Was Lavinia Fisher the First Female Serial Criminal: Versions and Legends

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

In the early twentieth century, the Fisher couple ran the Sixth Mile House hotel near Charleston. However, after a while, travelers on the busy road began to disappear. In 1820, exactly 200 years ago, Lavinia and her husband were hanged on charges of robbery. Until now, in those places, tourists are told a blood-curdling legend about the owners-maniacs and about a woman who climbed the scaffold in a wedding dress. Which of this is true and which is fiction is very difficult to find out today, especially since there are several versions of those old tragic events.

The version, which almost became "official" in a couple of hundred years, looks like a script for a creepy thriller. According to him, the spouses really found out from the travelers who stayed for the night what the state of their finances was, and, if there was something to profit from, they brought poisoned tea to the unfortunate. The victim died or, perhaps, just fell asleep, after which the husband finished off the poor man in his room. A more interesting version even includes an option with a bed dropping or rolling over into the basement, where the crimes took place. Such testimony was allegedly given by the only surviving guest John Peeples.

The man made it to Mile Six in the evening and asked for an overnight stay. At first, the hostess allegedly refused him, saying that there were no rooms, but still fed the guest. During this dinner, the traveler opened up and told her about several successful deals and that he was now "in the money." After that, a room was unexpectedly found for him, and the hospitable hostess even brought the guest a cup of tea for the night. The man, fortunately, hated tea, therefore, in order not to offend the hostess, he discreetly poured the contents of the cup into the flower. At night, he regretted his frankness, because times were turbulent, and decided to be careful - he did not go to bed, but sat on a chair against the wall. At the dead of midnight, a traveler who was dozing off saw with horror that the bed, under the action of some mechanism, was sliding down under the floor. He did not wait to continue and jumped out the window. The frightened man managed to get to the police, and the terrible hotel was searched. The murder weapons and belongings of many victims were allegedly found in the basement. Spouses-maniacs were immediately arrested.

Lavinia Fisher was held in Charleston before her execution. Under South Carolina law, married women were not allowed to be executed at the time. According to legend, the criminal wanted to take advantage of this nuance, but the judge said that the execution of her husband would take place earlier, and this rule does not apply to widows. Before her execution, Lavinia put on her wedding dress in the hope that someone would want to marry her in order to save her from death, but there were no such daredevils. I must say that the woman, apparently, was really a beauty, so she could count on a similar outcome of events. Realizing that her feminine charms are powerless and death is inevitable, she supposedly shouted to the crowd: - and jumped into the scaffold hatch herself. Today, Lavinia Fisher is referred to in a huge number of sources and reference books as the first female serial killer and the first female criminal executed in America. However, researchers disagree about these facts.

The above option, although the most interesting, suffers from many inconsistencies. For example, there are documents confirming that “The House on the Sixth Mile” had burned down long ago by the time of the trial and execution - angry townspeople tried, so it is difficult to say where the criminal in prison could get a wedding dress, and this is only one of the dubious details. The surviving documents of the investigation on this long-standing case prove that no "numerous corpses" were found in the basement at that time, but a burial place with the remains of two people was found not far from the house. After a detailed consideration of this issue, a more modern version of the same events was born, which can rightfully be called "romantic".

According to her, Lavinia was a beautiful mulatto, whom the rich heir John Fisher fell in love with in her youth. Having lost his head, he arranged the escape of his beloved with her mother, and all three settled near Charleston. The young people were happy, the old woman lived with them in secret and soon died quietly - it was her grave that was found not far from home. However, a few years later, an extortionist appeared at the House on the Sixth Mile, who accidentally recognized the fugitive beauty and decided to blackmail the spouses. John Fisher, without thinking twice, shot the villain and buried him in the same grave. John Peeples, in this version, was the second blackmailer who managed to escape and denounce the Fishers. The spouses, still loving each other dearly, wrote numerous petitions for clemency during their imprisonment and were together until the last second.

Such a development of events, in any case, explains, in the opinion of some researchers, why the court was so strict on the woman, if direct evidence of her numerous crimes, apparently, was not found. It is possible that in fact the spouses were brutally executed for a crime against the system, and the case was not publicized because of the influential family to which John Fisher belonged. This version, which looks more like a series in the style of "Slave of Izaura", also undoubtedly has a right to exist, although it is criticized no less than the first.

The option, which today can be considered the most "dry" and free from speculation, still classifies the Fisher spouses as a gang of robbers who were operating at that time on a busy road near Charleston. It is possible that their house was a gangster den, and not a hotel at all. The fact remains that the travelers stopped disappearing after the defeat of the "House on the Sixth Mile", so, most likely, Lavinia Fischer was really not an innocent victim of ancient justice.

It is interesting that people are often inclined to invent horrific facts and juicy details, because a crime and the way to solve it are always not only scary, but also interesting. Read next: Astounding deadly performances at the Grand-Guignol Parisian theater