The Unsolved Murder at Northfield Mount Hermon
Onto Part II of the Buzzfeed Unsolved-esque cases that have happened where I was staying just a few weeks ago!! More factual than supernatural, but definitely still Unsolved.
This post is for the True Crime event that happened on the campus of this school; for the Supernatural accounts I have recorded regarding this place you can read about here.
I am also completely retelling from these sources ( x / x ) so you can also either read my summary below or the sources themselves. (There is also a book about the case but unfortunately I didn’t have the time to do such a thorough research).
Rev. Dr. Elliot Speer became headmaster of the of Mount Hermon School for Boys (Massachusetts) in 1932, taking over the position from the original founder of that school and its sister school (Northfield Seminary for Young Girls), Dwight Moody. Speer was more liberal with the school and wanted it to go in a more modernist direction, creating conflict with how the Presbyterian church currently thought of what he should be doing. By summer of 1934, Speer had firm control of what was going on inside of the school, the church-wide controversy still raging.
Speer spent a lot of time in his study, reading religious texts and writing. It was a habit that he would commit to every night after dinner.
“ About 8:20 p.m. Speer was seated at the desk, apparently writing something, when he stood and turned toward the window. At that moment there was a single blast from a 12-gauge shotgun fired point-blank through the window. Five pellets of double-ought buckshot, each about 1/3-inch in diameter, caught Speer in his right arm and the right side of his chest.
Almost immediately after hearing the blast, Mrs. Speer and her father rushed into the study. Speer had managed to stagger about 20 feet from behind the desk to the doorway where his wife found him.
“I don’t know what happened,” were Speer’s last words. ”
One of the observations made at the scene was how a low hanging bough outside of the window would have served as a good hiding spot for the shooter. The maid of the house at the time claimed to have heard heavy footsteps running on the lawn outside immediately after the shooting, and another witness heard a car speeding away after incident. The attorney who took command of the crime assumed that whoever committed this must have been familiar with the school itself, as he essentially stated that a stranger finding one’s way through the wooded paths on the campus was like going through a “virtual labyrinth”.
One of their first leads was the dogs that the Speer family had owned. The investigators theorized that the dogs had made no noise because they recognized whoever the murderer was, yet had to rule that theory out when the eldest dog Andy did not pay attention to any of the investigators around the house during the investigation anyhow, and the younger dog Amy was locked up in the kennel at the time of the murder.
“ Investigators were also intrigued by the possibility that the killing was inspired by an English murder mystery book The Public School Murder that Speer owned. That book told the story of a school headmaster who was murdered by a rifle shot through his window. ”
For the next few months, the police followed hundreds of leads, and interviewed a few thousand NMH alumni. The investigators tried looking for anyone who could’ve wanted Speer dead: anywhere between a disgruntled student/teacher or a “religious fanatic” who disagreed with Speer’s beliefs and policies over the school. They did track down one former student who apparently had a list of violent acts they wanted to commit, one of the items being killing Speer. However, the student was actually in Virginia at the time of the murder.
“ By December, however, police had quickly eliminated all but one suspect — the school’s dean, Thomas E. Elder. ”
Elder’s relationship with Speer was rather conflicted, as he was one of the remaining fundamentalists at the school that went against Speer’s beliefs, and was rather upset when the school passed over him and chose Speer to be the new headmaster of the school. Elder was also known to have a quick temper and able to hold grudges. In addition, there was a lot of damning evidence from the case that went against him.
“ •He was known to have once owned a shotgun of the type used to kill Dr. Speer, but denied this to police.
•After Speer’s murder investigators saw that Elder had injured his right index finger — the one most likely used to pull a trigger — and friends told police that Elder’s shotgun “had a defective trigger guard.”
•Elder placed a telephone call to Speer’s home shortly after the murder. Police surmised that he did this to ascertain whether his attack was successful.
•Two letters, one supposedly written by Speer to Elder and the other in response, “are believed to be forged to simulate a firm friendship which actually did not exist between the pair.”
•Speer reportedly lent The Public School Murder to Elder shortly before he died. However, in other reports, authorities simply said that Speer owned the book.
The most damning evidence of Elder’s guilt was the fact that he turned several clocks on the Mount Hermon campus ahead by 15 minutes as part of a scheme to establish an alibi.
The timepieces included the landmark clock on the tower of the school’s granite chapel, and, more importantly, the clock on the mantlepiece of Elder’s home. “
One notable event was during the night of Speer’s death, Elder was talking with a young man in his house when he pointed to his clock on the mantle and said “It’s getting late, I have to go someplace.” Elder’s guest turned out to be a shortwave radio enthusiast, and when he got home, he received a message and realized that Elder’s clock was actually wrong.
All of this evidence stated was presented to Justice Hayes during the inquest. “ Hayes closed the hearing at the request of the prosecution to prevent the suspect from “framing a defense” or “absconding if it became clear that he would be held for murder.”
Hayes, however, did not feel that the prosecution’s case was sufficient to warrant presentation to a grand jury, much less to a trial court. After hearing from more than 60 witnesses in a seven-day hearing, Hayes determined that Speer was killed by “a person unknown to this court.”
Shortly after the Hayes report was released, Dean Thomas Elder retired from the school and moved to New Hampshire where he operated a poultry farm.
Six years after the Speer murder Elder was arrested for threatening a former Mt. Hermon school colleague with a shotgun. He was acquitted at trial. “
Was Thomas E. Elder responsible for the death of Rev. Dr. Elliot Speer? Could it have been a different student or religious fanatic? Or perhaps even an unknown force coming into play? This case is and will probably remain, Unsolved.
