Who Killed William Dean? A tale of Spies, Politicians and Swindlers
On August 13, 1918, the last day of William Dean’s life, a couple of unusual things happened. Early in the day he asked a neighbor leaving for Boston if she would get in touch with the police for him. He had information for them. He didn’t say what.
Later in the evening he got a visit from his friend, Charles Rich, the local political kingpin. Rich was a judge in Jaffrey as well as a banker and politician. Rich would later say he visited William Dean to ask how to treat an injury he had just received when his horse kicked at him, leaving him with a black eye and head injuries. Dr. William Dean had stopped practicing medicine and had long retired. He lived as a gentleman farmer. Nevertheless, he advised Rich on his injury and Rich returned to his home at about 10 p.m. Roughly two hours later Dean, 63, left his house and went to the barn on his property. Unlike most farmers who milk their cows at first light and dinnertime, Dean milked his single cow at the unconventional hours of midnight and noon. Upon entering the barn, he was attacked, beaten, strangled, bound up and carried to a cistern on the property.
Dr. Dean’s wife Mary worried about her husband. The next morning, when a hired hand arrived to begin mowing, she asked him to look for him. He was dead, she feared. She even speculated he was under water.
Mary was 68 and losing her faculties. But her immediate conclusion that her husband was dead raised suspicions. When Dr. Dean’s body was discovered, suspicion fell on Mary, who was also Dean’s cousin.
But there were two obstacles to the case against Mary. There was no evidence that she was at odds with her husband. While she was not completely rational, probably suffering from dementia, she was never known to be violent. And, she was physically not a likely suspect. Smashing her husband’s head, strangling him and carrying him to a cistern were beyond her abilities.
With the case against her seeming unlikely, townspeople turned their attention to the potential spy in their midst: Laurence Colfelt.
William Dean needed money, though not inordinately so. He and his wife had moved from their large house to a smaller bungalow on their property. They rented the large house to Laurence Colfelt and his family.
Colfelt, a New Yorker, lived on a trust fund. It wasn’t unusual for people from elsewhere to come to Jaffrey, but it was unusual for them to spend the winter. Colfelt’s lack of any work and lack of local ties made people suspicious of him.
Rumors circulated that he was German, or at least had German sympathies. Might he be a leader of the spies flashing signals to one another in the New Hampshire mountains? Might he, or other spies, have killed Dean because he had caught on to the spying operations in the hills?
The man who had probably the biggest target on his back in the murder investigation was Charles Rich, the banker and friend of William Dean.
The morning Dean was discovered murdered, Rich had a fresh black eye and bruises on his head. He explained his horse had kicked at him and knocked a board he was carrying, striking him in the head. Many in town doubted the story. Though William Dean and Charles Rich were friends, one other odd occurrence implicated Rich. The day Dean’s body was found, an employee and friend of Rich’s visited Mrs. Dean and cleaned up the barn where the murder took place. Perhaps he obliterated evidence in the process.
A grand jury empanelled to investigate the case concluded that Dean was murdered, but the members of the jury could not determine who did it and to this day it remains unsolved.
