Dark Downeast - The Murder of Emma J. Turnbull (Maine)

Episode Date: April 5, 2021

MAINE MURDER, 1916: Emma J. Turnbull was the widow of Charles Turnbull and mother of eight children. When Harold Turnbull returned home on August 4, 1916 to an alarming scene and his mother nowhere to be found, the frantic search for Mrs. Turnbull became a community-wide effort.Suspicion turned quickly to the woman's own nephew, but with only circumstantial evidence, how could they prove he killed her? It was a job for undercover detectives playing the most unlikely of roles. View source material and photos for this episode at darkdowneast.com/emmaturnbullFollow @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.

Young Harold Turnbull pressed his face against the front porch windows of his home, a modest dwelling on the outer boundary of Otter Creek, Maine. It was just after 4 o'clock in the afternoon on August 4, 1916. The front door was locked as he'd left it, though the key that he and his seven siblings always kept hidden in a tree was missing. Without a key, he tested the window, and the sound of wood on wood made him wince as it opened. Harold clambered through the small opening. The missing key was just the first warning that something was off. The scene inside was all the more alarming. Broken glass from a lamp chimney pebbled the floor. In the center of the kitchen was a saucer-sized pool of what appeared to be blood.

His mother's white apron lay on a chair in a crumpled mess, covered in deep red stains. Murder will out. That's what they used to say. In this case, the saying was proven true. Though not without a cunning scheme to push the prime suspect to the precipice of confession. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is the case of Emma J. Turnbull on Dark Down East. Otter Creek is a small village on Mount Desert Island, settled in a valley between Cadillac Mountain and Door Mountain, today completely surrounded by the famous Acadia National Park.

Passamaquoddy and Penobscot people fished the waters of Otter Cove and clammed along its shores long before Samuel de Champlain claimed it for himself and settlers to do the exact same thing in the 1600s. Over a 200-year span, more settlers seized the Wabanaki land we now know as Mount Desert Island, and it became a fishing town with a bustling, working waterfront in the 1800s. This was also the earliest era of rusticators, the folks from away who began to form a community of seasonal summer residents, many of them wealthy and famous. When the land surrounding Otter Creek and Cove was bought up by Rockefeller to formally establish Acadia National Park, the waterfront industry floundered. The village of

Otter Creek no longer could access Otter Cove for fishing, and as author Douglas Dewar explained in his publication, The Waterfront of Otter Creek, A Community History, this caused a rift in the relationship between the people of Otter Creek and those establishing Acadia as a destination for vacationers. A small section of the coast was carved out for fishermen, but the booming waterfront economy that they had once known had largely disintegrated. Today, Otter Creek is a favorite stop for hikers and road trippers winding their way around Mount Desert Island. There's the Otter Creek Inn & Market, conveniently located in the village for hikers on their way out for the day, or as a place to rest their tired bodies after scaling the trails of the park.

Blackwoods Campground sits at the Cadillac Southridge Trailhead, and it's a favorite spot for Acadia adventurers. Of course, there's Otter Cliff and its breathtaking yet precarious overlook, a place you might remember from Dark Down East episodes past. Otter Creek and Mount Desert Island as a whole are endlessly fascinating to me. I could spend hours, and I have spent hours, reading about the history of the landscape and the secrets, scandals, and other dark stories that somehow come from a place of such stunning natural beauty. I've been slowly working my way through a book called Bar Harbor Babylon by Dan and Leslie Landrigan, and it's where I first heard the name and case of Emma J. Turnbull.

She was born Emma J. Young in Eden, Maine, on April 14, 1869, the fourth child of her parents, Robert and Mary Jane Petty. Emma grew up entirely on Mount Desert Island. Sometime as a teenager, Emma met the man she would marry, a Canadian immigrant and fisherman named Charles E. Turnbull. Not much can be uncovered about their early lives together as husband and wife, not even a date of their marriage. Though through genealogical research, I learned that their first of eight children, Charles Jr., was born in 1886, when Emma was just 17 years old. Then their first daughter Mary arrived around 1899, Lena in 1891, Delphine in 1895, and their second son Howard was born in 1897, followed by Averill

Ferdinand and Harold, and their family was complete with baby Edgar in 1910. By 1912, the Turnbull family was living in Otter Creek along what we now know as Route 3. Their home sat at the very last curve in the road just before Otter Creek became Seal Harbor. 1912 was also the year that Charles passed away, leaving 42-year-old Emma a widow with many of their youngest children still at home in her care. The family walked through challenging seasons together after their father died. Everyone who was old enough and able to work did. Emma herself cared for cottages in Seal Harbor and picked up odd jobs at the home of seasonal rusticators. She was also known to pick blueberries in the summertime.

Though some sources confuse his age, birth records show that Charles and Emma's son Howard was a teenager when his father died, and in 1916, at 19 years old, Howard earned $50 a month as a gardener. The pay was significant, equivalent to about $1,200 in today's money. Unfortunately, that significant paycheck also made the Turnbull family a target. On the afternoon of August 4, 1916, Emma J. Turnbull was with a friend at a blueberry patch, plucking the ripe berries and dropping them by the fistful into the bottom of her pail until her harvest threatened to spill over the sides. Pressing her hands onto her tired knees and standing upright once again, Emma carried the pail of blueberries at her side with a gentle sway as she began to walk back home. Eight-year-old Harold Turnbull was at home while his mother was out in the blueberry fields that day, but just before two o'clock, he decided to

venture up the street to the village of Otter Creek for his own day of blueberry picking, before his mom made it back to the house. Their house sat not far from passing cars and teams of horses, and it may have appeared empty to passersby, but Emma had just returned home from picking blueberries sometime between 3 and 4 p.m. She placed the overflowing pail on the floor of the front room before kicking off her shoes and climbing the stairs to change out of her sweat-soaked clothing. Early August is often the peak of cruel humidity in Maine. She was standing there half-dressed in her bedroom when she heard an alarming sound in the rooms below. Perhaps not expecting much more than a clumsy child or some other innocuous source,

Emma made for the stairs, still not fully clothed. But as her feet touched the first floor, she encountered the source of the noise, and he was neither a child nor innocuous. Just after 4 p.m. when Harold returned home to that broken glass and pool of blood and no sign of his mother or response to his frantic shouts, he retreated back outside and scrambled to the main road where he intercepted his neighbor, Mr. Roger Davis. Harold breathlessly detailed the scene inside the house, and upon seeing it himself, Mr. Davis contacted the local police and rallied neighbors in the search for Emma Turnbull. At first, the search party believed, or at least hoped, that Emma had only injured herself in the kitchen and set off to Seal Harbor in search of medical care.

That was the first place they checked, but Emma wasn't at the hospital. No one could account for her whereabouts after her time picking blueberries. Neighbors scoured wooded areas and nearby waterways in search of Emma, and as the sun began to set, nearly the entire village had heard the news that the Turnbull matriarch was missing. Several hours into the search, around seven o'clock, a man named Greeley Walls had joined the effort, and he navigated the overgrown fields and thick wooded area behind the Turnbull home. About 200 yards from the back porch, there in the tall grass, lay the body of Emma Turnbull.

Among the search party of friends and family was Emma's nephew Guy Small, and he happened to be nearby when the searcher made that heartbreaking discovery. She was lying face down, and the back of her skull had obvious trauma and signs of a relentless beating. Greeley asked Guy to stand guard as he ran to find the chief of police and the doctor, who was also the medical examiner. The doctor checked for a pulse, but it was clear that she was gone. He asked Guy to confirm the identity of the woman, and between sobs, he nodded yes. That was his aunt Emma Turnbull. It was the most brutal, sickening, and ghastly crime that the most perverse moral degenerate could ever commit. That's what the Bar Harbor Times wrote as the story of the murdered widow

and mother of eight circulated the tiny village not far from what they called the most fashionable resort town in the country. But who was the perverse moral degenerate that killed Emma Turnbull? The investigation was off to a clunky start. Teams of detectives didn't actually begin the investigation until the next morning. Emma's body was removed from the scene where it was discovered the night of August 4th, but they didn't collect a single shred of physical evidence from the property or inside the house until the morning of August 5th.

The local authorities and state police force were joined by privately hired investigators courtesy of Mount Desert Island's wealthy rusticators. The granddaughter of William H. Vanderbilt, Edith Shepard, and her husband Ernesto G. Fabry contributed highly trained Belgian police dogs to search the scene at dawn. The idea that this exclusive seaside escape

might be terrorized by a crazed murderer was too much for the seasonal population to bear. While the dogs did not lead police directly to a culprit, the human investigators recovered significant evidence at the scene. A flatiron with dried blood and strands of hair still attached, lay not far from where her body was discovered. A flat iron, by the way, was simply an iron used for removing wrinkles from clothes. But at the time, they were heavy, solid objects with a handle made of wood or maybe more iron looped over the top. It was clear that the injuries on Emma's head were inflicted by multiple swings

of these two mundane objects turned deadly weapons. Rumors flitted about the village, fingers pointed at an unknown group of men seen walking through town that day. Some surmised that it was an attack by another woman. But investigators had another theory, one that would be challenging to prove, because it was only supported by circumstantial evidence, and a conviction on circumstantial evidence was not the guaranteed conclusion that police wanted or needed. When Emma was laid to rest a week later, police still hadn't made an arrest, and the town was livid over the lack of progress in the case. Pressure mounted on investigators, and their eyes narrowed on their most likely suspect, none other than the man asked to stand guard

over his aunt's body, Guy Small. A rather checkered reputation and a shiftless ne'er-do-well. The papers were clear in their assessment of the man presumed responsible for the attack and murder of his own aunt. He was known around town as an unlikable drunk and careless father to four children. He was also no stranger to local law enforcement, having been arrested for break-ins and minor thefts from the summer homes of wealthy seasonal residents in Seal Harbor in years past. Money was a constant source of struggle for Guy Small, who couldn't hold down a job, an assumed side effect of his favorite pastime that involved

rot-gut whiskey. It was still the Prohibition Era in Maine. Any time Guy Small got liquored up, it was on illicit, cheap, bootleg booze. Not exactly the Maine craft distilling we know and love today. As the financial strain on Guy's family became even more dire, he rented out a home to a boarder. In their search for more hard evidence against Guy Small for the murder of Emma Turnbull, detectives interviewed that boarder, and his statement revealed a likely motive for the attack. Guy had told the man renting a Romanist home that he was planning a great escape. Guy's brother lived in the West Indies, and once he had the cash, he'd be hightailing it straight out of Mount Desert Island and off to the islands of the Caribbean Sea. The boarder was

apparently a man of conscience, because he asked Guy how he could leave his wife and four children behind. Guy told him, quote, to hell with her and the Bratz, unquote. Emma's son Howard Turnbull's healthy $50 monthly pay would make a significant contribution to Guy Small's West Indies travel fund. And with his record of thefts in the past, it seemed even more likely that Guy was the one to carry out the killing. Evidence was still scarce. What they needed was a confession, and so investigators called Guy Small in for the first of several interrogations. A pained, apparently grief-stricken man sat before them. Guy Small detailed his whereabouts on August 4th, 1916. He and a friend, a teenager named Lincoln Wright, bought a pint and a quart of

whiskey from the Russian tea house and drank it all together. Then Guy went on to have a scythe ground and sharpened. On his way home, he walked along the main road past the Turnbull home and stopped to pick wild orchids in a field just past the house. He then returned home by 5.30 or so and washed up for supper. Although parts of his story could be corroborated by other witnesses, Guy was notably unable to account for the hour between 3 and 4 p.m., the same time that police determined Emma was murdered. The detectives told Guy that a witness saw him walking along the road near the Turnbull home, wearing a striped shirt, old shoes with light-colored laces, and light brown pants.

They asked him, could he produce those clothes? Guy said that he couldn't, and what's more, he claimed he was wearing a pair of black overalls, with a black shirt and blue coat, not the outfit they described. But the investigative team wasn't convinced by the story. Guy was eventually released from that interrogation without an arrest, and he addressed the scrutiny against him, saying, quote, I know that they are connecting me or trying to connect me with that murder. I'm no fool. I've got enough enemies right within a stone's throw here who would be tickled to death to pass this on to me. I am an innocent man.

I was in my home when this murder was supposed to have taken place. I had no hard feelings against Mrs. Turnbull. We were always friends, unquote. But that was far from the truth. According to statements by Emma's son Harold, a past dispute over a horse led to bad blood between Guy Small and his aunt Emma. The two hadn't spoken in years. Although their suspicions were only affirmed in those first interrogations, police and the county attorney still did not feel the evidence and witness statements were enough to arrest Guy Small and secure a conviction in court. Meanwhile, Emma's friends and family and the entire town was critical of the lack of movement in the case.

Law enforcement knew they had to nail down their suspect and do it fast. To quell the fiery heat of public opinion, police arrested Guy Small for the murder of Emma Turnbull. And they did so without the involvement of County Attorney Fred Mason. Now I mention the County Attorney Mason for a specific and significant reason. The arrest came during the local election season, and the political climate at the time only fueled the motivation for a conclusion in the case. While Otter Creek and surrounding villages celebrated the suspect in custody, the powers at be in the small Mount Desert political arena made the case into campaign fodder. Both County Attorney Mason and the Attorney General William

Pattingall published letters in the papers, Mason calling out the police chief for moving forward with an arrest without his knowledge, and Patengal otherwise applauding the measures taken by the investigative team to bring the suspect into swift custody. When you read the letters published side by side in the Bangor Daily News and other publications, it really feels like the 1900s version of a Twitter feud or Facebook newsfeed argument. If I'm being honest, the politicizing of the case, whether intentional or not, was kind of gross to me. The published letters distracted from what should have been the primary focus. They were dealing with the murder of a woman, the mother of eight children.

They had the prime suspect behind bars, and now he was unable to post his $10,000 bail. So this was the prime opportunity to build a strong case against Guy Small and later secure his conviction at trial. But so far, they still had nothing more than the original circumstantial evidence and witness statements. How would they prove his guilt? Meanwhile, 25 miles away off Mount Desert Island in Ellsworth, state police faced another distraction from the Emma Turnbull Murder Investigation Someone knew that the safe at the C.L. Meringue dry goods store in Ellsworth, Maine would contain multitudes of cash. And that someone broke into the store and successfully stole that cash, making off with a considerable bounty. The apparent conclusion of that case was swift. Ellsworth police arrested a

identified only as M. Clark on burglary charges. M. Clark was held in the county jail until the October term, the same county jail as Guy Small. The two had a lot in common, what with their tendency towards theft, and they became buddies behind bars. Clark told Guy that he was part of a band of burglars and revealed that he had devised a plan to escape custody and rejoin his partners in crime on the road. The pair seemed bonded, though Clark complained to the authorities at the jail that Guy was up all hours of the night, very clearly tormented by something to the point of insomnia. State Police Chief Colgan could sense that Guy Small felt the walls closing in on him. Outside those county jail walls, the investigation continued as the Turnbull family awaited justice

for their mother. Her eight children were orphans, navigating life without either parent. The Small family, Guy's wife and his four children, faced their own challenges during this time. His family was down to what the kids and his wife could bring in for income, and the children needed tending to when Mrs. Small was out searching for work. A friend of the Small family, knowing their predicament, introduced the mother and children to a woman named Miss Ellen Gardner. Ellen was a widow, and she'd traveled to Otter Creek in early September in search of work.

Mrs. Small, though unable to pay much, welcomed the extra set of hands with the many mouths to feed, and the woman was a fast friend to the small children, especially the youngest, a boy named Stuart. Mrs. Ellen Gardner always seemed to have questions for Stuart. Thoughtfully, carefully,

Ellen asked Stuart about his father, knowing he was in jail, awaiting trial for a brutal crime. She asked Stuart about any peculiar behavior. She pressed the child to recall anything out of the ordinary about his dad during that time. Stuart did remember something strange. In a later statement, he detailed his memory of that day, August 4, 1916. Quote, Papa came into the house and he had blood on his trousers. He took off the trousers and bundled them up. Then he put on black overalls and went out. Then he came back with some wood and made a fire in the stove. Then he took off the covers and put the bloody trousers on the fire. Then he put the covers back and went out. Unquote. Why did Mrs. Ellen Gardner ask so many questions about August 4th, 1916?

Ellen wasn't truly a down-on-her-luck widow looking for work. She was only playing that role for her undercover assignment. It was all part of a carefully crafted plan to solve the murder of Emma J. Turnbull. While the burglary of the C.L. Meringue store was very much a true story, the arrest made for that crime was all a farce, as was the perfectly timed arrival of the widow known as Miss Ellen Gardner in Otter Creek. State Police Detective Lawrence Colgan contracted with a private Boston-based detective agency to carry out a plan devised in total secrecy. The first of three private detectives arrived in Ellsworth in early

September of 1916, and that private detective, identified as M. Clark, was immediately arrested for the burglary of the C.L. Morang store. Clark's mission was to befriend Guy Small while held in the county jail and, through through his friendship encourage Guy's confession for the murder of his aunt. The story about a band of burglars and a jailbreak plan, they were all part of the ploy. And while the false criminal worked on Guy behind bars, another undercover operative, Miss Ellen Gardner,

wandered into Otter Creek. Ellen relayed the new details gleaned from the story of young Stuart to Detective M. Clark, still in jail and attempting to coerce a confession from Guy Small. With the new information, county officials decided to bring Stuart to the jail to visit his father. And at the sight of his son, the tormented man spilled over. He demanded a meeting with the county attorney, Fred Mason. He needed to relieve his mind. To the relief and satisfaction of an entire community,

Guy Small confessed. The confession of Guy Small was printed in its entirety by the Bangor Daily News on October 17, 1916. Yes, he'd been drinking cheap whiskey from the Russian tea house on August 4, 1916, downing nearly 32 ounces, near a liter-sized bottle of the stuff by the time he found himself standing in the home of Emma J. Turnbull in search of the money her son had made at his gardening job. Guy stated in his confession, quote, Mrs. Turnbull was there standing in the kitchen when I went in. I do not remember saying a word to her, and I do not remember that she spoke to me.

She was standing at the farther side of the room near the stairs and opposite the shed door. I thought that she made for me with a knife, and I am scared to death of a knife as I have been cut with a knife several times. I picked up something in the room. I do not know what it was, and struck her with it. I threw it at her, and she fell in the room. I do not know what it was and struck her with it. I threw it at her and she fell to the floor. Then I came to myself. I had been in a dazed

condition up until this time. I saw her lying there on the floor and then I do not remember what took place. I do not remember what I did until I had taken her down in the woods. I remember seeing her lying on the ground down in the woods. I came to myself enough to realize what I had done, that I had killed her." In October 1916, Guy Small pleaded guilty to murder, and after brief proceedings was sentenced to life in prison. While his counsel suggested that manslaughter was a more appropriate charge, since Guy was drunk and did not intend to kill his aunt, the signed confession indicated a degree of intent, and so a lesser charge than murder

would not be entertained. He was transported to the main state prison at Thomaston, where he would spend the remainder of his days. Guy and his attorneys appealed his sentence and petitioned the governor for clemency on numerous occasions, but each time was denied. The last mention of his name in the press was February 6, 1947. His petition to commute his life sentence to a lesser 40 years was denied by Governor Horace A. Hildreth. Guy Small likely died in prison. Census, marriage, and death records show that at least five of the Turnbull children lived well into their golden years. Young Harold, who discovered the concerning scene in his home that day in August 1916. He was 97 years old when he died, in the year 2000.

Emma Turnbull is buried in the Otter Creek Cemetery, alongside her husband, Charles. If you find yourself hiking the trails of Acadia National Park this summer, or taking in the sights by car winding clockwise through the quiet Otter Creek village wedged in the valley between Cadillac and Door Mountain, I hope you'll make note of a sharp curve along Route 3, on the outer boundary of Otter Creek just before Seal Harbor. It's one of two places known as Flatiron Corner on Mount Desert Island. This place in particular was given the moniker over a hundred years ago. The Flatiron reference points to the weapon used to end the life of Emma J. Turnbull.

If you do find yourself at Flatiron Corner, I hope you'll seize the opportunity to tell Emma's story to whoever may be within earshot. I hope you tell them that place would be better known as Emma's Corner, to honor the life of the woman dedicated to raising and providing for her eight children. The Flatiron Corner name dredges up the darkest part of her story. But you can shine a light in that dark. Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. Sources for this case and all others, including links to individual articles, are listed in the show notes at darkdowneast.com so you can do some more reading and digging.

Please subscribe, follow, and review Dark Down East. It's all free and it's a great way to support this show. It's also the best way to ensure that you never miss an episode of Maine and New England true crime stories. As always, if you have a story or a case I should cover, one that you're connected to, I'd love to hear from you at hello at darkdowneast.com. Follow along with the show at darkdowneast.com and on Instagram at darkdowneast. Thank you for supporting this show and allowing me to do what I do.

I'm honored to use this platform for the families and friends who have lost their loved ones, and for those who are still searching for answers in cold missing persons and murder cases. I'm not about to let those names or their stories get lost with time. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is Dark Down East.