Date: Fri 30-Apr-1999

Publication: Bee

Author: CURT

Quick Words:

history-cruson-peck-murder

Full Text:

A Tragic Newtown Tale Retold

(with pamphlet cover)

There are hundreds of murder mysteries that circulate in and out of Newtown's

Cyrenius Booth Library, but few recount the degree of tenacious sleuthing

required of Town Historian Daniel Cruson in the production of his slender

pamphlet A Victorian Murder in the Newtown, Easton, Redding Frontier. This

reconstruction of the 19th Century crime that shocked the good citizens of

Newtown of the time, is now available to the public at the library for $3, or

from Historical Society members.

The murder of Andrew J. Peck on June 8, 1888 quickly took its place as a part

of Newtown lore. In recent years, middle school students have even staged a

theatrical production based on the local murder. Many of the telling details

of the crime, however, were lost along with contemporaneous accounts of the

crime. Ten years ago, building on some initial research by one of his history

students at Joel Barlow High School in Redding, Mr Cruson set about to uncover

what he could about the murder. He published his findings in the The Rooster's

Crow, the newsletter of the Newtown Historical Society.

That account of the crime, however, failed to tie up many of the loose ends in

the case. Little was known, for example, about the two trials of the man

eventually convicted in the case, Rudolph Stoffel, and it was still uncertain

who had inherited Andrew Peck's estate; the inheritance was thought for a time

to be a motive of one other suspect in the case. Through happenstance, good

fortune, and a painstaking survey of early editions of The Newtown Bee from

the 1880s and other newspapers from that time, Mr Cruson has managed to come

up with the whole story.

The tragic tale, as recounted in the pamphlet, paints a picture of an untamed

quarter, existing on the margins of society on the "frontier" of Newtown,

Easton, and Redding. Mr Cruson's descriptions of the colorful and passionate

people living there, with their sometimes unorthodox views of marriage, social

responsibility, and personal conduct, set the stage for a cold-hearted killing

that would be shocking in any era, but is especially so in the Victorian era

with its social veneer of propriety and rectitude.

A Victorian Murder in the Newtown, Easton, Redding Frontier may be the

shortest murder mystery you will read this year, but it is not one you will

soon forget.