Blood in the Wilderness: The Story of the Harps, America's First Serial Klr

By Jack Edward Shay

Early August, 1799.

A wilderness clearing along the Mud River...a few miles northeast of Russellville, a small town in the vast, nearly unbroken frontier of western Kentucky.

A pioneer family has stopped to rest.

Two men. Three women. Three babies. A string of pack horses.

It has been an exhausting journey, a dangerous one at times.

The men are about thirty, the women some five to ten years younger. Each woman has a baby, her own child. The children, two girls and a boy, range from four to six months in age.

The day is hot. The shallow river is cool. Shade trees provide a measure of relief from the sticky humidity, the baking heat. The men stretch out along the banks of the river. The women tend to their children's needs, then place them down and stretch out themselves. Everyone drinks from the stream.

They have been traveling forever. Or, at least, it seems that way. They're tired. They just want to rest before they must move out again, always pushing on, always in search of their destination in an unforgivingly harsh wilderness, battling tremendous odds against their very survival. They carry all their worldly possessions with them. True pioneers, they live off the land, taking from it what they need to eke out another day of life in the new American world of democracy and free enterprise.

Suddenly, one of the babies cries. It is one of the girls, this one only four months old.

One of the men rouses himself from his rest. He makes his way to the crying infant. The man is both a husband and a father, and he is with his family.

A touching scene seems about to ensue. A father lovingly tending his irritable child all alone in the wilderness. A loving man doting on his daughter's needs.

He picks the child up.

But this is no ordinary family. And this is no ordinary man.

The man is Micajah Harp, and he is wanted by the law. Even at this moment, there is a price on his head, and posses are after him. They might hear the wail of the infant and swoop down on the family and arrest them.

Micajah must do something. He must silence the baby.

He picks the child up by her feet and swings her against the side of the tree. Her head smashes against the unrelenting wood. The breath of life leaves her instantly. He then tosses the lifeless body into the woods.

He signals the rest of the family to rise to their feet.

They do so, and the family moves deeper into the wilderness.

They are the Harps. America's first and most brutal serial killers.

God help anyone who gets in their way.

***********************************************************

They were "the most brutal monsters of the human race" to those who knew them...ruthless and indiscriminate barbarians terrorizing an innocent America...unconscionable brutes inflicting savagery upon anyone they encountered.

They sought little in life save the very survival necessary to maintain their bloodlust. It mattered little where or with whom they lived. They cheated and tormented at will and killed for the sake of killing. Their adult lives became a continual exercise in abject, unrepentant evil. During a reign of horror engulfing Kentucky, Tennessee, and Illinois, they became the scourge of the late 18th-century American frontier. They killed anywhere from two dozen to four dozen men, women, and children before justice caught up with them. They were the historical prototypes of later killers - Billy the Kid, Bonnie and Clyde, and Jeffrey Dahmer - but they far exceeded them in brutality and criminal enormity.

They were the Harps...Micajah, the older and bigger; Wiley, the younger and smaller...Big Harp and Little Harp, as they were commonly called. And they were America's first serial killers.

This is their story.

"Blood in the Wilderness: The Story of the Harps, America's First Serial Killers" includes a bibliography of seventy-five sources. It results from years of research and visits to all the sites associated with t

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 11, 1998
• ISBN: 9781453551905

Jack Edward Shay

Jack Edward Shay is a former newspaper reporter and magazine features writer. He is currently a freelance fiction and nonfiction writer.

Book preview

Copyright © 1999 by Jack Edward Shay.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-7-XLIBRIS

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

0225

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

THE HARPS

THE FRONTIER WORLD OF THE HARPS

THE BACKGROUND OF THE HARPS

THE BEGINNING OF THE VIOLENCE

MOUNTING MURDERS

CAPTURE AND ESCAPE

BARBARITY

SOJOURN AT CAVE-IN-ROCK

THE REIGN OF TERROR

THE MANHUNT

THE EXECUTION

THE AFTERMATH

THE FATE OF WILEY HARP

THE LEGACY

THE SUMMATION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

To Tom Townsend,

a near-lifelong confidant, boon companion,

fellow adventurer, former writing collaborator,

and the best and wittiest impressionist I’ve ever come across.

PROLOGUE

Early August, 1799.

A wilderness clearing along the Mud River...a few miles northeast of Russellville, a small town in the vast, nearly unbroken frontier of western Kentucky.

A pioneer family has stopped to rest.

Two men. Three women. Three babies. A string of pack horses.

It has been an exhausting journey, a dangerous one at times.

The men are about thirty, the women some five to ten years younger. Each woman has a baby, her own child. The children, two girls and a boy, range from four to six months in age.

The day is hot. The shallow river is cool. Shade trees provide a measure of relief from the sticky humidity, the baking heat. The men stretch out along the banks of the river. The women tend to their children’s needs, then place them down and stretch out themselves. Everyone drinks from the stream.

They have been traveling forever. Or, at least, it seems that way. They’re tired. They just want to rest before they must move out again, always pushing on, always in search of their destination in an unforgivingly harsh wilderness, battling tremendous odds against their very survival. They carry all their worldly possessions with them. True pioneers, they live off the land, taking from it what they need to eke out another day of life in the new American world of democracy and free enterprise.

Suddenly, one of the babies cries. It is one of the girls, this one only four months old.

One of the men rouses himself from his rest. He makes his way to the crying infant. The man is both a husband and a father, and he is with his family.

A touching scene seems about to ensue. A father lovingly tending his irritable child all alone in the wilderness. A loving man doting on his daughter’s needs.

He picks the child up.

But this is no ordinary family. And this is no ordinary man.

The man is Micajah Harp, and he is wanted by the law. Even at this moment, there is a price on his head, and posses are after him. They might hear the wail of the infant and swoop down on the family and arrest them.

Micajah must do something. He must silence the baby.

He picks the child up by her feet and swings her against the side of a tree. Her head smashes against the unrelenting wood. The breath of life leaves her instantly. He then tosses the lifeless body into the woods.

He signals the rest of the family to rise to their feet.

They do so, and the family moves deeper into the wilderness.

They are the Harps. America’s first and most brutal serial killers.

God help anyone who gets in their way.

THE HARPS

They were the most ruthless, indiscriminate, chronic barbarians to ever wreak senseless violence on an innocent nation... unconscionable scoundrels who reveled in cold-blooded butchery... emotionless brutes who inflicted vicious, random savagery upon anyone they might encounter.

They sought little in life save the very survival necessary to sustain their bloodlust. It mattered little where or with whom they might live. They cheated, tormented, and fornicated at will, stole items they might never need, and killed for the sake of killing. Their adult lives became a continual exercise in abject, unrepentant evil. During a reign of horror engulfing every locale they found themselves in, they became the scourge of the American frontier.

Underneath their malignity, they were human beings, born as naturally as all mortals. Said to be related, they may have been brothers or mere blood brothers bonded by shared interests. Even the surname conferred upon them may not have been real in an age when a convenient alias often masked a criminal’s face.

Richard H. Collins, an historian of the 19th century, called them the most brutal monsters of the human race.

James Hall, a jurist and author, wrote thusly one generation removed from their reign of terror:

Neither avarice nor want nor any of the usual inducements to the commission of crime, seemed to govern their conduct. A savage thirst for blood—a deep-rooted enmity against human nature, could alone be discovered in their actions.... Plunder was not their object; they took only what would have been freely given them, and no more than what was necessary to supply the immediate wants of nature; they destroyed without having suffered injury, and without the prospect of benefit.... Mounted on fine horses they plunged into the forest, eluded pursuit by frequently changing their course, and appeared unexpectedly to perpetrate new horrors, at points distant from those where they were supposed to lurk.

James Garrard, a Kentucky governor whose state was especially victimized by them, referred to them as inveterate enemies of human happiness.

They were the Harps. Micajah, the older and bigger. Wiley, the younger and smaller. Big Harp and Little Harp, as they were commonly called.

And they were America’s first serial killers.

THE FRONTIER WORLD OF THE HARPS

The first few years after the close of the Revolutionary War brought only limited westward migration from Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, and the other eastern seaports and commercial capitals centering America’s population. But only a few years later, by the mid- to late-1780s, the westward movement was on.

People went west for a number of reasons. Veterans of the Revolutionary War often moved to the frontier to accept land grants they received in exchange for their war service. Others came to settle vast expanses of virgin forests and stake out claims on land so inhospitable the government was either selling it cheap or giving it away. Still others traveled to parts unknown to start lives anew in the wake of failed financial ventures back east. And the wanderlust motivated some people who found life uncomfortably confining in the tight row houses and clogged streets of the eastern cities. Some people ventured west to escape bad marriages, bad memories, and bad mistakes. And some came simply to escape the law.

Migrants burst across the Appalachian Mountains from Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the Carolinas. Packing provisions and valuables in wagons, strapping necessities on pack animals, they took to the western trails established by the early trendsetters like Daniel Boone. Traveling along buffalo and cattle traces, on Indian paths, or through the Cumberland Gap and along the Wilderness Trail, they streamed into the eastern portions of what would later become Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee.

They came in wagons, on horses, or on their own feet across the rugged trails cut into the ground by trailblazers only a few years earlier. Trails like the Natchez Trace, a narrow, rough-hewn five-hundred-mile bridle path crudely chopped through the midst of the teeming wilderness between Nashville, Tennessee and Natchez, Mississippi. An indispensable artery, it provided a direct route back to the East for hundreds of traders who had ridden the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to the rich markets of Natchez and New Orleans. Eliminating the costly, time-consuming alternative of returning from New Orleans by water around Florida and up the Atlantic seaboard, it offered instead a cheap, fairly quick (by standards of the day) link with Nashville and, once there, access to the wider, more established roads to Kentucky, Illinois, and the eastern states.

Initially a buffalo pass and later an Indian trail, the Trace was the great land path connecting the affluent, luxurious South with the rest of America. Its traffic included settlers, travelers and vagrants, and, above all, traders who made bundles selling their cargoes of grain, crops, and animal hides. Its name derived from the town of Natchez, an important trading center on the Mississippi River, a settlement with enough genteel culture and overt rowdyism to render it a junior version of the bustling cosmopolitan market farther down the river at New Orleans. To its users, the Trace became a thin strip of familiarity coursing through a jungle of threatening animal and human carnivores. Snaking northeast through the Mississippi Territory from Natchez, it crossed the Bayou Pierre, cut along the middle ground between the Big Black River on the north and the Pearl River on the south, forded the Tombigbee River, then crossed the Tennessee River, and finally cut through Tennessee as it proceeded to Nashville. It comprised rudimentary