A minister was acquitted of a brutal 1832 murder. A new book revisits the case

When the words "Fall River, Massachusetts" and "true crime" go together, one name jumps out — with a bloody hatchet in hand: Lizzie Borden.

She was tried in 1893 — and acquitted — for the gruesome murder of her father and step-mother.

Today, the site of that crime is a bed-and-breakfast and museum and one of the city's biggest tourist attractions.

But decades before Borden was born, another murder trial captured the attention of New Englanders — that of Methodist minister Ephraim Avery.

He was accused of killing 30-year-old Sarah Maria Cornell.

"I was really drawn in when I read the letters that she wrote her family," says Kate Winkler Dawson, true crime historian and author of the new book about the case, The Sinners All Bow.

"And then, of course, there's this ominous note that she wrote and she locked in a trunk."

In fact, Sarah Cornell had left behind a bit of evidence incriminating Rev. Avery.

The victim

Cornell was known as a kind, generous woman as well as a skilled seamstress and weaver. She worked in Fall River in 1832, one of the many women who'd left their families to earn a living in the new factories that had sprung up all over New England.

"It was cheap, reliable labor for the factory owners, because you don't have men who are drinking and carousing around," says Dawson. "You had factory owners who were courting families and these young women and saying, 'Please come work for us, you'll have some financial independence. And, you know, you can kind of control your own life. We'll keep you protected.'"

This was a big shift. Women had typically married, raised families, and otherwise stayed at home. If they earned wages, it was usually doing domestic work.

"It made people very uncomfortable, as any shift in society makes people uncomfortable if they want to stay rooted in their old-fashioned ways" says Dawson, "And so I think the women were looked at, not with skepticism, but just really kind of cautiously, because with independence comes, really, the opportunity of becoming sinful. And this was a very, very religious area."

Sarah Cornell was herself enamored with the Methodist movement, which then was known for its charismatic style of worship: passionate preaching and camp meetings that lasted for days.

"They frankly sound like Burning Man, with religion," says Dawson. "There is alcohol. There are certainly a lot of flirting and certainly sex, to a point where one of my sources had said that there was a phrase called 'tent babies,' meaning: people would get pregnant so often at these tent revivals."

It was a camp meeting that eventually lead to Cornell's death.

Discovery of the body

On the morning of Dec. 21, 1832, on a farm on the southern part of town that was then in Tiverton, R.I., John Durfee saw a figure hanging by the neck from one of his hay poles. The corpse was dressed in a dark, heavy cloak and bonnet, its legs were bent with knees not far from the ground.

"It was 26 degrees overnight, so cold that her hair had been frozen to her face. She'd been there all night, which is horrible to think about," says Dawson.

Durfee yelled. Neighbors came running to his farm, including a doctor named Thomas Wilbur. He recognized the woman as his patient, and told those gathered that she'd been distraught: she was unmarried and pregnant. But at first, he didn't tell all that he knew.

The ground beneath Cornell was undisturbed, and her shoes were neatly next to her, says Dawson. "I just don't think it occurred to any of the men looking at her that this was anything but a suicide, the end to a sad girl's story."

But when the body was brought inside, and the town matrons undressed it to wash and prepare it for burial, they immediately noticed scratches, abrasions, skinned knees stained with grass, and bruises along Cornell's back. Bruises around both hips looked as they were made by large hands.

John Durfee retrieved Cornell's belongings from the boarding house where she lived.

Inside her trunk were letters — some from her family, some sent to her unsigned — a vial of tansy oil and a note written in Cornell's own hand. It read: "If I am missing, enquire of the Rev. E.K. Avery."

Ephraim Kingsbury Avery was a Methodist minister, married with a young family. Sarah Cornell had attended his church, briefly worked for him, and had asked for his help when questions over her moral character threatened her involvement with the Methodists.

After Cornell's burial on the farm, a disturbed Dr. Wilbur revealed to Durfee what Cornell had told him: Avery had assaulted her at a camp meeting that August. When she confronted him later with news that she was pregnant, he gave her the tansy oil with instructions to take it to end the pregnancy. But Cornell wanted to have the baby. She'd been negotiating with Avery: her silence in exchange for financial support. Wilbur thought Avery had been manipulating her.

Authorities arrested Avery, and tried him for murder that spring.

Two writers and the Cornell Case

A poet, writer and New England blue-blood named Catharine R. Williams was appalled by what she was reading and hearing about the dead woman.

"Sarah had made some mistakes early in life," Dawson says. "She had been accused and confessed of stealing some small items of clothing. But in 1830, that would have haunted you for the rest of your life as a single young woman."

Avery's defense trashed Cornell's character before the trial and during, "to essentially slut shame her," says Dawson. "Everything that you can think that happens today, happened to Sarah. And it was the first time it had been documented in a criminal case, where the victim of a murder has been just disparaged by everybody on the stand."

And it worked. Without hard evidence, the jury had enough reasonable doubt to acquit Avery.

Catharine Williams attended the trial. She also interviewed witnesses, retraced Cornell's last days and got Cornell's letters from her family. She wrote a book in 1833 called, Fall River: An Authentic Narrative. Dawson says it was invaluable as a source.

Kristin Boudreau, a professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, says Fall River is a great read. It's one of the many writings by women that were out of print until Brown University republished it in 1993, and she came across the text while researching. Boudreau has since written about Cornell's death, including an academic paper called "'The Scarlet Letter' and the 1833 Murder Trial of the Reverend Ephraim Avery."

Boudreau notes some parallels between Nathaniel Hawthorne's story about adultery in Puritan times, published in 1850, and the Cornell case. First, both Hawthorne's main character Hester Prynne and factory worker Sarah Cornell were known for their needlework and charity.

And then there's Hawthorne's minister, Arthur Dimmesdale.

"He preaches in an almost Pentecostal tongue. So Hawthorne, the narrator, describes him as very passionate in his preaching and very rhetorical and moving. And, you know, that was characteristic of Methodist ministers in the 1830s, but not colonial ministers."

Methodist ministers in the 1830s like Ephraim Avery. Boudreau says there's another parallel to Dimmesdale.

"If you accept that Avery was the father of [Sarah Cornell's] child and killed her, they were both hypocrites because they both presented themselves as law abiding and pious. And yet, they had this other part of their character that they didn't reveal."

Boudreau says it's certain that Hawthorne, living in Salem, Mass., knew about the case. It was in the public sphere for a couple of years, "in the newspapers, in songs that were written, plays," she says. "It was a way for ordinary people to conduct a new trial, because a lot of people were angry that he was acquitted."

Hawthorne also wrote in his journals about visiting a wax museum, where figures of Ephraim Avery and Sarah Cornell were featured in a gallery of killers and their victims. "He says that the representation of Avery — he looks like an ugly devil. And it was said to be a very lifelike representation," Boudreau says.

Nathaniel Hawthorne told a sympathetic story about his minister in The Scarlet Letter, one of mercy and redemption. But there's little redemption for Ephraim Avery in Kate Winkler Dawson's book, The Sinners All Bow.

The Anonymous Letters

The unsigned letters found in Sarah Cornell's trunk set up that fateful meeting at the Durfee farm. At the murder trial, prosecutors could not prove they were written by Avery. The defense called witnesses who claimed that Cornell had said she could mimic handwriting.

Dawson decided to present copies of the anonymous letters to an expert in handwriting analysis, Eileen Page. She also provided copies of letters Cornell had written to her family, including one detailing her conversations with Avery about her pregnancy, and letters Ephraim Avery had written, including one about Cornell.

Page's conclusion: Avery wrote the anonymous letters.

Dawson also points out something obvious: Avery misspells Cornell's name as "Connell." So does the anonymous letter writer.

"I think that he wrote her and said, 'Let's settle this. Meet me here,'" concludes Dawson. "They walked over to the Durfee farm. I do not know if this was premeditated on his part," she adds, "but she left the boarding house that night in a wonderful mood, because she thought she was going to get money. She thought she would be able to raise this child and that he was finally going to come to an agreement."

Dawson thinks they argued, and that Avery may have beaten her to try to force her to miscarry. "Clearly she was fighting because there were marks all over her body," says Dawson. She thinks Avery might have knocked Cornell out, grabbed some twine, then strangled her before hanging her from the hay pole, leaving her to look as if she'd hanged herself.

Today, Cornell's body lies in a lonely grave in Fall River's Oak Grove Cemetery. John Durfee moved her there after the trial, worried that the notoriety of the case would bring grave robbers to his farm. Her headstone is not far from that of Lizzie Borden, and doesn't seem to attract much attention. But Kate Winkler Dawson says it's still important to remember what happened to this single, pregnant woman in 1832.

"Sarah Cornell could be the young woman you meet on the street tomorrow. It's a different time period, but the same story, all the same human emotions, the same themes, everything. It was a tragedy then," Dawson says, "it's a tragedy now."

Samantha Balaban and Ed McNulty produced and edited this report.