The gunshots were heard in the vicinity of the house shortly after eight in the evening. A moment later, Mrs. Mary Burrows and her son-in-law, Oscar Blay, ran to the neighbors, crying that Mr. Burrows had shot himself.

When the first men arrived, they found Thomas Burrows lying motionless in his bed, clearly dead. The widow stood by in a highly emotional state, explaining that she had heard shots near the barn, rushed to the bedroom, and seen her husband firing a revolver at himself through the window. His lantern had gone out, she said, yet he had managed to crawl from the yard, drag himself into the house, and climb onto the bed, where he died without uttering a word. In the town of Kittery, Maine, the explanation was accepted at first.

Thomas Burrows had been known to behave strangely, and many were willing to believe he had taken his own life during a fit of mental disturbance. His funeral was held without delay, and his body was buried. But doubt did not rest. Neighbors who knew the household well began asking questions.

A man suffering such grave gunshot wounds, they said, could not have crawled such a distance and lifted himself onto the bed unaided. Why had there been no official inquiry? The coroner eventually ordered the body exhumed, and Dr. Potter performed the post-mortem.

The examination revealed five bullet wounds. Three were minor: one in the right calf, one grazing the outer edge of the left hip, one grazing the right leg. The fourth had shattered the right hip. The fifth had lodged in the brain, having grazed the right arm, as if the man had raised his hand to shield his face.

Dr. Potter concluded that it would have been impossible for a man to inflict such injuries on himself, or to crawl from the barn to the house and climb into bed unaided. In his opinion, the shooting must have taken place inside the house, with Burrows seated or lying on his bed. The story of Thomas Burrows and his wife had been troubled from the beginning.

He was a relative newcomer to Kittery, born in Cheshire, England in 1809, who had immigrated to Canada after his first wife died, lived there many years, and crossed into the United States in the mid-1870s. He had spent time in Vermont, Boston, and New York before arriving in Kittery in 1880. He was known as an honest, hardworking, and dependable man, but also as one with a volatile temper. During one violent outburst, he had drawn a revolver and fired at his wife, Mary, then turned the weapon on her daughter.

Believing he had killed them both, he attempted to shoot himself, but the gun jammed. In truth, no one had been killed. The bullets only brushed Mrs. Burrows, though her fall left her with a broken leg.

He was arrested and held in jail at Alfred for about sixty days, but she refused to appear against him, and he was released. The couple had married only recently. Before that, Mary had been the wife of Benjamin Kates, a farmer of about twenty acres outside Kittery. Theirs had also been an unhappy marriage.

Kates had worked for the F. M. Holmes Furniture Manufacturing Company in Boston until the dust in the workshop damaged his lungs, and the illness eventually forced the family to return to Maine. As his health declined, his wife neglected him, refusing to visit his room or attend to him while he was ill, and eventually sleeping in another part of the house.

Neighbors whispered that she had twice tried to poison his food, and that the sick man, grown suspicious and fearful, would not eat anything unless she tasted it first. By September 1881, Kates hired Thomas Burrows as a laborer. Burrows became indispensable, assuming daily care of the ailing farmer, who died on Sunday the 17th of December 1882. On the night her husband died, Mary did not even inquire about his well-being, though she knew he would not survive until morning.

After the funeral, Burrows stayed on to work the farm, and Mary was able to pay off a considerable portion of the mortgage. He proposed marriage. She was reluctant at first, preferring that he remain in her employment, but by the end of 1882 she agreed. Whether the consent came from affection or necessity is not entirely clear, but many believed it was a marriage of convenience.

It quickly proved almost as unhappy as her first. Burrows grew jealous and suspicious, and his resentment extended to anyone who came to the house. His strongest hostility fell on Oscar Blay, the fiancé of Mary’s daughter, Martha. Blay was a young man of excellent reputation, but Burrows conceived an intense dislike of him, forbade him from entering the house, and ordered his stepdaughter to end all contact.

The tension culminated in a physical altercation between the two men at the church they both attended. The young couple met in secret afterward, and about nine months later they married, settling on a small farm of roughly forty acres a mile and a half away. It was widely believed that Burrows’s hatred of Blay stemmed from property concerns. If Burrows outlived his wife, the farm would pass to her daughter, leaving him with no claim.

He urged his wife to deed the property to him, but she refused. She complained openly to friends and neighbors about her husband’s treatment of her, and many heard her say she wished something might happen to him, or that he might be removed from her life altogether. On Wednesday the 14th of November 1883, Thomas Burrows traveled to Portsmouth on business and returned to Kittery about eight in the evening. Not long after his arrival, the shots were heard.

District Attorney Higgins, High Sheriff Gale, and Deputy Sheriff Beechen took charge of the case. When Dr. Potter’s conclusions were put to Mrs. Burrows, she insisted her version of events was true.

Oscar Blay told the same story: he knew nothing until his mother-in-law called for him. Neighbors confirmed he had not left his house that evening until summoned. The local authorities made little progress. Eventually, District Attorney Higgins telegraphed the Boston Police Force, and detectives arrived in Kittery.

When they interviewed Mrs. Burrows again, she repeated her account, but added crucial information. She now claimed she had heard gunshots near the stable, looked out the window, and seen her husband lying on the ground. She immediately went to her son-in-law’s home, found him sitting by the fire, having just taken off his shoes, and asked him to come with her.

On the way, she told him her husband had shot himself and was in a bad way. When they arrived, she said, her son-in-law went into the bedroom, where her husband sat on his bed, and because of the old bad feeling between them, shot him twice more. This time he died. The next morning, Mrs.

Burrows was taken to Mr. Blay’s home, where Detective Wood spoke to the young man. After a few questions, Blay broke down and hid his face in his hands. When asked whether Mrs.

Burrows’s story was true, he wiped his tears and said in a trembling voice, “I guess most of it is. ” He then gave a detailed confession. Oscar Blay described his long conflicts with his stepfather-in-law, who had tried many times to keep him out of the house, and spoke of their constant quarrels. He said that on the Saturday before the murder, he went to Dover, New Hampshire, where he bought a five-shot double-action revolver.

He bought one cartridge there and six more at Wendell’s store in Portsmouth, seven in total. On the afternoon of the murder, he met Burrows on a bridge while returning home, but the older man did not recognize him, which hurt him deeply. On the night of the 14th, he walked toward his mother-in-law’s house, fired one shot to test the revolver, and hid in a shed next to the barn. When Burrows came out carrying a lantern to feed the animals, Blay fired at him.

Burrows dropped the lantern, which went out, and Blay, terrified, dropped the revolver and ran home. When his mother-in-law came to find him, he returned with her, searched through the grass, found the gun, loaded two more cartridges, and went inside. He saw Burrows on the edge of the bed, groaning in pain. The injured man looked at him and said, “Oscar, I think I’m going soon.

” Blay replied, “Your time has come now,” and fired. The bullet shattered Burrows’s hip. As the dying man raised his arm to protect his face, Blay fired again, the bullet passing through the forearm and into the brain, killing him instantly. He then walked out the back door, threw the revolver under the shed where he had first hidden it, and he and Mrs.

Burrows notified the neighbors that her husband had shot himself. Officers charged Oscar Blay with deliberately shooting Thomas Burrows with intent to kill, and Mrs. Burrows was charged as accessory before and after the fact. The trial opened on Tuesday the 29th of January 1884.

Counsel for Mrs. Burrows applied for a separate trial, but the request was refused. Both pleaded not guilty. Witnesses included those who knew Thomas Burrows, those who had seen him returning home on the night of his death, neighbors who saw the body, and the shop staff who had sold the gun and cartridges.

Dr. Potter and Dr. Gordon both testified that the fatal wound could not have been inflicted by his own hands. When Oscar Blay changed his plea to guilty, the character of the young man was placed before the court.

He was the adopted son of Mr. Frank Blay, his biological father, Mr. James Forester, having been stationed at the Kittery Naval Yard and said to have suffered from mental illness, while his mother had died when he was very young. The court also heard that Burrows had declared the house was not large enough for both families and demanded his wife choose between himself and her daughter and son-in-law.

Counsel for Mrs. Burrows argued there was no evidence she had shot her husband or conspired to have her son-in-law do so. He reminded the court of Burrows’s earlier attempt to shoot his wife and stepdaughter, and contended it was entirely possible he had again attempted suicide, and that even if Blay had fired the final fatal shots, the act had been carried out independently, without her knowledge. The prosecution presented a different interpretation: Mary Burrows had been the central figure, carefully planning the shooting and manipulating her son-in-law into carrying it out, intending that he bear full responsibility while she remained in the background.

The trial lasted six days. After deliberating four hours, the jury found both Mary Burrows and Oscar Blay guilty of murder, and the judge sentenced them to death. The sentences were appealed. On Wednesday the 25th of November 1885, Oscar Blay’s sentence was commuted to imprisonment for life.

The following April, Mary Burrows’s sentence was also commuted. Tragedy continued to follow the family. On Friday the 11th of May 1888, Martha Blay, the daughter of Mrs. Burrows and wife of Oscar Blay, died of consumption.

Oscar Blay remained confined in the state prison until Wednesday the 18th of September 1895, when he died by his own hand in his cell. Mary Burrows lived many years longer, dying at the state prison in Thomaston on Friday the 3rd of November 1916, at the age of seventy-four.