Stephen Dee Richards
Stephen Dee Richards or Samuel D. Richards, also known in the media as the "Nebraska Fiend" and the "Kearney County Murderer", was an American serial killer who confessed to committing nine murders in Nebraska and Iowa between 1876 and 1878.
Richards was born in West Virginia. His family would later move to Ohio, eventually settling in the Quaker village of Mount Pleasant. In 1876, Richards left his home and headed westward with the intention of "seeking his fortune". For a time, he found work at a local asylum; he claimed that during his time there, he lost all empathy for other people. When Richards later confessed to his crimes, he claimed to have committed his first murder sometime in late 1876, two weeks after arriving in Kearney, Nebraska. He would go on to commit several other murders, which he later claimed were done in self-defense. Richards fled after murdering Mary L. Harlson and her three children, but was captured in Mount Pleasant. In 1879, he was convicted of the murders of the Harlson family, as well as the killing of neighbor Peter Anderson, and hanged.
Richards was regarded as handsome and charismatic by contemporary chroniclers, who noted that his appearance and behavior completely obscured his nature as a cold-blooded killer. Many observed that he displayed a complete lack of remorse for his crimes, and indifference toward his execution. Modern-day forensic psychologist Katherine Ramsland has noted that these characteristics were also displayed by Ted Bundy, and she has referred to Richards as The Old West's Ted Bundy.
Richards would become notorious by way of a posthumous biography, which was based on an interview conducted after his final arrest. The biography, which also included entries on other criminals of the time, was published in 1879 by the Nebraska State Journal.
Early and young adult life
Stephen Dee Richards was born in Wheeling, West Virginia, on March 18, 1856. He was said to have had five sisters and a brother. When Richards was six, his family relocated to Ohio; first to Monroe County, and then to Noble County. The family later settled in the Quaker village of Mount Pleasant in Ohio when he was eleven. Richards would later describe his mother as a devout Methodist, and his father, a farmer, as having "made no profession of religion". During his residency there, Richards attended school in Mount Pleasant; he claimed that the teachers considered him well-behaved. At his mother's insistence, he also attended Sunday school and church regularly.Up until the age of twenty, Richards lived with his parents, working for farmers and other locals in the area. On September 16, 1871, Richards' mother died of an unknown cause. Several years later, the age of 20, Richards met and became engaged to a young woman named Anna Millhorne, with whom he regularly corresponded during his later travels, up until his final arrest. Richards also met men whom he would describe as being of "questionable occupation"; he began passing counterfeit bills that he claimed he had obtained by way of a man in New York. In February 1876, he left Mount Pleasant, heading west to find fame and fortune.
For a time, Richards lived in Iowa, working as a hand at farms in Burlington and Morning Sun. He was later hired as an attendant at the Iowa Lunatic Asylum in Mount Pleasant, Iowa; his job was to bury deceased patients. The New York Times reported that Richards' time at the asylum served to dull his own humanity, as well as his view of the human race. The Omaha Herald quoted Richards as saying that after he quit his job at the asylum, he "didn't care for anything and had no respect for human nature."
Richards left the asylum by the fall of 1876, and began drifting around the Midwest, finding intermittent work and occasionally consorting with train robbers. He stayed in Kansas City briefly before moving on to Nebraska, where he passed through Hastings before arriving in Kearney.
Murders
Early murders
In a confession written after his final arrest, Richards admitted to having killed four men during his travels around Nebraska and Iowa in 1876 and 1877. He claimed to have committed his first murder sometime in late 1876, two weeks after arriving in Kearney. According to Richards, he met a man while traveling on horseback through the Nebraska countryside, and the pair decided to camp for the night near Dobytown. Settling down for the night, the two began gambling in a game of cards, with Richards winning most of the stranger's money. As the two set off for Kearney the following morning, the other man turned on Richards and demanded his money back. Richards refused, whereupon, he claimed, the other man became belligerent. Richards then shot him above the left eye, killing him instantly. After confirming that the man was dead, Richards disposed of his body in a nearby river.Several days later, as he continued his trek to Kearney, Richards encountered another man, who was traveling on foot. The man had seen Richards and the previous traveler together, and the stranger asked what had become of that man. While talking to him, Richards realized that this man and the man whom Richards had killed were friends and business partners. Richards denied any knowledge of the dead man, but his friend continued to hound Richards with questions, which caused Richards to become increasingly anxious. Believing that the man knew too much, Richards decided to kill the stranger in order to prevent him from disclosing to anyone else his knowledge of the association between Richards and his murder victim. Richards would later state that when the stranger turned his back, he shot him in the back of the head, killing him. He disposed of the corpse and sold the man's horse in a nearby town. He then continued on his way, but before reaching Kearney, stopped at the home of Jasper Harlson, who, according to Richards, was a train robber of some repute. Mary, Jasper's wife, whom Richards described as being a "free talker", noticed that Richards' shirt was stained with blood, and commented on it. Richards had not noticed the blood on his clothes, and claimed to have replied, as if in jest, that it must have come from the men whom he had murdered. That ended the conversation.
Richards later traveled to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where he used counterfeit money to purchase a horse and buggy from an unidentified man. After Richards left, the seller soon discovered that the bills were not genuine. Tracking Richards down, the seller demanded that Richards give him either give him real money or return of his horse and buggy. With Richards refusing both demands, the man threatened to have him arrested, and Richards responded by shooting him. He then buried the body and left the area.
In March 1877, Richards and a young man with the surname Gemge left Grand Island, Nebraska, on horseback and headed towards Kearney. As they neared their destination, they stopped and camped for the night between Lowell and Kearney, along the Platte River. Richards woke up at about 3a.m. and roused his partner, telling him that it was nearly morning, and they should get back on the road. Gemge, infuriated at being awakened so early, began arguing with Richards about the time, and then started insulting him. The argument continued, as Richards later recounted:
Murders of the Harlson family
In June 1878, while in Kearney, Richards was arrested and jailed for larceny. He would later claim that this charge was unfounded. During his time in jail, he reunited with Mary L. Harlson. Shortly before Richards' arrival, she had been arrested under suspicion of having aided the escape of her husband and another prisoner, named Underwood or Nixon, from the Kearney jail. Richards and Mary Harlson agreed that she would sell him the deed to her property six months later, for $600.After Richards was released from jail, he traveled around Nebraska for several months. He did business in Hastings, Bloomington and Grand Island before arriving at the Harlsons' Kearney County homestead on October 18, 1878. Mary Harlson transferred the property to Richards upon his arrival, and he stayed there for several weeks. It was later reported by the New York Daily Herald that Richards had married Harlson on November 2, in what the newspaper alleged was a scam to acquire ownership of Harlson's land. A month later, Richards decided to kill Harlson and her three children—ten-year-old Daisy, four-year-old Mabel and two-year-old Jasper, nicknamed "Jesse". In his confession, Richards claimed that Harlson had discovered that he was guilty of murder, and he feared that her talkative nature might betray his presence to the authorities. Richards therefore decided to murder the family in order to ensure that his previous crimes would remain hidden.
On November 3, 1878, Richards got up early in the morning, along with another man named Brown, who had been staying at the house. Brown left to feed the horses and complete other chores around the farm. Richards found a spade and dug a hole, then sneaked back into the house and murdered Mary, Daisy, Mabel and Jesse with an ax. According to one report, Mary and one of the children were murdered with a smoothing iron, while the other two were physically assaulted. Richards would refute this claim, stating that he had killed the family while they were asleep. He said that most of them had died after the first several blows, with the exception of Daisy, who had "writhed in pain for some time". Richards was said to have scrubbed the blood off of the floor and himself after the murders, before sitting down to breakfast. After he had eaten, he carried the bodies out of the house and buried them in the hole that he had dug nearby. When later questioned about the Harlsons' disappearance, Richards told several people that the family had left with Brown, and he did not know when they would return. A 21st-century account claims that Richards said that Harlson had transferred the deed of the farm to him, and subsequently left with her children, to reunite with her husband. The bodies of Harlson and her children were discovered on December 11. Some reports stated that they had been concealed underneath a haystack, rather than buried, as Richards would later claim.
Murder of Peter Anderson
In December of 1878, Richards agreed to help his neighbor, an immigrant from Sweden named Peter Anderson, with some work on Anderson's property. The Columbus Journal would later report that Richards had used the alias "Dick Richardson" when working for Anderson. On December 9, Anderson became ill after eating a meal Richards had prepared, causing him to suspect that Richards had poisoned him. Anderson informed a neighbor of his suspicions. The next day, he confronted Richards; the two fought, and Richards either beat Anderson to death with a hammer or hatchet, or shot him. Anderson's body was later discovered in the cellar of his house, buried underneath a pile of coal. Richards would deny poisoning Anderson, saying that that was not his style. He claimed that Anderson had attacked him with a knife, and he then had killed Anderson in self-defense.On the run
Richards decided to flee Kearney shortly after murdering Anderson, expecting that the bodies that he had concealed would soon be discovered. In the evening, as he was hitching up Anderson's horses and preparing to leave, some of Anderson's neighbors arrived. They had noticed Anderson's absence, and questioned Richards about it. He reportedly told them that Anderson was inside the house. As Anderson's neighbors entered the dwelling, Richards fled on horseback, and rode to Bloomington. He traveled east, by horse and train and on foot, passing through Omaha and Chicago. While on the run, he met up with Jasper Harlson and Harlson's fellow escaped prisoner. The three traveled through Wheeling, West Virginia, and into Ohio, passing through Bridgeport, before arriving in Richards' hometown of Mount Pleasant. Nebraska Governor Silas Garber issued an arrest warrant for Richards on December 16, 1878, and promised a reward of $200 for his arrest and conviction.Capture
Most accounts state that on December 20, 1878, shortly after Richards had arrived in Mount Pleasant, he attended a ballroom dance, accompanied by two unidentified women. Copies of a wanted poster featuring Richards had been circulated throughout the town recently, and a constable named McGrew recognized him from the poster. He enlisted the help of a penitentiary guard named Folge; the two men armed themselves with shotguns and set off after Richards. They found him walking through a field just outside of town with the two women. He was unarmed, and quickly surrendered. Richards would later claim that he had spotted the officers approaching him; intending to fight his way out of the situation, he told the women to head back to town. They refused, however, so Richards chose to surrender. He said that if the women had left, he would have avoided arrest:Richards said that if he had escaped, he would have returned to Nebraska. He reasoned that it would have been the last place that anyone would have looked for him.
Some accounts differed about the date and place of Richards' arrest. The Wheeling Daily Intelligencer stated that, upon arriving in a town near Mount Pleasant, Richards was identified by a former acquaintance, who detained him with the help of another person. One source claims that Richards was arrested in early 1879 in Austin, Texas. There were even conflicting descriptions of Richards' appearance. Newspapers described him as being approximately six feet two inches tall and "heavily built", with dark hair and blue eyes. However, the account of a Dr. Moreland, who performed a phrenological examination of Richards before his execution, conflicted with these descriptions of him. In his examination report, Moreland stated that Richards had light brown hair and dark gray eyes.
The Workingman's Friend, a Leavenworth, Kansas, newspaper, reported that Chicago authorities received part of the reward.
After his arrest, Richards was incarcerated in Steubenville, Ohio. While there, he wrote two articles for the local newspaper, confessing to nine murders in a period of three years. Sheriff David Anderson of Buffalo County, Nebraska, and Sheriff Martin of Kearney County, both of whom had pursued Richards to Ohio, returned him to Nebraska. Due to local public outrage, Anderson and Martin feared that Richards would be lynched if he were returned to any of the localities where he had committed his crimes, so it was decided to avoid taking him to these places initially.
At the time of Richards' arrest, authorities suspected that he was a member of a gang of outlaws who had plagued the state, or even the group's leader. Law enforcement was able to definitively link Richards to the nine murders to which he had confessed, and suggested that he might have killed even more, but The Nebraska State Journal doubted this.
Shortly before his trial, Richards predicted that he would be convicted and hanged for his crimes. He was moved to a jail in Omaha on December 28, then transferred to Kearney by train. On December 30, a large crowd of enraged townsfolk gathered outside of the jail in Kearney where Richards was being kept. Fearing a lynching, authorities took "extra precautions" to ensure Richards' safety, as well as their own. While being moved to the depot, Richards was said to have been enraptured by the large crowd that had gathered, and asked whether the whole town was there to see him. Eventually, the crowd dispersed; no further incidents occurred during the rest of Richards' stay in Kearney.
Trial
Richards' trial began on January 16, 1879, in Minden, Nebraska, with Judge Gaslin presiding over the court proceedings. The prosecution was led by a district attorney named Scofield, and Richards' defense was led by a lawyer called Savage. Scofield laid out two indictments for murder in the first degree, for the killings of the Harlson family and Anderson. Richards pled not guilty, arguing that Anderson's murder was in self-defense, and therefore justifiable. The prosecution called seven witnesses to the stand. They all testified to the state in which Anderson was found. Richards then was called to testify. When questioned by Scofield, he admitted to killing Anderson with a hammer after a heated argument, but reiterated that he did so in self-defense. Richards stated that, although he had repeatedly warned Anderson not to do so, he had reached for a hatchet nearby. The prosecution then entered into evidence the hammer that had been used to kill Anderson. Richards identified it as the murder weapon.After two hours of deliberation, the jury found Richards guilty of the murders of the Harlsons and Anderson. He was sentenced to death by hanging, and his execution date was set for April 26, 1879. Richards was described as being "cheerful and indifferent" to both the proceedings and his conviction. The Sedalia Weekly Bazoo reported that, shortly after his conviction, Richards managed to smuggle a knife into his cell, with the intention of using it to kill himself, but the weapon was discovered by the authorities, and confiscated before he could use it. No other newspaper records corroborate this story, however.
Execution
When Richards was returned to Nebraska, the Omaha Herald reported that he "manifested supreme indifference to his lot, was perfectly willing to be brought direct to Kearney Junction and said he had as soon died one way as another." Shortly after Richards' conviction, Sheriff Martin announced that his execution in Minden would be open to the public, even though Martin feared the attendance of a large number of spectators who could become violent. In an effort to prevent a riot, an enclosure was constructed around the gallows to separate the expected crowd from Richards. However, tickets that allowed admittance into the restricted area were sold. Also, Richards was allowed to invite people; he chose members of the press whom he had befriended while in prison.Spectators at the execution were said to have numbered between 2,000 and 25,000. As the crowd became increasingly agitated, the authorities pleaded with them to stay outside the enclosure, but guards were unable to prevent the spectators from beginning to destroy the barrier. At precisely 1p.m., Richards was led to the gallows by Martin and his deputy; this pacified the crowd. Upon ascending the gallows, Richards launched into an impassioned defense of his actions. He again claimed that the killing of Anderson was in self-defense, and also disavowed any involvement in the murders of the Harlson family, and claimed that he was the victim of a "wrongful conviction". He then stated that he had found the Lord, "made peace with God", and "had faith in Christ", and asked the crowd to join him in singing the hymn "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing". Richards' final words were said to have been "Jesus be with me now!" Reverend W. Sanford Gee, who presided over the execution, would later tell reporters that he hoped that Richards' professions of religious salvation were genuine, but allowed that they might not have been.
At 1:17p.m. on April 26, 1879, Richards was hanged. The St. Louis Globe-Democrat stated that it took fifteen minutes for him to die. Shortly after his execution, a photographer was able to capture a photograph of Richards' corpse propped inside a coffin. This would be the only confirmed photograph of Richards.
Aftermath
Local doctors hounded Richards before his execution, asking him to consent to donating his body, so that they could perform an autopsy. He refused, and would be buried in Minden. Despite his gravesite being guarded, his corpse was stolen the night after his execution—The Sedalia Weekly Bazoo suspected the doctors who had wanted to examine him—but was returned to its resting place shortly thereafter. Sometime later, his body was dug up once again; this time, Richards' bones were scattered on the streets of Kearney. On November 1, 1882, it was reported that Kearney County Gazette had obtained Richards' skull and placed it on display in the newspaper's office window. The current location of the skull is unknown.Pathology
After his arrest, many people described Richards as charismatic, and noted that he successfully concealed his dark nature under a polite, articulate, and handsome exterior; a friend who accompanied Richards' autobiographer to his interviews said during one visit that Richards did not have the look of a murderer. Contemporary observers remarked that Richards seemed to feel no guilt whatsoever about his crimes. Numerous times between his arrest and his execution, Richards was asked why he had no empathy towards his victims or remorse for his crimes. Sometimes he simply refused to answer. When he did choose to reply to this question, he gave conflicting responses. He would usually cite his associations with people of questionable morals, and his time working at the Mount Pleasant Asylum, as deleterious influences. When The Nebraska State Journal questioned him about his lack of remorse for the heinous murders that he had committed, particularly those of the Harlson family, Richards recounted an event from his childhood. He had been tasked to kill a litter of kittens, and did so by bashing each of their heads against a tree. After he had killed all of the kittens, he found that he felt no guilt about it, and in fact found the killing "fun". However, he adamantly claimed that he did not enjoy inflicting pain upon others, and that in his younger years, other people had considered him to be kind. Reporters who interviewed him after his arrest were struck by his calm and collected behavior; an article in the New York Daily Herald described him as being "carefree and cheerful". In an interview for the Wheeling Daily Intelligencer, Richards said that he knew that he would be executed for his crimes, but that he was unafraid of death and was "ready to meet it". When the jury sentenced him to death, he was said to have been unconcerned and in good spirits. The St. Louis Globe-Democrat reported that Richards broke down during his final moments, but this was contradicted by other newspaper accounts of his execution.Criminal psychology and profiling would not be used as an investigative technique until the Jack the Ripper murders in 1888, nine years after Richards' execution, but in 2018, forensic psychologist Katherine Ramsland referred to Richards as "The Old West’s Ted Bundy". Both Richards and Bundy used their charisma to manipulate others, and both displayed a complete lack of remorse for their crimes. Ramsland also noted, however, that Bundy murdered for the purpose of sexual gratification, whereas Richards had no preferred method of killing or type of victim; furthermore, Bundy fought his execution, while Richards was indifferent to his death sentence.
Throughout his travels, Richards used various aliases. In an account of his life published in The Sedalia Weekly Bazoo, Richards would admit to having used the false names George Gallagher, F.A. Hoge, and William Hudson. Richards also admitted to corresponding with various acquaintances under the names D.J. Roberts, J. Littleton, and W. A. Littleton.
Legacy
The Philosophy of Insanity: Richard, the Nebraska Fiend is a detailed analysis of Richards written by Dr. John Sanderson Christianson. It was published on February 9, 1879. A Nebraska State Journal interview with Richards prior to his execution was published in a book titled Life and Confession of Stephen Dee Richards, the Murderer of Nine Persons Executed at Minden, Nebraska, April 26, 1879. The book, published on May 1, 1879, five days after Richards' hanging, includes entries on other contemporary criminal cases as well.NET Nebraska's documentary special Until He Is Dead: A History Of Nebraska's Death Penalty, featured Richards as a prime example of the public spectacle of the state's early executions, the documentary would mistakenly refer to him under his "Samuel Richards" alias. An episode of the SyFy Channel documentary series Paranormal Witness, titled "The Nebraska Fiend", features a family who is purportedly being tormented by Richards' spirit.