Murder & Mayhem in Scott County, Iowa

by John Brassard Jr.

  Before they left, Reinhart gave his daughter $500, telling her that it was a wedding present. Kissing his beloved daughter goodbye, he shook his new son-in-law’s hand, wished him luck and sent the brand-new couple on their way back east.

  Soon after their arrival in Washington, the first cracks began to form in the marriage. During his visit to Iowa, Henry must have been on his absolute best behavior and had tried to make a wonderful impression on Mary and her family. During conversations with them, Henry told them that he was a regular churchgoer. He understood the standard German drinking customs, but he stated that he did not drink. Mary quickly discovered that he had lied. Henry drank heavily, anything from beer to hard liquor. The $500 wedding present quickly dwindled away.

  Mary, as she had done since attending college in Chicago, wrote frequently to her parents in Iowa. Her growing dissatisfaction became more and more apparent in her letters. Reinhart and Elise started to worry and soon wanted to have their daughter back home with them, where they could keep a close eye on her. Discussing it between themselves and then making their own plans, they wrote to Mary and Henry, proposing a new idea.

  Reinhart and Elise told them that they should come back to Iowa and take an interest in the Hose farm in Pleasant Valley. Mary and Henry could live with them while the younger couple took over the daily operation of the farm. By paying a very generous low rent and running what was already a successful farm operation, Henry could set himself and his new wife on a very lucrative path. It did not take long for them to move back from Washington to Pleasant Valley.

  Henry and Mary moved onto the farm and immediately set to work. Almost as immediately, Reinhart and Elise realized, just as their daughter had, that Henry had lied to them. Henry showed a genuine taste for whiskey, and he drank all the time. The abuse was almost constant. Henry would frequently berate his wife, swearing at her and calling her names.

  In spite of all this, Mary bore her husband a son the year after they were married. For some men, this may have softened their disposition and caused them to rethink their lives. Men like that might even make a change for the better. Henry was not one of those men.

  Only two days after the child was born, Henry professed his desire to choke the infant to death with his bare hands. Later that same day, Mary asked Henry to close a window in their bedroom, where she was lying sick in bed. The wind coming from outside was making her cold. Henry, being the attentive husband that he was, stalwartly refused and left Mary to her own devices. Another time, Henry found that his infant son had moved off the blanket he was lying on. He lambasted Mary for it, and she told her husband that the baby was always moving off the blanket. Henry picked up his son and began to tell him how his mother did not love him and would be just as happy if he were dead.

  Eventually, a second son was born, with Henry showing the same fatherly affection toward him as he did his firstborn. When the boys would irritate him, Henry was known to drag them to the barn, where he would take them to a cow stall, tie them up and leave them. Suffice it to say, the boys were terrified of their father.

  In spite of his seeming disdain for his own children, Henry was not above using the boys as a way to further insult and terrify his wife. One morning, before they had even gotten out of bed, Henry began to berate Mary, cursing at her and calling her every insulting name that he could probably think of. As if this was not bad enough, Henry told her that he was going to teach their oldest son to kill his grandparents if they ever dared to raise a hand or use a word to correct him.

  Henry’s abuse was not limited to Mary and the children. One morning, Henry and Mary were preparing to go to nearby LeClaire, Iowa. While Mary was speaking to Elise, Henry approached and asked Mary if he had any underwear. Mary was not sure and had to take a few seconds to think about her answer. Before she could speak, Henry called her an idiot. Elise tried to intervene, gently telling Henry that he should be more patient and give Mary a little time to think about her answer. Henry, in reply, began cursing at Elise.

  More than once, while fighting with Mary over one thing or another, Henry would exclaim to the household that he was just going to go kill himself. Taking a pistol that he owned, he would stride purposefully out into the farmyard and fire a shot into the air. As soon as he did, he would fall onto the ground and lay still, pretending that he had actually shot himself.

  Henry ran the farm for six years. During that entire time, he continually abused his wife, children and in-laws. Neither they nor their neighbors were absolutely sure what he did with the money he made on the farm, but there is room for speculation. Henry frequently drank, buying the best booze he could find. He explained to one neighbor that he had not moved all the way to Pleasant Valley from Washington, D.C., to settle for second best.

  In spite of the fact that Henry ran the farm for Reinhart and Elise, Reinhart made sure that he held the title to the property. Several times over the years that they lived together, Henry tried to get Reinhart to sign the farm deed over to him. But the old German farmer stalwartly refused and stubbornly held onto the title with the tenacity of a starving dog defending a scrap of meat.

  Once, during those six long years, Mary left Henry. After they were first married, Henry, in one of his angry ravings, told Mary that he was going to kill her beloved father, Reinhart. She could not bear him anymore and fled to the home of John Dodds, a trusted neighbor who lived just down the road from the Hose farm. She had just entered their front door when Henry burst in almost right behind her. He pleaded with her to return, explaining to Mary and the Doddses that he was only joking and that there was no truth to his words. Mary chose to believe him and returned to the farm with him.

  Over the years, Reinhart and Elise had also moved off the farm, hoping that Henry and Mary would be able to work things out if they were no longer living there. For his own reasons, Henry always lured them back.

  In the spring of 1897, Mary left Henry for a second time, staying with neighbors for several days until Henry finally succeeded in gaining enough of her trust to bring her back home. But, just as it had happened before, the abuse started again.

  Henry was a tyrant, ruling the farm with an iron hand. His anger and hatred spewed forth from him in an unending tide, drowning his wife, his children and his in-laws in its vile black flood. For six long years, Mary endured. But six years is a long time for anyone in that kind of situation, and in 1898, things finally came to a head.

  One night, Henry returned to the farm after everyone had fallen asleep. Drunk, he walked through the door, a jug of whiskey in his hand. On the kitchen table he found some butter rolls that Mary had baked that were to be taken to LeClaire the following day. Staring at them in his drunken haze, Henry decided that something about them was not right. Hot-tempered man that he was, Henry immediately lost what little self-control he possessed.

  He stomped up the stairs and into their bedroom, where Mary lay sound asleep. He roughly awakened her. Her mind had just climbed into the first vestiges of consciousness when Mary found herself pulled out of bed and herded down the stairs. Henry took her to the kitchen, where he demanded that she remake the rolls until they suited his tempestuous fancy.

  The next day, Henry hitched the horse to his buggy, loaded the rolls and his oldest son into it and started for LeClaire. Once some time had passed and Mary was sure that he was gone, she hastily packed some belongings, took her youngest son and went directly to the house of Guy LaGrange.

  LaGrange was a schoolteacher in nearby Valley City, but he was also the son-in-law of John Dodds. Dodds and his wife had recently moved to Davenport, in the neighborhood of Brady Street and Kirkwood Boulevard. Mary pleaded with LaGrange to take her and her son to the home of his father-in-law. Well aware of Mary’s domestic situation, LaGrange readily agreed and took her to Davenport.

  Once there, Mary once again asked her old friends to shelter her from Henry. She explained that she had left Henry and taken their youngest son with her. Mary was determined that this time it
would be permanent. Like LaGrange and many of their other Pleasant Valley neighbors, the Doddses knew what Henry had been doing and were more than happy to help.

  During the next few days, Mary visited the law firm of Heinz and Fisher to file a petition for divorce. She sat down with the lawyer and related the entire tale of her unhappy marriage, including the years of abuse she had suffered at the hands of her drunken husband. The petition was written and filed. As before, Henry discovered where she was staying and came to Davenport in an attempt to bring her back to Pleasant Valley. But this time she would not come home to him, no matter how much he pleaded or how charming he tried to be.

  Realizing that she was serious this time, Henry quickly retained his own lawyer at a different firm, Lischer and Bawden. Henry told Lischer that he did not want a divorce but, rather, just wanted his wife to come home. The second time he met with the lawyer, Henry stated that he had been to see Mary a few times on his own. He asked if he should keep trying to visit her. Lischer responded with a resounding no. He explained to Henry that it was entirely possible that things might be reconciled between them while waiting for their court date. Henry promised his lawyer that he would not try to see Mary again and left the office. Unbeknownst to anyone else, Henry had already begun to form plans of his own.

  Entering a local gun store owned and operated by a man named Berg, Henry traded a shotgun that he owned for a new .38 Smith and Wesson revolver. While talking with Berg, Henry decided to tell him that the pistol was for killing livestock. Henry claimed that his neighbors in Pleasant Valley would often ask him to shoot their cattle for them and that he had developed a particular methodology in the performance of the task

  Henry said that he would have a cob of corn in one hand, and in the other he would secret his pistol. He would be friendly to the animal, luring it in with the food. The condemned animal would eventually come over and begin to eat. Henry would bide his time, waiting for his victim to fully relax. Once he felt the animal had reached that point, he would put his gun within close range and pull the trigger, fulfilling his task. To further illustrate his point for all those present in the gun store, Henry pantomimed his killing methodology as he described the various steps involved.

  But Henry’s plans for his new revolver did not involve livestock.

  As a matter of fact, Henry was quickly finalizing his plans. He had weighed out his options, considered his choices and consequences and, finally, had come to a very definite conclusion as to what he should do. It was time for Mary and him to die. But first, he had to explain himself. Henry was human, and even as abusive and alcoholic as he was, he felt compelled to tell his side of the story.

  So Henry sat down and began to write a series of four very long letters. He must have wanted to get things correct, to fully explain how he felt. One letter went to his own parents back in Washington, D.C., and another he wrote for the benefit of Reinhart and Elise. He knew that the actions he was about to undertake would draw a lot of attention, so he wrote still another letter to the Davenport Democrat and Leader, one of the most prominent newspapers in the region, so that it could share his feelings with the world.

  His fourth and final letter he wrote to his friend Emil Wiese. In it, Henry expressed his feelings over the situation that he now found himself in and how he felt like he was being crushed by this tremendous pressure. Henry asked Emil if the man would be kind enough to see to it that he was buried by Mary’s side. He ended the letter by asking his friend to kiss his sons and to help cheer them up. And with those final words written, Henry was satisfied. It was time to act.

  Jesse Dodds and his wife lived on Brady Street, just north of Kirkwood Boulevard. Their property had a decent-sized yard with a barn. By Saturday, August 6, 1898, Mary had been staying there for about a week. She was probably feeling a little more confident, relaxed and safe than she had for a long time. She did not have to face the daily insults from her husband that had become all too commonplace. Life must have started to seem just a little sweeter than it had since her marriage. Perhaps if Mary had known how sour everything was about to go for her that morning, she would have gotten as far away from Davenport and Henry Schultz as she possibly could.

  As Mr. and Mrs. Dodds and Mary went about their daily activities, Henry Schultz and his elder son drove up nearby Main Street, bringing his buggy to a stop near Seventeenth Street. At that point, an alleyway ran behind the Doddses’ residence and made an ideal way to get onto the property without being seen. Getting out of the buggy, Henry hitched his horse and began to walk down the alley to the Doddses’ barn. His son was left unattended in the buggy to entertain himself.

  Gradually, the house came into view. Mary was there in the yard, washing clothes. Mr. and Mrs. Dodds, their daughter and Henry’s three-year-old son were also there, but Henry paid them little heed. The pistol that he had secreted away in his pocket was meant for Mary, not for them.

  Henry thought back to when he had been there before, when he had tried in vain to coax his wife out of the house. Mary had been stubborn. She was adamant about the divorce and would not come out. The house was obviously her refuge, and if Mary were to see him in the alley, then she might get scared and retreat inside its stout walls. Once inside, Henry might never have the opportunity to kill her.

  Henry Schultz parked his buggy in this area, at Seventeenth Street, on his way to murder his wife. Author’s collection.

  Like a mountain lion stalking its prey, Henry walked carefully around to the front of the house so that Mary would not see him. From there, he came into the backyard where his wife was and placed himself between her and the back door, cutting off her avenue of escape into the house. Probably using the same suave charm that he had used in the past, Henry greeted those in the yard. He kissed his son, and Mary allowed him a kiss after that.

  Ignoring the Dodds family for the most part, Henry began to talk to Mary in German. He began his old diatribe again, telling her that he wanted her to come back home. But Mary was still adamant. Being away from him had only strengthened her inner resolve, and she absolutely refused to return to Pleasant Valley with him.

  In the hidden places of Henry’s mind, where he hid his murderous intent, Mary’s words probably only served to reinforce his decision to end her life. Changing tactics, he asked her if she would come into the barn with him to see her elder son. Mary resisted at first, but her desire to see the child she had left behind proved too strong, and she agreed to Henry’s request. The Doddses did not speak German and understood little of the transaction.

  Mary was wary of Henry, having been on the receiving end of his abuses for the better part of a decade. She asked her friend and protector Jesse Dodds to come with them inside the barn. Jesse, who had so graciously opened his home to Mary and her son, readily obeyed. This was his home, and he would entertain none of Henry’s nonsense there.

  Once inside, Jesse began to tend to his horses in order to give Mary privacy with her husband. The three-year-old had come with his parents, and his father asked the boy to fetch his brother, telling him the location of the buggy. The boy ran out the back of the barn and into the alley, looking for his sibling.

  As the estranged couple continued to converse, they noticed that the young boy had not returned. They thought that, in the manner of many three-year-olds, he was probably not only having trouble finding his way but also probably getting distracted by all kinds of other things.

  Turning to Dodds, Henry, speaking English now, asked the man to go check on his son. Jesse was not about to leave Mary alone with Henry or be ordered about by a man he probably did not care for. Ignoring Henry, Jesse asked Mary if she would like him to go and see what the young boy was doing. Mary said that she would, and Jesse set off down the alley in search of the young boy.

  Henry watched Dodds leave. He kept talking to his wife, keeping her distracted in the same way that he would an animal he was about to kill. Instead of an ear of corn, he was using his words to lure her into relaxing her guard.
He was also giving Dodds as much time as possible to get to Main Street, where it would be too late for him to help. As he continued his conversation with Mary, Henry’s hand began to slide into his pocket and around the grip of his revolver.

  Meanwhile, Dodd had reached the end of the alley. He looked over to see the two brothers running toward him. The younger boy had completed his task after all, and now his older brother was running toward the house, excited to see his mother. Dodds smiled then at the two boys, who had experienced so much misery at the hands of their father and yet still held onto the innocence of youth. But when he heard the first gunshot echo from his house, the smile quickly disappeared from his face.

  In the barn, Henry was finally satisfied that Dodds was well and far away. All of his preparations over the past week had come to a head in that moment, and he finally had his unprotected wife alone. With a snarl, he drew the revolver and fired, point blank, at Mary.

  Her eyes widened in surprise as she first saw the gun and then a flash of light from the muzzle. Immediately, she felt one of the weapon’s deadly projectiles tear a path through her torso. Instinctively, she turned and began to run.

  Mary left the barn and went into the yard. Her chest was burning from the wound in her torso, now bleeding freely. Her mind was screaming at her to run, to escape. But Henry was right behind her, murder in his heart and hate in his eyes. Running toward Mary, he raised his revolver and fired again.

  Dodds was sprinting now. He knew that it had been a mistake to leave Mary alone with Henry Schultz. How many times had Henry done the same thing? Abuse his wife, tie his children in a cow stall and when they left him, turn on the charm and lure them back? But this time, Henry did not want to bring his wife back—he sought to put her in the cold, hard ground.

  Dodds knew Henry had a gun now and knew that he would need something to fight with. He saw a few rocks lying on the ground. They were of a good size and might be heavy enough to do some damage. Pausing for a precious few seconds, Jesse Dodds leaned over, picked them up and began running again.