The Night on Smuttynose

Hey Coastal,

This week and next, I'm doing something different. One story, told in two parts.

Because some stories are too big for one night.

And this one happened in a single night, on a tiny island ten miles out in the North Atlantic, to three women who thought they were safe.

Lock your door before you read this one.

Smuttynose isn't much. A hump of bare rock in the Isles of Shoals, off the coast where Maine meets New Hampshire. No trees to speak of. Just stone, wind, and the sea on every side.

In the winter of 1873, only one house on it had anyone living there.

It belonged to John Hontvet, a Norwegian fisherman, and his wife, Maren. Living with them were Maren's sister, Karen, and Anethe, the young bride of Maren's brother, Ivan. Three women and their men, alone on a rock in the ocean, with nothing between them and the rest of the world but miles of freezing water.

Which was fine. As long as the men came home.

On March 5, John, his brother, and Ivan sailed for Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to sell their catch and buy bait. They meant to be home by dark.

On the wharf in Portsmouth, they ran into someone they knew.

Louis Wagner had fished with John. He'd lived with the family on Smuttynose the summer before. He'd slept under their roof and eaten at Maren's table. Lately he was broke, behind on his rent, and desperate.

And he knew something. John had been saving to buy a new boat. Around $600, kept somewhere in the house.

Louis made small talk. Then he asked a question. Would the men be going back to the island tonight?

A little later, he asked again.

Then he asked a third time. Would the women be out there alone?

That evening, the wind turned against the fishermen. They couldn't get home. They stayed in Portsmouth for the night.

And Louis Wagner disappeared.

Somewhere in the Portsmouth harbor that night, a small rowboat went missing.

Picture it. Black water. Bitter cold. A thin young moon sinking toward the horizon. Far ahead, the beam of the White Island light sweeping slowly across the dark, the only thing to steer by. A man pulling the oars, hour after hour, mile after mile, toward a rock with three women on it.

He knew the island. He knew the house. He knew exactly where everyone slept.

And he knew they were alone.

Inside the house, the women had given up on the men and gone to bed. Maren and Anethe slept in the bedroom. Karen lay on a lounge in the kitchen, close to the warm stove.

Sometime around one in the morning, the kitchen door opened.

Karen woke to someone standing over her in the dark. Then a chair came down on her.

She screamed. And the words she screamed, over and over, were these:

“John kills me! John kills me!”

Maren leapt out of bed and ran for the kitchen. In the dark and the chaos, she grabbed her sister and dragged her back into the bedroom, then threw her weight against the door.

On the other side, someone was trying to get in.

Maren screamed at Anethe to run. Get out the window. Get help.

Anethe went out the window into the snow, barefoot, in her nightclothes. She didn't get far.

Maren, at the window, watched the man come around the corner of the house.

She saw him lift the axe. The family's own axe.

Anethe looked up at him and screamed his name.

“Louis! Louis!”

Then he brought it down.

Maren begged Karen to come with her. Karen was too badly hurt to move.

So Maren did the only thing left. She grabbed a skirt, threw it around her shoulders, and went out the window, barefoot, into the snow. Her little dog, Ringe, scrambled out after her.

She ran for the shore and crawled down among the rocks at the edge of the sea. Then she lay face down on the ice-slick stone, pressed her little dog against her chest, and didn't move.

From the house, she heard her sister scream one last time.

Then she heard him come outside.

He was looking for her.

For the rest of that night, in a nightgown and bare feet in the March cold, Maren lay in the rocks with the waves washing up beside her, holding the dog to keep it quiet, listening to a killer search the island for the one who got away.

He never found her.

When she finally heard nothing, she still didn't move. She couldn't be sure he was gone.

What she didn't know was what he was doing inside the house.

He had strangled Karen. He had dragged Anethe's body in from the snow. He tore the house apart looking for the money and found only about fifteen dollars.

Then, with two dead women on the floor around him, he sat down at the table and ate a meal.

Before the sun came up, he rowed away.

When daylight finally came, Maren crept to the far end of the island, half frozen, and stood on the rocks waving her arms at the next island over, a quarter mile across the water.

Finally, a neighbor saw her. Through the cold morning air, he shouted across to her:

“Maren, Maren, who has done this?”

And she gave him one name.

Louis Wagner.

The police caught Louis Wagner. You'll hear all about that next week. On the surface, it looks like a closed case. A man with a motive, a dead-of-night row, a survivor who named him.

But go back to that kitchen for a second. Back to the first scream of the night.

When Karen Christensen woke up in the dark with someone standing over her, she didn't scream “Louis.”

She screamed “John.”

John was Maren's husband. And he was supposed to be ten miles away.

Two women dead. One woman alive, the only witness to what happened inside that house. A man who swore to his last breath that he never set foot on the island.

Next week, for Halloween: the manhunt, the mob, the hanging, and the question that's been whispered on the Isles of Shoals for 150 years.

What if the killer never left the island?

Part Two: The Woman in the Rocks.

Until Next Tide,

Hey Coastal

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