It was a cold February evening in 1898 when Jonas Staats answered a knock at the door of his Chatham, N.Y. farmhouse. He didn’t recognize the scruffy-looking man at first, but soon realized who was standing in his doorway.
“My God, It’s Joe,” he exclaimed, ushering the man inside. It was John Schmidt, an accused murderer who had been on the run for more than five years.
That night after supper, Schmidt, in his broken English, admitted to the farmer that he had killed his stepson, William Hildebrandt, on the evening of Sept. 12, 1893, along the train tracks in nearby Philmont. He claimed that when he cracked the 19-year-old in the head with a hammer it was an act of self-defense.
Staats listened to the man’s story without much in the way of commentary, and allowed the alleged murderer to spend the night and made him breakfast the next morning.
The farmer had known Schmidt for about 15 years, having met him in New York City. Staats brought him to work on his Columbia County farm just after Schmidt arrived from Bromberg, in what was then called Prussian Poland. Schmidt remained at the Staats’ farm for about a year and a half. He then began working for a farmer in Ghent, John Coburn, with whom he stayed on and off for several years.
In 1891 Schmidt met Dora Sophia Johanna, a German immigrant five years his junior. The couple moved in together on Coburn’s property, but soon began a rootless life of travel, going from Columbia to Dutchess County to New Jersey and then Baltimore. When the couple returned to Ghent in 1893 Dora’s teenage son was with them. Schmidt had made enough money to pay the lad’s passage from Germany and now the family was back in Columbia County to work the fields of yet another local farmer.
Sept. 12, 1893
Schmidt and his 19-year-old stepson spent the day working in the field helping to bring in the corn crop of a Ghent farmer. After knocking off for the day they returned to the house. After dinner Schmidt insisted on walking into Philmont to pick up some meat for the family and invited Hildebrandt to go along.
A few hours later Schmidt returned home alone, his clothes bloody and with a leg wound — and without any meat.
He told Sophia that Hildebrandt had been arrested after they brawled with some rowdies in town and that he had escaped arrest by running off. This was just one of several versions Schmidt told of that night’s events. Early the next morning, the couple went to Ghent to catch a train to Hudson, where Hildebrandt would have been taken if arrested. The couple took the train into the city and walked to a building that Schmidt said was the courthouse. He went in alone and came out a few minutes later. Dora was crying and asking where her son was, but Schmidt told her a convenient lie and they headed back home. Later in the evening when the farm boss came around Dora overheard her husband tell the man that Hildebrandt had gone to visit his relatives in New Jersey.
Meanwhile, that afternoon, the crew on a freight train on the Harlem railroad noticed what appeared to be a drunken man passed out along the train tracks in Philmont. He was lying on his back with a leg cocked up, his cap hanging from a nearby tree. It wasn’t until the next morning, on the return trip, that the workers realized the man wasn’t a drunken hobo, but was in fact a corpse.
It wasn’t long until authorities determined young Hildebrandt had been killed by a blow from a hammer that was found near the body, a hammer belonging to Schmidt. He was arrested that afternoon and shipped off to Hudson. But the constables in charge of the prisoner were drunk and when Schmidt made his escape, they were unable to keep up with him and he disappeared into the night.
For five years Schmidt evaded capture. He traveled widely from New Jersey to Michigan and Minnesota, working on farms and performing odd jobs. And then one evening he appeared on the doorstep of the man who had first taken him in when he arrived in America.
Why he returned after more than five years as a fugitive is unknown, but Schmidt did say that being on the run and in constant fear of arrest had been hard on him both mentally and physically.
It is unclear whether Staats told authorities at the time about the conversation he had with Schmidt that night or whether he revealed that the fugitive was back in Columbia County. It would be another four months before Schmidt was taken into custody. While sitting in jail awaiting trial he allegedly confessed to two jailers that he had killed his stepson because the teen was having an incestuous relationship with Schmidt’s wife. Later, at trial, the testimony of the two men was called into question by the defense attorney, who told the jury that the jailers might have misheard Schmidt, because his English was so poor. Both witnesses stuck to their stories.
During Schmidt’s trial in Columbia County Court in Hudson, a two-week affair in May and early June of 1899, he told the jury a similar story to the one he had told Staats on that cold February night a year earlier, but in this version, he said he and the teen weren’t on their way to purchase meat, but had instead been trapping along the railroad tracks. Hildebrandt wanted to set a trap, Schmidt told the jury through an interpreter, but when it snapped on his finger he got angry and punched Schmidt.
“I will give you more, yet,” Schmidt alleged the teen told him before pulling out a knife and taking a swing at him.
“(H)e stooped down and got the hammer and he raised the hammer and struck him,” the interpreter told the jury. “He says he didn’t want to strike him.”
After the boy fell to the ground and didn’t move, Schmidt said he stood there for about 10 minutes and cried, before pushing Hildebrandt’s body further down a culvert. He told the jury he didn’t think Hildebrandt was dead, merely stunned and figured he would wake up and come home. Before leaving, Schmidt left the teen’s cap hanging from a nearby tree. He tossed the hammer down the culvert, took his traps and headed home.
The jury deliberated for close to nine hours before returning a verdict of guilty of first-degree murder. After an appeal and a determination of insanity by a special panel appointed by the governor, Schmidt was electrocuted at Dannemora Prison in January 1902.
As a strange side note, during the hullabaloo surrounding Schmidt’s capture, he told his jailers that his wife had murdered her former paramour, a man named Gruber with whom she had been living before she and Schmidt got together. Police discovered the headless remains buried in a cellar on the property of the Ghent farmer John Coburn, whose home was known as “Broadstairs.” Dora denied the killing, telling police that she came home one day to her residence, which she and Gruber had been sharing with Schmidt, to find Gruber gone. Schmidt allegedly told her Gruber had left her. Dora quickly took up with Schmidt and they were married a few months later.
There have been ghostly encounters reported at the residence since that time.
