Butcher-hired assassin?

[Singer7j]

I found this article that I posted to Jeffery's theory back in 2004 that you may find interesting.
It reports a strange acting man a day or two after the Borden murders talking to a store owner on Rodman St.
Perhaps the board Administrator would be willing to add this to the list of Suspects list.

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[Singer7j]

Sorry lol
Please read it bottom first to top.

[Singer7j]

I find this news article very interesting

[camgarsky4]

Very interesting article. Any other leads that connect this stranger to the Borden's?

Andrew was killed at 11am Thursday and, just short of 24 hours later, this stranger is only a long city block from the Borden house. He sure didn't try to put distance between himself and the scene of the crime.

Borden house at top and Cuttle's store at bottom of map below.

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[Singer7j]

This map is incorrect

[Singer7j]

Sorry
Now it won't let me post any photos

[Singer7j]

Sorry
Now it won't let me post any photos
im trying to post a photo of the 1893 map and directory listing for John F Cuttle "clerk"
30 Rodman st.

[Singer7j]

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[Singer7j]

Sorry again
Your map is correct lol

[Singer7j]

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[Singer7j]

Please read bottom to top

[camgarsky4]

No worries on the map. Glad its ok, because I have been using like a 'bible' for couple years.

I reread the article. Is the connection to the crime that the stranger was in the butchering biz?
I'm going to go back and reread your theory.....I've forgotten much of it.

[Singer7j]

Yes
William A Davis the butcher.

[Singer7j]

I think its interesting that several of the people in Flint village that were interviewed by Officer J.M. Heap in the Witness statements in Fall river on the day of the Murders said that the Stranger they met "Leaned a little to the left when he walked"
On Ancestry I found William A Davis' son Isaacs' world war 2 registration card that stated that Isaac Davis was missing two toes on his left foot and in a Newspaper article i found his former doctor said that Isaac had a bad back and suffered from Arthritis.
Hmmm....
I'm just wondering if his father William a davis suffered from some of the same conditions as his son Isaac did.
especially missing toes on his left foot that may have caused William a davis to "lean a little to the left when he walked".

[Singer7j]

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[Singer7j]

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Not this

[Singer7j]

Imo the photo of the group of men are Horse Traders.

[camgarsky4]

In your opinion, what made buying Andrews acreage so uniquely important vs purchasing other lands for grazing horses? Seems like Andrew would have let Morse lease the property. Morse went back to Iowa, so he didn't appear to want to live out his life in Massachusetts.

What did Morse/Davis accomplish by killing Andrew and Abby? Are you thinking pure revenge?

[Singer7j]

Yes

[camgarsky4]

In an Iowa paper, there is a quote (red print below), reportedly from his half-sister, that Morse is not someone who forgave a transgression easily. That comment would match with your theory. That said, as always, there is a risk of taking a comment out of context.

Source: The Gazette, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Aug. 16,1892 (CagneyBT posted this article previously on another thread).
...Morse came here in 1869 from Illinois, where he had been a farmer with the exception of two or three years, during which, when a young man, he learned the butcher's trade. Morse has been a farmer ever since.

While in Illinois, Morse rented a farm. During this period, he saved up something less than $1,000 and then came here and bought land. He now owns two farms, 220 acres in all, of the finest land in Mills county. Both these farms lie directly south of Hastings, only a mile and a half from town. One of them has a fine house on it, a large barn, and is otherwise as well improved as any farm in the county.

Morse has never married, but it is the theory of those who know him best that he at one time contemplated marriage, and that he improved this farm with a view to marrying some day and occupying the place as his home. He was always regarded by his neighbors as a very eccentric and peculiar individual. He never, apparently, formed any close friendships, always maintaining an austere reserve that with most people checked the slightest approach to intimacy. In all his dealings he was close, almost to the point of penuriousness, but he was always strictly honest. There is probably not a man in Mills county who could accuse him of dishonesty, and certainly during the quarter of a century spent here, he was never guilty of a crime.

The years Morse spent here were years of the strictest frugality, of self-denial that amounted almost to greed, and no doubt all this made its impress on a character which was probably none too lovable at best.

Even after Morse became comparatively well off, there was no laxation in his frugal practices. He would drive to town In an old rattletrap lumber wagon, using a pine board for a seat, when he could just as well have afforded a buggy. He would wear the same suit of clothes everywhere, and on all occasions, and one suit usually lasted him two or three years. Indeed, it is pretty certain that the suit that he is now wearing at Fall River is the same one he wore when he left here two years ago. Only once during the long period of his residence here did he show any inclination to take any comfort in life as he went along. One winter he electrified everybody who knew him by purchasing a nice new buggy and a new suit of clothes. He suddenly showed a disposition to go into society, and all that winter, he attended parties and such other social gatherings as country and village life afforded.

It was evident that he was looking for a wife, but no girl seemed to take kindly to the long, lanky, awkward, hard-featured fellow, who dressed like a scarecrow and ate like a cormorant. This was. no doubt, the reason why, when the winter was over, he sold his buggy, laid aside his store clothes and gave up his dream of connubial joy.

Among Morse's neighbors there were, of course, several who were devout church members, and these held the opinion that Morse's morals were decidedly below par. Not that they thought him guilty of breaking the commandments oftener than is common with the average man, but he occasionally expressed in very forcible language his contempt for preachers and church members, all of whom he classed together as canting hypocrites. He had a way of making little sarcastic remarks in which there was always just enough dry humor to enrage and humiliate the person to whom it applied.

It became a habit with him to say cynical things when he condescended to speak at all, but generally he was silent, morose and gloomy. A year or so before be went east, some little talk was occasioned by him engaging an old woman from Council Bluffs to keep house for him. Some of the people professed to be considerably scandalized by this, but on the whole the prevailing opinion seems to be that as he needed a housekeeper, and as this woman was well qualified for the position, his employing her was after all the business of no one but himself.

Those who know him best, however, agree that he was never anything more than eccentric. He was selfish, close, hard-fisted, almost avaricious, but scrupulously honest. On one occasion, in making a settlement with a brother of L. G. Gerung, who lives here, Morse recalled and paid for items and services which Gerung had entirely forgotten, and it is only fair to add that most of those who heard of it thought this something of an eccentricity, too. It is somewhat singular that in the discussion of the probability of Morse's connection with the Borden murder, Morse's brother-in-law, John Davidson, whose farm adjoins that of Morse and who has known Morse since 1857, manifested almost no feeling. In fact, his extreme reticence and the little he does say might cause one to think that Davidson suspects Morse of complicity in the murder.

Some years ago, however, Morse lived with the Davidsons, and the result of this was a coolness amounting almost to an estrangement, which has continued up to the present. And yet Davidson says he thinks Morse perfectly honest, although rather close in business transactions. Mrs. Davidson, who is Morse's half sister, seems to hold an opinion of Morse which is hardly as favorable as that of her husband. She says Morse was a man who, when crossed, would never forgive, and in fact she describes this as a characteristic of him and one in which she herself shares. In speaking of the arrest of Lizzie Borden, she became very indignant and exclaimed that it is most preposterous to suppose that Lizzie could have murdered her parents.

Some effort has been made to connect Morse with the horse traders who are at present hanging about Fall River. Morse was never a horse trader, but he raised a good many horses on the farm, and when he had a surplus he sold them. Two years ago, when he went east, he took with him a carload of horses. None of the animals were blooded, and there are people here who wondered at him taking such ordinary stock east. But however peculiar, eccentric and disagreeable he may have been, he prospered, and today he is considered quite well off for a farmer. Besides his farms, he owns stock in the Botna Valley State Bank of Hastings. He has not been in need of money recently, for a short time ago, he quite willingly gave one of his tenants who pays cash rent an extension of time.

Summing it all up, it appears that for about twenty-five years, John V. Morse has been a very hard working farmer. He has prospered and now seems to be taking life easily.