Dark Downeast - The Murders of Smuttynose Island (Maine)

Episode Date: November 9, 2020

HISTORIC MAINE MURDER, 1873: Smuttynose Island in the Isles of Shoals has become an iconic part of the dark side of Maine and New Hampshire history.This is the historic case of three women attacked in the dead of night, when a robbery turned bloody and the thief wielded an ax that would end the lives of two. The third woman lived to tell her tale, though some argue that it was the sole survivor herself who committed the murders and pointed her finger at Louis H.F. Wager, who would face death himself for the crime. Get J. Dennis Robinson's book on AmazonView source material and photos for this episode at darkdowneast.com/smuttynoseislandFollow @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. 

Picture yourself standing on an island off the rocky coastline of Maine. It's really more of a glorified rock protruding from the sea, if we're being honest. It's only about a half mile long and even narrower than that, about 10 miles from the mainland of Kittery, Maine. It's barely inhabitable in modern day. There are no facilities or electricity, no protection from the offshore elements elements save for two structures that are somehow still standing after 200 years. Smutty Nose Island in the Isles of Shoals has become an iconic part of the dark side of Maine and New Hampshire history. The island's name is part of local folklore, said to have earned the moniker after fishermen thought the fulsome seaweed on one end looked like the smutty nose of some sea creature.

The Isles of Shoals is made up of nine islands, with five belonging to Maine and four to New Hampshire. The islands have been inhabited for over 400 years and were once the site of fishing camps for indigenous peoples until colonial settlers staked their claim on the many coves and inlets, as they were known to do. Captain John Smith even tried to claim them as his own namesake, calling them Smith Isles in 1614, but the name never did stick. Isles of Shoals was once considered all one town named Appledore, all part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, before Maine and New Hampshire were their own states. One by one, the little islands grew modest populations and separate townships formed.

Among the main islands today are tiny and privately owned Cedar Island, Duck Island, Appledore Island, and Malaga Island, which is connected by a breakwater to the infamous Smutty Nose Island. I'm Kylie Lowe and you're listening to Dark Down East. Smutty Nose Island has a robust collection of legend and lore surrounding it. Captain Edward Teach, or more widely known as his alias Blackbeard, he's said to have honeymooned on Smutty Nose with his final bride, Mrs. Blackbeard number 15, sometime around 1720. The post-nuptial vacation didn't last, however, because as legend has it, Blackbeard spotted British warships on the horizon and soon after boarded his ship and sailed away without his brand new wife. Before he left, though, he may have buried a bountiful treasure on the

island and his wife was charged with keeping it safe. His wife died on the island in 1735 and her ghost is said to still appear there, whispering to anyone who sees her, he will come again. Now as for that treasure, that might actually be factual. In 1820, Captain Samuel Haley found four silver bars buried beneath a rock on the island, which he later used to fund the construction of the breakwater that now connects Smuttynose and Malaga Island, and offers a calmer cove for ships seeking refuge. The Smuttynose Island history continues with the shipwreck of Sagunto in 1813, a Spanish ship that smashed its hull into cedar ledge during a snowstorm on January 14, 1813. It sank just off the shores of Smuttynose. Over the next several days, it's said that 14 bodies of the Spanish sailors were found in the

coves and inlets of the island. The bodies are rumored to be buried on the island, but that detail may be fiction. Famed local poets have incorporated the legend of the Spanish sailors' graves into their work, taking liberties with the facts of the case. In 1991, archaeologist and assistant professor Faith Harrington conducted soil tests in the areas where the graves were once assumed to be, but turned up no evidence of graves or human remains. The topsoil is only one foot deep, and a main winter would have frozen it solid. Despite the inconclusive results,

the legend remains and the suspected gravesite is labeled as a landmark. And then we get to the piece of smutty nose history that drew me to this island to begin with. The story of three women attacked in the dead of night when a robbery turned bloody and the would-be thief wielded the axe that would end the lives of two. The third woman lived to tell her tale, though some argue that it was the sole survivor herself who committed the murders and pointed the finger at one Lewis H. F. Wagner, who would face death himself for the crime. This is The Murderous History of Smutty Nose Island. Smutty Nose Island is best described by Celia Thaxter in her piece, A Memorable Murder, published in The Atlantic.

She wrote, quote, Long ago I lived two years upon it, and know well its whitened ledges and grassy slopes, its low thickets of wild rose and bayberry, its seawall still intact. The ancient wharf drops stone by stone into the little cove, where every day the tide ebbs and flows and ebbs again with pleasant sound and freshness. I used to think it was a pleasant place, that low, rocky, and grassy island, though so wild and lonely, end quote. Its distance from shore combined with its barren, unprotected land makes it a less than ideal spot for modern inhabitants, but you can visit today if you provide your own transportation and reach the cove by dinghy. A rotating collective of smutty-nosed stewards keep watch as curious true crime adventurers explore the rocky shores on foot, whispering and pointing at the very spot

where two grisly murders were committed one cold March night in 1873. Haley Cottage is one of the original structures still standing on the island. Sam Haley built the cottage in the 1770s, and his last name was once the name of the island before it became Smuttynose. The Haley Cottage is often mistaken to be the Haunt Vent House, but author J. Dennis Robinson is quick to correct anyone who makes this mistake. Because the Haunt Vent House burned down in 1908. All that remains is a rough stone foundation obscured by tall grass. It's marked by a plaque telling the briefest of summaries about what happened where the house once stood. In 1868, the Honfett House was also

known as the Red House by locals. It was a simple duplex, home to renters John and Maren Honfett. Now John Honfett, he was a fisherman running a successful trawling schooner called the Clara Bella in the waters outside Boston Harbor. He had been in America for seven years, long enough to save for the passage of the woman who would become his wife in an arranged marriage, Maren Christensen. She immigrated to America from Germany in the late 1860s, and soon after, the couple settled down on Smuttynose. They even adopted a dog, a scruffy little pup named Ringe. With his booming business, John Hunt Vette afforded the passage of more family members

to Maine from Europe. In 1871, Maren's sister, Karen Christensen, also immigrated to America and arrived in the Isles of Shoals from her native Norway, finding work on nearby Appledore Island at the Appledore House Hotel. Family was exceptionally important to Maren and John. She told Celia Thaxter, I never was so happy in my life as when we were all living there together. The Honfett family rented this red house on Smutty Nose Island from a man named Thomas Leighton, who was also the proprietor of the Mid-Ocean House of Entertainment and the Appledore House where Karen Christensen was working as a maid. And it deserves to be noted

that Thomas Leighton's daughter was the famed poet Celia Thaxter. You'll hear me reference her name and her work throughout this story as she became an important voice in the case. All of these people, the Hauntvets, the Christiansons, Thaxter, and Layton, they were all closely intertwined, both by blood relation and circumstance. In 1872, the Red House summer occupancy grew again by one person. The Haunt Vents welcomed a new housemate, a man named Louis H. F. Wagner. Jealous, desperate, and very likely a sociopath. That's how author J. Dennis Robinson describes Louis Wagner today. But while those traits may have become apparent later on, they were not obvious to people in town at the time. Marin recounted Wagner as tall, powerful, dark, with a peculiarly quiet manner. He was also an immigrant like the Hantwets, having moved to the northeast from northern

Prussia sometime in the 1860s. His history was rumored to be dark and difficult, and some people got strange and suspicious vibes from him, but what we know for sure is that he was struggling financially and barely scraping by fishing the waters off St Star, Malacca, and Cedar Islands. He lived among the shoals and bounced from boat to boat and crew to crew, even attempting to make a living as an independent fisherman, but Lewis continued to fall on hard times. When he went hungry, he often depended on the generosity of locals like the successful John Honfett and his wife Maren. It was simply in their character to take care of someone in need. Maren and John were described by Celia Thaxter in A Memorable Murder as gentle, faithful, intelligent, God-fearing human beings. They use such courtesy toward each other and all who come in contact with them, as puts our ruder Yankee Manners to shame.

John Honfett took an interest in Lewis and offered him a position on his fishing boat and a place to stay at the Red House. The arrangement seemed to be going well. Lewis had a steady job with John and a place to call home with this family who treated him like a brother. In 1872, more family arrived from overseas, Marin's brother Ivan Christensen and his wife Annette. It was around this time that Louis Wagner's luck seemed to turn downward once again. Rheumatism crippled Louis and for most of the summer fishing season he was out of commission. Still the Hanvet kindness continued. They fed him and cared for him and he stayed in the Red

House for over a month after Ivan and Annette moved in. When November came, Lewis Wagner parted ways with the house and the people who cared for him when he had nothing, and set off for a new employment opportunity in Portsmouth. It seemed that Lewis Wagner could never get out of his own way because his new employment quickly disappeared when the schooner wrecked and sank. Once again, Lewis was down and out, lurking and lingering around town planning his next move. And then on March 5th, 1873, Lewis put a plan into action. March is very much still winter in Maine and New Hampshire, but John Honfent, his brother Matthew,

and his brother-in-law Ivan set off with the Clarabella schooner to pull their trawls and planned to return to Smuttynose that evening after dropping their catch in Portsmouth. They'd be home in time for dinner, or at the very least, one of them would return between pulling the trawls and continuing to Portsmouth. Celia Thaxter wrote that it was custom for at least one man to stay home and protect the women overnight. With winter still hammering down on the shoals, the wind was working against the schooner. Stopping back to the island to drop one of the men off would have made the trip much longer, and so the three men went straight for Portsmouth to unload their fish and bait their lines for the next day, still planning to return to Smuttynose. That is, until a late train from Boston changed everything.

When the bait train arrived late, it set into motion a full night of work for John Honfen and the other men. They wouldn't be returning to Smuttynose in time for supper, at all before sunrise. The men had arranged for a messenger to give the woman news earlier in the evening and he knocked on the red house door to tell Annette, Maren, and Karen that the men were delayed and not to keep their dinners warm. According to Celia Thaxter, the women stayed up chatting around the fire until around 10 p.m. before calling it a night and climbing into bed. Maren would have typically gone up to her room upstairs, but weather made it a bit chilly, so instead she propped up a mattress on chairs near the fire for Karen, and Annette and Maren retired to the downstairs bedroom.

The wind that made the men's journey so difficult had died down and the night was still. As the saying goes, if you don't like the weather in Maine, wait a minute. Imagine the quiet of living on that small island. The water that gently crashed in the cove, the bright moon in a dark night. I'm picturing the most perfect, peaceful setting, and yet that's not how the night ended for anyone on Smutty Nose Island. Back on the mainland, Lewis Wagner was on the docks when he encountered Matthew, Ivan, and John and helped them tie up the Clarabella. Lewis was familiar with the routines of the Hauntvent House. It was a rare occasion that all three men were away so late into the evening.

So he asked them if he'd be returning to Smuttynose that evening, and they replied that with the bait train delay, it wasn't looking like it. Lewis's ears seemed to perk up. Lewis not only knew the routines of the Hauntvent house, having lived there for months the previous year, he also knew the success of John Hauntvent's business after working on his schooner. At this point, Lewis was destitute. He had no job prospects, he was behind on rent, so he asked John if he had had a profitable catch that day, and John had told him he made nearly $600.

Wagner's desperation and his mistake in logic that the money would be at the Hauntvent home led him into a deadly scheme. Lewis asked the men again if they'd be returning to the island that night. And with the delayed train confirmed, they said no, they'd be staying in town Portsmouth after baiting their trawls. It was the perfect opportunity for Lewis to burglarize the Hauntvent home. Although he was asked to help bait the lines with John and the other men, Lewis disappeared from the docks around 7.30 p.m. and quickly put the pieces of his plan into place. He needed a way to get to Smuttynose and he didn't have a boat of his own so his first crime on that evening was stealing a dory that he would row 12 miles from the mouth of the Piscataqua River

and through the harbor to Smuttynose. Rowing 12 miles took him over three hours, and he made landfall around 11 p.m. that night, just after the women had tucked themselves into bed. Lewis stood watching over the house, waiting for the lamps to burn out to make doubly sure that the women were asleep. A broken clock found later at the scene was stopped just after 1am, so that must have been when Lewis began his attack. Now many people looking back on this story assume that Lewis never meant to do the women harm, that he just wanted to steal some of John Hauntvent's money and get out, but when he stepped inside the unlatched door of the Red House to find Karen sleeping unexpectedly in the kitchen, his mission to go unnoticed was foiled.

Their little dog, Ringe, started barking at the appearance of that towering, dark figure in the entrance of the home. Karen was startled awake, and Maren, she later recounted hearing Karen ask into the dark, John, is that you? At that moment, Lewis was startled too, and that's when the violence began. He grabbed a chair and he swung it at Karen, and that's when the violence began. He grabbed a chair and he swung it at Karen, and she realized in horror that it wasn't John returning from the long night of baiting lines. She started screaming for help as Lewis continued to deliver blows to her body. Maren and Annette woke in the next room as Karen frantically tried to escape her attacker.

She flipped the latch to the bedroom door, and with quick instincts, Maren was able to pull her inside the bedroom. She turned to Annette yelling for her to run and hide. Annette flung open the window and hopped out onto the crusty snow only to be met by Wagner who had left the house after his initial attack on Karen. Lewis rounded the property now wielding a wooden-handled axe that came from the Hauntvent home. Just one swing of that axe ended the life of Annette Christensen. Marin had witnessed it all.

Her fear and panic turned to determination. Annette couldn't be saved, but she still had her sister Karen fighting for her life on the bedroom mattress. She urged Karen to stand and to run to escape the impending horror that was sure to come as Lewis continued his spree, but Karen couldn't stand. Her injuries were too severe. So with only one option left, Maren made the decision to save herself. Maren followed in the footsteps of Annette, clamoring out the window and setting

off barefoot into the night. Her loyal four-legged protector, Ringe, trailed behind her as she considered the best way out of this horrific night. She knew Lewis was aware of the island and of the vacant buildings, so she opted not to hide indoors. Instead, she continued to the edge of the island, hoping to find the dory that she assumed Wagner had used to make his way to Smuttynose that night. But there wasn't a boat where she expected one to be. Maren's best chance of saving her own life was hiding between the rocks of the shoreline, crouching out of view with nothing but her nightclothes and her dog to keep her warm. As she made her way into her rocky hiding place, she remembers hearing the screams of her sister as Lewis inflicted the final

fatal blow. Wagner searched for Marin, not wanting to leave any witnesses to the cold-blooded murders he'd committed, but he turned up nothing and he knew he didn't have much time to escape while it was still dark. What he did next solidifies in my mind the level of monster he had become. Lewis brewed a pot of tea and fed himself in the kitchen and rested up before turning over everything in the haunt-fed home in search of the fortune he believed John had hidden there. The fortune? It turned out to be $15. And with the $15, Lewis fled back to the mainland. Maren waited in hiding until the late morning. She recounts trying unsuccessfully to hail for help at the neighboring islands, but it wasn't until some kids playing on Appledore saw her peculiar waves that someone came to her

aid. A man named George Ingerbreadson took her to Appledore, saw her peculiar waves that someone came to her aid. A man named George Ingerbredsen took her to Appledore, where she rested and recovered, and recalled the horror she witnessed the night before. The Clarabella returned to Smuttynose as George and other men from the Isles cased the entire island in search of the man responsible for the murders. John, Matthew, and Ivan entered the Red House first, finding in the kitchen the beautiful, fair-haired Annette, blood pooled around her, and Karen in the bedroom, where her sister so hopelessly tried to save her life. John Honfen and his brother Matthew boarded their schooner and sailed immediately back to Appledore to see Maren, and John brought the story that Maren told to the

authorities in Portsmouth. It didn't take long for the gory tale to make the rounds in town. I guess New England has always been the same. These things just don't happen here, so people were talking and people were scared. Most of all, people were angry, and they wanted Louis H. F. Wagner to pay for what he'd done. Meanwhile, Wagner was on the run. According to the State v. Wagner, as published in the American Law Register by the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine in February 1874, Wagner returned to the home where he had been renting a room, changed out of his bloodied clothes, and caught a 9 a.m. train to Boston where he bought new boots,

a suit, and shaved off his facial hair. In a continued demonstration of his sociopathic nature, Lewis seemed altogether unfazed by the acts he committed the night before. It's said that he was socializing with some women at a nearby boarding house when police apprehended him. Boston isn't far from Portsmouth or Kittery or the Isles of Shoals where he committed his crimes, and so with the word spreading fast, an angry mob followed behind police as Lewis, with his freshly shaven face and brand new clothes purchased with the money he took from John Honfent, was hauled away and held for trial in Alfred, Maine. The trial of Lewis H.F. Wagner for the double murder of Annette Christensen and Karen Christensen began on June 9, 1873. Maren Hunt Vent, as the sole survivor and witness of the brutal attack, gave her testimony before

the judge and jury. Without her eyewitness testimony, the evidence was circumstantial, albeit damning. As reported in an article by the Boston Globe on June 25, 1875, the clues that pointed to Lewis being the perpetrator of the acts included his knowledge of money at the house, that John Honvent and the other men wouldn't be returning that night, that he was seen in Portsmouth the night of the murders, that he disposed of a blood-saturated shirt as he hurried through town the next morning, and two little clues connecting him back to the red house on Smuttynose and the women who lived there. The first of these little clues was a silver half dollar that Karen was known to carry in her pocket, and the other was a unique button that

came from the clothing of one of the women he murdered. On top of, you know, an eyewitness saying that he was the one who did it and had lived to tell her story. So the defense turned to dismantling Maren's testimony and turning the suspicion back on Maren and her husband John themselves. That's where an enduring alternate theory arose. Was Maren really the lone survivor of an attempted triple murder? Or did she commit the acts against her sister and sister-in-law herself? I'll circle back to this alternate theory in just a minute. Let me first tell you what happened to Lewis H. F. Wagner. Maine was still a capital punishment state, and it wouldn't be abolished for a few more years after the murders

of Annette and Karen. And so when the jury returned after just one hour of deliberation, reading the verdict, guilty of murder in the first degree, everyone in the courtroom knew what sentence lay before him. While awaiting his formal sentencing, Lewis was returned to the Alfred Jail. It was considered a high-security jail for its time, with more modernized locks and new bolts to keep murderers like Wagner securely inside. But in a feat that must have given inspiration to endless prison break films in the following century, Lewis constructed a dummy of himself made of a broomstick, a stool, and extra clothing, and then picked the lock on his supposedly secure cell door and stepped out

into the hall and clambered into the attic of the jailhouse. On his way out, he swung by two other cells, collecting his buddies, I guess, and apparently walked right out the front door unnoticed. Lewis wandered freely among the wooded forests and open fields of rural Maine and New Hampshire, eating wild berries and begging for food. He didn't even really seem to be fleeing or hiding, he just was kind of enjoying himself with the knowledge that he escaped prison. He was recaptured four days later and returned to the Alfred Jail that had since re-upped its security measures. Lewis was pretty damn proud of himself and he shared his escape tale with plenty of exaggerations, including

fighting off wild beasts. Two months later, at his sentencing hearing on September 24th, Lewis H.F. Wagner was sentenced to death by hanging and transferred to the state prison at Thomaston. And through the two years of his confinement as he awaited the executioner to come knocking, Wagner maintained his innocence. He cried often in his cell and continued to point his finger

at the haunt vents themselves for the horrid crimes he was convicted of committing. Lewis H.F. Wagner, the convicted murderer of Annette and Karen Christensen, was hanged on June 25, 1875, the fourth to last person to face capital punishment in the state of Maine. Now, I can't close out this story of the Smutty Nose Axe murders without addressing a conspiracy theory that has followed the case for over a century. The author J. Dennis Robinson, on his site smuttynosemurders.com, totally discards the theory that Marin was the one to commit the murders and then pointed to Lewis as her scapegoat. That Marin did it theory was used by defense, and it gained steam with a newspaper article that made the rounds in 1876.

The newspaper article reported that there was an alleged deathbed confession from Marin Honfant. The original article was lost with the years, but it was also retracted the day after it was published. The story could not have been true because Marin was still alive when this supposed deathbed confession was made. J. Dennis Robinson theorizes that the article was published by an opponent of the death penalty. The Marin rumor and that alternate theory became source material for a novel by Anita Shreve called Weight of Water, and it was later turned into a movie by the same name. It's a dramatized and modernized version of events, but sometimes

fiction has a way of influencing what we believe, and so the alternate theory persists. So as for John and Maren Honfent, they moved from Smutty Nose after the murders and made a new home on Water Street in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, with their little dog at their side, eventually welcoming a baby into their lives. Though they appeared to rebuild after the Smutty Nose Horror, the tragedy hung heavy over their heads and took a toll on their marriage. They separated and Marin returned to Norway, while John remained in Maine. After surviving two wrecks in his fishing career, he moved his business from sea to land, beginning again as a farmer. Celia Thaxter closes this out best as she writes in A Memorable Murder, quote, And on the island other Norwegians have settled, voices of charming

children sound sweetly in the solitude that echoed so awfully to the shrieks of Karen and Annette. But to the weirdness of the winter midnight, something is added. A vision of two dim, reproachful shades who watch while an agonized ghost prowls eternally about the dilapidated houses at the beach's edge, close by the black whispering water, seeking for the woman who has escaped him, escaped to bring upon him the death he deserves, whom he never, never, never can find, though his distracted spirit may search till man shall vanish off the face of the earth, and time shall be no more. Thank you for tuning in to Dark Down East, and thank you again to my sources for this episode,

among them Murderpedia.org, NewEngland.com, SmuttyNoseMurders.com, curated by J. Dennis Robinson, SeacoastNewHampshire.com, Wikipedia pages for the Isles of Shoals and Smutty Nose Island, Lane Memorial Library article by John Hertel, and a piece written by Celia Thaxter titled A Memorable Murder.

All of my sources for this episode and others are listed at darkdowneast.com so you can dig in and learn more. If you have a story or a case I should cover, I'd love to hear from you at darkdowneast at gmail.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 to homicide and for those who are still searching for answers in cold missing persons and murder cases. I'm not about to let those names, those manners, those stories get lost with time. I'm Kylie Lowe and this is Dark Down East.