After the American Revolution, the US began making history. But far away from international
politics, another history was being made. It was only a matter of time before America
ended up seeing its very first serial killers: the Harpe Brothers.
The story of the Harpe Brothers actually starts out with a little bit of a mystery. Given
that they're the first serial killers in the history of an entire nation, it's no surprise
they used a lot of aliases in their time.
All those aliases mean their background is a little hazy, but the best historians can
tell, they were both born to Scottish immigrants. Both of their fathers, William and John Harpe,
settled down with their wives in Orange County, North Carolina, both couples having a son.
Micajah Harpe was born sometime in the 1760s, while William "Wiley" Harpe was born a couple
years later.
Yes, having different fathers, who were brothers, actually makes the Harpe "brothers" first
cousins. But, they just grew up around each other and spent a lot of time together, so
they just pretended to be brothers. And, in all honesty, that seemed to work out, with
their nicknames referring to each other. Micajah became known as "Big" while Wiley became "Little"
for the obvious reasons. Micajah was muscular and, you know, bigger than Wiley. Hence the
nicknames.
Being born in the British Colonies around the mid-1700s meant that, of course, the story
of the Harpes ended up intersecting somehow with the American Revolution. But not as young
rebels and patriots ready to fight for their ideals. The Harpes weren't really like that.
They left their home for Virginia, around 1775, to look for a future in the slave trade.
They didn't seem to have much interest in the Revolution, at least until it interfered
with their plans. And when it did, they found a new way to satisfy their interests.
They joined up with the Loyalists and were seen fighting with the British army on at
least a few occasions in 1780 including The Battles of Blackstock's Farm and King's Mountain.
But the Harpes weren't really into it for any sort of duty or ideology. They were in
it for the violence. It's more accurate to say they joined up so they could pillage,
murder, and ruin as they saw fit.
The American frontier at this time teemed with lawlessness and danger, with outlaws
and ruffians roaming all about.
Sure, the frontier saw its share of legends, Daniel Boone and the like, but there was a
darker side, too. It was the perfect place for people to escape from the consequences
of whatever crimes they had committed, and then go on living life as they wanted to.
In general, these more rural areas weren't known for any sort of quick police response.
It was actually agonizingly slow for officials to do anything and that worked out perfectly
for the less-than-law-abiding types.
"Something mighty fishy about that peddler. Why'd you let Mike bring him aboard?”
"Cause he's the first sucker that nibbled at our bait."
And so, the frontier gained a very bad reputation. According to The Raven Report it was once
described as a place where,
"...the Devil, old and worn out, had given up traveling and settled in so that he could
spend his declining years with like-minded people."
The thought that America's first serial killers could be happily married is a little hard
to imagine, and frankly, the truth is much more sinister.
It all started when Little Harpe tried to abuse a girl in North Carolina. He was shot
and wounded by Captain James Wood in the attempt, so the brothers headed out for revenge. They
kidnapped the Captain's daughter, Susan Wood, and a girl known as Maria Davidson, forcing
them both to become their wives. Later, though, Wiley somehow managed to marry Sarah Rice,
the daughter of a minister, and the other two women both became wives to Big Harpe.
No surprisingly, the brothers weren't great husbands. Wood and Davidson became pregnant
but both of their children were killed before Rice ever entered the picture. Then, when
all three became pregnant, the brothers blamed the women for how the infants cried.
Big Harpe actually killed another of the infants, taking it by the heel and bashing its head
into a tree. When a man named Moses Doss became concerned for the safety of the women, the
brothers saw to it that he was killed.
By the late 1790s, the Harpes had already taken a number of lives. Moses Doss was killed
around the late 1780s and, undoubtedly, they killed a lot of others under the guise of
the American Revolution. But 1798 is when their real murder spree took off, lasting
into 1799. In that time, they killed a lot of people.
They ultimately confessed to a total of 39 murders, though it's suspected the true number
is closer to 50. Frankly, it's a ridiculous laundry list of names, many of them killed
in horrific ways.
On multiple occasions, they would kill random travelers they happened upon, delighting in
blood more than money. Thomas Lankford was a former associate, but they murdered him
with a tomahawk. They were arrested for that one, only to escape prison shortly after.
After that escape, they happened upon Edmonton and Stump and killed them
A farmer named Bradbury turned up dead and then a man named John Tully's body was found
under a log. Hudgens and Gilmore just ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Gilmore
was shot in the head, and Hudgens had his brains beaten out.
The Harpe Brothers are able to claim the title of America's first serial killers, but most
of the time, murder wasn't enough to satisfy their unquenchable thirst for violence. One
of their favorite things to do was to disembowel their victims' bodies and stuff the cavity
with a bunch of stones. They would then throw the corpse in a river so it would sink to
the bottom. This was the fate that a handful of their victims would meet: Ballard, Trowbridge,
and Stump, just to name a few.
But this wasn't the only way they liked to off their victims. One day a young boy named
John Trabue happened to run into them. The Harpes didn't just kill him, but they also
dismembered him and threw the body parts into a sinkhole. The remains weren't found for
weeks.
And other times, it was just a violent death. Some of their victims' bodies were found with
axe wounds to the head, and others were just left mangled and brutalized on the ground.
The Harpes didn't just savor murder, but gruesome violence.
In the midst of the Harpes' murder spree, they headed to an area in Southern Illinois
called Cave-In-Rock. They began hanging out with Samuel Mason's gang, who were a group
of river pirates that terrorized a part of the Ohio River by attacking boats and taking
their cargo.
The Harpes wanted to really make an impression. In the Spring of 1799, a young couple disembarked
from their boat, heading up onto a cliff to hold hands and enjoy the view. It all seemed
perfectly innocent and romantic, at least until the Harpes caught sight of them. They
snuck up behind them and pushed them over the edge, laughing as their bodies hit the
rocks below. The couple survived, but the brothers were ecstatic anyway. However, the
pirates were less than amused.
But that didn't stop them. A little while later, the pirates had captured and tied up
three men, and the brothers had an idea. They took one of the men, stripped him bare and
tied him to the back of a horse. They brought that horse to the top of the cliff and blindfolded
it, where they hit it with sticks, pushing it forward until it toppled over the edge.
The pirates had gone back outside just in time to see the horse and its passenger fall
to the rocks near the river. The violence was too much even for them, and the Harpes
were promptly kicked out.
How exactly did a couple of cold-hearted serial killers manage to somehow avoid the authorities
and any kind of retribution for so long? By pretending to be a couple of travelling preachers,
of course. They would get themselves into the homes of unsuspecting people, where they
would discuss the goings-on of the terrible Harpe Brothers.
Apparently this is what happened when they met James and Robert Brassel. They pretended
to be good civilians riding along the road, asking for news of the Harpes in order to
hunt them down. They even went so far as to accuse the Brassels of being the Harpes, and
the exchange ended with James Brassel being brutally murdered.
Posing as Methodist preachers, they were invited into the home of James Tompkins, but it didn't
end in Tompkins' death. Instead, it ended with Big Harpe saying grace and presenting
Tompkins with a fresh supply of gunpowder after learning he'd recently run out. No death,
just deception.
Then, of course, there's also the fact that Little Harpe somehow managed to marry Sarah
Rice. He must've been pretty good at feigning innocence and civility to be able to marry
a minister's daughter.
The end of the Harpes' reign of terror had to come at some point, and the thing that
really led to their downfall came in 1799. They were looking to take shelter with one
of their associates, Moses Stegall, whose wife let them into the house. There, they
became acquainted with Major William Love, another houseguest at the Stegall home.
But the three men were all assigned to the only spare bed in the house, and so the Harpe's
killed Love with an axe to the head. Apparently, his snoring annoyed them. And more than that,
they blamed Mrs. Stegall for that being the case.
The next morning, they asked her to make them breakfast, which she agreed to, since the
brothers said they would take care of her infant son. Unsurprisingly, that was a bad
idea. After a while, she noticed that the baby wasn't crying anymore, and when she went
to investigate, found her child's throat slashed open with a butcher's knife. Of course, the
Harpes ended up killing her too, and then torched the house, leaving the smoldering
ruin behind as they made their escape.
Moses Stegall was infuriated by the death of his family and put together a small group
to track down the Harpes. The group succeeded, following their trail of death, eventually
finding them on August 24th, 1799. Little Harpe escaped, but Big wasn't as lucky as
he was shot through the leg and then fatally through the back.
He still tried to fight back by shooting his rifle, which misfired, and then by brandishing
a tomahawk. The blood loss got to him eventually, and he admitted to his crimes. The exact sequence
of events after that differs, depending on the source. Some say he just died from the
wound, others say he died after being shot through the heart. The most gruesome says
that Stegall decapitated him while he was still conscious. Regardless, his head was
ultimately hung at an intersection in Dixon, Kentucky, which became known as Harpe's Head.
Little Harpe took on a new alias and rejoined the Mason gang. But then when he found out
about the reward on the head of Samuel Mason, he just couldn't help himself. He and another
pirate killed Mason, bringing his head into town, only for the two of them to be immediately
recognized. Little was executed in January 1804. His head was cut off and placed on a
stake.
As for the women, well, their stories ended much happier than that of the two brothers.
The general public believed that they were abused by the brothers and were only doing
what they could to survive and protect their children. They didn't want to be a part of
any of their husband's murderous ways, but they just didn't have much choice. On top
of that, there wasn't much they could do to survive on their own in the frontier while
trying to raise infant children, even if they did escape.
So, they were acquitted and allowed to return to normal life. Sarah Rice and Marie Davidson
both married decent men and raised large families, while Susan Wood also ended up a perfectly
respectable citizen.
Of course this story isn't without a little bit of weird, supernatural speculation. Long
ago, a group of ancient people called the Hopewells were escaping oppression in Mexico.
They carried with them the bones of their ancestors and travels eventually led them
to what is now the Natchez Trace in Mississippi. There, they chose to settle and bury those
bones.
Fast forward a few more years, and the legends grew around that spot, which got the name
of Witch Dance, because, well, witches were said to gather there at night, performing
ceremonies and dancing.
Not that Big Harpe cared. At one point, a native guide was showing him the area, and
upon mentioning the cursed, dead bits of land, Big just laughed it off, jumping from barren
spot to barren spot, taunting the witches and daring them to fight him. Nothing happened
at the time, but the story goes that a witch later took Big's decapitated head and ground
it up to make a potion. From then on, travelers along the Natchez Trace swore they could hear
a cracking sound in the trees near Witch Dance. Creepy stuff.
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