Where's Your Mother, George? The True Crime of George Schneider

By Richard O Jones

George said that he was taking his mother to a train in the fall of 1883 when they were overcome by two robbers at the end of the lane at the edge of his farm. In the course of the robbery, he claimed, the robbers killed his mother, and buried her in a ravine on George's property. He fetched a shovel for them. George said they threatened his family, so he kept quiet about it for five long weeks. This novelette-length story details the unraveling of George's story and the terrible price he paid for his rage.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Richard O Jones
• Release date: Jan 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310833687

Richard O Jones

About Richard O Jones After 25 years writing the first draft of history as a writer and editor for his hometown newspaper, the Hamilton Journal-News, Richard O Jones left the grind of daily journalism in the fall of 2013 for a life of true crime. He is the author of two books on the History Press imprint, Cincinnati’s Savage Seamstress: The Shocking Edythe Klumpp Murder Scandal (October, 2014) and The First Celebrity Serial Killer: Confessions of the Strangler Alfred Knapp (May, 2015). In 2016, he began a twice-weekly podcast "True Crime Historian" (www.truecrimehistorian.com) where he tells stories of the scoundrels, scandals and scourges of the past through newspaper accounts in the golden age of yellow journalism. He created the Two-Dollar Terror series of novella-length ebooks. Mr. Jones, a creative writing graduate of Miami University, Ohio, spent most of his career as an arts journalist and has won numerous awards for his reviews and profiles. In 2004, he was named a Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts Theatre and Musical Theatre program at the Annenberg School of Journalism. The Ohio Associated Press named him Feature Writer of the Year in 2011. Since leaving the newspaper world, Mr. Jones has become an active member of his local history community as a board member of the Butler County Historical Society, a member of the History Speakers Bureau and a regular presenter at Miami University in a program titled “Yesterday’s News.” The Michael J. Colligan History Project of Miami University presented Mr. Jones with a Special Recognition for Contributions to Public History for his coverage of the Centennial Commemoration of the Great Flood of 1913. Photo by Sandra M. Orlett

Book preview

Where’s Your Mother, George?

The True Crime of George Schneider

By Richard O Jones

A Two-Dollar Terror #4

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2014 by Richard O Jones

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Contents

Missing

Bandits

Arrest

German born

Prelims

Trial

Verdict

The aperture confession

The Gallows

Note

Sources

About the Author

Where’s Your Mother, George

Missing

It had been over a month since anyone had heard from Catharine Schneider.

Widowed for nearly 25 years, the old German woman rented a room on Walnut Street in Hamilton, Ohio, but spent much of her time visiting the homes of her children. Her sons George and Henry Schneider and daughter Mary Betz, one of her oldest, all had farms in Butler County, but Catharine stayed mostly at George’s place when she wasn’t in Hamilton. The other children would remark that George was her favorite.

Henry’s wife Gretchen [see notes] picked her up in front of Miller’s Drug Store in Hamilton on the afternoon of October 31, 1884. Catharine wore a blue calico dress with white spots and a velvet hood trimmed with fur that she had been wearing for the last six winters. She carried a basket, which she said contained a clean dress and an apron, and handed it up to Gretchen so she could climb into the buggy.

It was heavy, as if it contained something besides her clothing, but I do not know what it was, Gretchen later said.

They rode together to Darrtown, a carriage-stop village about eight miles from Hamilton on the road to Richmond, Indiana. Gretchen dropped her off at the road that led to George’s farm, and handed her the basket when she got out of the buggy, still thinking that it was awfully heavy for an apron and a dress, but still not saying anything. The 74-year-old woman walked the rest of the way, about two and a half miles west of the village over a bad, broken road in a remote area of Butler County. There were not many houses on the road, and along the creek bank on his property there is nothing within a quarter of a mile. George’s house was another 200 yards or so off the road on an even rougher lane.

That was the last time anyone in the family saw her.

So when George, Margaret and their seven children showed up to have dinner with Gretchen on Thursday, December 4, 1884,