APPENDIX B

Paul Wilson, After Alice

An unidentified white man, believed to have been approximately 55 years old, was
found dead on the floor of a lonely desert cabin about a mile north of Freeman
Junction Saturday afternoon.
—the Bakersfield Californian, 1941

The death of Alice did nothing to abate the public’s interest in the life of Paul Wilson. For at least six years after her death, newspapers continued to report on his penchant for thievery, his gun-toting ways and his marriage—in a courthouse, this time—to Henrietta Martindale Hyessa.

But it was one of the first articles about Paul, published two months after Alice died, that is most important; it confirmed for the public that Diana’s story was indeed of mythical stature and provided the foundation for the popular Diana of the Dunes ghost story. Shared by newspapers from San Francisco, California, to Palm Beach, Florida, the story ran a full page and featured the headline “Haunted by the Spirit of ‘Diana of the Dunes.’”187 Without actually interviewing Paul, the author spun a fanciful tale about his loneliness and immense grief; so intense were these feelings, she wrote, that he suffered vivid hallucinations of his Diana.

At the foot of Mount Tom, where Paul sat and waited for his beloved beneath a rising moon, the soft waves of Lake Michigan provided background music, while an evening breeze brushed across the sand hills. It wasn’t long before a ghostly figure pirouetted from a dune ridge down to the water’s edge, garbed in a white, billowy veil and moaning sorrowfully as she drifted along the beach. In Paul’s imagination, the writer insisted, the vision was that of Diana. She visited a bereft Paul because he suffered from “the deepest grief a heart may know—the knowledge of failure to keep faith with a loved one who is dead.” He mourned at Mount Tom because he could not cremate her and spread her ashes from its great height, as he had promised. What else could his Diana do but haunt the dunes she loved so much?

“And she said that she would come back and haunt the dunes if her wishes were not carried out. So he expects to see her and hear her—and he does!”¹⁸⁸

Paul’s fame quickly fell from that brief, poetic grace and landed squarely in the newspapers’ crime beat. In the dozen or so primary stories generated over the next six years, Paul’s name is almost always followed by mention of him as the former mate of Diana of the Dunes. He could not escape the legend they had created.

If there was any doubt that his relationship with Alice provided stability for Paul, the newspapers laid it to rest. “After the famous ‘Diana’ died in February, 1925, her soulmate of an ideal existence in the dunelands was in much trouble. It appears to have been the influence of the mysterious ‘Diana’ which kept the caveman Wilson within bounds.”¹⁸⁹

He was first arrested by Michigan City police in the spring of 1926 for taking pot shots at a South Shore conductor after he jumped off the train. The conductor said Paul was upset because the train was forced to pass through a stop where he had meant to disembark.¹⁹⁰ Paul, who admitted being on the train but denied using his gun, told police that two men who were arguing near the train had fired the shots, but his story was quickly dismissed. Reminiscent of the diary he and Alice turned over as evidence of their innocence during the murder investigation in 1922, police retrieved a letter Paul had written to the train operator, explaining the incident as he recalled it. In closing his letter, Paul wrote, “I’m too busy just now to be arrested on such affair.”¹⁹¹

Authorities looking for Paul after the train episode found him “in the hut of an Indian squaw living in the dunes...about four miles west of Michigan City.” In fact, she was Henrietta Martindale Hyessa, a white, Wisconsinborn woman who had inherited dunes property.

It seems well-educated women found Paul appealing. Henrietta, an alumna of Smith College, had also done some graduate work at the University of Chicago, 1915–16. While there, she became friends with, and the research assistant of, Jens Jensen, noted landscape architect and Prairie Club member. It was Jensen who inspired her to pursue family property near the Indiana dunes.¹⁹²

A newspaper story indicated Henrietta had arrived in the region two years earlier to inspect it.¹⁹³ A 1922 plat map shows “H.H. Wilson” property in Pine Township, near the town of Pines. In 1924, the local phone directory listed “Mrs. H. Martindale” as owner of Solomon Seal’s Lodge.

In the year following the train incident, Paul and Henrietta experienced a whirlwind of change and challenges. Less than a week after Paul’s arrest, they were married in the Porter County court clerk’s office in Valparaiso, on May 1, 1926. At the time, he was still out on a $2,000 bond paid in part with money from Henrietta’s mortgaged property.¹⁹⁴

Less than ten months later, on March 14, 1927, Henrietta asked Porter County authorities to arrest Paul and place him under a peace bond because he meant to harm himself and had also threatened her life and that of “her little daughter”—seven-year-old Bonno, a child born to Henrietta during an affair with Dr. Charles Eastman.¹⁹⁵

In seeking his arrest, Paul’s wife told Michigan City police that her husband became angry when she could not “meet his demands for money.” During several days of hiding, Paul was sought by both Porter and LaPorte County authorities. They caught up with him at the “clinic sanitarium in Michigan City,” where he went to see his wife who was a patient (the reason is unknown). He was carrying a .38-caliber revolver.¹⁹⁶

Earlier that day—at Henrietta’s request—Porter County Superior Court judge H.L. Crumpacker withdrew the bond that she had posted for Paul’s release while he awaited arraignment on the shooting charge.¹⁹⁷ Paul could not raise additional bail and was held at the Michigan City jail after being arrested at the hospital on a charge of carrying a concealed weapon.

It was reported that he consumed match heads—an entire box of them—in an unsuccessful suicide attempt during that first night in jail.¹⁹⁸

A week later, on March 21, 1927, Paul was sentenced to one year in jail.

Less than three years afterward, on November 17, 1930, he was back in Judge Crumpacker’s court on burglary charges involving “seven minor jobs,” including theft from the Pine Township Farm Bureau.¹⁹⁹ Henrietta again posted bond, and he was released.²⁰⁰

By this time, Henrietta and Paul’s family had grown with the birth of two more children. No doubt at Paul’s insistence, they named their first daughter, born in 1928, Diana. The couple’s second daughter, Henrietta, was born in 1929.

Just before they would have celebrated the new year in 1930, the Wilsons were devastated by the loss of their house in an unexplained fire: “The home of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Wilson on Dunes highway near Furnessville was totally destroyed by fire of unknown origin early Monday night. No one was home at the time and when neighbors arrived the fire had gained such headway that nothing was saved.”²⁰¹

If Paul possessed any remaining manuscripts or diaries once belonging to Alice—at one point after her death he had tried to sell them—they were likely lost in the fire.

One week after his family’s home was destroyed, and while he was still free on bail, Paul was arrested again. This time, the charge was reckless driving²⁰² in regard to an automobile collision that sent three men who were “badly battered” to a Michigan City hospital. The accident occurred at West Tremont on the Dunes Highway. A news story reported that Paul was injured, but the state police brought him to the Porter County jail anyway. There was no mention of the extent of his injury.

Then, on February 5, 1931, Paul was sentenced on the burglary charges and sent to Indiana State Prison for a term of one to five years. Not surprisingly, the court took his criminal record into consideration:

Wilson, who is thirty-eight years old but appears somewhat older due to his graying hair, told the court of his sick wife and three children and begged leniency on their account. But Judge Crumpacker, after a lengthy review of Wilson’s past criminal record and general disrespect for the law, refused to accept his plea and imposed sentence.²⁰³

For his prison file,²⁰⁴ Paul provided some interesting, if not wholly truthful, personal information. His aversion to using the name Eisenblatter was evident, since he identified his father as Otto “Wilson” and his mother as Caroline “Westman,” her maiden name. He indicated his parents were living together—although his mother was long deceased—and that their financial position was “poor.” He claimed that he had no brothers or sisters. Paul also told authorities that he left home at age sixteen and that his education extended to the seventh grade. In response to a checklist of questions, he answered that he smoked cigarettes and drank “moderately.”

Although he was given two brief temporary paroles, Paul spent nearly two years in jail; he was released on January 26, 1933.

At some time and for reasons unknown, the Wilsons moved to California. The next time Paul Wilson’s name was published in a newspaper story, it was to report his death—and the story began with a familiar theme: “An unidentified white man, believed to have been approximately 55 years old, was found dead on the floor of a lonely desert cabin about a mile north of Freeman Junction Saturday afternoon.”²⁰⁵

The man was identified the next day as Paul G. Wilson of Freeman Junction, California.²⁰⁶ On the death certificate, Paul is listed as a “transient.” He died of a ruptured aortic aneurysm on “about” October 25, 1941. Although Henrietta is named as Paul’s wife, the record also indicates he was divorced.

There was little to know for certain about Paul’s life; the same held true regarding his death.

The funeral of “Paul Wilson” was held in Bakersfield, California. An obituary in the Michigan City News Dispatch announced the death of “Paul George Eisenblatter.” He was survived by two children, and by two sisters, two brothers—and his wife.