Christ’s daughter came to him in a dream. “I’ve seen Clara,” he said. He told everyone he met. “I’ve seen her . . . I know she’s dead. I saw her buried on her face in a grave on a hill near Rising Sun.”1 People thought Christ had gone queer in the head. He was a sight: ragged hair, ragged beard, an old sheepskin duster that smelled of whiskey and hay. Anger and despair—the not knowing—wouldn’t let him rest.
Clara was twenty-two when she disappeared. She wasn’t the Olsons’ oldest, wasn’t their youngest. Six girls, two boys; Clara was Christ’s favorite. She’d gone missing in September—stepped outside at midnight, “to get a breath of air,” is what she said. Christ had just blown out the light; he’d been up, checking the cattle gates; he’d seen headlights coming up the road. Clara came downstairs, passed through the parlor; Christ called to her; she was headed to the outhouse. The next morning, her bed was empty.
Christ had money. Owned land. Hundreds and hundreds of acres. Rich land, expensive land, tobacco land. He and his sons farmed it. Christ went to the county seat in Viroqua and hired a lawyer; he went to the state capital, to Madison, Wisconsin, and hired a private detective. All he had was his dream. He started pestering the district attorney in Prairie du Chien. Fifteen times Christ visited him. The DA was a hardheaded man but Christ wore him down. Everyone knew about Christ’s dream. Late in November, the DA drew up a warrant; Christ and his lawyer took it to a justice of the peace, had it properly sworn, had it issued.
Christ’s family had been in Seneca for thirty years. Everyone knew everyone else or was related. Albertsons, Helgersons, Ericksons, Olsons. Norwegians. Christ’s sons, Bernard and Adolph, took the matter to the American Legion post in Gays Mills. The post called for volunteers. One thousand men stepped forward. Snow was falling.
At sunrise, a posse of three hundred men, in small groups, walked north from Seneca, along Highway 27, toward Rising Sun. Six miles. Eyes to the ground. Clarence Allen, one of Clara’s cousins, walked next to his friend Hillman Lee. They reached the crest of a hill called Battle Ridge. Chief Blackhawk and his band had taken a stand there, back in 1832. People still found bones there. Clarence stumbled on a root. The ground was stony, thick with the roots of red and black oak trees. Clarence stumbled, looked down, kept walking. A hunter named Charles Brown came up behind him. Brown looked down to see where Clarence had stumbled: yellow mud, frozen now, but a sign that someone had turned the earth. Brown poked the spot with a stick. He saw the bottoms of a pair of high-heeled shoes. “It’s all over,” he yelled. “It’s down here.”
Clara’s grave was shallow and long. Someone had spent time, digging it. An hour just to get eighteen inches down; another hour to cover it with soil and shrubs. Digging it hadn’t been quick, hadn’t been easy. It may have been waiting for her. She lay in it, now, on her belly, facedown, just as Christ had seen her. She wore her nicest clothes—a new silk dress, a new wool sweater, a tan coat. Her favorite coat.
Searchers converged on the spot. Men stopped cars on Route 27 and sent them, north and south, to carry the news through the county. By the time Frank Holly, the coroner from Prairie du Chien, reached the place, two hundred men had gathered around Clara’s grave. They’d laid bows and branches around it, framed it, out of respect. Night was coming on; a light snow was falling; the oaks rose into the sky. At the coroner’s signal, the men lifted Clara up and laid her in a long, shallow wicker basket. They were careful not to brush the mud from her clothes. Her left hand was drawn up clenched, against her chest, between her breasts. A broken pearl necklace, a little purse dangling from the belt of her dress—the men were careful not to leave anything behind. In the gloom, they could see the lights from Albert Olson’s farm, a quarter of a mile away. Albert’s son, Erdman, had been Clara’s boyfriend. Erdman had gone missing, too.
Erdman and Clara had been keeping company for more than a year. Erdman would call on her whenever he came home from college. He’d drive up to Clara’s house—the Olsons’ big white house with its gables and porches—and park in front. Wouldn’t come in, wouldn’t even walk up the steps to the front door. Just sit in his Ford and wait. Clara would come out, then they’d drive away. She never offered to introduce Erdman to her folks; he never asked.
Clara was older than Erdman. Four years older. She kept close to home, close to the farm. She was a good girl, a sweet girl, a dutiful daughter. Dark hair, dark eyes, lips like a Cupid’s bow. Clara was closest to her middle sister, Alice. Alice was twenty-six; she lived at home, too. Clara confided in her. Alice told Christ who Erdman was, but that was all she told him. She and Clara kept each other’s secrets.
Erdman was what some people called a “country Don Juan.” Albert, Erdman’s father, was as rich as Christ, but Erdman was Albert’s oldest child and oldest son. Erdman knew he’d inherit everything—and behaved that way.
All the girls knew Erdman, and he knew all the girls. At dances, he always had a bottle in his pocket, always knew where a person could buy something for himself. The fact was, Erdman sold the stuff. No one knew where he got it, but everyone knew he had it. Erdman had a reputation for something else. Back when he was nine, he and a friend had been playing with a shotgun. The gun went off. Erdman’s friend died. The county sheriff decided it was an accident, but some people thought it was Albert Olson and not the sheriff who’d decided that. Now Erdman was eighteen, went to Gales College; he’d been thrown out once, then readmitted. He sang in the glee club, played basketball, had a college sweetheart. Back home, though, Erdman spent time with Clara. When someone at school asked about Clara, he called her “a hick.”
In August 1926, Clara wrote Erdman’s parents a letter. Erdman had never brought her home, never introduced her. Never mentioned her.
“Dear Mr. and Mrs. Olson,” Clara wrote. “I know you folks will be surprised to hear from me and what I have to say. Understand I am a good friend to your son Erdman and sorry to say we are in a pinch and have to get married if God is willing and you folks are willing to help us.
“I wrote Erdman a letter some time ago and told him I wanted to see him, but have not seen him come down. I saw him and you folks at West Prairie Missions, Sunday, but did not have the chance to talk with him. Tell Erdman to come down one day or night this week so I can talk with him and also let me hear a few words from you.
“I do not like to get Erdman into trouble so I hope you folks will help us before my folks find out what is coming. Please be good to Erdman. I know he never meant to leave me in this way. It is only four and a half months left now until I will be expecting so I hope Erdman and I can get married this month and make our life worthwhile. Will close with love and God’s blessings. . . . P.S. Excuse scratching as I am in haste and hoping to hear from you and see Erdman soon.”2
Erdman’s parents showed him Clara’s letter. Erdman shrugged it off. “I’d never seen the girl,” Erdman’s father said, “didn’t know anything about her. I told Erdman to get a doctor to examine the girl and get the truth.”3 “Tell her to come see us,” said Erdman’s mother. Clara refused. She wouldn’t go to see a doctor; she wouldn’t come to see Erdman’s parents. She knew what she knew. Erdman told his parents: “She got her dates mixed.” They believed him. Clara had landed herself in a mess; she needed a husband. She was probably after Erdman’s inheritance. It was a trap. She had enticed him. “He was no more than a child,” Erdman’s mother said. “He was a boy; he wasn’t full grown yet.”4
Erdman wrote Clara a letter:
“Dear Friend: I suppose you think me awfully neglectful, but I haven’t. I have been to the hospital for a while. Had a couple of operations [on my throat]. I have decided the time is right for us to show some action. Now—we’ll not leave for good, but will go and get the ceremony over with, and then come back in a week or so and let them know if they don’t know. Of course, we’ll have to disappear, you know, so I thought we could skip. You’ll have to coax your brother to take you down to the dance in Seneca. . . . I will get you there.
“Then go to Hendrum, Minn., which is the same as Winona. Do not take any more clothes than what you wear and taking more will raise suspicion, but try to get as much cash as possible as that is necessary if you wish to make it a pleasant trip.
“I will be at Seneca between nine and ten o’clock and when you see me, leave the hall and walk up the street until I find you and remember that everything is on the QT. Also write a note and leave some place where it can be found in a day or so and say that you are going away for a while and not to worry as you’ll be back some day, but don’t mention why you are going or my name.
“If you can’t come to the dance, sneak out of the house about 12:30 and come towards the road. If I’m not there, keep on going until I meet you. Don’t let anyone see you. Please destroy this letter and my other letters and act hard toward me to your folks.
“Do as I have asked you to do and everything will be OK. If you don’t, your chance will be shot and I might make a scarce hubby. So if you wish to avoid disgrace, do as I say and keep mum. See you tonight. As ever, as usual. Remember to do as I say and destroy all my letters.”5
Erdman’s letter was postmarked “Sept. 9, Ferryville, Wisconsin.” It was delivered to Clara at two o’clock in the afternoon, the same day Erdman mailed it.
Alice was there when Clara opened it. Purple ink; the pages folded, thick. From Erdman. Clara read it, folded it into tight squares, then slipped it into her bodice. She went to the parlor, took a school geography book from the shelf, and began to look through it. Winona was on the Mississippi, north of La Crosse. Her sister Minnie, her oldest sister, asked her what she was looking for. “Oh—a place,” said Clara. Then she went to her room and did what Erdman told her to do: burned his letters. Not the envelopes though; she left them hidden under her rug. Alice sat and watched.
Clara helped with the evening milking. At supper, she sat pale and silent.
At eleven-thirty, Erdman drove past the back door of the general store in Seneca. There was a pool hall next door, and a dance hall, one flight up. Two girls, cousins, Christine and Marie Anderson, remembered dancing with Erdman that night. Fox-trots. Christine remembered because Erdman couldn’t keep step.
A farmer named Merle Murry was standing out in front of the pool hall. Erdman drove by, asked him if he wanted a drink. Erdman had a stranger with him. Never introduced him, though. The three of them went around back and passed around a bottle that Erdman had with him. They stood and drank for a while. Merle asked Erdman if he had another one; Erdman did indeed. The stranger climbed back into Erdman’s car. Erdman and Merle walked into the pool hall; Merle paid Erdman. Park Moore, the proprietor of the Mount Sterling hotel, ambled over to say hello. The two men walked Erdman out to his car. Merle and Park got a look at the stranger; it was dark but they saw him there. Erdman drove away. It took twenty minutes to reach Clara’s house.
“It was about five minutes to twelve when I blowed out the light,” Christ said. “Clara went out just a couple of minutes after I went to bed. Then I seen a car. I didn’t see no person. I looked through my front door and I seen him turn around this way. . . .”6
Christ dozed off. When he woke up, he turned to his wife. “Clara didn’t come back, did she?” “Yes, I think she did,” said Dina. Christ fell asleep; he had a dream. In the dream, he walked past Clara’s room and looked in. Her bed was empty. Christ woke up, frightened. He told Dina to go see about Clara. She did. Clara’s bed was empty. The two of them went outside with a lantern. No Clara.
Christ woke up his sons. He told them Clara was missing. He told them about the car. Adolph and Bernard took a lantern and went down to the road. They found tire tracks; one tire had been patched. The tracks led north.
Clara had left a note under the lamp in her room. “I didn’t know I was going until this afternoon, but couldn’t make up my mind until now, when I’m leaving. Please don’t take it seriously, as it will mean nothing, only a little surprise. I am taken good care of and will be back soon. Lovingly, your Clara.”7
Albert Olson was awake when Erdman came home that night. The “chime clock” in the parlor struck the hour—one o’clock. Erdman walked into the kitchen, turned on the radio, made himself a sandwich. He ate while he looked through a catalog. Then he went to bed.
Clara’s brother Bernard knocked on the Albert Olsons’ door at six o’clock the next morning. Erdman’s mother was cooking breakfast. Albert, Erdman, and the Olsons’ hired man, Ed Knudson, had three days to bring in the tobacco before Erdman went back to college. “Well, good morning,” said Bernard to Mrs. Olson. She nodded. “Pretty cold this morning,” he said. “Yes it is,” Mrs. Olson said. “I’m here to see Erdman,” said Bernard. “He’s asleep, but I’ll see,” she said.8
Erdman came in. “You were up pretty late,” said Bernard. “Yes,” Erdman said. Alice had told her father about Erdman’s letter to Clara. Bernard and Adolph knew about it, too. “You wrote a letter to Clara the other day?” said Bernard. “Yes,” said Erdman. He wasn’t quite awake. “Last night you came after her and I came to know where she went.” Erdman didn’t answer. His mother handed him a cup of coffee. He looked out the window. “I didn’t come after her,” he said.
Bernard told him about the tire tracks on the road. “Those were your tires, all right,” said Bernard. Erdman pulled on his boots and led Bernard outside. They looked at the tires on Erdman’s car. New tires. “It must have been somebody else,” Erdman said. Back inside, Erdman’s mother asked what this was about. Bernard explained. Mrs. Olson led Bernard through all the rooms in the house. “So you can be sure your sister’s not here.”9
Bernard went home and told his father.
Erdman worked all day with his father and Ed Knudson, cutting tobacco, tying it and hanging it. Erdman worked all the next day and the next. Then he went back to college in Galesville.
Christ waited two weeks. “If Clara was alive, she would have written me . . . she was not afraid of me—no matter what was wrong.”10
Christ and Dina went to see the Albert Olsons. Erdman’s mother told them not to worry. “I’ll remember what she said as long as I live,” said Christ. “She said it would be just like a lot of other girls—Clara would be home after New Years with a kid and no man. . . . That was the first we knew anything about it.”11
Clara was six months pregnant. Christ and Dina hadn’t noticed.
Christ asked Oliver and Andrew Helgerson to drive him to Galesville to see Erdman.
“I asked Erdman what he done with Clara. I asked him if he seen Clara that night. He said he hadn’t. He said he never went down to get her. I told him I could prove it. He said, ‘You can’t prove nothing on me,’ and then he started to go away. I said, ‘You gave that girl instructions to burn your letters. . . .’ He kind of stopped and got kind of weak and asked me if I seen the letter. I said, ‘Alice seen it.’
“I put my hand on his shoulder and I said, ‘Erdman, I want to talk just a few minutes with you. You told her in that letter to meet you at the door at twelve o’clock, didn’t you?’ He said, ‘I did.’ I said, ‘Now, you sent somebody else in your place to take her, because you called her out to the road.’
“He said he took her to Veroqua. I said I didn’t believe it because I seen those auto tracks the next morning and they came from the south.
“Then he said she went to St. Paul. He said he gave her $50.
“I told him I didn’t have any strings on the girl. She was of age and all I asked was that she write a few lines so we can see whether she is alive. He said he couldn’t do that. I said, ‘You got to bring her back so I can see if the girl is alive.’
“I said, ‘Erdman, if there is anything between you and the girl that we don’t know anything about, bring her back. I will help you all I can’12 . . . I said, ‘The two of you can go ahead and get married. I have plenty of room . . . I’ll give you a nice piece of ground and you can grow some tobacco and start you that way.’13
“He didn’t answer me. He told me: If I would give him a little time, he could bring her back Thursday morning. I told him, ‘Now you go down to the car and tell them, Oliver Helgerson and Andrew Helgerson, what you told me.’
“He went down and told the Helgersons what he told me.
“I told him, if the girl didn’t show up Thursday night, I would get the sheriff after him.”14
Erdman’s roommate heard him crying that night.15 Erdman wrote two letters—one to Christ, one to his parents. He mailed them the next day (September 27, 1926). Then he left town.
To Christ, Erdman wrote:
“Just a few lines to let you know that I will no longer be at Gale after tonight. I am going to make myself scarce enough so you can not find me or Clara . . . Just where she is is my business at present, and after the bunch of lip I got from you, Sunday, I’m not caring a great deal, either. I believe she is all right, in health and such, but where she is, I cannot say. . . . I am leaving because I don’t like the idea of the sheriff coming up here if I couldn’t find her. I’ll be back when she comes back.”16
“I suppose you have heard a lot of things already. I know I did. I had some visitors yesterday and they were real nice about some things. They seem to think they have me where I can’t wiggle my toes, which is where they are mistaken, very much so.
“He, the old man, claims that he has absolute proof that I know where she is. . . . I haven’t the least idea of her location, but I cooked up a story that she was in St. Paul and that I would have to have some time to get her back here.
“I am leaving tonight for some place no one knows. I shall not even tell you folks, though God knows how I feel. I have thought of finishing everything, but life is sweet and hard to part with, but . . . I would rather take death than captivity.
“Sometime I may write you, but I can’t say that you will ever see me again, unless it may be in a coffin. Perhaps you may never want to see me again. I would not blame you if you don’t. . . .
“I will never stay long in one place. . . .
“Mother, I suppose that your health will suffer tremendously from this and it might wreck Father, but don’t let it do that.
“Live for Orvid [Erdman’s younger brother]. He will repay you many, many times for what you sacrifice for him. . . . Forget me and live for Orvid. Send him to school and he will make you proud. . . .
“These people cannot prove anything definite although they will try. Do not let them try to pull anything over on you folks. . . . Please try to forget me as I am not worthy of your memory. Shut me out of your thoughts . . . as though I never existed. . . . You have not failed me as parents, but I have as a son.”17
After Erdman’s parents got his letter, they went to see Christ. “They told me I made a bad mistake when I went up to Gale College,” Christ said. “They said I’d threatened the boy and scared him out of school. . . . The Dad came back later; he said, ‘Between me and you, you had better drop this thing. ‘I said, ‘I won’t drop it. I’ll find that boy and he’ll tell me where the girl is if it costs me $1,000.’ ”18
The lawyer Christ hired told him he thought Clara was probably dead. The private detective Christ hired thought Erdman was probably staying with relatives: a grandmother in North Dakota; an aunt in Canada. Once Clara’s body was found, the county sheriff and the DA sent telegrams to police in Milwaukee, Chicago, Minneapolis, and St. Louis. They asked the Canadian Mounted Police to be on the lookout for Erdman.
The story of Christ’s dream—the way the details of the dream coincided with the facts—carried the news of Clara’s disappearance, death, and discovery east, west, and south to the biggest city newspapers in the region. Editors in Chicago at the Tribune and the Daily News remembered a 1916 Wisconsin murder case that made news even in the New York Times. Chicago reporters and photographers began to converge on Prairie du Chien the way searchers had gathered on Battle Ridge.
The 1916 case, the “Orpit murder case,” had involved a pretty high school girl from Lake Forest, Illinois, and a pale, handsome college student from the University of Wisconsin.19 Now, ten years later, there was a new “pregnant girl/Wisconsin college boy” murder case. Had Clara really been pregnant? If she had been pregnant, had she killed herself? Died after an abortion? Died because her college boyfriend thought she was nothing but a nuisance—a pregnant hick who needed a husband?
The Crawford County sheriff asked Dr. Charles Bunting, a professor of pathology at the University of Wisconsin, to autopsy Clara’s body. The sheriff asked three doctors from Prairie du Chien to witness and assist with the autopsy.
As the doctors lifted Clara’s body onto the autopsy table, the pearls from her necklace scattered across the table. A tiny bottle of perfume fell out of her purse. A thick wad of paper fell out of her bodice. Dr. Bunting retrieved the pearls and put them in a little pan; he tightened the cap of the perfume bottle and stood it in another pan; he used tweezers to lift the wad of paper up to the light. The doctors could see words written on it, written in purple ink. Dr. Bunting placed the wad on an enamel tray, set everything aside. He noted Clara’s clothing: tan coat, greenish-black silk dress, red wool sweater. New shoes, new stockings, new undergarments. All noted. All set aside.
Dr. Bunting began his examination of the cadaver. “Terrific crushing blows to the head” were the direct cause of death. As Dr. Bunting rotated the head, a two-and-a-half-inch piece of bone fell from the left side of the skull onto the table. Multiple, severe fractures of the left temple; a single fracture of the right. It appeared that Clara had been struck from behind. A single blow from a heavy ax might have caused the head injuries but, more likely, “a series of blows had been struck.”
There was no evidence of rape.
No evidence of abortion.
Clara had been six months pregnant when she died. The child she carried was a girl.
Dr. Bunting asked the county coroner to come in. Bunting wanted him to be present when he unfolded the paper that had fallen from Clara’s bodice.
It was Erdman’s last letter to Clara. The one that told her, twice, to burn all his letters.
The coroner convened an inquest. Family, friends, dance hall partners, drinking buddies—all called as witnesses. The coroner leaked news about Erdman’s letter. The fact of it. No details. A letter found.
Albert Olson spoke to reporters. By now, newspaper readers in Chicago were beginning to know as much about Clara and Erdman as they’d once known about Carl Wanderer, Cora Orthwein, Belva and Beulah, and Harvey Church.
Albert Olson issued a statement:
“Dear boy of mine” was the way it began. “Come back, Erd boy. I’ll stand by you until the last. I know you didn’t have anything to do with the disappearance of Clara. Your mother is fine and knows you are innocent of any wrong doing. It may look bad for you, boy, but trot along home to me, kid, never mind how black it may look. Try your damnedest to get in touch with me and I’ll do the rest.”20
Five hundred people came in cars, in wagons, buckboards, buggies, and sleighs to the inquest. Most people thought, “Erdman ran so he must have been guilty.” Albert testified; Christ testified. Alice took the stand. The DA held up the pages of Erdman’s letter, sandwiched between panes of glass. Alice identified it. She told what she knew. Five minutes later, the coroner’s jury indicted Erdman.
They buried Clara the next day. They laid her out in a gray coffin. The same people who’d come to the inquest came to her funeral. The service was in Norwegian.
They buried her in the middle of a snowstorm, in a cemetery on a hill next to the church where she’d been confirmed.
Christmas was two weeks away. No one ever found Erdman.