The Hall-Mills case
The Reverend Edward Wheeler Hall, an Episcopal rector, and Eleanor Mills, a singer in his choir.
The Reverend Edward Hall and Eleanor Mills, a singer in his choir, were found shot under a crab apple tree near New Brunswick, New Jersey, in September 1922, their letters scattered around them. Four years later three of his family were tried and acquitted. Nobody was ever convicted.
What is not in dispute.
On 16 September 1922 the bodies of Edward Hall and Eleanor Mills were found under a crab apple tree on an abandoned lot. Both had been shot. Their letters to each other had been scattered around them and placed between them.
The investigation was a jurisdictional muddle from the first day, with two counties involved and the scene trampled by sightseers before it was properly examined.
Four years later the case was reopened and Frances Hall, the rector's widow, and her two brothers were tried for the murders. The prosecution's principal witness was a woman who said she had seen the killings from a nearby field.
All of the accused were acquitted. No one else was ever charged.
Where the record stops.
Who killed them, and why the letters were arranged as they were. The acquittals are a finding that the case against those three was not made out; they are not a finding about anybody else.
What this page is, and is not.
No one was ever convicted of this. What is written above is the part of the record that is not in dispute. Where something is argued over, this page says it is argued over and does not pick a side. No real person is accused here of anything a court did not find, and no confession is invented for anybody.
- Under the Crab Apple Tree is not a reconstruction. It is an original crime set in this world, with an invented killer. Every real person at your table is innocent of the murder in the game.
- The victim is a person, not a prop. The Reverend Edward Wheeler Hall, an Episcopal rector, and Eleanor Mills, a singer in his choir.
- We publish the rules we work to. How we treat real cases sets out the six things this catalogue will not do, including the two cases that were dropped for failing them.
If you think we have crossed a line, the policy page is the standard to hold us to, and the email address is on it.
Under the Crab Apple Tree
Two bodies, a bundle of letters, and a scene that had been walked over by half the county before anybody wrote anything down.
Six to twelve people at your table, hosted from a TV and your guests' phones. The evidence arrives a piece at a time and nobody sees the whole of it until the last act. Read the full case file, including the content note for this one.