An Adam Horn Snow

Adam Horn, from the Sun, 1843

Once upon a time, a heavy, late March snowstorm in Baltimore was known as Horn's snow, because it was during such a storm that the murderer Adam Horn made his escape from Fowlesburg, Maryland. His crime, his capture, and his execution, would dominate newspaper headlines in 1843, and become one of the most infamous murders, locally anyway, of the 19th century.

Baltimore poet Lizette Woodworth Reese included the incident in her book, "The York Road," but the actual scene of the crime was the Hanover-Reisterstown Road, today's Hanover Pike, at the border between Carroll and Baltimore counties. There, in 1842, Adam Horn, a 50-year-old German tailor, opened a small shop in Fowlesburg, and shortly thereafter married 17-year-old Malinda Finckle, who lived nearby.

The Horns' marriage turned sour quickly. Horn was jealous of his young wife, and kicked her out of the house several times. On March 23, 1843, during a heavy snowstorm, he struck her with a piece of firewood and killed her.

Horn spread a story around that Malinda had left him, but two weeks later her torso was discovered, buried in a burlap sack, in an orchard near his house. She was four or five months pregnant when she was killed. A subsequent search of his house revealed her limbs, and her head was found partially burned in the stove. By this time, Horn himself was nowhere to be found.

In September, he was caught by a private detective in Philadelphia and returned to Baltimore for trial. The Sun covered it extensively, in full, front page stories almost daily, even printing a 32-page supplement for that  Horn's confessions. And the case just kept getting worse.

John Storech was a neighbor of Horn's -- a fellow German and a shoemaker -- who had been witness to some of the evidence against Horn. While in Philadelphia, the murderer has signed a deed, giving Storech his Baltimore County property. Under questioning in jail by the acting mayor, Storech revealed that Horn had confided in him after the murder, or at least confided a version of it -- that Horn had caught Malinda with a young man and beaten her to death with a shovel. Storech told the the mayor that Horn had sworn him to secrecy and said he'd taken care of the body. Storech left with a promise to return to Baltimore a few days later. Instead, he went home, walked out into his yard, and slit his own throat with a table knife. His body was found later, partially eaten by hogs.

The biggest revelation in the Horn case, though, was that he wasn't actually Adam Horn.

After arriving in Baltimore from Germany in 1817, Andrew Hellman moved to Virginia, where he married Mary Abel, the daughter of a respected Loudon County farmer in 1821. Despite what seems to have been an unhappy marriage, they had three children, a girl and two boys. In 1831, the Hellmans moved to Finksburg, where they lived for five years, then again to Ohio, where Mary's brothers lived. Mary survived an apparent poisoning attempt when she noticed a white powder lining a bowl of milk, and in April, 1839, the three children took suddenly ill. The middle child, Henry Hellman, recovered, but the other two died. It was never proven, but strongly suspected, that they had been poisoned as well.

In September, 1839, Henry was sent away to help a sick uncle, leaving his parents alone in the house together. When Mary's sister-in-law stopped by the Hellman house, she found Andrew in bed, unable to move and covered in blood that he said was the result of an attack by robbers. Mary's corpse lay in the other room, her blood spattering the walls and furniture. The house looked like it had been ransacked, and Hellman stuck to his robbery story, but when his neighbors assembled at the house, Mary's brother accused him of killing her and demanded that his wounds be examined by a doctor. There wasn't a scratch on him. A bloody ax, a knife, and Hellman's bloody clothes cemented the case against him, and the evidence pointed to him attacking Mary with the ax in her sleep.

Due to a delay, Hellman was still in jail awaiting trial in November 1840, when he was left alone in an unlocked room, and made his escape. He headed to Baltimore, where he might have run a shop yet another name, on Pennsylvania Avenue near Hamburg.Two years later, he turned up in Fowlesburg using the name Adam Horn.

After Horn's capture in Philadelphia, he was charged by a grand jury once for each of the nine methods he had employed in Malinda's murder. The Sun listed them: "1st, with a hatchet; 2d with a knife; 3d, with a wooden club; 4th, with a stone; 5th, with his fist; 6th, by dashing her against the ground; 7th, by strangling with a cord around the neck; 8th, by strangling or choaking with the hands; 9th, by pistol shot, through the head."

The trial drew enormous attention, running from November 21 to 27 as a parade of witnesses took the stand, and Horn (or Hellman) was sentenced to death. A special scaffold was built, higher than the walls of the Baltimore jail, and a record-breaking crowd of 30,000 people turned out to see him hanged, covering both side of the Falls River. 500 tickets were issued for entry into the jail yard, some of which were sold for a profit. Horn's head was examined by a prominent Philadelphia phrenologist, he said goodbye to his remaining son, and spoke to a priest, then ascended the scaffold. The Sun reported that a hush fell over the crowd, broken by the shrieks of women as Adam Horn dropped. He "struggled for about four minutes," then died. The reporter remarked that "I would venture to say that there was never an execution that took place in the United States, if in the world, marked with such dignity and propriety as this."

It wasn't the last of Adam Horn, though. Because a priest forgave his sins while he was in jail, his life was used as an example of the corruption of the Catholic Church (to which he belonged, though his wives did not) by anti-Catholics at home and abroad. And for a long time after his execution, his tale was told as a ghost story, every March, when it snowed in Baltimore. Looks like we got off easy, though. In Logan County Ohio, Hellman (a.k.a. Hatchet man) haunts the grave site of his first wife. Or, more likely, he doesn't.

No one seems to know where Horn is buried. It's tough to believe that his son Henry, who was disowned by his father, would cart the body back to Ohio for burial in the family plot. After his execution, the Sun speculated that his body would be taken to Virginia, but for now his final resting place is a mystery.

Note: I hope to return to the subject of Adam Horn soon, when I have time, to return to the scene of the crime and see what's there.