“The population of Massachusetts is rapidly increasing. Triplets were born in Millbury the other day, and we learn from the Springfield Republican that John Kemmler of Holyoke has just been made the happy father of two daughters and a son born together.”
The Boston Post – March 5, 1878
The birth of a child is traditionally a time for happiness and celebration, of renewed hope and faith for the future. But for John Kemmler, an unemployed German immigrant living with his wife and two daughters in Holyoke, MA, the birth of his triplets – two girls and a boy – may have felt more crushing than joyful.
The reality of the triplets’ birth was far more grim than The Boston Post’s lighthearted report indicated. The boy, George, was stillborn, and sister Mary died just over a month later from unknown causes.
This left John and his German-born wife Anna with one surviving triplet, Amy (as she is referred to in newspaper reports although she is recorded as Emma in her Massachusetts birth record), and older sisters Annie and Ludmilla.
The family lived in a tenement building belonging to the Germania Mills where John had been employed as a fireman. But a year after the triplets’ birth, he’d emptied the family’s bank account and traveled west, leaving his family behind. There is no record of what reason he gave Anna and his employer, if any, for leaving. But when he returned, the mill informed him that his employment had been terminated and he and his family were ordered out of their apartment.
With five mouths to feed, no employment and impending homelessness – on top of the grief of losing two children the year before – it would have been easy to understand if John Kemmler had been feeling despondent and desperate. But it still would have been difficult to predict his solution to his problems.
At 2pm on the afternoon of June 21, 1879, Kemmler sent Anna to the store to buy a hat for one-year-old Amy. As she disappeared from sight, he locked the doors and gave six-year-old Ludmilla a bowl of gruel poisoned with cyanide of potassium. He forced the little girl to eat several teaspoonfuls, which she promptly threw up. Failing in his attempt to poison Ludmilla, he took four-year-old Annie into a bedroom and shot her behind the ear with a revolver. In another bedroom, he shot Ludmilla in the same manner and then laid little Amy on a bed in the same room and shot her behind both ears, burning the pillow with gunpowder. Powder burns found on all the children indicated the gun was placed against their heads and death was instantaneous. The bullets, the coroner later reported, traveled straight through the children’s skulls.
After killing his little girls, Kemmler left the house, locking the doors behind him, and walked to a saloon belonging to Blaise Borten where he was reported to have spent 20 minutes pacing up and down, in a state of distress. Eventually, he gave Borten the key to the tenement, told him what he had done to his children, and started walking uptown.
Shortly after, Deputy Sheriff Kingsbury learned of the murders and found Kemmler at another saloon where he was taken into custody. The revolver was found on Kemmler, with four empty chambers, as was a slip of paper in his pocket with the words “cyanide of potassium.”
John Kemmler took life behind bars in his stride, sleeping soundly and worrying that his police photograph would be an unflattering likeness. He gave an interview to a newspaper admitting he had murdered his daughters and that they were now in Heaven:
“I could not support them and I could not bear to have them come on the town and, perhaps, when they grew up, see them go into bad houses.I loved them and so I killed them. I put the revolver up to their heads and they died easily. My wife can support herself washing and with other work, as she has no children. I don’t care if they do hang me. It makes no difference what becomes of me. I am a good Protestant Christian. I did not shoot myself, because it would be wrong, and I should go to Hell. If I could make the laws, I would have fixed it so children would not come on the town and go to the bad. I would have them all killed first.”
Adding to the horror of Kemmler’s nonchalant confession, the newspaper added that when told that daughter Ludmilla had not been killed instantly, but was still lingering in the hospital (she died the day after being shot), Kemmler volunteered to go there and finish the job. In the meantime, Kemmler’s wife was reported to be inconsolable, crying out for her children and begging to be allowed to die with them.
(Kemmler’s concerns that his daughters would “come on the town” and “go to the bad” probably meant that he feared they would turn to prostitution as a result of growing up poor.)
Two days after the murders, Kemmler was brought to court, smiling at the large crowd that had assembled. When the judge asked if he understood the charges against him, the German-born prisoner laughed and replied it was “too much English” for him to comprehend. The judge read the charges to him again, slowly, after which Kemmler responded, “Oh yes; I did that. Oh yes; I shot her.”
Kemmler told the court that he wanted to be hanged within the week, but the judge ordered him to be held in the Springfield jail to await trial on December 3. Still smiling, he was again led past the crowd, this time to a waiting hack.
While Kemmler was behind bars, his children were being laid to rest, their bodies put on public view at city hall before the funeral. Over 2,500 were reported to have attended the service, led by German-speaking clergy, with hundreds more turned away. The New York Times, as an aside when reporting on the funeral, wrote that Mr. Kemmler had “always abused his wife.”
Two months later, police made a curious discovery.
In early October, Chicago police headquarters received a letter:
No. 7 Newbury Street, Boston, Mass., Oct. 1, 1879
To the Chief of Police, Chicago, Ill.,
Dear Sir, in the examination of a prisoner at the County Jail in Springfield in regard to the question of insanity, my attention has been directed to a statement made by him that, some time in May or June last he was in the beer saloon of one Rudolph Bernauer, now in Chicago. My object in writing is to ascertain if such a person is in Chicago, or whether you have any information concerning such a man. In June last the prisoner, John Kemmler, killed his three children. He is a German. If there is such a person in Chicago, may I inquire as to his character. An early answer will oblige. Yours respectfully,
James H. Denny, M.D.
The Chicago police confirmed it: there had been a man named Rudolph Bernauer in Chicago recently, having bought a saloon in the city that past March where he lived for several months. On June 2, 1879, Bernauer married Frederika Mayo, a young women whom he had met upon his arrival. Five days after the marriage, Bernauer left for Holyoke, MA, telling his new wife he needed to attend to some family business. Mrs. Bernauer told the Chicago police that was the last time she’d heard from him.
Pictures and descriptions of John Kemmler were given to Mrs. Bernauer and others who had known her husband during his time in Chicago. There was no doubt: Kemmler and Rudolph Bernauer were the same person. Along with child-murderer, Kemmler could now add adulterer and bigamist to his significant list of character flaws.
In February 1880, a judge found John Kemmler incurably insane, sentencing him to life in an asylum. It was reported at the time that he was suffering from Bright’s Disease and not expected to live much longer. But a quick search of death records finds a John Kemmler who died in 1897 at the Bridgewater State Farm in Massachusetts – an asylum – of suicide by strangulation. It is possible this is the same John Kemmler and his health issues had been misdiagnosed or misreported. If so, maybe Kemmler finally felt remorse twenty years later and decided Hell would be a better alternative than living with the guilt.
City directories for Holyoke, MA over the next several decades record a Mrs. Anna Kemmler living in a house near Germania Mills, as does the 1920 census where it is noted that Mrs. Kemmler is a 78 years old widow, living alone, and a German immigrant. This Mrs. Kemmler seems to have died shortly after that census was taken. If this is the same Anna Kemmler who lived through the loss of five children – three at the hand of her bigamist husband – it can only be hoped that in the intervening years she was able to find some small measure of peace and happiness.
the morgue reporter 