The McGlincy Killings in Campbell, California: An 1896 Unsolved Mystery

By Tobin Gilman

A "comprehensive" account of the cold case that "still captivate[s] the people of Campbell and Santa Clara County" (Culture Trip).

 


On the morning of May 27, 1896, the peaceful township of Campbell awoke to shocking news. Six people were brutally murdered at the home of Colonel Richard P. McGlincy, one of the town's most respected citizens. The suspect, James Dunham—the colonel's son-in-law—fled the scene and disappeared into the hills of Mount Hamilton overlooking Santa Clara County. This heinous crime triggered a massive, nationwide manhunt while investigators pieced together the details. Author Tobin Gilman examines the mind and motives of the killer, the sensational media coverage and the colorful personalities associated with the protracted and unresolved pursuit of justice.


 


Includes photos!


 


"The book includes parts of Campbell's history at the turn of the century, theories of what may have provoked the killings and the manhunt that never led to Dunham's capture."—The Mercury News

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jan 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781439663851

Book preview

INNOCENCE LOST IN SANTA CLARA COUNTY

THE ORCHARD CITY

The township of Campbell, California, nestled in the Santa Clara Valley and adjoining the city of San Jose, was bustling in the spring of 1896. More than twenty years had passed since Benjamin and Mary Campbell, along with other ranchers, had granted the South Pacific Coast Railroad a right-of-way through their land to facilitate the transport of locally grown agricultural products to consumers back east. Following the construction of a small depot a decade earlier called Campbell Station, the Campbells started to subdivide their 160-acre ranch, eventually forming downtown Campbell. The township, largely settled by prosperous easterners, had the distinction of being the only community in Santa Clara County under prohibition.

By the 1890s, Campbell had become known as Orchard City. Many local orchardists began banding together in cooperatives, the most notable of which was the Campbell Fruit Growers Union, formed in 1892. The convenience of rail transport provided a strong incentive for major canneries and fruit drying ventures to locate by the tracks, with the Ainsley and Hyde canneries emerging as centers for packing and shipping fruit. To serve the hundreds of workers employed in the fruit orchards and canneries, churches and grocery stores opened, and in 1895, the Bank of Campbell was established.

Ben and Mary Campbell orchard and residence, circa 1876. Courtesy History San Jose.

Campbell Avenue, circa 1900–1910. Photo from the Campbell Weekly News. Courtesy Campbell Historical Museum.

Campbell Avenue looking west, circa 1900–1910. On the left is the Central Santa Clara Fruit Company. Photo from the Campbell Weekly News. Courtesy Campbell Historical Museum.

Willetts Store in downtown Campbell, circa 1889–94. Courtesy Campbell Historical Museum.

Campbell Avenue, circa 1889–94. Courtesy Campbell Historical Museum.

May 26 was a typical day in Campbell. The San Jose Evening News was brimming with attention-grabbing stories of local interest:

•A spiritual medium and self-proclaimed psychographist named Fred Evens testified in a local court case about how he helped the dead communicate with the living using two slates and a piece of pencil lead.

•A San Jose resident named Fred A. Misippo was granted citizenship.

•The trustees of the Agnews State Hospital were under fire for placing advertisements that called their political leanings into question.

•The Christian Endeavor and the Epworth League Society met and agreed to help raise funds for the YMCA.

•The low price of horses, caused by over-breeding and the growing popularity of bicycles, was resulting in many unwanted animals being sent to the slaughterhouse, where they were killed, canned and sold as food.

•Dairy Inspector Spencer was keeping busy examining cows throughout the county. A day earlier, he had killed a cow in east San Jose, and an autopsy was performed confirming tests of the cow’s milk indicating the animal had been sick.

•During the previous week, 72,000 pounds of cherries, 184,770 pounds of dried prunes, 167,830 pounds of wine, 24,150 pounds of grape juice and 49,050 pounds of hops had been shipped back east.

Nineteenth-century cherry pickers on a ranch in Campbell. In 1893, Campbell canner J.C. Ainsley began marketing a product called fruit salad under the Golden Morn label. Courtesy Campbell Historical Museum.

No one in Santa Clara County reading the newspaper that day could have foreseen the shocking story that would appear on the front page of the local and national papers the following day.

A CRIME IS REPORTED

It was after midnight on May 27 when thirty-nine-year-old Santa Clara county sheriff James Lyndon received word that he was about to be tasked with solving not only the biggest crime of his career but also the most heinous crime in Santa Clara County history. Six people had just been found violently murdered at the ranch of one of the county’s most prominent citizens. The killer was armed and on the loose.

The murderer was thirty-one-year-old James Dunham. The victims included Dunham’s father-in-law, Colonel Richard P. McGlincy, fiftysix; Mrs. Ada Wells McGlincy, fifty-three, the colonel’s second wife and mother-in-law to Dunham; Mrs. Hattie Wells Dunham, twenty-five, the colonel’s stepdaughter and wife of the killer; James K. Wells, twenty-two, Dunham’s brother-in-law and the colonel’s stepson; Minnie Shesler, twenty-eight, a domestic servant; and Robert Brisco, fifty, a ranch hand. The sole survivors on the property that night were Dunham’s infant son, Percy, who was born just three weeks earlier on May 4, and a ranch hand who managed to elude the killer.

Neighbors who reported the crime had rushed to the McGlincy residence after the sound of gunshots had broken the still silence of night. Upon arrival, they encountered the body of Colonel McGlincy in the yard, lying in a pool of blood. Inside the home, they found more bodies, evidence of unspeakable violence and, amid the carnage, a tiny baby sleeping peacefully. Arriving too late to save any of the victims, Lyndon notified authorities in San Jose.

Lyndon was well acquainted with Colonel McGlincy. In many ways, the colonel, who was seventeen years his senior, had lived a life that paralleled his own. Both men were military veterans who were born in the East and moved west to Santa Clara County, where they became successful businessmen and active in local politics. Born in Jefferson County, West Virginia, in 1841, McGlincy began his career at the age of eleven, working as an errand boy in the printing office of his hometown paper. As a young man, he served with distinction in the Civil War, fighting under Stonewall Jackson and rising to the rank of colonel. After the war, McGlincy returned to the paper, holding the position of office foreman.

In 1868, the colonel married and moved to Illinois, eventually becoming dairy editor with the Elgin Gazette, as well as for a Minneapolis newspaper. It was in Elgin that his passion for the newspaper business and the dairy industry converged. By the 1870s, he had been named city editor of the Elgin Advocate, was secretary of the Northwestern Dairymen’s Association and was an Odd Fellow of good standing. He was known to deliver addresses at dairy industry gatherings on relevant topics of the trade, including Butter Making on the Farm, Dairy vs. Grain Farming and Hints and Helps in Dairying. In 1880, he was elected secretary of the Elgin Board of Trade and served as one of forty-seven delegates at the Democratic Congressional Convention that was held in Elgin. Evidence of the colonel’s integrity and selfless character is reflected in an 1885 Illinois state auditor’s report that noted McGlincy had not claimed $30.70 owed to him for expenses incurred as a witness representing the Elgin dairymen before a state legislative committee.

Portrait of Colonel Richard P. McGlincy. Courtesy Campbell Historical Museum.

As his career flourished, his marriage floundered. In 1887, the prominent dairy expert and agricultural writer’s wife filed for divorce, alleging cruelty and infidelity. In the fall of that year, the colonel moved to San Jose, possibly seeking escape from what might have been unpleasant memories of his marriage and perhaps also motivated by Santa Clara County’s burgeoning agricultural industry, beautiful landscape and sunny weather. Whatever the reasons, by 1889 his divorce was final and he was thriving in California.

By the 1890s, he had established himself in horticulture, serving as an elected officer of the Campbell Horticulturists and a member of the Grape Growers Protective Association of Santa Clara Valley. In the summer of 1893, Colonel McGlincy drew attention to his exhibit at the World’s Fair in Chicago by unveiling a prancing prune horse, a wooden horse adorned with dried prunes, apricots, apples, raisins and other agricultural products from the county. When the fair ended, a newspaper article reported that he had lost his railway ticket home and suggested, tongue-in-cheek, that it would be an excellent advertisement for Santa Clara County if he rode the prune horse home.

At the same time, the colonel was becoming active in local politics. In November 1892, he spoke to the First Ward Democratic Club, and in August 1894, he was championed by the Democratic County Committee to represent local Democrats at the State Democratic Convention, which was to convene in San Francisco later that month.

The rejuvenation of the colonel’s professional life in California was accompanied by a rejuvenation of his personal and romantic life when he met and married Ada Marie Kendall Wells, a widow and mother of three. The couple, along with two of Ada’s grown children from her first marriage, Harriet Hattie Wells and James Jimmy Wells, settled into a stately home on the McGlincy ranch.

Portrait of Ada Wells McGlincy. Courtesy Campbell Historical Museum.

Portrait of James Jimmy Wells. A week and a half before the crime, he injured himself in a tandem bicycle accident. Courtesy Campbell Historical Museum.

The expansive home and property proved fortuitous, as the new family soon expanded. Hattie married a local man named James Dunham, who moved into the residence. In short order, the couple welcomed a baby boy into the world, and a domestic servant, Minnie Shesler, was hired to assist with the infant’s care. From outward appearances, the family patriarch was blessed with community admiration, a comfortable home and a happy family.

While the citizens of Santa Clara County slept, blissfully unaware of the news that would shock them to the core in the hours ahead, the sheriff hastily grabbed his coat, holstered his gun, saddled his horse and went to work.

THE CRIME SCENE

It was around 1:00 a.m. when Sheriff Lyndon met Deputy Sheriffs Black and Gardner at the crime scene. A full moon illuminated a stately, white, two-story house featuring bay windows on every side. Across from what earlier that evening had been transformed into a house of horrors stood a large barn and a bunk house, surrounded by a fifty-four-acre orchard that comprised the colonel’s estate. A cacophony of chirping crickets and croaking frogs augmented the animated conversations among bathrobe-clad neighbors, police officers and newsmen gathered at the ranch.