• Source: Louis H. F. Wagner

      • Louis H. F. Wagner (also spelled Lewis Wagner; died June 25, 1875) was a German-born fisherman who arrived in the United States around 1865. Eight years later he was accused of the axe murders of two Norwegian women, Anethe Matea Christensen and Karen Christensen, on Smuttynose Island in the Isles of Shoals of Maine and New Hampshire. Later convicted of the March 6, 1873 crime, he was sentenced to be hanged. After a failed escape attempt, Wagner became the fourth to last person to be executed by the State of Maine.
      Despite an aggressively prosecuted case, so vehement was his denial that doubts still remain as to his guilt.


      In popular culture


      In 1875, poet Celia Thaxter wrote and published an account of the Smuttynose murders in Atlantic Monthly. It was titled A Memorable Murder and remains a classic of American true crime writing.
      Author Anita Shreve fictionalized the crime in her bestselling 1996 novel The Weight of Water, which claims that Wagner was falsely convicted. In the 2000 film adaptation, Wagner was portrayed onscreen by Irish actor Ciaran Hinds.


      Further reading


      Schechter, Harold, (2012), Psycho USA: Famous American Killers You Never Heard of, Ballantine Books.


      References




      External links



      Celia Thaxter: A Memorable Murder (The Library of America, Story of the Week, Reprinted from True Crime: An American Anthology (The Library of America, 2008), pages 131–155. Originally published in the May 1875 issue of Atlantic Monthly.)

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