Speaker 1: Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership
Speaker 1: with iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Herman Webster Mudget of New Hampshire, better known by the
Speaker 2: alias H. H. Holmes, was responsible for anywhere from twenty
Speaker 2: to two hundred killings before he was apprehended in eighteen
Speaker 2: ninety four. He admitted to twenty seven while in custody,
Speaker 2: and is known as one of America's first serial killers,
Speaker 2: but not the first. Welcome to Criminalia, I'm Maria Tremarky.
Speaker 1: And I'm Holly Frye. That title of first serial killer,
Speaker 1: at least on record, belongs to a duo, the Harps.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you'll see them listed as the Harp Brothers, but
Speaker 1: that's a little complicated. Joshua Harper, known as Macaiah or
Speaker 1: Big Harp, and William Harper, known as Wiley or Little Harp,
Speaker 1: were born probably in seventeen sixty eight and seventeen seventy, respectively.
Speaker 1: Big Harp was described as quote bony and muscular. He's
Speaker 1: been called the brown to the smaller, red haired Little
Speaker 1: Harps brains. But make no mistake, both of these men
Speaker 1: shared a proclivity for carrying out unspeakable horrors. We know
Speaker 1: that they're killing spree in the late seventeen hundreds spanned
Speaker 1: a handful of states. We know they killed dozens and
Speaker 1: dozens of people. Historian John Musgrave has said of them, quote,
Speaker 1: the Harps were able to strike fear while they were living,
Speaker 1: and then became the boogeyman for generations to come. This
Speaker 1: may be be warned the most violent episode we have
Speaker 1: ever yet had.
Speaker 2: First, though, let's talk briefly about what experts know about
Speaker 2: serial killers before we start talking about the story of
Speaker 2: this pair. Researchers believe serial killers are most often driven
Speaker 2: by a psychological thrill or or pleasure they get from
Speaker 2: their actions. They often lack empathy and guilt, and many
Speaker 2: are egocentric individuals, or at least become that way during
Speaker 2: their killing spree. Big and Little Harp murdered for the thrill,
Speaker 2: sometimes set off by minors lights, but there was really
Speaker 2: no rhyme or reason to it. They didn't consider monetary
Speaker 2: gain when choosing victims. It was just bloodlust. Dating back
Speaker 2: to ancient times, serial murderers have been chronicled around the world.
Speaker 2: The Harps are not considered the world's first serial killers,
Speaker 2: not even close, but they are the first documented American
Speaker 2: serial killers. The two committed murder and other crimes indiscriminately,
Speaker 2: mainly around the frontier town of Knoxville, but also in
Speaker 2: other parts of East Tennessee, Illinois, and Kentucky.
Speaker 1: Though there is documentation about this pair of serial killers,
Speaker 1: historians have noted that there are still some difficut culties
Speaker 1: differentiating between fact and legend when it comes to the Harps.
Speaker 1: This happens often when you're relying on documents that are
Speaker 1: hundreds of years old. Sometimes it happens with documents that
Speaker 1: are even just years old, and sometimes recollections written down
Speaker 1: from oral history can be embellished. This problem is only
Speaker 1: exacerbated when a person goes by more than one name.
Speaker 1: We do know they were highwaymen and river pirates and
Speaker 1: of course murderers who operated in the late seventeen hundreds.
Speaker 1: Those are facts, and we will not get into all
Speaker 1: of their exploits. We really can't. They were very, very busy.
Speaker 1: But regardless, their story is a list of atrocities that
Speaker 1: are frightful, inhumane, and truly the things of nightmares.
Speaker 2: Not a lot that's fact is known about their childhood,
Speaker 2: or family or background. Many consider them to have been cousins,
Speaker 2: although they may have been brothers. It's believed that their
Speaker 2: family were Scottish immigrants who had settled in Orange County,
Speaker 2: North Carolina, around seventeen sixty, and that the family changed
Speaker 2: its name from Harper to Harp. Though there's no definitive
Speaker 2: explanation for that, a common explanation is the American Revolution
Speaker 2: was about to spark. This was a time when the
Speaker 2: United States was still the Thirteen Colonies, and the Harpers,
Speaker 2: new to the Colonies, were Scots loyal to the British Crown,
Speaker 2: but wanted to fit in with their patriot neighbors, so
Speaker 2: Harper became Harp.
Speaker 1: Another fuzzy fact from their childhood is that the Harps
Speaker 1: may have watched as their parents were brutally tortured and
Speaker 1: hanged for their loyalist affiliations. If that's true, that kind
Speaker 1: of devastating personal tragedy could have helped put the orphaned
Speaker 1: Harps on track for a haphazard life of butchery and depravity.
Speaker 1: But to be clear, this isn't a fact that appears
Speaker 1: in all of the documentation about them, so consider that
Speaker 1: particular element of the story with a grain of salt.
Speaker 2: The two left North Carolina, hoping to find work as
Speaker 2: slave overseers. They didn't because the American Revolution interrupted their plans.
Speaker 2: Like their parents did, the duo sided with the British,
Speaker 2: but if we're being honest, they didn't really care about sides.
Speaker 2: They were much more interested in violence than patriotic duty.
Speaker 1: It said.
Speaker 2: They spent most of their time raping, pillaging, and killing
Speaker 2: during the War for American Independence, and they may have
Speaker 2: spent some of that time actually fighting in a few battles.
Speaker 1: Upon leaving the military, they joined with the Cherokee Chickamauga
Speaker 1: village of Nikajack, located southwest of modern day Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Speaker 1: During that time, the men raided settlements with the tribe
Speaker 1: and also became good with and very fond of the Tomahawk.
Speaker 1: After the British surrendered at Yorktown, the Cherokee continued to
Speaker 1: war with those who identified as patriots. Big and Little
Speaker 1: Harp had already left for East Tennessee, where they settled
Speaker 1: alongside Beaver Creek, only about eight miles west of Knoxville.
Speaker 1: At first, they farmed and slaughtered hogs for a living,
Speaker 1: actually peacefully, which you'll soon come to find a little
Speaker 1: bit hard to believe, but even so, it didn't last.
Speaker 1: They began plundering hogs, sheep, horses, whatever they could grab
Speaker 1: from their neighbors. Barnes mysteriously started to burn down after
Speaker 1: a man named Edward Teal's horses were stolen from his
Speaker 1: stable and angry posse of locals captured the Harps, but
Speaker 1: the pair escaped while the captors tried to bring them
Speaker 1: to the Knoxville jail. Here we're going to take a
Speaker 1: break for a word from our sponsors, and when we're back,
Speaker 1: we're going to start doing a deeper dive into their killings,
Speaker 1: which frankly reads like a demon's to do list.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Criminalia. The Harps killing spree lasted for
Speaker 2: roughly eighteen months. Let's talk about the hellish atrocities they raised.
Speaker 1: The tale of horrors the Harps engaged in is really
Speaker 1: just beginning in this story. Sometime before seventeen ninety four,
Speaker 1: while living in Tennessee, they kidnapped two women, Maria Davidson
Speaker 1: and Susan Wood. Susan was the daughter of Captain James
Speaker 1: Wood of the United States Continental Army. Here's an aside.
Speaker 1: During the American Revolution, the Harps took part in a
Speaker 1: lawless Tory gang, and little Harp had been shot and
Speaker 1: wounded by the captain for the attempted rape of a
Speaker 1: young girl. Some accounts call these kidnappings of Maria and
Speaker 1: Susan marriages, and that needs air quotes because there is
Speaker 1: absolutely no evidence that these relationships were legally bound or
Speaker 1: at all consented to you by the women. Let's be
Speaker 1: very clear, they were captives. The men were violent and
Speaker 1: abusive to Maria and Susan, and when any children were
Speaker 1: born from these unions, those children were murdered.
Speaker 2: It was in seventeen ninety eight when the Harps rampage
Speaker 2: officially took off. The beginning of that eighteen month killing spree.
Speaker 2: They became one of the most violent serial killing pairs
Speaker 2: known to America still to this day. When they began
Speaker 2: career murdering. It began in Knox County, and the community was,
Speaker 2: as you may imagine, alarmed. One victim, maybe not their first,
Speaker 2: but definitely an early victim who stood out was a
Speaker 2: man named Johnson, who the Harps believed was trying to
Speaker 2: force them out of town. In reality, everyone wanted them
Speaker 2: out of town. The Harps killed Johnson carved his body open,
Speaker 2: disemboweled him, and filled him with stones before they tossed
Speaker 2: him into the nearby Holston River. Johnson was not the
Speaker 2: only victim who met that fate.
Speaker 1: John Musgrave has also stated of the pair, quote, I
Speaker 1: think they realized early in they were not part of
Speaker 1: the elect and decided if they were going to Hell,
Speaker 1: they might as well make a grand entrance. The viciousness
Speaker 1: of the all but civil war in the Carolinas during
Speaker 1: the American Revolution didn't help, and certainly led them away
Speaker 1: to the wilderness and the less than civilized norms they
Speaker 1: lived over the next couple of decades.
Speaker 2: After killing two more men, they trekked through Tennessee and
Speaker 2: traveled north to Kentucky through the Cumberland Gap, the point
Speaker 2: in the Cumberland Mountains where Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia all meet.
Speaker 2: There they killed two more men from Maryland who were
Speaker 2: traveling in the opposite direction. Graphic accounts of these killings
Speaker 2: suggest Big Harp used his tomahawk skills to split open
Speaker 2: the head of one of the victims. Another of the
Speaker 2: murders involved a young man named John Langford, who was
Speaker 2: traveling alone in the wilderness with a purse full of silver.
Speaker 2: His body was discovered as Johnson's was disemboweled and filled
Speaker 2: with stones, a manner that would become kind of a
Speaker 2: favorite technique for the pair. On April twenty second, seventeen
Speaker 2: ninety nine, the Kentucky governor issued a three hundred dollars
Speaker 2: reward on each of the Harps.
Speaker 1: In December that year, the men and the women that
Speaker 1: they had kidnapped as their wives were captured for those
Speaker 1: murders after a local innkeeper fingered them, and they were
Speaker 1: jailed in Danville, Kentucky. Two months into their incarceration, the
Speaker 1: men escaped and in doing so left the women behind,
Speaker 1: each of whom was pregnant. The women were acquitted of
Speaker 1: the Harp's crimes. The son of the innkeeper who identified
Speaker 1: them was found dead.
Speaker 2: The men kept moving into less populated areas. Little Harp
Speaker 2: married a minister's daughter named Sarah Rice, Well maybe married.
Speaker 2: Big Harp kidnapped two sisters for himself, Susan and Betsy Roberts,
Speaker 2: as his own to abuse, terrorize, and impregnate, Similar to
Speaker 2: Davidson and Wood before them, The women were beaten and
Speaker 2: forced to remain with Big against their will. It's unclear
Speaker 2: if Little's wife, Sarah knew what she was getting into,
Speaker 2: or if this had actually been a kidnapping and not
Speaker 2: a marriage. And also, like in Davidson and Wood's situation,
Speaker 2: most if not all, of the newborns produced through these
Speaker 2: relationships were killed. For instance, at a camp a few
Speaker 2: miles northeast of Russellville, Kentucky, it's well reported that Big
Speaker 2: Harp smashed his infant daughter's head into a tree because
Speaker 2: she was crying. Some later accounts suggest it was the
Speaker 2: only time he admitted he regretted a murder, but most
Speaker 2: do not believe that is a fact. When a man
Speaker 2: named Moses DAWs, who may or may not have traveled
Speaker 2: with them, showed concern for the brutalized women, he too
Speaker 2: was murdered.
Speaker 1: Historian John Musgrave, who we mentioned earlier, theorized that quote
Speaker 1: the Harp wives were brutalized, battered women trying to survive
Speaker 1: and protect whatever children they could. During the early part
Speaker 1: of seventeen ninety nine, when the Harps were barely midway
Speaker 1: into their killing spree, all three were pregnant or had
Speaker 1: just given birth. They had no way to survive apart
Speaker 1: from the men not in the wilderness when caring for
Speaker 1: infant children. That's even if they thought they could get
Speaker 1: away without being tracked down and killed by their husbands.
Speaker 2: Here we're going to take a break for a word
Speaker 2: from our sponsors. The Harps terrorized the American frontier, killing
Speaker 2: aimlessly as they traveled. We have more atrocities to talk
Speaker 2: about when we return.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Criminalia, where we sadly have many more
Speaker 1: bodies to talk about. The light at the end of
Speaker 1: the tunnel will also talk about the deaths of the Harps.
Speaker 2: Big and Little Harp still each had a three hundred
Speaker 2: dollars bounty on each of his head. Next, they made
Speaker 2: their way to a river pirate gang. Samuel Mason's gang's
Speaker 2: notorious Caven Rock stronghold was in Illinois, and while en
Speaker 2: route to it, the Harps, to no one's surprise, continued
Speaker 2: their killing spree. Numerous people died, including women and children.
Speaker 2: Once they met up with Mason's River Pirates, a gang
Speaker 2: in the lucrative business of raiding merchant flatboats on the
Speaker 2: Ohio River, they were welcomed, but not for long. Even
Speaker 2: those who chose a pirate's life, which could often be violent,
Speaker 2: couldn't handle the bloodlust of the Harps. The end came
Speaker 2: when the men got into the habit of stripping victims naked,
Speaker 2: tying them to a blindfolded horse, and then running that
Speaker 2: horse off the top of a nearby bluff. In May
Speaker 2: of seventeen ninety nine, not long after they had arrived,
Speaker 2: the Harps, including their captive women, were forced to leave
Speaker 2: the pirate stronghold because of their horrific behavior.
Speaker 1: The Harps, as we see, never put but then would
Speaker 1: you if you were driven to kill all humans? They
Speaker 1: and their captive women walked hundreds of miles through rural
Speaker 1: Kentucky and Tennessee on the way of course, adding to
Speaker 1: their kill list. In their wake. They left William Ballard's
Speaker 1: disemboweled corpse drifting in the Holston River. James Brassel was
Speaker 1: discovered with his throat violently hacked open. In south central Kentucky,
Speaker 1: John Graves and his teenage son were found dead. Their
Speaker 1: heads had been axed. While passing through Logan County, Kentucky.
Speaker 1: The pair murdered a young enslaved girl and a family
Speaker 1: while they slept at their camp. They killed a farmer
Speaker 1: named Bradbury. They killed a man named Hardin, and they
Speaker 1: killed a boy named Coffee. Another man named John Tully
Speaker 1: was also found murdered of.
Speaker 2: The Harp's travels. Musgrave has also noted quote the near
Speaker 2: wilderness front tier west of the Appalachians and the sparsity
Speaker 2: of settlements allowed the Harps maximum freedom to commit their deprivations.
Speaker 2: Kentucky and Tennessee were states young but at least formally organized,
Speaker 2: but when they crossed north of the Ohio River at
Speaker 2: Cavan Rock, they were in the old Northwest Territory, where
Speaker 2: the nearest law man was more than one hundred miles away.
Speaker 1: Seeking shelter, that August, the Harps stayed overnight at a
Speaker 1: farmstead in Webster County, Kentucky, at the invitation of a
Speaker 1: Missus Stegall, who was being kind to those passing through,
Speaker 1: and for her kindness, the men slit the throat of
Speaker 1: her four month old baby boy when he cried, and
Speaker 1: when she discovered the baby's body, they killed her too.
Speaker 1: They killed another overnight guest named Major William Love. Missus
Speaker 1: Stegall's husband, Moses, who had been away during the murder
Speaker 1: of his wife and infant son, set out to kill
Speaker 1: the Harps as soon as he returned.
Speaker 2: They were preparing to kill another local Kentucky settler, George Smith,
Speaker 2: when they were found by a local posse on August
Speaker 2: twenty fourth, seventeen ninety nine. The men called for their surrender,
Speaker 2: but that did not happen. The Harps fled on horseback.
Speaker 2: Big Harp was shot in the leg and the back,
Speaker 2: making it easier for those hunting him to catch up
Speaker 2: with him. As he lay dying on the ground, he
Speaker 2: confessed to twenty murders, and then Moses Stegau, looking for
Speaker 2: vengeance and part of the posse searching for him, took
Speaker 2: his blade and slowly sawed off BIG's head, described with
Speaker 2: very gory detail that he started at the back of
Speaker 2: the neck while Big was still conscious. Later, Big was
Speaker 2: hanged on a pole near Henderson, Kentucky, at a crossroads
Speaker 2: where for years the remaining pole was called Harp's Head.
Speaker 1: And Little Harp. He escaped and rejoined Samuel Mason's gang
Speaker 1: of pirates at Cavan Rock and for four years used
Speaker 1: the alias of John Sutton. During this time, a sizeable
Speaker 1: reward was placed on Mason's head, and Harp, with a
Speaker 1: pirate named James May, killed him for the money. But
Speaker 1: as they presented the head to authorities, they were arrested.
Speaker 1: If Harp thought that he wouldn't be recognized, he was
Speaker 1: gravely mistaken. Both men actually escaped, but their luck had
Speaker 1: run out. They were recaptured, tried, and then sentenced to
Speaker 1: be executed by hanging. In January of eighteen oh four,
Speaker 1: Little Harp was executed. His head was cut off and
Speaker 1: placed on a stake along the Natchez Road a warning
Speaker 1: to other outlaws. Big Harp may have confessed to twenty
Speaker 1: murders as he was dying, but historians believe the Harps
Speaker 1: killed at least forty men, women and children, and very
Speaker 1: likely more than that.
Speaker 2: In hindsight, for many historians, the Harp's capture was inevitable,
Speaker 2: and that's because they never had a motive just to
Speaker 2: desire or impulse to kill any other person who they
Speaker 2: happened to come across. John Musgrave has stated he never
Speaker 2: quote thought the Harps had an endgame other than to
Speaker 2: stay alive as long as they could. According to judge
Speaker 2: James Hall, who was one of the first to write
Speaker 2: about the Harps in the eighteen twenties, there were two
Speaker 2: types of men on the frontier. The first was the
Speaker 2: noble pioneer seeking to do right by his family and God.
Speaker 2: The second wasn't looking to advance civilization. He was trying
Speaker 2: to escape it. They were men, as Haul put it,
Speaker 2: with a blunt perception of virtue, which is a very
Speaker 2: polite way to put that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the thought of the word virtue in a sentence
Speaker 1: anywhere near the Harps feels a little bit weird, feels wrong.
Speaker 1: It's wrong. This is not as st with a lot
Speaker 1: of things that inspire me to be creative. However, we
Speaker 1: have rules, so I tried to pick out things that
Speaker 1: seemed like they might be a good fit. And this
Speaker 1: is another one where I turned to a popular spirit
Speaker 1: of the seventeen hundreds, which is brandy. So that's going
Speaker 1: to be in it, mm hmm. But then we have
Speaker 1: some other things. So this one starts out with an
Speaker 1: ounce of brandy, an ounce of London dry gin, and
Speaker 1: we're including that as a reference to the Harper family
Speaker 1: alliance to the royal crown. Yes, and then you're going
Speaker 1: to add an ounce of crem Denia, which we've used
Speaker 1: I think once before on this show, I believe, but
Speaker 1: it's been a minute. It's a liqueur it has kind
Speaker 1: of a sweet almondy flavor.
Speaker 2: I feel it's been a few minutes.
Speaker 1: It has that. So if you bought it a couple
Speaker 1: of seasons ago, bring out that bottle. Let's start, and
Speaker 1: then you're going to do two dashes of grapefruit bitters
Speaker 1: and you're gonna combine all of this and you're shaking
Speaker 1: tin with ice, give it a good shake, and then
Speaker 1: you will strain it into your cocktail glass. This is
Speaker 1: a weird one because it's like booze on booze on booze,
Speaker 1: and yet it does not taste all that boozy, and
Speaker 1: I don't know why, but it doesn't. Sometimes that happens,
Speaker 1: and it's dangerous because since it doesn't taste all that boozy,
Speaker 1: you can really throw it back and then you're like, wow,
Speaker 1: I just had a lot of alcohol. So yes, as
Speaker 1: always drink responsibly, but particularly if you make one of these,
Speaker 1: like don't chug a bunch. To make the mocktail version
Speaker 1: of this instead of brandy, you are going to steep
Speaker 1: some low sugar white grape juice with Earl Gray tea
Speaker 1: for a little while, and then I would do that
Speaker 1: like a four ounce with one tea bag and then
Speaker 1: you're obviously gonna have leftovers, so you can either make
Speaker 1: more or you can use that in something else. Actually,
Speaker 1: I like infused white grape juice that has a tea flavor,
Speaker 1: just with like a little bit of ginger ell or clips. Like,
Speaker 1: it's just a nice quick way to make a little bevy.
Speaker 1: So you're gonna use an ounce of that infused white
Speaker 1: grape juice, You're gonna use an ounce of flat tonic,
Speaker 1: and then in lieu of the kremdon noio. I would
Speaker 1: only do a half ounce of almonds syrup because otherwise
Speaker 1: I think it gets too sweet. So you might want
Speaker 1: to up the the grape juice and the gin a
Speaker 1: little bit, but not too much. If you do absolutely
Speaker 1: zero alcoholic content to the point that bitters are not cool.
Speaker 1: Just a few drops of grapefruit juice and like maybe
Speaker 1: a little saline or just throw some salt in. We'll
Speaker 1: do you just fine here, So same deal, Shake it
Speaker 1: with ice, pour it over, pour it into a chilled
Speaker 1: cocktail glass, and you have a mocktail. And we're calling
Speaker 1: this one discordant harp because I kept thinking out the
Speaker 1: idea of harp as an instrument that would normally make
Speaker 1: beautiful music instead of all of this murder.
Speaker 2: It's a horrible nightmare music.
Speaker 1: That's the discordant part. I hope if you try this
Speaker 1: you love it. I really really like this drink. Actually,
Speaker 1: it surprised me how much I liked it.
Speaker 2: I really like when grapefruit shows up in drinks, even
Speaker 2: in small amounts. You know, I'm a big fan.
Speaker 1: Here's the oddity. I don't love a grapefruit to eat,
Speaker 1: but I will drink grapefruit soda. You all use the bitterers.
Speaker 1: I have a grapefruit liqueur that I love. I don't
Speaker 1: know what that's about, but there you go. I have
Speaker 1: like regular grapefruit juice. I'm like hard pass, but somehow
Speaker 1: in other forms totally down.
Speaker 2: It was friends.
Speaker 1: It has to it needs friends, for sure. You're one
Speaker 1: hundred percent accurate there. So that is the discordant harp.
Speaker 1: And if you make it, I hope you love it.
Speaker 1: We sure love that you spend this time with us
Speaker 1: listening to stories that are in this case not all
Speaker 1: that delightful in terms of their content, but hopefully you
Speaker 1: learn something. And now you know that there have been
Speaker 1: terrible people around as long as we've had a country
Speaker 1: and way before that as well, forever. But we will
Speaker 1: be right back here next week with another story and
Speaker 1: some more drinks, and we hope you will join us
Speaker 1: for that. Criminalia is a production of Shondaland Audio in
Speaker 1: partnership with iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, please
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.