Dark Downeast - The Murder of Florence Small (New Hampshire)

Episode Date: May 2, 2022

The fire horn rang out in Ossipee, New Hampshire around 10 p.m. on September 28, 1916. The blaze at Frederick and Florence Small's cottage on the lake burned fast, even, and hot. The fire department could do nothing to save the structure or anyone who might remain inside. Frederick was out of town, seen leaving on a train towards Boston that afternoon, but Florence was unaccounted for.It was a suspicious fire that left a homicide case in its smoldering rubble. Frederick Small was arrested and charged with his wife's murder, but how could he pull off the crime from an entirely different state?Janice Petrie, author of Perfection To A Fault: A Small Murder in Ossipee, New Hampshire, 1916 joins me to explore the case of Florence Aileen Curry Small. View source material and photos for this episode at darkdowneast.com/florencesmallFollow @darkdowneast on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTokTo suggest a case visit darkdowneast.com/submit-case Dark Downeast is an audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.

It started with a piece of family folklore. Janice Petrie was just a baby when her parents brought her and her brother to stay at their grandparents' cottage on Ossipee Lake for a week-long family vacation. But the first night would be their only night. Was the cottage haunted? The energy was unsettling, dark, cold. My parents are absolutely not involved or interested in the supernatural at all, which that's what made this so weird, that they felt that way, and yet they were not, never even considered ghosts or anything like that. That

was not their thing. Neither parent could sleep a wink that night. They waited for sunrise to signal their chance to get out. At four o'clock in the morning, as soon as they could see the boat and the trailer to put the boat on the trailer and get out of town, that's exactly what they did. They left the cottage. And they had to tell my grandparents something. So they said, well, you know, it was really hard not having a washer and dryer and having, you know, diapers from, you know, a toddler and a baby because Pampers didn't exist back then. And so they said they really decided that it wasn't going to be vacation at all, you know, doing it that way. And they'd rather take day trips. And my grandparents bought that, you know, so nobody had to say anything about how they felt about the

cottage. Janice's grandparents sold the cottage about a year and a half later. About three years after that, my father read a really interesting article in the Boston Globe magazine about a horrific murder that happened in a cottage in Ossipee on the lake. And my father called up my grandfather and said, could that have been your cottage? And my grandparents knew about it all along. Janice had heard the story from her parents of that strange night at the Ossipee summer cottage. She decided to take a closer look. I just wanted to find out if there really was something to the story, that something actually happened there that would have caused them to feel uncomfortable.

And the story that I uncovered was just so much more incredible than anything I could have imagined. I had to write a book about it. Janice Petrie is the author of Perfection to a Fault, A Small Murder in Ossipee, New Hampshire, 1916. The book is a deep dive into the story of Florence and Frederick Small and what happened at their cottage on Ossipee Lake. grandparents once owned, where her parents stayed just one haunting night, was built on the original stone foundation of Florence and Frederick's Cottage that burned to the ground in 1916, leaving a homicide case in its smoldering rubble. Janice dug through the original source material herself, wading through century-old case files, speaking to relatives of those who remember the small family, and piecing together the true tale of a perplexing crime that was almost lost with time. I'm Kylie Lowe with Janice Petrie. This is the case of Florence Aileen Curry on Dark Down East.

She was born in Nova Scotia. They moved to Southborough, Massachusetts, and her mother and father, her father was a sailor, and they had a farm in Southborough. Elizabeth was her mother, and Norma was her sister. Neither Norma nor Florence got married. And I think part of that was because of the fact that they were on a farm. How many eligible bachelors walk into your farm every day? So I don't think they really had an opportunity to meet people. Her father could no longer sail. He got very ill. He had to go to a home. So here's Elizabeth with her two daughters, and they have to make a living somehow. So she turned her farm into a convalescent home. If we're able to infer anything about Florence based on the limited information we have about her life, we can assume she was caring and kind,

having been in a caretaker role at the facility her mother opened on the farm. And on top of that, managing a business is and was a lot of work. So you have to maybe think that Florence probably was very skilled at business. And so you would think that maybe nowadays, if she was alive now, she might have had a great career in business or in management or, you know, she obviously had a lot going for her. Working at the care home changed things for Florence. Well, that all of a sudden allowed them to meet men because there would be men visiting people at the convalescent home and there would be people coming by to fix things. And in Frederick Small's case, that was his role. He came in and was hired as a repairman, basically, who actually lived kind of a caretaker of the convalescent home.

When Frederick Small came to the Curry's farm to be their on-staff handyman and caretaker, he was coming out of his second marriage and years of personal challenges. He played baseball remarkably well. In high school, he was a star. So he was used to people making of him, basically. He was planning to be a pro. He was going to go into professional baseball, for sure. His whole life was geared to do that.

And then he was sliding into first base one day, collided with another player, broke his leg in several places. The doctors tried to put it together as best they could. But when all was said and done, his leg was significantly shorter than the other leg. Not only did it leave him with a significant limp, but it also just ruined his career to be a baseball player. So it was pretty devastating to have that happen to him so young, you know, when he pretty much had mapped out his whole life as to how wonderful it was going to be. And it was going to probably be really wonderful.

He worked at a grocery store when he was 21, met his first wife, Nettie Davis. They were very happy. She got pregnant. About a year later, she was having the baby. She and the baby died. Another devastating blow to him. Well, he did a few jobs here and there.

And then eventually he moved to Boston and he was a stockbroker. And he found another woman who would marry him. Her name was Laura Patterson, and she was from Salem, Massachusetts. They lived in Somerville, and they were pretty happy for a long, long time until 1908, when Frederick suddenly decided that she was having an affair with a man named Sodden, who was the part owner of the Boston National League Baseball Club. He sued him, got $10,000 for suing him. And even though I guess, I feel that maybe Laura did have an affair with him. But according to the auditor, Frederick kind of encouraged it in order to sue Sutton. So he found a way to make significant money in a very odd way. After Frederick and Laura divorced, he stayed in the Boston area for a while before

answering an ad for a repairman at the Curry's farm. He was very handy building things, and I guess he was good with electrical wires, stringing them and making them work and things, so he was handy. When Frederick Small moved to the Currys farm, Florence was in her 30s. That was old for a woman to still be single in those days. When Frederick Small landed on the farm, a single man, all sure of himself, Florence was taken by him. At first they were friends, but six weeks later, Frederick and Florence were married. Florence's mother, Elizabeth Elizabeth never really liked Frederick. She thought that he was boastful and overbearing.

And as their relationship progressed, Elizabeth had even more reason to not like her son-in-law. There was not only verbal abuse but physical abuse there and obviously that's a huge problem, especially for a mother and a sister who are watching this take place and really can't do anything about it. It must have been heartbreaking for them.

Their existence on the farm with Florence's family was likely not a peaceful or pleasant one, especially with Florence's family's distaste for her new husband. When Frederick acquired a cottage on the shores of Lake Ossipee in New Hampshire, about 130 miles away, Florence was faced with a choice. Divorce her abusive husband and remain with her mother and sister on the farm, or move with him. But a woman in that era really only had one acceptable choice, to follow wherever her

husband went. And so in 1914, the Smalls moved to Ossipee, New Hampshire, to their lakeshore cottage. It was quite a nice cottage. You almost wouldn't have considered it a cottage. It was more of a home. You know, it wasn't just something thrown together really quickly. Janice described the small's cottage in her book, quote, a huge farmer's porch wrapped around the front of the cottage, offsetting the second-story bedroom framed by a gambrel roof. A massive brick fireplace adorned one of the walls in the living room and served as a focal point, end quote. Frederick, as handy as he was, made some improvements to the cottage, including adding a workshop and side entrance to the house. But one of the things he could not fix himself, and wasn't keen on paying to have someone repair, was the basement. Waterfront

properties are often plagued with wet basements, and the cracks in the Fieldstone Foundation let water leak in and flood the cellar on rainy days and during the damp spring season. I'm sure it gave the entire cottage a distinct, musty smell so closely associated with New England lakeside homes. The Smalls appeared to live a quiet life on the shores of Lake Ossipee. They held card games at their cottage with neighbors and went duck hunting with friends they made in the area. Frederick helped out when anyone needed a hand tinkering or wiring or fixing something. But come the colder months, much like it is today for Lakeshore homes, the seasonal residents boarded up the windows and headed for their full-time residences,

far away from the winters that make this region so difficult. Florence was lonely there in Ossipee, with family far away, few opportunities to make friends, and Frederick traveling back to Massachusetts to conduct his business at the time, which was selling insurance. That was the plan on the afternoon of September 28, 1916. But that may have only been part of Frederick's plan. The day began as mundane as any other.

The day started off with Charles Skeggle dropping by with Florence and dropping groceries off and kerosene. They did order kerosene, but kerosene was something that was commonly ordered at that time because they had kerosene lamps and things that they needed to run. Charles would be the last person to see Florence alive. Frederick, early afternoon, called Ed Connor, who was the high school principal, and asked him if he would like to go to Boston on the 407 train. They often went to sell insurance. He didn't want to go because he was a principal and it was the middle of the week and he didn't want to leave right then. It wasn't convenient for him, but Frederick insisted it was the only time that he could go. And so he agreed because

he needed the money, basically. Frederick hung up the phone from him and immediately called George Kennett, who had a taxi service with a horse and buggy. And so he arranged to have him pick him up around 3.15. And so around 3.15, he arrived with his horse and buggy, hoping to have a little snifter or nip because they always had a little drink before they went. And today they didn't have that drink. Frederick was standing outside the side entrance of his cottage with his suitcase in hand, and he yelled, goodbye, dear, to Florence. And then he closed the door, and he walked to George and got into the buggy. And they went to the train station.

Upon arriving in Boston, Frederick and Ed checked into Young's hotel, where they started their evening with a bottle of rye. They had dinner at the Parker House and used it as a chance to catch up on business. After that, they bought postcards, which was really weird. Why would you buy a postcard? And it wasn't just Frederick who bought the postcard. Ed bought a postcard for his wife too. And Frederick's postcard, he wrote, Fairweather at Young's, Fred, September 28, 1916, 8 40 p.m. And he showed the card to Ed and said, Mrs. Small and I are exact in all things. And it was just such a bizarre thing to do. And such a bizarre thing to write.

The duo headed off to a movie and then got a late night snack of beer and scallops, returning to Young's hotel with full bellies and unsteady legs. A message for Frederick was waiting when they returned. Frank Farron, who was the night clerk at the Central House, called Young's Hotel to leave a message for Frederick when he got in to call up to Ossipee because his cottage had caught on fire and burned to the ground and they couldn't find Florence anywhere. They wanted to know if he maybe knew that Florence had gone away somewhere the night since he was gone too, maybe stayed with a friend or something. That wasn't the case. And immediately Frederick felt that he'd lost his wife because he knew she was home. And he was heartbroken. He was in tears. He was drinking rye and exclaiming, oh, my poor pet, my poor,

poor pet, because that's what he used.m. on September 28, 1916. It burned fast, even, and hot. The fire department could do nothing to save the structure or anyone who might remain inside. Some locals pieced together that Frederick was out of town, seen leaving on a train towards Boston that afternoon. But Florence was unaccounted for. For a long time, they didn't know. They were really searching all around town trying to find her.

The scene was chaotic, and most definitely not sealed or protected. When the investigators and quite frankly, anybody who happened to show up and want to look, because talk about a contaminated crime scene, they didn't even take account of who was looking. They just, anybody who wanted to go for it, you know, was searching the place. And so they were going through the home, it, you know, was searching the place. And so they were going through the home, the cottage, and everything was pretty much destroyed. And they thought, we're not going to find anything here. And then they noticed the basement had about two feet of water in it.

And they saw pieces of furniture and things jutting out of the surface of the water. And they thought, wait, maybe we might have some hope here. Water in the cellar from the leaky fieldstone foundation that Frederick would never fix preserved what otherwise would have been lost to the flames. They started finding things that hadn't burned because they had fallen into this basement full of water. Ed Connor actually was in one of the corners of the basement, and he saw a mattress, and he rotated it, and when he did, Florence's body popped up. Her injuries were extensive.

Her limbs were lost to severe burns. But water from the basement protected much of her back, neck, and head. That made all the difference in the world as far as knowing what happened to Florence. There was a piece of cloth over her face, tied and secured around her neck. But when they pulled it off, they noticed that her skull had three significant places where it was crushed that looked like maybe a fireplace poker had hit her several times. There was also a gunshot wound to her left temple that also had an exit wound on her right jaw, but they don't think any of that killed her. What they think killed her was there was a cord, a very thin cord wrapped around her neck. It was tied with a perfect square knot at

the base of her neck. And she had signs that she had been strangled. And they think that that was actually the cause of death. They had a homicide on their hands at that point. They knew it at that point. Florence Small's death was a homicide. The sheriff told Frederick the news, and he was quick to offer a $1,000 reward for information. But the sheriff decided to place Frederick under protective custody. Frederick's talk went from rewards to attorneys.

He lawyered up fast. Meanwhile, investigators began to collect evidence and build their case. Suspicion mounted against Mr. Frederick Small. First, there was the postcard, the very exact postcard that Frederick wrote to Florence during his evening in Boston, printed in his own handwriting with a location, date, and time. Of course, the postcards that Ed and Fred made out was very strange and definitely looked like he was creating an alibi. There's no getting around that. Investigators also found that Frederick carried with him to Boston a number of peculiar things for a trip of that nature. Small took a satchel to Boston with him, and it contained some very interesting things.

His Masonic apron, some letters from his second wife, Laura, the deed to his cottage. It was a lot of things that were very personal to him that he might want to maintain possession of after a fire, which made investigators kind of led them to believe that the reason he took them with him was he knew there was going to be a fire and he wanted to be sure that he saved them, that he preserved them. Now, Frederick said he was taking them because he was opening a safety deposit box and was going to put them in it, you know, in Boston. Okay, maybe he was opening a safety deposit box, but never had the chance, given the news from back home in Ossipee. But how did he explain this? The funny thing was, he also had listed an inventory of all the things in his cottage. And one of the things that he added was

25 pieces of candy in the candy dish. Frederick said it himself. He was exact in all things, but the inventory certainly seemed over the top precise. Candies in a candy dish? Why would Frederick make an inventory of his possessions and carry it with him unless he knew something was going to happen? When I went to the courthouse, they had 13 volumes, huge, thick volumes of the court records. And they had a lot of the evidence that I described. They really still had that from a trial in 1916 in their courthouse basement. And they brought it all up to me. It was great, you know, just to be holding like, you know, the inventory that Frederick wrote on the Parkahus stationery. I actually held that in my hand. I mean, it was, it was incredible. And at the time I did it,

I didn't really know the significance of it because it all kind of was just handed to me. But after I did realize what all this, all these things were, I was amazed that I was so close to all of the evidence that was used in the trial and the fact that they held on to it that long. It's not a stretch to look at those pieces of evidence and think they were the calculated moves of a man who knew his home and wife were about to be lost to a fire. What the investigation turned up next was something that looked an awful lot like a motive. An inflated insurance policy for the cottage and its contents and a massive joint life insurance policy for he and Florence.

The only problem with the insurance policy was he took out a $3,000 insurance policy on a $900 cottage. It was an inflated value, you know, for what the cottage really was worth. $1,000 for personal items, $20,000 joint insurance policy for life insurance for both he and Lawrence. It was a lot of insurance. You know, you look at the payments, the premiums, I think that was the real downside to the insurance that really looked incriminating for him because the premiums were so high because the amounts were so inflated that in order to keep up the payments, he was going to run out of money in three or four years.

So he wasn't going to be able to keep it up long term, which led you to believe why would somebody take out insurance policies that you know very well you're not going to be able to keep up the payments for unless you were pretty sure that at some point in the near future something was going to happen and those were going to pay out. Because why would you do it any other way? It wouldn't make sense. The prosecution also uncovered a curious coincidence in Florence and Frederick's past that made them wonder if this fire at the cottage was part of an ongoing scheme by Frederick. As they were about to be married, Frederick had legal paperwork drawn up that clearly identified Florence's stake in her family's farm. He then insured that piece of property for $10,000.

That's over $575,000 in today's money. One day after Florence and Frederick packed up and moved to New Hampshire, the Curry farm caught fire. There were no deaths, but it was a total loss. Frederick collected the $10,000 insurance payout, keeping it for himself. The investigation also included speaking to a number of witnesses and collecting statements about Florence and Frederick's movements on the day of the fire. One interaction was especially important when the horse and buggy driver arrived to bring Frederick to the train station. George Kennett swears he heard Frederick say goodbye dear,

and yet he never heard anything back from Florence saying anything. So that was disappointing for the defense because they were sure that he was going to be basically another alibi for Fred just stating that Florence was alive when he left, but he couldn't recall Florence yelling back. This was a case built entirely upon circumstantial evidence, extremely compelling circumstantial evidence. But regardless, the biggest issue was that Frederick Small had an airtight alibi.

He left for Boston on the 407 train on the afternoon of September 28, 1916. The fire at the cottage started well after his departure. Proving Frederick Small was guilty of killing his wife and setting fire to their home to hide the evidence meant proving Frederick Small could somehow start a fast-moving fire from out of state. The theory? Frederick built a timed incendiary device. Except they hadn't actually found anything of the sort.

Still, that's what the prosecution was going with. It was crucial to the prosecution that they convinced the jury that this did exist. Because without it, Frederick Small could not have committed this crime, because clearly he had an airtight alibi. So what they did was, they did not find a whole bunch of items connected that would cause a fire. They didn't find that at all. What they did was all these people who were searching the cellar, they took all the items that they found, items that you would find in any home or cottage of the time.

There's nothing special about them. And they didn't find them in the same cottage of the time. There's nothing special about them. And they didn't find them in the same area of the cottage. They found them here and there. I mean, the German silver wire they were talking about was part of a hairbrush. They found a spark plug. They found, of course, telephone wire that was holding up the stovepipe

for the oven that they had. So it had a purpose, not as an incendiary device, but it was holding something up. The spark plugs didn't work, so they found that they couldn't use them in an incendiary device anyway because they weren't functioning properly. They found an alarm clock. They found a battery. A whole host of things. And they hired an electrician to put them all together in an incendiary device. That electrician was a man named Frank. The prosecution presented him with the several mismatched items like a puzzle he was tasked with solving. And he took a battery and he connected a wire to it. And he connected

that wire to the alarm hand of an alarm clock. He connected another wire to the hour hand of the alarm clock and wrapped the wire around it, connected that to a piece of German silver wire. Now German silver wire was very important because when electricity, a current goes through it, it has resistance. So it heats up almost like a toaster heats up like a red color, very, very hot, easy to catch on fire. And then he connected another wire from that German silver wire back to the battery. And what happened was when the hour hand connected with the alarm hand, the circuit was complete. And then the German silver wire heated up. And all you needed to have was a kerosene-soaked whip that was in a little jar of kerosene next to that German silver wire, and you've got a fire.

The stack of evidence against Frederick Small for the murder of his wife Florence is both compelling and confusing. He certainly looked guilty, had a financial motive for carrying out the crime, and the prosecution kind of, sort of proved it was at least possible to start a fire with a timed device constructed with items they found in the Smalls' home. But the defense had some good arguments, too. Janice told me that the argument that raises the most reasonable doubt for her is the presence of residue from a substance called thermit all throughout the cottage. There was definitely thermit residue found in the cottage. And thermit is a compound that welders use to repair things in place like ship hulls and subway or train rails, something that you don't want to

take out physically and bring back to the shop to mend. And so they use thermit. Thermit burns at a very high temperature. However, it's hard to get. It's really hard to purchase thermit. He wasn't a welder. Even though the prosecution tried to find any place where he bought Thermit, they couldn't. They didn't. One thing that the observers of the cottage said was that the cottage seemed to explode when it first caught on fire and burn evenly all around. And Thermit was one of the things that they thought caused that. Plus the fact, all the evidence that fell into the basement, they found or thought that there was a circle of thermit around the bed. And it burned a hole through the floor in a circular way, so that the bed and the floor fell to the basement into the water before it burned because the thermit burned

quicker than the rest of the kerosene-soaked cottage did. Frederick Small was charged with the murder of his wife, pleading not guilty. When the case went to trial in December 1916, it was all anyone in town, across the state, and throughout New England could talk about. Everyone wanted to be present for the trial of Frederick Small. It was the middle of the winter. It was right around Christmas, a little bit after Christmas, and in the beginning of January, there was snow on the ground. There had been storms, and yet people would bring their chairs and, there had been storms, and yet people would bring their chairs and their bagged lunches, and they would sit underneath the courthouse

windows, and the windows would be open because they wanted to hear the testimony, and there wasn't enough room in the courthouse because it was such a sensational trial. Each side presented their case. The prosecution presented all of the circumstantial evidence against Frederick, while the defense shared all of the airtight reasons why he could not have carried out such a crime. The trial lasted several weeks, and the jury was finally released to begin their deliberations and render their verdict on January 8th, 1917. Now this is normally where I would tell you the verdict and sentence, how the case concluded, and the ultimate fate for Florence Small's accused killer, giving you an end to the story.

I do know how it ends, as does Janice, who wrote the book on the case. But Janice did not share the ending in our interview, hoping that, instead, you'll read her book and learn even more about the crime, the investigation, and the evidence in Florence Small's case before hearing what the jury decided. I'm going to honor that for Janice, because without her and without her book, I would not be able to tell this story. So instead, I'll give you another ending, one all about Florence. 91 years after Florence Aileen Curry Small died, she was finally remembered and honored. For more than 90 years, Florence Small lay in an unmarked grave

in Grant Hill Cemetery in Center Ossipee, New Hampshire. Back in 1916, she was buried in a modest coffin with a single floral wreath provided by her husband. Janice Petrie's book brought Florence's story to light after so many years in the dark. When members of the Ossipee Historical Society learned that Florence did not receive the memorial she deserved, they decided to do something about it. In 2007, Natalie Peterson of the Ossipee Historical Society told the Carroll County Independent, quote, it bothers me. She never did anything wrong. She never had a proper burial. Until I got involved in this thing, it was as though she didn't exist. She slipped into oblivion without

anybody caring, but I cared, end it just has her three initials, F-A-S, because it wasn't marked at all before that, before this book came out. Nobody even really knew where she was or what she was about. Janice traveled to Ossipee on September 28, 2007, for a ceremony in Florence Small's honor. 91 years after her life was stolen so tragically, Janice stood at Florence's grave. They had a dedication ceremony, and that's when I ran into the sister who is part owner of the cottage. And she invited me over. And it happened to be the night of September 28th. I don't know, there was something about it that just made me feel really not comfortable about going over there on the night that she obviously had been murdered.

And I declined. And you know something? I have been kicking myself ever since that day for declining going over there because I've always wanted to go ever since then, even more since then. As of the release of Janice Petrie's book, a new version of the Smalls Cottage still stood on the property built around the original Fieldstone Foundation and fireplace. I want to leave you with a final thought that Janice raises in her book. In the cracks of those stones

that seep water into the cellar with each spring and storm, Florence Small still lingers, the century-old remnants of her ashes inhabiting the quiet cottage forever. Thank you for listening to Dark Down East, and thank you to Janice Petrie for joining me to tell Florence Small's story. For more on Florence's case, read Janice's book,

Perfection to a Fault, A Small Murder in Ossipee, New Hampshire, 1916. I'll link it in the show notes and show description for you. Additional sources for this episode are listed at darkdowneast.com. If you know of an active missing persons case in Maine or New England, send me an email with the subject line missing to hello at darkdowneast.com. I will share the information on an upcoming episode

of Dark Down East and at darkdowneast.com slash missing. 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.