Page 14 - Leisure Living Magazine Spring 2017

Wilbur Wright
Continued from page 13
ing a way to improve mankind, as Dr. Jekyll had claimed in the book.
Instead, Haugh’s use of cocaine and morphine turned him into a Hyde-like monster. It’s believed that between 1891 and 1905 he committed at least sixteen murders in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Wisconsin – often drugging his victims with hy- oscine.
Haugh’s likely first victim was his fiancé’s fa- ther, who didn’t approve of the marriage. Haugh opened his first medical practice in Dayton, but he was forced to move often to escape suspicious deaths and bad medical practices. He also alleged- ly had several wives in different cities, some of whom met untimely deaths.
Haugh might have continued his anonymous reign of terror without detection had it not been for losing his temper when he learned that his parents intended to leave their small inheritance to his brother. Haugh allegedly drugged his par- ents and brother, mutilated their bodies, then set their home ablaze. He was apprehended while fleeing the burning house.
Newspapers across the country covered Haugh’s story. The AP reported that he denied committing any crime, but “a strong circumstantial case was made. His defense was insanity, but he was legal- ly declared to be sane.” Haugh was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. But he filed an appeal that brought his case before the 1907 ver- sion of the Ohio Supreme Court.
In his appeal, Haugh claimed there had been several errors in his trial. One of those alleged er- rors involved a Mr. Heitman, who was the “star witness” for the prosecution. Heitman was on the
stand at the close of court one day, and was sched- uled to continue testifying the next day.
According to Haugh’s attorney, “The next morn- ing upon resuming the stand the defense ques- tioned Heitman ... if he had not stayed away from home at a saloon all night, and talked consider- able about the case during the evening.” When the court sustained an objection by the prosecution, Haugh’s attorney claimed that he’d been denied an important line of questions that “were not imma- terial.”
Haugh also objected to the testimony of Delia Betters, whom he claimed was his wife. Under the law at the time, “in criminal prosecutions, hus- band and wife may only be witnesses for each oth- er,” not against one another. But it was determined that Delia wasn’t his lawful wife – Anna Haugh was – and Delia’s testimony was allowed.
The 1907 Ohio Supreme Court ultimately de- nied each of Haugh’s seven claims of error and af- firmed the judgment of the trial court.
In his last statement, Haugh wrote: “They say I murdered my father, my mother and brother with hyoscine for the sake of the money. Then they say that when I have taken enough of the hyoscine the man within me disappears, and Hyde is the power. It seems as though I must do something – destroy something. My only recourse is to get out into the street – out into the open country – away from men and women, lest I murder them. It is possible for me to have killed these people and know nothing of it. It is possible for me to have committed all the other murders of which they accuse me, and in my normal condition be in ig- norance, for in my normal condition I am another man. All that I do know is, that if I die for these crimes, I shall have at least established the proof of the theory on which I have always insisted – that two beings, one of good, the other of evil, may ex- ist in the same man, and in that respect at least I shall have rendered a distinct service to posterity.”
Haugh was executed – by electrocution – on April 19, 1907, in the annex at the Ohio Peniten- tiary in Columbus. And thus ended the story of the man who changed the trajectory of Wilbur Wright’s life, and, in the process, changed the course of history.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Special thanks go to Nathan Wasson, Deputy Clerk at the Ohio Supreme Court, for tracking down archival information.
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