Introduction
True crime history often tempts you to question established verdicts and search for hidden conspiracies in century-old murders. You look at infamous historical cases and wonder if the wrong person took the blame.
J. Dennis Robinson investigates the infamous 1873 Smuttynose Island ax murders on the isolated Isles of Shoals off the coast of Maine and New Hampshire. An exhaustive historical investigation of the infamous 1873 Smuttynose Island ax murders that debunks modern conspiracy theories and reveals the true sociopathic nature of the killer, Louis Wagner.
The book follows a clear historical trajectory from the early settlement of the islands to the tourism boom, the fateful night of the crime, the frantic manhunt, the courtroom trial, and the enduring cultural legacy. You will examine the evidence to answer several historical mysteries:
- How did a destitute Prussian immigrant execute a brutal nighttime raid on an isolated island home?
- What physical and circumstantial evidence sealed the fate of Louis Wagner during his trial?
- Why do modern writers continue to blame the surviving Norwegian victim instead of the convicted killer?
1. History and Setting of the Shoals
The Isles of Shoals evolved from an indigenous fishing base and a seventeenth-century industrial cod empire into a nineteenth-century luxury resort.
Prehistoric Habitation
You can trace the origins of the nine small islands back 12,000 years ago when Paleo-Indians traveled along the coast of Maine as the last Ice Age receded. Glaciers flattened the tips of a flooded mountain range to create two hundred scattered acres. Four islands belong to New Hampshire and five belong to Maine.
From the highest point on Smuttynose, thirty feet above sea level, you could see the entire coastline from Boon Island and Mount Agamenticus down to Cape Ann. Archaeologist Nathan Hamilton and his crew unearthed more than three hundred thousand artifacts, including prehistoric ceramics, arrowheads, and calcined fish bones from the triangular two-acre front lawn of Smuttynose. Aboriginal people visited the islands across eight separate periods starting six thousand years ago.
The Cod Economy
Captain John Smith visited the region in 1614, named it New England, and later published A Description of New England in 1616 containing his famous map of the area. Smith promoted New England as a high-profit fishing station where salted Atlantic cod could rival diamonds in value.
During the seventeenth century, the islands operated as an industrial fishing factory. Up to six hundred men worked at island factories on Smuttynose, Hog, and Star Islands. Specialized assembly-line crews performed repetitive tasks:
- The throater cut the cod from belly to anus.
- The header ripped out the entrails, tossed the liver into one basket and the roe into another, sliced off the head, and kicked it into the sea.
- The splitter separated the fish flesh from the backbone with rapid knife movements.
- The fish were dried, turned, and salted on rocks or wooden platforms called flakes.
2. Tourism and the Norwegian Immigrants
Thomas Laighton transformed the islands into a summer resort while Norwegian families like the Hontvets revived the local fishing trade.
The Resort Transformation
In 1839, Thomas Laighton purchased four islands from the Haley family. He operated a lighthouse on White Island before renovating the old Haley hotel into the Mid-Ocean House.
In 1842, the Laighton family began summering on Smuttynose Island. On June 15, 1848, the grand Appledore Hotel opened for its first season with $2,500 in funds provided by the Thaxter family.
Nathaniel Hawthorne visited the Isles of Shoals in 1852, stayed at the Appledore Hotel, and recorded his impressions of the islands and local inhabitants in his journal.
Boston merchant John R. Poor systematically bought up the property of the Star Island fishing village of Gosport to construct a massive luxury Victorian resort. Using a Portsmouth go-between named Nathan F. Mathes, Poor acquired almost all island deeds by paying off overdue taxes and compensating impoverished residents.
Arrival of the Hontvets
Following the Civil War, a quarter of the population of Norway left their homeland in that era. John and Maren Hontvet immigrated as part of this major wave of Scandinavian migration.
On August 17, 1866, John and Maren married in Boston. They found an ideal home on Smuttynose where John fished commercially aboard the Clara Bella.
Musician Ole Bull raised $365 during his Appledore concert for Norwegian families. In 1858, Dr. Henry Ingersoll Bowditch visited Smuttynose and described the decaying Mid-Ocean House and shark remains in the cove before the Hontvets restored purpose to the island.
Karen Christensen arrived from Norway in March 1871 at twenty-nine years old. She worked as a domestic servant for Celia Thaxter's family before becoming a central figure in the Smuttynose tragedy.
3. The Night of the Murders
The Accused
Destitute Prussian immigrant Louis Wagner monitored the Hontvets, stole a dory, and rowed to Smuttynose Island to rob their savings.
After his lodging on Smuttynose ended, Wagner lost all his personal effects when the fishing schooner Addison Gilbert sank after colliding with a sloop near Portsmouth Harbor Light. John Hontvet and his crew were forced to work through the night baiting trawls in Portsmouth because a late train delayed their bait supply, unknowingly leaving the Smuttynose women unprotected. Louis Wagner closely monitored John Hontvet's earnings and learned that the fishermen had left their wallets on the island while intending to return home that night, creating a fatal window of opportunity for robbery.
While standing on Walker's Wharf on March 5, 1873, Wagner repeatedly asked John Hontvet whether the men were heading back to Smuttynose that night before the delayed bait train forced the men to spend the night working in Portsmouth.
The Rowing Journey
Louis Wagner stole a dory in Portsmouth and rowed approximately ten miles to the Isles of Shoals under favorable weather conditions, aiming to steal the Hontvets' savings. Wagner capitalized on clear skies, calm seas, a rising moon, and a swift outgoing tide to navigate past three ocean lighthouses. He believed he could complete the robbery and return before anyone noticed the missing boat or money.
James and Peter Jackson tied David Burke's dory with two half hitches at the base of Pickering Street at 7:30 p.m., only to find it missing an hour later. Karen Christensen's unexpected presence on Smuttynose Island disrupted Wagner's plan and triggered the murders. Wagner expected to find only Maren and Anethe in the house. Karen had stayed behind due to a shift in the wind that canceled her planned shopping trip to Portsmouth, placing her in the kitchen where Wagner encountered her.
Karen planned to shop in Portsmouth and had copper coins, three quarters, a dime, and a white button from Maren's sewing basket in her locked purse.
4. The Crime and Escape
Recognized by the women after a botched robbery attempt, Wagner escalated from burglary to brutal homicide, murdering Karen Christensen and Anethe Christensen with an ax.
The Attack
After Karen woke and spoke, Wagner struck her with a kitchen chair. Later, when Anethe shouted his name from outside the window, Wagner attacked her with an ax and subsequently strangled Karen in the other apartment. The kitchen clock registered 1:07 a.m. when it crashed to the floor.
Anethe cried out "Louis! Louis! Louis!" as Wagner approached her in the moonlight before he struck her on the head.
Maren Hontvet managed to escape the house through a window and survived the night by hiding among the jagged rocks of Smuttynose Island. Despite wearing only her nightclothes and lacking shoes, Maren barricaded a door, assisted Anethe in escaping, and ultimately crouched among the freezing boulders with her dog Ringe while Wagner hunted her.
Maren hid near the southeastern tip of the island close to the water, where the waves could almost reach her hand, walking three-quarters of a mile across frozen terrain.
Wagner ransacked the Hontvet home but only recovered a small amount of cash, leaving behind a crime scene filled with unexamined forensic clues. Failing to locate the hundreds of dollars he sought, Wagner stole roughly sixteen dollars from purses and trunks, ate food in the kitchen, and washed in the well before fleeing.
Wagner stole a silver half dollar and a white button intended for Anethe from Karen's purse, resulting in a total loot of about sixteen dollars, while missing $10 in a pocketbook inside the trunk and $145 in cash tucked between sheets. The Red House stood thirty feet away from the open well.
Jorges Ingebretsen rescued a frostbitten and traumatized Maren from Malaga Island on the morning of March 6, bringing the news of the murders to the islanders. Spotted by the Ingebretsen boys while signaling with a skirt, Maren was ferried to Appledore Island, where she named Louis Wagner as the killer to Celia Thaxter and returning fishermen.
Ivan Christensen departed Portsmouth on the Clara Bella at six a.m., set trawls at 6:45 a.m., and experienced a ten a.m. reunion of John Hontvet with Maren after discovering his wife Anethe's body on the kitchen floor.
Flight to Boston
Eyewitnesses in New Castle and Portsmouth tracked a suspicious stranger moving quickly from the direction of Little Harbor toward Boston on the morning after the murders. Multiple residents, including night watchmen Charles Campbell and Israel Fletcher, as well as ferry passengers and townspeople, spotted a disheveled man wearing a white hat, blue overalls, rubber boots, and a red scarf who avoided main roads, crossed a broken bridge using a makeshift plank, and acted nervously.
Sarah Campbell spotted the stranger looking around through her window at dawn, and the Amazeen brothers helped him cross the washed-out New Castle bridge using a twenty-five-foot wooden rail at 6:00 a.m. Israel Fletcher saw the unknown man crossing the Mill Pond at 6:40 a.m., and Wagner was seen passing Liberty Bridge in Puddle Dock at 7:15 a.m.
After arriving in Boston by train, Wagner immediately changed his appearance and wardrobe, using stolen funds to buy new clothes, visit a barber, and seek out old acquaintances. Wagner purchased a train ticket for $1.45, got his beard and hair shaved off by a barber for thirty-five cents, bought a new hat, coat, vest, and shoes from various merchants, and visited old acquaintances including shoemaker Jacob Todtman and boarding house operator Katherine Brown.
Wagner visited Jacob Todtman's shoe shop on Fleet Street where he changed into new clothes, drank kimmel liqueur, and made a strange remark about seeing a woman lie as still as a boot, having spent $10.00 on new clothes on Hanover Street after taking the 9:10 a.m. Thursday morning train from Portsmouth.
5. Arrest and Mounting Evidence
Police arrested Wagner in Boston amid a furious mob, uncovering a damning trail of eyewitnesses, stolen money, and a bloody shirt.
The Arrest
Boston police arrested Wagner at a North Street boarding house based on a telegraph message sent from Portsmouth authorities. Marshal Frank Johnson and assistant Thomas Entwistle telegraphed a description to Boston police. Officers James Haley and William Gallagher confronted Wagner as he entered the boarding house at 295 North Street, searched him, and brought him to the station house. Wagner arrived at the Boston police station at 8:45 p.m. Officers found a silver half-dollar in Wagner's possession during the search.
When officers James Haley and William Gallagher grabbed Wagner on the sidewalk, he asked to go upstairs and put his boots on, to which the officer replied that his slippers were well enough.
Thousands of angry townspeople and about two hundred fishermen gathered at the Portsmouth depot. Police and a squad of bayonet-charging marines had to protect the prisoner from being trampled or lynched as they escorted him through the streets. Marshal Frank Johnson stopped the train fifteen minutes before the depot to sneak Wagner through back streets, but the crowd still surrounded them on Bridge Street and threw blows. Wagner weighed 170 pounds, and the prisoner's scheduled arrival time at the Portsmouth depot was 12:30 p.m.
John Hontvet, Ivan Christensen, and an injured Maren Hontvet confronted Wagner at the police station three days after the murders. Maren and John verbally berated him and accused him of killing the women, while Wagner calmly denied the charges and claimed he never left Portsmouth that night. John Hontvet shouted threats at Wagner through the cell bars, stating that hanging and hell were too good for him and that he ought to be cut to pieces and put on fish-hooks.
Physical Evidence
Investigators gathered a strong chain of circumstantial evidence against Wagner, culminating in the discovery of his bloody, torn shirt hidden behind a privy vault. Physical evidence continued to pile up, including heavily worn thole pins on the stolen dory, eyewitness identifications at the New Castle bridge, and missing clothing. Mary Johnson and police officers eventually discovered Wagner's missing white shirt, torn and stained with blood, hidden behind the privy of the Water Street boarding house.
Mary Johnson examined the blood-stained shirt found hidden in the snow behind the privy and positively identified the stitching and collar as belonging to Wagner. Stolen money from the Hontvet House totaled an estimated 13 to 16 dollars. The wooden thole pins on the recovered dory were worn down overnight by 0.25 inches.
Louis Wagner's secret transfer from Portsmouth to Maine sparked violent riots among local fishermen and citizens determined to lynch the accused. Armed mobs hurled bricks and stones at the police escort, injuring officers and damaging the train as law enforcement bravely shielded Wagner and transported him north. Marshal Thomas Entwistle was hit by stones and cocked his revolver to scatter the angry crowd at Hanover Street while smuggling Wagner onto a smoking car. Approximately 1,000 people assembled near the North Church, and Wagner spent 36 hours in the Portsmouth jail.
6. The Trial in Alfred
Prosecution Arguments
Prosecutors presented an overwhelming hailstorm of circumstantial evidence during the trial in Alfred, Maine, while the defense challenged early forensic blood science.
Lead prosecutor Harris Merrill Plaisted and attorney George Yeaton argued that circumstantial evidence multiplies rather than merely adds up like a chain. Yeaton rejected the traditional metaphor of a chain being no stronger than its weakest link. He argued instead that multiple independent circumstances multiply against each other to create an overwhelming proof comparable to a hailstorm.
Yeaton detailed how footprints in fresh snow or the moon controlling tides demonstrate that much of human knowledge relies on circumstantial conclusions.
The 44-year-old Harris Merrill Plaisted oversaw the four days of evidence presentations. Witnesses including Maren Hontvet, Ivan Christensen, and various fishermen provided damning testimony placing Wagner near the crime scene and establishing his dire financial desperation.
Ivan Christensen walked wearily to the witness stand and described finding his wife Anethe dead on the floor of the Red House.
Dr. Horace Chase testified as a pioneering forensic expert, using a microscope to claim that dried bloodstains on Wagner's clothing were of human origin. Chase soaked blood corpuscles in serum and used a micrometer at four hundred times magnification to measure cell shapes and diameters, differentiating human round cells from oval fish cells. Max Fischacher cross-examined Dr. Chase by citing Taylor's Medical Jurisprudence regarding the unreliability of distinguishing certain blood types after twelve hours of soaking time in serum.
The Defense and Verdict
The defense strategy relied on highlighting the circumstantial nature of the evidence and presenting Wagner as an innocent working-class foreigner caught in a rush to judgment. Attorney Max Fischacher argued that while a terrible crime occurred, the state failed to prove Wagner was on Smuttynose Island to a moral certainty. The defense called 19 witnesses in total and delivered a 1-hour long opening statement on Friday afternoon, June 13, 1873.
Fischacher cited an anecdote where a New Hampshire witness mistakenly swore a deputy sheriff was the criminal, illustrating how unreliable eyewitnesses can be under stress.
Louis Wagner took the stand in his own defense, delivering a detailed, confident hour-by-hour alibi that contradicted multiple witnesses and attempted to cast suspicion on others. The 28-year-old worked aboard fishing vessels since he was 13, spending 7 years in America before the murder trial. Wagner claimed he spent the night drinking beer, baiting 900 hooks by himself aboard a different boat, vomiting near a town pump, and sleeping near a sofa in his landlady's house.
Wagner claimed he scratched his knuckles helping a lame fisherman load boxes on Pier Wharf, and explained his bloodstained shirt by recalling he asked Mrs. Johnson to tear it up for rags.
Judge William Griswold Barrows charged the jury on legal definitions, circumstantial evidence, and the implications of lying. The jury spent 55 minutes deliberating before returning with the verdict on Wednesday afternoon, June 24, 1873, when Wagner made his final trip to court for sentencing. The jury found Louis Wagner guilty of first-degree murder after a brief deliberation, and he was subsequently sentenced to hang.
When a deputy asked the condemned man how he felt immediately after the verdict was read, Wagner replied that he felt a damn sight better than he did after dinner.
7. Jailbreak and Execution
After executing a daring jailbreak using a rye straw, Wagner maintained his innocence to the end and was hanged alongside another ax murderer.
The Alfred Jailbreak
You watch as Louis Wagner turns the newly built Alfred facility inside out. On Wednesday, June 25, Wagner and two confederates escaped the thirty-thousand-dollar Alfred jail.
Wagner used a straw from his mattress stuffing to pick the lock after boasting to guards that he could escape at will. He created a broomstick dummy to fool the night watchmen and climbed through a ventilation scuttle. The group moved through the attic and pantry before fleeing along the railroad tracks.
The Execution
Governor Nelson Dingley Jr. personally interviewed Louis Wagner at Thomaston Prison. The governor rejected final clemency appeals and told Wagner he looked like a man who murdered his way out of a corner.
John True Gordon attempted suicide in his cell hours before the scheduled hanging. Guards found Gordon curled in a widening puddle of blood on his cell floor after using a 2.5 inches blade smuggled to him by visitors.
On June 25, 1875, authorities carried the bleeding Gordon to the scaffold alongside Wagner. Before the trapdoor opened, Wagner remarked to his companion, "Good and poor John, we're gone."
8. Myths and Legacy
Celia Thaxter immortalized the tragedy in true crime literature, while modern fiction and conspiracy theories unfairly blamed the surviving victim.
Celia Thaxter wrote a moving account of the murders for the Atlantic Monthly called "A Memorable Murder" in 1875. She sought to capture the true pathos of the victims. Tourists and relic hunters constantly visited Smuttynose Island, honeycombing the bedroom walls for blood spots and removing woodwork around the window through which Maren Hontvet escaped.
Edmund Pearson elevated true crime writing into an intellectual discipline he called "pure crime" or "pure murder." Pearson published Studies in Murder in 1924, followed by Murder at Smutty Nose and Other Murders in 1926, which included a seventy-page overview of the Louis Wagner case.
Literary Legacy
Anita Shreve published the bestselling historical fiction novel The Weight of Water in 1996. The novel popularized a fictional conspiracy theory blaming the survivor Maren Hontvet for the murders by presenting her as the actual killer driven by jealousy. In Shreve's novel, the protagonist Jean James discovers a fabricated long confessional letter by Maren Hontvet inside the fictional Portsmouth Athenaeum.
Modern skepticism and conspiracy theories blaming Maren are entirely groundless and contradicted by trial testimony and weather data. A university professor wrote a letter to Yankee Magazine in 1981 arguing that blood spots on Maren's nightclothes indicated she was the killer, ignoring the trial record showing she was beaten with a chair. Louis Wagner displayed classic traits of an antisocial personality disorder, psychopathy, and sociopathy decades before psychology formally classified these conditions.
Debunking Conspiracy Theories
You can spot charming antisocial predators by watching for specific behavioral red flags described in modern psychology:
- Be aware of braggarts and people who crave pity.
- Stay away from people who feign illness or pretend to be your soul mate.
- Watch out for those who blurt out strange confessional statements and then deny saying them.
- Shun those who never accept responsibility and blame everyone else for their problems.
- Avoid anyone who attaches to you like a parasite.
10 Key Ideas
- The Isles of Shoals evolved from a seventeenth-century industrial cod empire into a nineteenth-century luxury resort.
- Thomas Laighton transformed the islands into a summer resort while Norwegian families like the Hontvets revived the local fishing trade.
- Destitute Prussian immigrant Louis Wagner monitored the Hontvets, stole a dory, and rowed to Smuttynose Island to rob their savings.
- Recognized by the women after a botched robbery attempt, Wagner escalated from burglary to brutal homicide, murdering Karen Christensen and Anethe Christensen with an ax.
- Police arrested Wagner in Boston amid a furious mob, uncovering a damning trail of eyewitnesses, stolen money, and a bloody shirt.
- Prosecutors presented an overwhelming hailstorm of circumstantial evidence during the trial in Alfred, Maine, while the defense challenged early forensic blood science.
- After executing a daring jailbreak using a rye straw, Wagner maintained his innocence to the end and was hanged alongside another ax murderer.
- Celia Thaxter immortalized the tragedy in true crime literature, while modern fiction and conspiracy theories unfairly blamed the surviving victim.