Apparition: Murder of Edwin Hughes 1898

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By Nancy Bowers
Written April 2014

In 1898, by most accounts, 34-year-old plumber Edward D. “Ed” Hughes lived a satisfying life. He had a Main Street office in downtown Mason City and kept busy installing farm and domestic pumps and windmills.

His marriage of 12 years to Lottie M. Thomas, the daughter of a prominent local cattleman, had produced an 11-year-old son, Vern.

At late-summer county fairs, Ed and Lottie operated a steam merry-go-round and demonstrated pumps and other machinery to fairgoers.

Ed’s wealthy parents Marilda and Patrick “Pat” Hughes loaned money when the couple needed it and even opened their home to Ed and Lottie.

But, some co-workers later said Ed sometimes had “the blues” and pored over his financial matters incessantly, particularly worrying about a large sum of money owed to his father. And there were other creditors, as well, and assets not equal to his debts.

A few friends reported the normally robust and healthy man complained of dizziness, breathlessness, and numbness in the early spring of 1898; one acquaintance noticed he was pale and had dark spots under his eyes. According to Lottie, Ed was sometimes aroused from sleep by stomach pains and had to walk the floor to find relief.

Although his symptoms could have been physical — and even the result of something ongoingly sinister — Ed might also have had a heavy heart and mind because of his wife Lottie’s behavior, which made their outwardly perfect life a lie.

☛ The Boy Down the Street ☚

Two doors away from the Hughes lived the Margaret and Henry Goude family. The youngest of their 10 children — strapping, dark-haired, 21-year-old Jesse — was quite a handsome fellow.

Perhaps too handsome, in fact, for 30-year-old Lottie Hughes to resist. Her infatuation for Jesse intensified in the late winter and early spring of 1898 when her in-laws had not yet returned from their winter residence.

When Jesse passed the Hughes house, Lottie called him inside. She also summoned him there when she was alone in the afternoons and occasionally met him in the downtown Mason City business district.

The two were seen kissing and the Hugheses’ hired girl said Lottie threatened to fire her if she ever told anyone that her employer and Jesse went into the bedroom and closed the door while Ed was at work and her in-laws were gone.

Lottie reportedly showered Jesse with gifts, offered to pay for his education, and spoke of moving together to Colorado to escape her husband, who she claimed was cruel to her (although there was no proof of that).

When Jesse Goude turned 21 on March 21, 1898, Lottie arranged a surprise birthday party at his residence; she never left his side and even asked him to go to her home while the other partygoers were celebrating.

Lottie wrote Jesse notes and sent him a Valentine, using her own young son Vern as a courier to the Goude house.

Jesse’s mother came to the Hughes home once, demanding to know if her son was there. The hired girl was told to lie.

The Daily Iowa Capital later reported that Jesse Goude’s mother once caught her son at the Hughes house and told Lottie:

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, what will people say? I don’t want you to spoil my son in this manner.”

☛ Collapse and Death ☚

On April 17, 1898 — the first Sunday after Easter — Ed spent part of the afternoon teaching Lottie to ride a bicycle in the Hughes yard. He passed the rest of the afternoon with his friend and co-worker J.M. Ward and was never alone before he went inside his parents’ house for supper at 5:00 p.m.

Marilda Hughes made food, including biscuits and dumplings, in the kitchen; as she and Lottie carried the meal into the dining room, Lottie said she wasn’t hungry and wouldn’t eat.

When the family, including Lottie’s cousin Mary Babcock, gathered around the dining room table, Ed Hughes said his stomach hurt, as it often had of late, an ailment he treated with “salts.”

So Lottie prepared the salts he usually took and gave the medicine to him in a glass. Ed said the dose didn’t taste right and made him feel “funny.”

Ed left the table and then came back. During his absence, Lottie changed her mind about eating and fixed a plate for herself in the kitchen and returned to the dining room.

This was one of three times Lottie left the dining room during the meal; the other two were to fix toast for her son Vern and to retrieve onions to garnish the food.

Suddenly, Ed cried out to his family that he was losing his eyesight and going numb.

As the others helped him from the table, Ed fell to the floor and vomited. Then he was seized with five spasms, during which it was later said Lottie slapped him several times. Following the last seizure, the strongest, he died. Ed’s body was carried into the living room

When Dr. Charles Marston arrived at the scene, Lottie’s first question was, “Could Ed have died from heart disease?” Marston listened to the family describe Ed’s symptoms and declared the death due to “probable heart failure.”

Ed’s body was moved from the living room into the couple’s bedroom, where the process of laying him out began. Lottie, who was prohibited from coming into the room, rushed several times to the door and loudly declared, “The doctor said he died of heart trouble.”

Lottie told her father to remove the victim’s pocketbook and take out for her all the money, which amounted to between $100 and $200.

☛ An Apparition Appears ☚

On the second night Ed lay in state in the home, Lottie arose three times and came to the bedroom of her in-laws, saying that Ed had appeared to her as a spirit.

Without telling them she heard the rumors about her from Jesse Goude, she said she knew people suspected she poisoned Ed and asked, “But what can I do if they think that?”

Amidst much grieving, Ed’s funeral was held and he was buried in Elmwood Saint Joseph Cemetery

The morning after Ed’s death, Lottie searched the house and found his life insurance policies. She immediately initiated the claiming process: a $2,000 policy with the Knights of the Maccabees and another $1,000 one with Northwestern of Milwaukee. Both organizations quickly paid out the sums to the newly-widowed Lottie.

☛ Secret Exhumation ☚

Towards the end of May, Lottie and her father Lorenzo Thomas went to the cemetery to clean up the family graves in preparation for laying flowers for Decoration Day on the 30th.

They saw that Ed Hughes’s grave looked disturbed and sought out Sexton Christian Nielson, who told them the body was exhumed on May 26 because authorities suspected Lottie poisoned her husband.

Lottie hadn’t known that Ed’s parents Pat and Marilda — suspicious of Lottie’s continuing note-writing and other attentions to Jesse Goude — petitioned the Iowa State Board of Health to have their son’s body exhumed and the stomach sent to Chicago for chemical analysis.

Walter S. Haines of Rush Medical College examined Ed Hughes’s stomach and found strychnine in quantities sufficient to kill him. Haines’s report arrived in Mason City on June 3.

Arrest of the Widow

Dr. Haines’s findings only confirmed suspicions by Cerro Gordo County Attorney W.D. Pelford and Sheriff Conser.

Late in the evening of Saturday, June 4, 1898, Lottie Hughes was arrested on a warrant sworn out by Ed’s parents Marilda and Pat Hughes and she was charged with poisoning her husband. Justice Chambers set the time for the preliminary hearing, and Lottie was admitted to bail of $2,000.

The public was excluded from the preliminary hearing that followed, but word leaked out that strychnine was found in the victim’s stomach, although several newspaper headlines reported it as arsenic.

Mason City was shocked and divided. On June 5, the Waterloo Daily Courier wrote of the mood:

“[The town] was thrown into a fever of excitement . . . by the arrest of Mrs. E. Hughes on the charge of murder. The arrest was the outcome of the investigation which had been made by the authorities during the past two weeks and was made immediately upon receipt of word last night that the analysis of Hughes’ stomach had revealed a large quantity of strychnine, a dose of which had caused the death. This report confirmed the clues already in the possession of officers and the arrest followed.”

Lottie Hughes denied knowledge of poison or murder and reiterated that Dr. Marston listed heart disease on Ed’s death certificate.

Lottie hired prominent local attorneys John D. Glass and James M. McConlogue to defend her in an unsuccessful effort to prevent the case from being forwarded to the grand jury.

On Halloween Day of 1898, the grand jury indicted Lottie Thomas Hughes for first degree murder in the death of her husband Ed.

In November, Judge John Collins Sherwin set early January as the time for the trial, calling a special term of court just for the case.

☛ Dramatic Trial Begins ☚

Lottie Hughes’s trial for the murder of her husband began on January 10, 1899.

The Daily Iowa Capital wrote:

“A great legal battle opens today in the courts of [Cerro Gordo] County. It will be the crowning event in the life of one woman, Mrs. Lottie Hughes, accused of poisoning her husband and indicted by the grand jury for murder in the first degree.”

Judge John Collins Sherwin presided. Cerro Gordo County Attorneys D.W. Telford and David W. Hurn argued the case against Lottie Hughes; her defense was provided by prominent attorneys John Cliggitt, Duncan Rule, John D. Glass, and James M. McConlogue.

Enormous interest swirled around the trial, not only because of the prominent families involved, but also because of the lurid charges.

The old Cerro Gordo Courthouse, replaced a few years later, was packed to the rafters as the trial began. Spectators and gawkers swarmed the building and pushed and shoved so badly that the attorneys and even Judge Sherwin had to help bailiffs drive them back from the bench and the lawyers’ tables.

On the second day of the trial, Judge Sherwin ordered that only women be allowed inside the courtroom. Although his orders reduced the crowd to some degree, the room was still packed with eager watchers.

These women wanted to observe the defendant, the widow — termed by one headline the “Mason City Murderess” — accused of poisoning her husband to be with another man.

The Waterloo Daily Courier described Lottie as “a frail little woman, weighing about 90 pounds.” The Davenport Daily Republican wrote:

“She is a short, slender lady, neatly dressed in black, wearing a becoming sailor hat. Her faithful attendant, Mrs. A.S. Anderson, is always at her side. She frequently converses with her attorney.”

Lottie sat with strained composure during the reading of the indictment and through the prosecution’s case. The Burlington Hawk-Eye wrote:

“Mrs. Hughes does not stand the strain very well, but there is no undue sympathy for her. It is believed she will be justly tried.”

There was no doubt that the female trial-watchers were also fascinated by the primary witness, handsome young Jesse Goude, the lover Lottie allegedly killed for.

☛ The Certainty of Poison ☚

The possibility of heart failure was ruled out by an examination of that organ, which was removed at the request of Ed’s father during the exhumation. Dr. Marston, who signed the death certificate, testified he had not really believed Ed died of heart disease but declared it as the cause of death so as not to upset the family.

The defense, as was common in poisoning cases, charged that strychnine was introduced into the body through embalming. Prosecution attorneys knocked holes in that argument through the testimony of medical doctors that the stomach was not ruptured during burial preparations and was too hardened for an instrument to penetrate.

After failed attempts by the defense to claim that Ed Hughes died of tetanus (lockjaw), both sides in the trial implicitly stipulated to poisoning as the cause of Ed Hughes’s death.

What was left to be decided was whether Ed Hughes died from ingesting poison by accident, suicide, or murder.

☛ The Case Against Lottie Hughes ☚

Witnesses — notably women — filed before the court to recite their knowledge of Lottie’s strong feelings for and her flirtatious actions towards Jesse Goude.

Five witnesses swore they saw Lottie and Jesse together on the afternoon of the murder at the Goude residence.

Grace Wheeler maintained that Lottie and Jesse were walking with her on one occasion and kept talking and lagging along to the point that she left without them. Grace also said she saw Jesse and the defendant “going to town together” at the Goude home.

Jennie Ward, Jesse’s sister, asserted she saw Lottie and Jesse go into a bedroom at the Goudes’ house.

One woman insisted that Lottie’s hysterical attempts to get into the room where Ed’s body was being prepared for burial were a sham.

A Mrs. Thompson recalled visiting Lottie three weeks before the victim’s death and being told, “Mind you, Ed’s not long to live.”

Ed’s father Pat Hughes told how he instructed his wife to keep the salts that remained for fear they were poisoned. Mr. Hughes also swore that when he requested an exhumation he had no intention of accusing his daughter-in-law in particular but wanted to satisfy himself and his wife that poison killed his son.

Both Pat and Marilda Hughes, the mother sobbing in grief, described how Lottie came to their bedroom three times saying she saw Ed’s spirit; she seemed frightened both by the apparition and by the suspicions against her. After the third time, Marilda let Lottie lie in bed with her.

Three weeks after Ed’s death, the Hugheses asked Lottie to leave their home because they considered her behavior with Jesse Goude improper. They’d heard a rumor that Lottie and Jesse were getting married and taking with them the family furniture.

Lottie’s indignant father Lorenzo Thomas called on Pat and Marilda Hughes to ask why his daughter was turned out of the house and was told Lottie was claiming the family farm when they felt that because of the debt Ed owed them it should go to them instead.

The prosecution maintained that Lottie had three chances to dose something in the kitchen with poison — either the salts for Ed’s stomach discomfort or his food: when she went for the salts, when she went to make toast for her son Vern (which Marilda said the boy did not ask for), and when she brought back onions for the meal.

Jesse himself proved a strong witness, giving what the Waterloo Courier termed “sensational” testimony. He recounted all of Lottie’s intimacies and demonstrations of affection, her talk of divorce, and her promises to him after Ed’s death of a happy life together.

He recalled how they left his birthday party and went to the Hughes home, where she grabbed his lapels and pulled his face to hers and kissed him. When he said they should get back to the party, she said probably they should but she’d rather stay there with him. They embraced and kissed on a bed in a closed room.

According to the Daily Iowa Capital, Jesse stated that Lottie said to him after Ed’s death,

“I wish that I could have been separated from him in a different manner.”

Jesse Goude recounted how they quarreled after Ed’s death and he told her, “You know and I know that Ed did not die from heart disease.” When Lottie replied, “For God’s sake, the neighbors don’t think I poisoned him?” he answered, “I hope not.”

Waterloo Semi-Weekly Courier termed Jesse Goude:

“The star witness . . . [who had no] flaw in his three days of testimony.”

Besides Jesse Goude, the other star prosecution witness was Dr. Walter S. Haines of Chicago’s Rush Medical College, a paid expert who analyzed Ed’s stomach and who had given evidence in 230-250 previous poison cases.

Although he could not determine what substance the poison was delivered in, Dr. Haines said he found two-thirds of a grain of strychnine in Ed Hughes’s stomach — one-third to one-half a grain being enough to cause death of a human being.

In front of the court, Haines administered to a frog one-two hundredth and fiftieth of a grain of strychnine taken out of the victim’s stomach; within two minutes the frog had spasms, became rigid, and died.

☛ Defense ☚

J.H. McConlogue, who a few years later became President of the Iowa State Bar Association, stated that he would prove Lottie innocent and expose the real killer: the victim himself.

Two days of defense testimony were devoted to establishing what the Waterloo Daily Courier called the “good character and the happy, affectionate and pleasant demeanor of Lottie Hughes.”

Lorenzo Thomas gave evidence about his daughter Lottie’s upbringing and schooling. He said Ed Hughes was the only man she ever loved and their married life was “uniformly pleasant.”

Defense attorneys then stressed that Ed owed his father $5,000. His liabilities exceeded his assets and he also owed money to 73 other creditors, debts that could be a motive for suicide.

Ed’s co-worker J.M. Ward, who was with Hughes from 2:00 till 5:00 p.m. the day of the murder, swore that at his office Ed had several less severe spells similar to the one he died from and that his relatives hushed it up. He said that when he called the Hughes house after his friend’s passing, Pat Hughes said of his son, “This is what I have been expecting for some time,” implying he feared self-destruction and that there had been other attempts.

The defense tried to rule out poisoning of the salts by Lottie by having Mary Babcock, a visitor in the Hughes home and a niece of the Thomases, testify that she saw Lottie mix the salts and then swallow some right after Ed did.

The examination of the stomach by Dr. Haines found a large curdle of milk, which defense attorneys alleged showed that Ed deliberately swallowed poison in a glass of milk.

To account for the curdle, Marilda Hughes attested that she used two cups of milk in the dumplings and biscuits and that Ed put some in tea he drank earlier in the day.

Dr. C.P. Smith had been called by the state to affirm that Hughes’ symptoms were those of strychnine poisoning and not the result of embalming fluid or tetanus (lockjaw). Smith stated that Dr. Marston, who declared cause of death as heart disease, likely knew the death was murder or suicide but didn’t want to “rake up family history.”

A Dr. Charlson rebutted this assertion by saying that he gave the Hughes family dog an ounce of embalming fluid and salts from the same box as used by Lottie Hughes and these things did not kill the dog, suggesting death could have, indeed, been from heart failure.

Pearl Thomas, an adopted sister to Lottie, swore there was no door to the bedroom that Jesse Goude claimed to have visited with Lottie. She also said that Goude was there to see her, not Lottie Thomas, and they went to church together. Pearl said she never saw Lottie and Goude together and that she herself sent the Valentine to him, paying 50 cents for it.

Lottie’s cousin Mary Babcock, according to the Daily Iowa, claimed that, “Jesse Goude was spoony on her,” not Lottie, and that she was the one who sent the Valentine to him, not Lottie nor Pearl Thomas.

As the trial wore on, Lottie seemed to feel better about her chances, as the Des Moines Daily News wrote:

“The defendant is more cheerful now than she has been during the long trial and occasionally smiles at the lawyers’ pleasantries. Five ladies were with her this morning.”

☛ Lottie Testifies ☚

Dressed as always in black, Lottie took the witness stand on February 9, a day greatly anticipated by court-watchers. She testified under the questioning of her attorney John Cliggitt for two continuous hours.

Lottie denied she told Ed’s parents that his apparition appeared to her, said she walked home with Jesse Goude only twice and then in daylight, and insisted she never kissed him nor was intimate with him.

She alleged that when she left the Goude home on the day of her husband’s death, she saw Jesse in his room but did not speak to him. She was carrying a little girl, who called out to Jesse; he came out of his room and the child threw her arms around him and kissed him, creating the appearance that Lottie had done so.

She then described what transpired when she got back home to the Hughes house. The Le Mars Globe wrote of her testimony:

“She said that she and her husband were playing with each other, when he complained of not feeling well and asked her to mix him some salts, which he was used to taking. She did so, and her husband took some and then handed the cup to his little son, who would not taste it. Then she took the cup and swallowed the balance . . . .”

The most dramatic moment in Lottie’s testimony was her description of her husband’s death. The Waterloo Daily Courier wrote on February 9:

“For the first time during the Hughes murder trial there was weeping in the courtroom today. The defendant was telling of the agonies of her husband while in the throes of death, when the tears began trickling down her face, with suppressed sobbing. Her sister and mother were visibly affected.”

To counter charges that she robbed her husband’s corpse, the defendant said that on the night prior to Ed’s death he sat on the bed and tried to count his money. He finally asked Lottie to count it, which she did, finding $155. Her husband tossed the pocketbook under the pillow with the remark: “Lottie, here is $155; if you should ever need it, use it.”

The prosecution questioned the defendant aggressively, as described by the Waterloo Daily Courier:

“Mrs. Lottie M. Hughes is today undergoing a severe cross examination under the questioning of [David] W. Hurn. So far she has made no serious contradiction to her direct testimony. She is bright and has grit and wit equal to the emergency. She has acknowledged twice being alone in the room with Jesse Goude, but declares there was no thought of secrecy or improper conduct. Her testimony abounds in direct contradictions to very essential statements made by the state’s star witness, and if her story carries full weight with the jury, the motive for the crime of infatuation and finance are completely wiped out. In doing this she has been compelled to contradict a number of uninterested witnesses, and the weight of her story is hard to judge.”

Afterwards, Lottie’s supporters were divided over whether her testimony hurt or strengthened her case. But everyone in the courtroom could see that she and her supporters were becoming more confident of acquittal.

☛ Verdict ☚

On February 21, State’s Attorney David W. Hurn presented his closing remarks; John Glass, J.H. McConlogue, and John Cliggitt closed for the defense. Cerro Gordo County Attorney D.W. Telford made the final case for the state, and Judge Sherwin read the jury instructions.

After 43 days of testimony by 113 witnesses and $5,000 in expenses to the county, the case went to the jury on the night of February 22.

At 3:45 p.m. on February 25, the jury sent word they had a verdict. The Waterloo Daily Courier described the dramatic event that unfolded:

“A poll of the jury was taken by the Clerk, after which the judge asked if an agreement had been reached, to which Foreman Cahill answered, ‘It has’ and handed a copy of same to the judge, who first recorded it and passed it to the hand of Clerk Keerl, who read: ‘We, the jury, find the defendant not guilty.’”

Lottie, leaning on her father Lorenzo Thomas and her young son Vern, broke down and cried so hard that relatives encircled and attempted to calm her. The scene was so emotional, that the defense attorneys and even the judge were moved to tears.

Lottie moved towards the jury box to thank the jurors, but was so weak from emotion she could not follow through and had to sit back down.

The community was in general agreement with the verdict and even County Attorney D.W. Telford had said after his closing arguments that he thought the jury would acquit.

It appeared the key phrase in the jury instructions that led to the verdict was that if no positive evidence could be found that Lottie administered the poison to the victim, she had to be acquitted.

After the trial, Lottie and Vern lived in her parents’ house. Remarriage is possible, as no Lottie Hughes appears in any census after 1900. Vern passed away in 1919 at the age of 31.

Jesse Goude married Stella Ann McCullugh on March, 25, 1903, had several children, and died in 1950 in Lane County, Oregon.

☛ Edward Hughes’s Life ☚

Edward D. “Ed” Hughes was born in Mason City, Iowa, on November 27, 1863, the only child of Illinois native Marilda Owen and Irish immigrant Patrick H. “Pat” Hughes.

In October of 1887, he married Lottie M. Thomas, the daughter of stockman Lorenzo Thomas and his wife Elizabeth Converse. The couple had one child, Vernal R. “Vern” Hughes, born November 11, 1887.

He is buried with his family in Elmwood Saint Joseph Cemetery.
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Please note: Use of information from this article should credit Nancy Bowers as the author and Iowa Unsolved Murders: Historic Cases as the source.

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References

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• ☛ “Suspects Foul Play,” Graettinger Times, June 2, 1898.
• ☛ “Testimony Is All Given,” Le Mars Globe, February 22, 1899.
• ☛ “Testimony Is All Given,” Waterloo Daily Courier, February 20, 1899.
• ☛ “Testimony of Mrs. Hughes Ends,” Le Mars Semi-Weekly Sentinel, February 13, 1899.
• ☛ “She Is Not Guilty,” Waterloo Daily Courier, February 25, 1899.
• ☛ “She Is Not Guilty,” Waterloo Semi-Weekly Courier, February 28, 1899.
• ☛ “Slapped Her Dying Husband,” Daily Iowa Capital, January 18, 1899.
• ☛ “Slapped Her Husband’s Face,” Iowa State Reporter, January 20, 1899.
• ☛ “A Strong Point For The Defense,” Daily Iowa Capital, January 21, 1899.
• ☛ “Trial of Lottie M. Hughes,” Le Mars Semi-Weekly Sentinel, January 16, 1899.
• ☛ “Twelve Accepted,” Waterloo Semi-Weekly Courier, January 17, 1899.
• ☛ U.S. Census.
• ☛ “Was Poisoned,” Anita Republican, June 8, 1898.
• ☛ “Was Poisoned,” Pocahontas County Sun, June 9, 1898.
• ☛ “Weaving The Web,” Dubuque Daily Herald, January 20, 1899.
• ☛ “Web Is Growing,” Des Moines Daily News, January 18, 1899.
• ☛ “Will Go to Jury Tonight,” Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette, February 22, 1899.
• ☛ “Woman Held for Murder,” Marion Pilot, July 21, 1898.
• ☛ Worth County Index, January 12, 1899.