The Murder of Mary Monsell (Connecticut)

More than a century ago during the winter of 1923, a quiet Christmas in East Hartford, Connecticut took a devastating turn that would echo far beyond that holiday. Mrs. Mary Monsell never arrived for the dinner she’d been warmly invited to, and within hours, her home became the center of a crime that would send police searching for a suspect who vanished into the world and never returned. 

Mary’s name rarely appears in headlines now. Her story has nearly slipped beneath the weight of time. But history leaves clues if you’re willing to look, and some stories are worth digging up again.

Christmas Eve, 1923

It was Christmas Eve in the Burnside section of East Hartford, Connecticut, the kind of night when winter presses up against the windows with a sparkling frost and the whole neighborhood settles into a hush. Silver Lane and Forbes Street were quiet, the streets frozen and empty, and inside the small cottage at the corner, 72-year-old Mary Monsell was preparing for a simple, pleasant holiday.

According to reporting by the Hartford Courant, Mary had lived there alone for the past four years, ever since her sister Jayne passed away. Mary had moved to Connecticut from Long Island to be with Jayne after they were both widowed, choosing to share a home and each other’s company in the later chapters of their lives. When Jayne died, Mary stayed. The house held memories and the life she’d built in her golden years, and her neighbors had stepped in to fill the gaps that loneliness left behind.

Among those neighbors were Mr. and Mrs. John Rau, who lived close enough to check in all the time. They liked Mary, and they worried about her. She was elderly, lived alone, and had no other local family. When the Raus stopped by for a brief visit on the night before Christmas, they brought a small gift and something even more important: an invitation. They were hosting Christmas dinner the next day with turkey at one o’clock sharp. They told her she was welcome. Expected, even.

Mary accepted immediately. She didn’t have anywhere else to go, and she enjoyed the Raus’ kindness. It must have felt good to be included on a holiday that can otherwise amplify the quiet. Mary waved her neighbors goodbye and took a book up to bed, likely content and comforted by what the next morning would bring.

By the afternoon of Christmas Day, the Raus had the table set and dinner warming. One o’clock came and went, but there was no Mary. At first they waited, imagining she might simply be running late. But as the minutes stretched on, worry started to replace patience. She’d never miss a holiday invitation. Not without a word.

Finally, John put on his coat and made the short walk down Forbes Street to check on her.

When he arrived at Mary’s cottage, the first unsettling sign greeted him immediately: the curtains on every window were drawn tight. Not unusual for late evening, perhaps, but odd for mid-afternoon on a holiday when she was expected elsewhere. He knocked but there was no response.

Then, on the side of the house near the pantry, he saw something he knew wasn’t right. The window leading  into the pantry was open. It was December in Connecticut…No one left a window open in that weather, not intentionally.

He circled the house, stopping at another window that looked directly into Mary’s bedroom. Those curtains were drawn, too. He strained to see anything, even a shadow, but the interior stayed stubbornly dark. He tried to come up with a rational explanation. Maybe Mary had changed plans. Maybe she’d gone somewhere else for Christmas after all. But he knew better. Something was definitely wrong.

John didn’t want to alarm his wife by running home and announcing that their elderly neighbor might be in trouble. So instead he walked down to a local convenience store, one with a public telephone, and called the East Hartford police.

Chief William McKee himself responded. He arrived quickly, sized up the situation, and forced open the locked back door. What he found inside shattered any hope that Mary had simply gone elsewhere for the holiday.

Mary Monsell was lying in her bed. Her skull had been crushed. Even seasoned officers felt the weight of it – an elderly woman, alone on Christmas Eve, had been violently attacked in the safety of her own home.

Early Investigation

The scene around Mary’s body told its own story. There were signs of a struggle throughout the house. Furniture was disturbed, items were scattered everywhere. It was clear that Mary had fought desperately for her life, and then someone ransacked her home. Drawers were pulled open, cabinet contents dumped across the floor. The entire kitchen looked as though it had been torn apart. It appeared the intruder had come looking for money and valuables. 

Chief McKee called for county detective Edward J. Hickey, the lead investigator for the State’s Attorney’s Office, to respond to the scene. This was no simple break-in. It was brutal, personal, and devastating.

Mary had been beaten with a blunt metal object, possibly a hammer or another tool with a sharp edge. According to reporting published in the Bridgeport Telegram and the Hartford Courant, the fatal blows were to her right cheekbone and left temple, causing catastrophic bleeding in her brain. A hammer was found at the scene, one that could have been consistent with her injuries, but it didn’t have any blood on it.

Underneath Mary’s bed, investigators discovered her alarm clock. The hands were frozen at 3:15 a.m. That small detail became critical: paired with her physical condition, it placed her death somewhere between midnight and 3:15 in the morning.

It appeared the killer had removed some of Mary’s clothing and used it to wipe blood from her nose and mouth, as though cleaning her face. Afterward, she was placed back in bed and covered with a mattress. It was either an attempt to stage the scene or a disturbing gesture of concealment.

Investigators moved to the pantry window next. What John had seen from outside was even worse up close. The window hadn’t simply been left open – it had been shattered. The intruder had broken it, reached inside, unlatched it, and climbed through. Detectives believed Mary had heard the crash of breaking glass in the night, woken up, and confronted the intruder. The struggle likely began there, spilled through the house, and ended in her bedroom.

Only one lamp had been left burning in the home, casting a dim, flickering light on the chaos. Investigators imagined the intruder rifling through drawers in near-darkness, checking what they’d found by that single lamp glow.

Police believed the intruder expected to find a lot of money, but no substantial amount of cash existed in the house. Though Mary had sizable savings at the East Hartford Trust Company (about $2,400, which had the purchasing power of over $45,000 in today’s money) she hadn’t made any recent withdrawals. The bank confirmed she hadn’t touched her account for at least a month.

As reported by the Daily Advocate, the only money unaccounted for in Mary’s home included a small sum sent to her in a Christmas letter from her nephew and his mother on December 20th. Investigators found the letter, but not the money. For all the destruction, the killer also overlooked a stash of $95 upstairs. Instead, only about $12, two watches, and a few small trinkets were missing. Hardly a fair return for such an assault.

Almost nothing in the quiet Burnside neighborhood seemed unusual that Christmas Eve. The Journal reports that John recalled hearing a dog barking around three in the morning – a brief disturbance in an otherwise silent night. At the time it didn’t mean anything. In hindsight, it was the only hint that something was happening inside Mary’s small cottage.

Police did their due diligence, questioning anyone who might have been near the area overnight. A man from Windsor was brought in briefly, but it didn’t take long to eliminate him from suspicion. He had nothing to do with Mary’s killing.

And so, as Christmas Day wore on, the investigation remained painfully still. Theories would come later. Suspects would emerge. But in those early hours, the only truths police had were the ones left behind in the house: a window shattered open to the winter air, rooms torn apart by a desperate struggle, and the life of a 72-year-old woman abruptly and violently ended. Mary Monsell had simply been preparing for a holiday meal with neighbors who cared about her. Instead, she became the center of a crime so brutal it would haunt East Hartford for decades. 

In the earliest days of the investigation, detectives began to wonder whether the murder of Mary Monsell was an isolated act, or whether the violence that shattered her home on Christmas morning was part of something older, darker, and still unresolved.

Because five years earlier, in the fall of 1918, another life had ended on the very same patch of land.