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The Case of Mabel Page: A Crime That Shocked Early 20th Century America
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https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXNVw0S9_LZHhWTr-skizhg/join
Please remember to subscribe and hit the bell icon as well as leave a like and a comment for more videos every week!
Brief Case is a True Crime Channel focusing on old or lost cases that have been forgotten to history. If you have any recommendations for future cases that you would like to bring to light, feel free to reach out to me to: briefcaseuk@gmail.com
Music by CO.AG Music - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwZB4l43iTw&t=105s
Music by Myuu -https://www.youtube.com/user/myuuji
Music by Kevin Macleod - https://incompetech.com
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NewsTranscript
00:07Today we will be looking at a case from the start of the 20th century, so sit back as
00:13we go to the USA.
00:17Mabel Page was born in Boston on the 14th of December 1862.
00:22She spent her early years in comfortable surroundings and enjoyed a stable upbringing.
00:26When she was 20 years old, she became engaged, but the relationship ended before the wedding
00:32could take place.
00:33Family opposition was widely believed to have paid a part in the decision.
00:37Her former fiancé eventually left Boston, and never returned to renew their acquaintance.
00:43Following this, Mabel never married, and by 1904, she was 41 years old, and living with
00:49her father and brother in Weston, a small village just west of Boston, in a property that her
00:54father, Mr. Edward Page, had owned since 1884.
00:58At the turn of the 20th century, Boston was one of America's most established and influential
01:03cities.
01:04Its streets were crowded with horse-drawn vehicles, electric streetcars, and a growing population
01:10drawn by industry and commerce.
01:12The city combined old New England traditions with rapid modernization, its waterfront busy
01:18with shipping and its factories employing thousands of workers.
01:21Elegant neighbourhoods stood alongside densely populated immigrant districts, creating a
01:27city marked by both wealth and social change.
01:30Just beyond the city itself lay villages such as Weston, which were quieter and more rural,
01:36where wealthier families often sought to distance themselves from the congestion and noise of the
01:40urban life.
01:42The Pages had once enjoyed a very affluent lifestyle.
01:44Mr. Edward Page had made a lot of money dealing in steel and iron, and had lived on Boston's
01:49fashionable Commonwealth Avenue, while keeping the Western property as a country retreat.
01:54However, a series of unsuccessful investments in southern railroads had eroded his wealth.
02:00By the beginning of the 20th century, the family fortunes had been transformed.
02:05Mr. Page was retired, and much of the household depended upon the incomes earned by his children,
02:10Harold and Mabel. The burden had fallen particularly heavily upon Mabel.
02:15Her mother had been in poor health for several years before her death in 1902, and responsibility
02:20for running the household naturally became hers.
02:23It was a role she accepted without complaints.
02:26She was a woman who read extensively, enjoyed sewing and embroidery, and devoted herself almost
02:31entirely to caring for her father and supporting her younger brother.
02:37Thursday the 31st of March 1904 began much like any other day.
02:43Mabel's brother, Mr. Harold Page, left the house early to catch the train into Boston, where
02:47he worked for the Boston and Albany Railroad.
02:50Shortly after 10 o'clock, Mr. Edward Page departed for nearby Albandale.
02:55At about half past 10, the family's maid, Miss Amy Roberts, also prepared to leave, intending
03:01to spend the remainder of the day visiting friends in the town of Cambridge.
03:05Before she departed, Miss Roberts asked Mabel if she might be able to give her some money.
03:10Mabel obliged, and gave her 25 cents, and as the maid thanked her, she noticed that her
03:15paper bills had remained in the purse.
03:18The maid had left by half past 10, which meant that Mabel Page was alone in the house.
03:23Although Weston was only a short distance from Boston, it retained much of its rural character.
03:28The Page residents stood back from the road among pine trees, and they did not have any
03:33immediate neighbours.
03:34A visitor could approach the front door without attracting attention, and if anyone inside
03:39called for help, it was unlikely that their cries would be heard beyond the grounds.
03:44At approximately 11 o'clock, Henry Maynard arrived with a weekly laundry delivery.
03:49Mabel answered the door, accepted the bundle, paid the amount owing, and after a brief discussion,
03:54Mr Maynard continued on his route. At about 2 o'clock that afternoon, Mr Edward Page returned
04:00from Aubandale. However, he was unable to enter the house as the front door was locked.
04:05He had expected to find his daughter at home, so he walked around to the side entrance,
04:09and fortunately the door was unlocked. He entered the house, and called for Mabel,
04:14but received no reply. As he went into the living room, he saw a note lying on the writing table,
04:20and became quite concerned. The note read,
04:23Have just heard Harold is hurt, and is in Massachusetts General Hospital,
04:28have gone in at 12 o'clock, will leave key of front side door with key of Barnstair,
04:33and will telephone Mrs Bennet. This seemed to be quite a cryptic message,
04:37and he wondered why the back door had not been locked if Mabel had gone to Boston.
04:41He then searched the places mentioned in the notes, but the key was nowhere to be found.
04:46Now growing increasingly anxious, Mr Page climbed the stairs. As he reached the landing outside his
04:52daughter's bedroom, he looked through the doorway. To his horror, he saw Mabel lying motionless on the
04:58floor, and she was dressed as if she had been preparing to go out. Even her hat was still upon
05:02her head. For a few moments he simply stared, unable to comprehend the terrible scene before him.
05:08Then, he rushed outside and asked a passer-by to run to the nearby home of Mrs Bennet,
05:13one of the few neighbours with the telephone. From there, phone calls were made to Dr Horace B.
05:19Frost, as well as the local police station. Officer McAuliffe soon arrived, and Mr Page took
05:25him to Mabel's room so he could look at the body. The officer noticed the deceased woman was lying
05:30between the table and the bed, and although dressed, her skirt was missing. He saw that she was wearing
05:35walking shoes, a hat and a coat, and as he looked closer, he noticed that there was a long,
05:40jagged wound on the woman's neck. Dr Frost was the next to arrive, and with the officer present,
05:46he examined the body. He then sent for the district medical examiner, Dr Julian Mead.
05:53It did not take long for Dr Mead to arrive, and when he saw the body, he concentrated on the
05:58injuries to the throat. He did not undress the deceased woman, or carry out a detailed examination,
06:04and he soon came to the conclusion that Mabel Page had died by her own hands. However, despite this,
06:11Dr Mead left instructions that the undertaker should not begin the embalming process, until he had
06:16returned the following day to conduct a more detailed inspection. Satisfied that nothing further required
06:21his immediate attention, he left. Later that evening, the local undertaker, a man named Mr John Bruce,
06:28began preparing Mabel's body for burial. As he removed her clothing, he made a horrifying discovery.
06:35The wounds to her throat were only part of the story. Hidden beneath her garments were stab wounds
06:40to the chest, abdomen and back. One had pierced deeply into her heart, and it was obvious to him
06:46that Mabel Page had been murdered. Realizing the terrible significance of what he had found, Mr Bruce
06:51immediately halted his work and alerted the authorities. By the time the true nature of the crime became clear,
06:57more than 24 hours had been lost. Instead of preserving the house as a scene of a murder
07:02investigation from the outset, valuable time had slipped away, as doctors believed they were
07:07dealing with the case of a woman who had died by her own hands. The investigation was then handed over
07:13to the Massachusetts District Police. Detectives arrived in Weston, and began to examine the house.
07:19As they did, curious discoveries came to light. Near Mabel's body lay a small slip of paper,
07:26torn from the same writing pad on which she had written the hospital notes.
07:30On it was penciled a simple address, J. L. Morton, Charlestown, Massachusetts.
07:35The discovery of this second note only deepened the mystery. Detectives immediately tried to
07:40identify the mysterious J. L. Morton of Charlestown, but every inquiry ended in failure.
07:46No one by that name could be connected with the address,
07:49and neither Mr. Edward or Mr. Harold Page had ever heard Mabel mention anyone called Mr. Morton.
07:54It seemed an odd clue to leave beside a victim's body, yet no one could explain its purpose.
08:01Investigators tried to reconstruct Mabel's final hour. Medical evidence suggested that she had eaten
08:06only a light lunch shortly before her death, while the wording of the note she left for her father
08:11convinced investigators that she had written it, only minutes before going to change,
08:16in preparation to leave the house for what she believed would be a hurried journey to Massachusetts
08:21General Hospital, standing in the living room while writing the message. She would have been able to
08:26see the hall clock only a few feet away, and detectives became convinced that she knew exactly
08:31what time it was when she wrote, have gone in 12 o'clock. Combined with a statement from the laundry
08:37driver Henry Maynard, the evidence narrowed the murder to a relatively small window of somewhere
08:43around noon. The state police soon ruled out every member of the Page household, as numerous witnesses
08:49confirmed Mr. Edward Page movements in Aubandale before his return shortly after two o'clock,
08:54and work colleagues told how Harold had remained at work in Boston throughout the day. While Miss Amy
08:59Roberts was able to prove her presence in Cambridge, the police were sure that none could possibly have
09:04returned to the house and committed a murder. The police were now convinced that
09:07Mabel Page had died at the hands of an unknown intruder.
09:13After interviewing several young men, attention began to focus upon a young unemployed widower,
09:18named Charles Louis Tucker. When questioned, Mr. Tucker stated that he had spent the day near
09:23Western Bridge, approximately half a mile from the Page residence. He claimed to have seen road workers
09:29and carpenters nearby, and insisted he had never gone to the Page house. He admitted that he had once
09:35owned a hunting knife, but denied possessing it any longer. Unable to contradict his accounts,
09:41investigators released him. The following morning, however, newspapers published Mr. Tucker's photograph
09:46as a possible suspect, and the publication produced an unexpected breakthrough. In the nearby city of
09:52Quincy, a fish dealer named Arthur J. Woodward recognized the young man's picture, and informed the
09:58detectives that Mr. Tucker had traveled with him on his fish carts on the day of the murder. More importantly,
10:04after Mr. Tucker had climbed down from the carts, Mr. Woodward discovered an empty leather hunting knife
10:09sheath lying exactly where the passenger had been sitting. When detectives examined the sheath,
10:15they noticed something unusual. One end bore distinct bite marks, as though someone had gripped it firmly
10:21with their teeth. The impressions were clear enough to preserve the shape of the individual teeth.
10:26Meanwhile, officers checked Mr. Tucker's earlier statements about seeing workmen near the Page property.
10:32They discovered that the laborers and carpenters that Mr. Tucker had claimed to have seen had
10:37finished work and left the area at twelve o'clock. This meant that Mr. Tucker's claim that he had seen
10:42them during the afternoon could not be true. He was brought back to the police station for further
10:47questioning, and officers searched his home. Inside one of his coats, they made another significant
10:53discovery. Hidden within the lining were fragments of a broken hunting knife, and it was apparent that
10:58someone had attempted to destroy it by snapping the blade into pieces, and had also tried to file away
11:04the manufacturer's name. During the search, officers also recovered a decorative stick pin bearing a
11:10Canadian emblem. Questioned again, Mr. Tucker offered no real explanations, and offered only vague answers.
11:17The investigation increasingly relied upon scientific examination, an approach still relatively uncommon in
11:23early 20th century murder cases. Experts compared the broken blade with wounds found on Mabel Page's body,
11:30and concluded that the fragments came from a single-edged hunting knife, which was consistent with
11:34the murder weapon. When the pieces were fitted together, they formed the type of blade capable of
11:39producing the fatal injuries. Attention also returned to the leather sheath found by Arthur Woodward.
11:45Dental specialists compared the bite marks impressed upon the leather, with casts taken from Mr. Tucker's teeth.
11:51They concluded that the impressions corresponded closely with his dental pattern, providing what
11:56prosecutors regarded as another powerful link between the suspect and the weapon. Other forensic
12:02work strengthened the prosecution's theory. A microscopic examination of fibers recovered from
12:07Mabel's clothing revealed traces matching carpets elsewhere inside the Page's house, not solely from the
12:14bedroom. Investigators now believed that the attack had not happened exactly where the body had been
12:19found. Instead, they now thought that Mabel had been assaulted elsewhere, before being carried into the
12:24bedroom, where the murderer attempted to arrange the scene to look like she had died by her own hand.
12:29The mysterious slip bearing the name JL Morton also took a new importance. Handwriting specialists
12:36compared it with letters that had been written by Mr. Tucker, and believed that the message had been written by
12:41him.
12:41On the strength of the accumulating evidence, Charles Louis Tucker was formally charged with the murder of
12:46Mabel Page. The case attracted extraordinary public interest. Newspapers reported on how Mr. Tucker's
12:55wife had drowned a few years before Mabel Page's murder, which had left him a widower. Some reports simply
13:00presented this as a family tragedy, while others questioned if there was more to her death, even though there
13:06was no evidence that Mr. Tucker had been involved, or that it was anything other than an accident.
13:11The press and the public seemed to follow every development. The murder of a quiet middle-aged
13:16woman, in the apparent safety of her own home, had shocked readers throughout New England, while the
13:21unusual mixture of circumstantial evidence and emerging forensic science ensured that every new discovery
13:27received prominent coverage. When the trial finally opened at East Cambridge, the courtroom was crowded
13:33every day. Attorney General Herbert Parker led the prosecution, while James Vahey headed Mr. Tucker's
13:40defense. Both sides had spent months preparing expert witnesses in medicine, handwriting, dentistry,
13:46and forensic examination, making the proceedings among the most scientifically complex murder trials
13:52in Massachusetts history. The prosecution argued that Mr. Tucker had devised a hospital deception
13:57in order to gain entry to the Page residence, then Mabel believing that her brother had been injured.
14:03Wrote a note to her father, and shortly afterwards, Mr. Tucker had murdered her with a hunting knife,
14:09stole the money she was carrying, and attempted to disguise the crime by leaving the false jail mortar
14:14note beside the body. They said that Mr. Tucker had been familiar with the layout of the house,
14:19as he had previously been acquainted with Mabel Page's brother Harold.
14:23Jurors were shown the reconstructed knife blade, the leather sheaf, photographs of the wounds,
14:29handwriting comparisons, and the Canadian stick pin that had been recovered during the investigation.
14:35The defense attacked each piece of evidence individually. Mr. Tucker denied ever entering the
14:40Page house, and insisted that the knife fragments, sheaf, and handwriting evidence had all been misunderstood or
14:47incorrectly interpreted. Witnesses attempted to challenge the ownership of the stick pin, while
14:52experts called by the defense questioned some of the prosecution's scientific conclusions.
14:58Nevertheless, the prosecution maintained that every circumstance pointed in the same direction,
15:03that Mr. Tucker had been near the scene, that his accounts of his movements that day had been
15:08contradicted, that the knife fragments matched the murder weapon, and that the sheaf bore impressions
15:13consistent with his teeth. There was also the mysterious jail mortar note, which appeared to have been
15:19written by him. After listening to weeks of testimony, the jury retired to consider its verdict. Eight
15:25hours later they returned, to find Charles Louis Tucker, guilty of first-degree murder. However, Charles
15:32Tucker's conviction did not bring the case to an immediate close. His lawyers appealed the verdict, and sought a
15:38new trial, arguing that the largely circumstantial evidence, and so-called expert prosecution testimony,
15:45were insufficient to support a conviction for murder. The appeals ultimately failed, and a final plea for
15:51clemency was presented to the Massachusetts governor. Despite widespread public interest, and thousands of
15:57signatures urging that his death sentence be commuted, the governor declined to intervene. On the morning of
16:03the 12th of June 1906, Charles Louis Tucker was executed in the electric chair at Charleston State Prison,
16:10maintaining his innocence to the end, and insisting that he had played no part in the murder of Mabel Page.
16:18Hello everyone, and thank you so much for listening. As usual, please leave any comments or feedback you
16:25may have, and I hope to see you all again, in the next, brief, case.
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