote farm.What really happened to William Sanborn? Did he meet the same fate as Alphonse Cote Jr.? It all points back to their wife in common, Lottie Cote. View source material and photos for this episode at darkdowneast.com/lottiecoteFollow @darkdowneast on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTokTo suggest a case visit darkdowneast.com/submit-caseDark Downeast is an audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.

A piece in the Orlando Sentinel, written by Craig Rice, published on June 22, 1952, is accompanied by an illustration of a larger-than-life woman. She is glamorously styled, with classic 1920s hair, dramatic arched eyebrows, and thick, curled eyelashes. Farmland extends behind her, but she doesn't look like what you might picture as someone working on a farm in the 20s. Instead, she's wearing Art Deco-era jewelry with big sparkly earrings and gem-studded bangles on her wrist, and extending from her wrist is a very well-manicured hand. Her fingers are extended, and she's toying with four miniature men. On her ring finger is a wedding band. The depiction of the glamorous woman with her handful of men is of Lottie Cody.

Craig Rice's article calls her the Down East Siren. But to me, that name gives her the allure of a red-hot, black-and-white film love interest. Or maybe the damsel who is much in distress, and by the end of the story, she's rescued and twirled and dipped into a deep kiss as the credits roll. But that wasn't the story of Lottie Cody. She may have been the love interest of many men, but Lottie was not in distress. And the only thing read was the blood on her hands. In the 1920s in North Gorham, Maine, Lottie Cody couldn't stop killing her husbands. This is the case of Lottie Cody, the most murderous woman born in Gorham, Maine on April 3rd, 1883 to her prominent and respected parents, Freeman Johnson and Nellie Dresser Campbell. The very same year she was born, Lottie's father,

Freeman, passed away at just 27 years old. Lottie's mother raised her and her older sister, Hattie, on the family farm on North Street in Gorham. Their family might have been categorized as well-to-do at the time, given the fact that they owned land and a sizable farm in North Gorham. According to many news articles of the time, Lottie was a beautiful young woman, and coming from a well-off family made her doubly attractive to male suitors. She was often the talk of the town for all of the attention she received from eligible bachelors. Craig Rice said in her piece for the Orlando Sentinel that when Lottie finally chose a man who would become her husband, quote, the unmarried girls breathed secret sighs of relief that she would no longer offer them competition, unquote. Lottie married William

Sanborn on September 25th, 1901, but the first year of marriage was anything but a honeymoon phase. It seems as though Lottie had no interest in settling down after saying, I do. She was often seen in town on dates with other men, drumming up a fair amount of scandal in the little farm town of Gorham, Maine. But by 1904, you could argue that Lottie's ways had changed, as she became the mother to their first child, a son named Roland Scott. Then came Ralph in 1905, and their daughter Susan Emery in 1908. By the summer of 1910, 27-year-old Lottie was the mother of three kids under six years old. Lottie's widowed mother moved out of the North Gorham farmhouse and into the home of her new husband in Standish, and so Lottie lived on the farm with her husband William and their three kids. But on June 20th, 1910, everything

changed. Lottie sat in the sheriff's office, wiping away her tears as she reported that her husband, William Sanborn, had disappeared. The sheriff questioned Lottie about the last time she saw her husband and what they spoke about in the days prior, and Lottie didn't hold back with her suspicions as to why he left. She suspected that William had always been obsessed with her money. She believed that William forged her name on some notes, but couldn't pay the balance due himself, so he took off, leaving his wife and three children behind. The sheriff apparently took Lottie's story for fact, because no investigation was done into the disappearance of William Sanborn, at least not for another decade. But the small town talked, as a small town does, and even Lottie herself contributed to the swirling gossip around her husband's disappearance.

Her story changed depending on her audience. She told William's brother in a letter that he had been sent away to a prison in Tennessee, but that prison had no record of a William Sanborn as an inmate. And Lottie told friends that William simply went to a show in Portland one night, maybe it was the circus, and never returned home. The changing stories were suspicious, and the finer details were curious too. William had always dressed to the nines, but he left his best clothing behind when he disappeared. He also left his pipe, which would have been like leaving home without your phone today. William always had his pipe. Still, no further investigation was done immediately following the reported disappearance of William B. Sanborn.

As the years passed and William did not return, Lottie filed and was granted a divorce from her on grounds of desertion. Now a single mother of three with a sprawling farm to manage, Lottie moved on from her deserting ex-husband and directed her attention to the farm, hiring a farmhand to manage that acreage that she couldn't handle on her own. The first farmhand, whose name isn't published anywhere, seemed to work fine at first, but one night, without warning or word, the man Lottie hired simply disappeared. So Lottie filled the position again, and not long after, the second man was nowhere to be found. At least, that's what she told her neighbors when they asked. In the Downeast Siren piece by Craig Rice, it reads, Now any farmer will tell you that some hired men are incurable wanderers. They come and go

and are never heard of again, but the suspicion surrounding her first husband's mysterious departure, and the rumors swirling about the missing hired farmhands, Lottie fell in love with a new man, Alphonse Cody Jr. They married on July 14, 1915. 25-year-old Alphonse Cody was one of 11 children. His family moved to Maine from Canada before he was born, and he was known as a genial, friendly, and good-natured man, and he had spent plenty of time around Lottie and her farm before they were married. In fact, Alphonse was the farm manager while Lottie was still married to Mr. William Sanborn. Lottie Sanborn became Lottie Cody, and they had a baby together, a little boy named Fred. The Downey siren piece said, quote, by now she should

have been a staid and respectable matron, unquote. But then again, there is nothing staid about Lottie Cody's story. In November of 1924, on a gray, blustery morning, Lottie was in the sheriff's office, wiping away her tears with a familiar story as she did those 14 years ago when her first husband, William Sanborn, was nowhere to be found. Now, it seemed her second husband had vanished too. Deputy Sheriff Eugene Norton met with Lottie and listened intently to her story, knowing full well the history of Lottie's relationships and her reputation about town. Lottie told him the story. An aunt of hers had recently died and left a sum of money to her and the children.

Alphonse was angry when she refused to share the money with him and so he took his rifle and left. Lottie just assumed he was going deer hunting but never returned. Lottie also said that Alphonse stole nearly $200 before leaving. That would be equal to over $3,000 today. And that was the story she stuck to. Deputy Sheriff Norton had been around long enough, and he'd heard plenty of the stories around town. He only grew more incredulous of the tale with Lottie's next request. Lottie Cody didn't want Alphonse arrested for stealing. Lottie thought that Alphonse might have run away to Toronto where he had family, and she asked if she could put up a reward for information in Alphonse's disappearance. This notice, she thought, would stop the town from gossiping.

With that, Lottie left the sheriff's office. It all seemed highly unlikely to Deputy Sheriff Norton. Two husbands, missing, both accused of crimes by Lottie, forgery for the first and theft for the second. But this time, he wasn't about to take Lottie's word for it. Sheriff Norton began his due diligence. He connected with Alphonse's family in Canada, the family that Lottie thought he might be visiting. And they were surprised by the news. They hadn't seen Alphonse in years. The sheriff's concern for the fate of Lottie's second husband

only grew when Alphonse's brother, Fred, showed up the next day with a letter. It was from Lottie. And that letter told a completely different story to Fred, claiming that Alphonse's temper had gotten out of control and he took off, leaving Lottie and their son and his three stepkids in his wake. But Alphonse was known as genial and friendly and well-tempered. It didn't add up to Fred that his brother would have lost his temper and left. The letter was another piece of the confusing web that Lottie was weaving. The conflicting stories, the mounting coincidences, and yet another missing man who was last seen on the Cody family farm. It was all enough for the sheriff's department to follow their noses and sniff out what was really happening in North Gorham under Lottie Cody's eye.

Around the same time that Alphonse disappeared, Lottie was playing host to extended family at the farmhouse, her half-sister and her half-sister's husband, Charles H. Fielding. The sheriff's office began there at the farmhouse, questioning Lottie's family. Mr. Charles Fielding, the husband of Lottie's half-sister, and Ralph Sanborn, Lottie's son by her first husband, both met with police to answer their questions about the last night they'd seen Alphonse Cody at the farm. During questioning, Charles Fielding backed up Lottie's story and added a little more detail. Yes, just like Lottie claimed, Alphonse went deer hunting. He went deer hunting after Charles and Ralph said they'd spotted a

deer in one of the back pastures of the property right near the woods line. Charles confirmed that, just like Lottie said, Alphonse grabbed his rifle and he set off to hunt the deer, but he never came back. It was the next morning when they realized that his suitcase was missing. He must have had it planned all along. Here's the thing about Charles. Townspeople claimed that he, despite being married to Lottie's half-sister, was smitten with Lottie, and she knew it. Charles was also described in later testimony as eccentric and with a distorted personality. What I realize now is that those were the terms in 1920 for mental health disorders. With each answer to the sheriff's questions, Charles stuck by Lottie, whether it was for love or by manipulation or both. But when police brought in Ralph Lottie's son, the story changed. Under pressure by investigators,

a very timid and scared Ralph broke down. He spilled all of the details of the brutal scheme that he helped deploy. The truth? Ralph helped lure his stepfather into the woods, and that's when Charles Fielding shot him in the back of the head. Then, they buried Alphonse on the farm. I'm so interested by crime scene investigation in the early 1900s, especially here in Maine. Sheriff King Graham described in his testimony the search for the body of Alphonse Cody. It was a dark and bitter cold early November night when the sheriff's team drove onto the farmland with the confessed accomplice in tow. The field was freshly plowed, removing almost all traces of disturbed land.

But Ralph pointed to an area of the suspected gravesite, and the sheriff's men dug. They carried lanterns into the woods on the fringe of the cornfields, even maneuvered their vehicles so the headlights could illuminate the search area. The first spot turned up empty, but Ralph directed them to an area about three feet away. And just a few feet down as they dug, police hit a piece of sapling. Ralph told them in an oddly calm manner that it was part of the stretcher used to carry Alphonse's body. His body was exhumed from the shallow grave, and autopsy results showed that he died of a gunshot wound at the back of his skull, just as Ralph confessed. Alphonse hadn't deserted his family. This was a homicide. Charles H. Fielding was arrested for murder, while Lottie's son Ralph was arrested as an accessory after the fact.

Lottie Cody herself was arrested as accessory to murder before the fact. With three arrests made in the murder of Alphonse Cody, it seemed that nothing was coincidence or simply town gossip anymore. More witnesses came forward in the disappearance of Lottie Cody's first husband, William Sanborn, from 14 years earlier. His aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Emery of Steep Falls, gave a statement to police saying they saw William the night before he disappeared. And he talked about his plans for the next day, which included work, not a circus in Portland, and certainly not a trip away from home. With that, for the second time in two weeks, police returned to the Cody family farm. If the second husband was buried out there, maybe the first was too. And this time, they weren't just digging. They were ready to blast the earth wide open in search of William Sanborn.

On November 19, 1924, at 10 o'clock in the morning, investigators began searching, digging, and blasting the 35-acre North Gorham farm. A neighbor, Lucius Libby, claimed he could point out the spot in the fields where he thought a grave might have been dug 14 years before, and two other witnesses backed him up. I have photos of the crime scene investigation that I'll share on Instagram at DarkDownEast, and they're all thanks to the incredible archives of mainmemory.net. The search for William Sanborn's body began that day on November 19, 1924, in the fields behind the Cody Farm. But despite digging and blasting for days, and those witness statements directing investigators to potential burial sites, the search for William Sanborn's body was ultimately called off without any discoveries.

But police had their case against Lottie Cody and her accomplices for the murder of Alphonse Cody, and they prepared to went to trial, this small-town story became national news. Actually, most of my sources for the trial proceedings were from out-of-state newspapers, the Boston Globe, St. Albans Daily Messenger in Vermont, the Tuscaloosa Times in Alabama, and more. At the indictment hearing, Charles H. Fielding stood and half-faced the judge, simply stating, Your Honor, I am guilty. But Lottie Cody pleaded not guilty. And in February 1925, the murder trial began. The prosecution called a key witness, Sheriff King Graham, to discuss the confessions he heard that night in November before the search for Alphonse Cody began. All along, Lottie's son

Ralph had testified that he wasn't aware of any plan to kill Alphonse until it was done, and that his mother made him help finish out the plan by burying the body with Mr. Fielding. However, the sheriff said that wasn't true, and that's not what Ralph said in his first confession. Sheriff Graham said he asked Ralph, there was no deer, was there? And Ralph replied, no, this is what I had to say to get Cody into the woods. The prosecution already had a guilty plea for the murderer himself, Charles Fielding. They even applauded the work of his attorney for counseling the client to make his confession and plead guilty. The attorney general stated, quote, if it had not been for Fielding's counsel, the body of Cody would have remained in the mud until identification would have been

impossible. In the event of a trial, the defendant could claim it was that of some lumberman from Fort Kent who had crawled into the hole. Unquote. On the defense side, they doubled down on Fielding as being the mastermind behind the entire scheme and Lottie Cody having no knowledge or participation in the act itself. Defense attorney Nixon pointed at Fielding and categorized his story as a damnable, diabolical tale to bury this woman in the cells of Thomaston for the remainder of her days, because, quote, Since Adam ate the apple, some men have been prone to put the blame on the woman when cornered,

unquote. The prosecution challenged the defense's approach, claiming that Lottie did know, and in fact, she made a statement saying that she had a plan with Fielding all along. But the defense had an angle for this too. Remember, there was a third party in this murder, Lottie's son Ralph. Fearing the prosecution would go after Ralph, Lottie's defense argued she was only involved so far as to cover up what would have been pinned on her own son. Attorney Nixon said, quote, what mother wouldn't go into a burning building to save her son, even though she knew she would not return alive, unquote. But the prosecution wouldn't let Lottie be cast as the defenseless widow or the protective mother. As part of the trial, Charles Fielding underwent psychological evaluation, and the results showed

that he was possibly more susceptible to manipulation than most, and he was defined as sexually motivated. The prosecution said that Lottie used fielding, and she was scheming, conniving, and an evil woman. In his statements, the attorney general said, quote, he was the exact type of man Mrs. Cody must have. A man a little below normal. A man for her purpose. All he needed was submerging, and he got it that night when Mrs. Cody told him she'd go crazy if she had to live with that man all winter. And then, Cody was killed. It was the will of this woman, working on the subnormal mind of fielding, that helped him pull the trigger of the gun that killed Cody, unquote. From the Boston Globe's report of the trial dated February 20th, 1925, it reads, quote,

Throughout the argument, which was a scathing denunciation and a pitiless exposition of her alleged acts, Mrs. Cody sat apparently unperturbed, her head resting on the back of her chair, and showed not the deliberation, the jury returned with their verdict for Mrs. Lottie Cody. For the charge of accessory to murder before the fact, she was found not guilty. The jury wasn't buying the prosecution's story that she masterminded the whole thing and seduced Charles into pulling the trigger. They believed he carried out the murder on his own will. In the sentencing for Charles H. Fielding, he received a term of life in prison for the murder of Alphonse Cody and was ultimately sent to the state hospital in Augusta to serve his term. The charges against Lottie's son Ralph were dropped. But Lottie wasn't in the

clear just yet because just one month later, she was arrested again, this time for being an accessory to murder after the fact. The charges were based on her own testimony in the first trial. She admitted to knowing about the plan, and despite her testimony that she only gave that statement to protect her son, it was enough for the state to pursue her on these new charges. Her defense told reporters, quote, The officials are doing their duty, and we will do ours for Mrs. Cody. We are confident that we can secure her acquittal on this new charge, and she is as confident as we are. Unquote.

In December of 1925, as attorneys prepared their cases and Lottie Cody awaited her second trial, she fell gravely ill with pneumonia. Lottie passed away in her farmhouse, in the room with a window that overlooked the land where her second husband, Alphonse, was shot and buried. One of the most sensational murder cases of its time ended with Lottie Cody's death. And with her, she took her true knowledge of the night Alphonse Cody was murdered. And she took the real story behind the disappearance of her first husband, William, whose body to this day has never been found. I spoke to Tiffany Link, a research librarian at the Maine Historical

Society about this case, and the many potential conclusions that could be drawn about William Sanborn. Tiffany made me wonder if maybe he did simply run away and never returned home. Would that even be possible at the time? Tiffany said in her email, quote, I can state that it certainly appears William B. Sanborn disappeared from the record. There is no new census information, new marriage, death record, etc. That being said, it would not have been difficult for William B. Sanborn to change his name and assume a new identity if he really did leave his family. She said, I have a great story about a man who left his family

in the middle of the night, his footprints in the snow leading to a nearby river, and he turned up a few years later, murdered in another town. He had been living under a slightly different name. Now, this occurred around the same time period. The murder was in the early 1930s. Keep in mind, there were no social security filing requirements, and creating new documentation and identities would have been relatively easy. It does not appear there was really any investigation into William B. Sanborn's disappearance. Unquote. So maybe Lottie wasn't the evil, scheming, and murderous wife after all. Maybe her popularity

with men in Cumberland County in the late 1800s and early 1900s was only outweighed by her unluckiness with the men she ultimately married. Maybe William Sanborn really did run off and desert his family. Now there's still one piece of the puzzle that evades me. Why? Why carry out this plan to murder her husband, or both of them, if she did in fact orchestrate the death of her first in the same way as her second? In early questioning and at trial, one motive was offered up. Alphonse treated Lottie and her children poorly, and so to protect them, she needed Alphonse gone. But Lottie never claimed that defense for herself, and as her lawyer said, hundreds of women want a separation from their husbands, but they don't commit murder to get it. The mystery of Lottie Cody and her husbands will continue, maybe forever.

Through extensive genealogical research and public records requests, I learned that Charles H. Fielding, the convicted killer, died in the 60s in the state hospital in Augusta where he was serving out his life sentence. Lottie's son Ralph, the accused accomplice, passed away in 1985. Her other two children with William, Susie and Roland, died in 1978 and 1998. Lottie and Alphonse's only child, Fred, passed away in 2001. And no one at the Cody family farm that night, or during the days of William's disappearance are alive to share what they know. Also through my research, I believe I've narrowed down the location of the

Cody farm in Gorham, and I wonder if the current residents know the secrets their sprawling acreage may be keeping. I think the Downey Siren piece by Craig Rice said it best, quote, What was the spell Lottie could put on men, and the inevitable why? The little rural community still wonders and gossips and whispers after all these years. No one knows how many murdered men were buried on that New England farm. Someday, someone may plow too deep. Unquote. for this case and others, including links to individual articles, are listed in the show notes at darkdowneast.com so you can do some more reading and digging of your own. Subscribing and reviewing Dark Down East is a free way to support this show,

and it's the best way to ensure that you never miss an episode of Maine and New England true crime stories. If you leave a review after listening to this episode, could you leave a lobster emoji so I know where you came from? Now don't forget, if you leave a review after listening to this episode? Could you leave a lobster emoji so I know where you came from? Now don't forget if you have a story or a case I should cover, if you're connected to any cases that deserve a light, I'd love to hear from you at hello at darkdowneast.com. Don't forget to follow along with the show at darkdowneast.com and on Instagram at darkdowneast. Thank you for listening to the show and supporting it in every way. I'm honored to use this platform for the families and friends who have lost their loved ones

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