innocent - Maine Ghost Hunters

[1835] The Last Execution in Kennebec County

Maine Ghost Hunters — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 22:24:56 +0000

Joseph J. Sager and Phoebe Sager

Joseph and Phoebe Sager were a middle aged couple residing in the city of Gardiner when the unfortunate incident involving Phoebe’s death, occurred. Phoebe was a 48 year old milliner and dressmaker at the time of her death, and 36 year old Joseph was a saddle and harness maker, and a shop worker. While Phoebe was often sick, she was also known to have a drinking problem that wasn’t at all under control. On the day of her death she fell violently ill after drinking a wine and egg mixture Joseph prepared for her, to have with her breakfast. A local doctor was summoned to help her, but despite his best efforts to help her over the course of the following 6+ hours, he could do nothing to alleviate the excruciatingly painful episodes of unstoppable vomiting, including “bloody vomit”, and she eventually died; the date of her death was October 5, 1834.

Phoebe repeatedly told people who were present with her, during her final few hours, that her husband made her drink the wine concoction. He insisted she drink it, and finish it. This caused the physician to become immediately suspicious. He then noticed a white powder residue in the wine decanter she drank from that morning, and also in the container that held the cream that was added to the wine. His suspicions would eventually lead to a startling discovery.

Another very important person in the murder case against Joseph Sager was a young woman named Ann Rafter. Ann Rafter was a Catholic servant of the Sager household at the time of Phoebe’s untimely passing. During this time in Maine’s history anti-Catholic sentiment was at its height. Catholics were persecuted, ostracized, vilified, and openly discriminated against.

Irish Catholic, Ann Rafter, became the principal witness in the case.

Joseph Sager accused Ann, their house servant, of poisoning Phoebe and there was rumored to be an actual confession by Ann, herself, to that effect but it was never found in any of the documentation or evidence.

But… … another compelling rumor was floating around that she never went to confession again after the trial.

Determining Phoebe was murdered

After Mrs. Sager died her body was sent off for an autopsy. The Doctor present at the time of her death had collected the cream container that had the white residue in it and requested the medical examiner send the contents of Mrs. Sager’s stomach to be analyzed, along with the residue, to Professor Cleaveland at Bowdoin Medical School.

Both contained arsenic.

Trial and Execution

The case of the ‘State of Maine vs. Joseph J. Sager’ started on Tuesday October 23, 1834 when Sager pleaded “not guilty” to the charges of murdering his wife.

The facts of the case were presented as follows;

Joseph Sager, aged 36, was accused of killing his 48 year old wife – Phoebe – by poisoning part of her breakfast – a drink he prepared for her made of wine, an egg, and white sugar. The visiting Dr. sent to treat Phoebe noticed the wine carafe she drank from at breakfast had a white sediment in it. The cream container on the dining table also had this sediment in it so the Dr. saved it and had it tested. The sediment was found to be arsenic, leading to a charge of murder against her husband Joseph.

Two Judges presided over the trial simultaneously, as Maine law at the time stated if the life of a person was at stake during a trial it was to be done with 2 Judges sitting on the bench. The 2 Judges were; Chief Justice Nathan Weston and Judge Albion Paris, who had also served as Maine’s 5^th Governor.

Prosecuting attorneys on behalf of the state were; Attorney General – Nathaniel Clifford (a future Justice of the US Supreme Court) and County Prosecuting Attorney – James W. Bradbury (a future US Senator).

The Legal Defense Attorneys on behalf of Joseph J. Sager were; the Honorable Peleg Sprague, who was the Primary Defense attorney and a current, sitting, US Senator from Maine, at the time; Frederick Allen; and George W. Bacheldor. Court proceedings were held in the old South Church in Augusta, Maine. Oliver Bean of Readfield was the jury foreman.

Joseph J. Sager was found “GUILTY” of the murder of his wife Phoebe Sager by a jury of his peers on Monday October 27, 1834, just 22 short days after her passing. Judge Weston sentenced Sager to death by hanging with the date of the execution to be carried out on Friday January 2, 1835 at the corner of State Street and Winthrop Street in Augusta.

The Trial was a full-house sensation every single day. The courthouse was mobbed with people and no seat was left open. The balcony was full, too.

Joseph J. Sager collapsed into his chair when the “guilty” verdict was read. He was sweating, shaking, and sort of hyperventilating. His representation filed a motion for a new trial based on the claim that material evidence had been suppressed at the trial but the motion was denied

The day of Joseph Sager’s execution, Friday January 2, 1835, was a very cold, snowy, and windy one.

The hanging took place at the gallows in Augusta on the corner of Winthrop and State Streets near the Southwest corner of the jail. Sager was Llkely walked from the jail, across the street to “Winthrop Street Square” where the gallows was erected.

His very last words were “Gentlemen, I am innocent” with a little hitch in the word “innocent” when they tightened the rope around his neck.

The Controversy

The controversy surrounding Joseph J. Sager’s execution had a lot to do with his persistent claims of innocence. Sager claimed his innocence until the very end, even blaming Ann Rafter, the family’s Irish servant for the murder of Phoebe; anti-catholic rhetoric was all the rage among certain political groups during this time, and so blaming an Irish Catholic girl was seen as quite the tactic of desperation. His claims of innocence persisted even though he had been caught pre-meditating his wife’s death on a number of occasions. One example of this was when he told a Kennebec River Steamboat crew member he knew that he’d be a widow soon. Not only did he say this with an odd sort of exciting anticipation, he actually handed this friend a hand written list of women he thought he might be interested in once his wife passes.

Another curious bit of circumstantial evidence that didn’t bode well for his case was that Joseph encouraged Phoebe to drink all of the liquid mixture he mixed for her, telling her “the goodness being all at the bottom” in the carafe the arsenic was found. The only witness to this act, however, was by their servant, Ann Rafter which, of course, Sager had a vested interest in discrediting. Another subject of controversy was that most newspaper articles and historical documentation said the Dr. who tended to Phoebe, as she lay dying, took a container with the arsenic in it with the intent of having it tested and studied by proper authorities, but curiously, there was also the rarer mention that it was Ann Rafter who was said to have carried out this deed. And one doesn’t likely need to be told how much of a conflict of interest it would be if Rafter actually *was* the one in possession of the carafe with the white powder in it, as she was considered the prosecution’s star witness and her influential testimony led to the hanging of Joseph J. Sager.

The Hanging of Joseph Sager

The gallows was constructed near the Southwest corner of the Kennebec County jail. There were between 8,000 and 12,000 people present to view the hanging. To give you a rough idea of what this might look like, in person; in 1830 the population of Augusta was 3,980. In 1840 the population of Augusta was 5,314. This was 1835. So, this singular area of the city of Augusta was a convergence point of 8,000 to 12,000 people – which is easily two, to three times, the population of the entire city at the time – all standing in one small space at the same time.

That day the weather was horrible – snowy, windy, cold, and raw. The crowd was belligerent – men were drinking until ‘plastered’ and treated this execution like it was some sort of entertainment. There were also lots of women, elderly, sick, and children present. People traveled from great distances and spent the night to see the hanging.

There were armed soldiers present – the Augusta Light Infantry – surrounding the gallows. The day was chaotic and at many times, a dangerous place to be. A sea of 8,000-12,000 people pushing forward toward the gallows, to the point the soldiers had to get under the platform for safety. In one instance, someone hollered “FIRE!” which caused the mob to panic.

Militia situated themselves to guard the gallows and then the Sheriff and 2 deputies went to Sager’s cell to bring him to the hanging spot. The Sheriff saluted Joseph Sager at his cell – it’s said to make him feel better about this situation. Joseph didn’t put up any kind of fight and when they led him to the gallows he was carrying the noose on his own right arm.

When this all started just 3 and a half months earlier in October of 1834, Sager was ‘built’ physically. He was a man with physical stature. But, by the day of his hanging he’d lost so much weight he was almost unrecognizable.

Sager’s last words proclaimed his innocence. He wrote them down but had to have been in a state of utter panic when doing so, and so the words were just a mash-up of incoherent gibberish basically pleading for his life. They were read by Reverend Benjamin Tappan who then turned to the crowd and warned them, basically, not to live a life that would lead to this. To look at Joseph Sager and to understand that life choices can have serious life consequences.

Joseph Sager’s mother was in the courthouse begging Governor Dunlap and his advisors to stay the execution, to no avail. Where they were situated inside the courthouse offered them a vantage point with a good view of the gallows when the execution was taking place. Joseph firmly believed his mother’s pleas would save his life.

A Quaker from The Society of Friends in Fairfield also made his way into the Governor’s presence to beg for Sager’s life but the Governor was too busy watching the crowd and the gallows that he didn’t even make eye contact with the gentleman.

George W. Stanley was the Kennebec County Sheriff at the time, and he was responsible to drop Sager where he stood on the platform.

Stanley led Sager to the platform, let his last words be spoken, then put a black hood over Sager, adjusted the noose, took his hand and humanely said “goodbye”. When Sager proclaimed his innocence Stanley told him “this is now a matter between you and your god”. Stanley then walked down the gallows steps and slashed the rope holding Sager in place.

When the trap door was released the words “sickening thud” were used to describe the ‘drop’ and it’s thought he died instantly.

Sager dropped over 10 feet and then just hung, twirling around lifeless, as people gawked – for 20 minutes before his friends and family were allowed to cut his body down and carry it off to be given a proper burial. Dr. Franklin Gage declared him dead. He was lowered onto a horse sled and driven as fast as possible to Hallowell.

The Mystery

Joseph Sager’s body was rushed off in a hurry, to Hallowell, where his friends had a master plan of electrocuting him back to life. The concept they planned to use on him was a much misunderstood version of “galvanism”. Galvanism is named after an Italian doctor named Luigi Galvani – a man who hooked up a dead frog to an electrical charge, and witnessed the legs moving. It was the basis for the plotline in Frankenstein when the mad scientist brings the monster to life by electrocuting it into reanimation.

These efforts failed, of course, and Sager was buried in a secret location on an island in one of the ponds in Winthrop. 50 Years later, January 2, 1885 a newspaper article printed by the Daily Kennebec Journal specified Joseph Sager was buried on Horse-Shoe Island in Cobbosseecontee Pond.

But still, there were people who persisted in their belief that he was brought back to life and ushered out of the state by friends & family, escaping to Texas to live out the remainder of his natural life.

Some say if you go to the spot Sager was hung and you ask aloud “Sager, for what were you hanged?” a voice would reply “nothing”. So this question of his innocence or guilt was clearly in the collective conscious of the local community.

This hanging bothered people and was ultimately the last execution ever conducted in Kennebec County.

The post [1835] The Last Execution in Kennebec County first appeared on Maine Ghost Hunters.

[1884] The Murder at Fort Western

Maine Ghost Hunters — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 22:03:35 +0000

[1884] The Murder at Fort Western

On a cold November night in 1884, tragedy struck the city of Augusta, Maine when Police Officer Rufus R. Lishness, a dedicated servant of the law, was shot and killed while attempting to apprehend a suspect for disturbing the peace at a tenement called “Old Fort” on the east side of the Kennebec River (the old Fort Western). The perpetrator, Harry Burns, was apprehended an hour later and brought to justice. Officer Lishness left behind a grieving wife and four children, robbed of their husband and father by this senseless act of violence. The following is an account of “The Murder at Fort Western”.

Harry Burns and Rufus R. Lishness

At the time of the incident, Harry Burns was a 65-year-old man who was a prior patient at the National Soldiers Home at Togus and was addicted to the use of liquor. On November 11, 1884, he shot and killed Augusta Police Officer Rufus R. Lishness, as previously mentioned. Officer Lishness was responding to a disturbance call with another officer when they went to arrest Harry Burns. When they couldn’t gain access at the entrance, Officer Lishness shoved an unlocked window open and was about to climb into Harry Burns’ bedroom when Burns fired a shot at him, striking Lishness in the head. Lishness was able to walk to the police station with the help of another officer but soon afterward became unconscious, later dying of his wounds. His last words were “I did my duty, didn’t I?” It is unclear what led Harry Burns to murder Rufus Lishness, but his addiction to liquor may have played a role. Dedicated husband and father of 4, officer Rufus R. Lishness was a 45 year old, highly respected, man in the community. He was a table smoother, by trade, but had been put on the overnight police duty in the spring of 1883.

Brief History of Fort Western

Fort Western was built in 1754 during the French and Indian War as a British Colonial Outpost. It was built and maintained by the Howard Family. The fort was primarily built to encourage settlement along the Kennebec River region and to provide stores for the storehouse at Fort Halifax. Fort Western was commanded by Captain James Howard who had a unit of 23 men, including his four sons. In 1969, Fort Western was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and in 1973 it was listed as a National Historic Landmark. By 1767, the military had no use for Fort Western and it was decommissioned. In 1769, Captain James Howard bought Fort Western and 900 acres of surrounding land. He and his sons remodeled it into a residence and trading post. Fort Western was a central meeting point for early residents as far away as Hallowell. On September 23, 1775, Benedict Arnold and his troops stopped at Fort Western on their way to invading Quebec. They spent a week repairing the fort and loading supplies before continuing north. In 1810, William Howard, one of Captain James Howard’s sons, died and the fort was sold out of the family. It was made into a tenement house and the surrounding area became known for illegal activity and low-class behavior.

Breakdown of the Murder

At 3:00am on November 11, 1884, Mrs. Randall, a tenement renter in Fort Western, went to the police station to ask for help. Neighboring tenant, Harry Burns, had been making noise all night and her sick son was trying to sleep. She had already addressed the matter with Harry, but he had rudely dismissed her.

Officers Rufus R. Lishness and Arthur S. Baker accompanied Mrs. Randall back to the Fort. They tried to enter through the front door on the Bowman Street side, but it was locked or blocked. From inside, they heard Harry Burns say “Don’t come in here, Warren!” Warren Bruce was a cop who worked the day shift and was not present that night.

This is a great spot in the story to mention that it was pitch black ‘dark’ outside. It was 1884 and there was no exterior lighting present. Officer Lishness realized the front door was latched so he shimmied over to the window on the right side of the door, opened it up, and quickly popped his head and upper body inside. Without any warning whatsoever, he was shot and fell out of the window onto the ground with blood pouring out of his head.

Officer Arthur S. Baker ran to help him and asked if he’d been shot. It was so dark outside it made seeing the significance of the injury he’d just incurred, almost impossible. He helped Lishness get up off the ground and walk back to the police station. Lishness managed to walk without assistance for much of the way, but soon began to exhibit the effects of being shot in the head at close range. His face and right side of his body became paralyzed.

The last words Officer Lishness uttered before dying were “I did my duty, didn’t I?” A doctor was called and determined that a blood clot was causing issues. Lishness needed to get home as soon as possible, so a carriage was called to take him to his residence at Cushnoc Heights.

Officer Warren Bruce and Marshal Frank B. Farrington were called to arrest Harry Burns. They arrived, kicked in the outside door and then the interior bedroom door. They immediately saw Burns in bed with a gun pointed at the door. They wrestled him hand-to-hand to get the gun away while Mrs. Burns snuck out of bed and out of the room.

Harry refused to get dressed and officers said he was out of his mind with drunkenness and likely hallucinating. They put him in jail.

Officer Rufus Lishness died at 3:40pm the following afternoon.

Harry Burns’ Story

On Saturday, November 8, 1884, Harry made a plan to go to Boston on the following Monday, November 10th. He had plans to see a ‘Dr. Williams’ in Boston and was awaiting a letter from Togus giving him the go-ahead as he was still considered an “inmate” – or ‘patient’ – of the National Veteran’s Home (aka “Togus”). He needed a furlough to go to Boston and it had to be mailed to him. Harry asked Mr. Story, a local shopkeeper in town, to write a letter to Harry’s sergeant asking for the furlough.

Mr. Burns prepared for the trip by getting a haircut at a local place called Gannet’s where he told the barber about his plans to go to Boston, and then to Lowell to spend time with family before returning home to Augusta. He then went home and laid out his ‘good clothes’ in anticipation of the arrival of the requested furlough letter. But the letter didn’t arrive and he was panicking, stressed and anxious. He put his money in the pocket of a pair of pants that he hung on a chair near the window in his bedroom. He also set out a gun to give as a gift to his nephew in Lowell at that same window.

Harry’s reasoning for seeking help from a doctor in Boston was thought to be directly related to pain management regarding the battle injury he sustained during the Civil War, and to get help with detoxing from his alcohol addiction. However, having received no word from Togus that he could leave on furlough, Harry started drinking again at 4:00pm. He drank 2 gallons of his homemade brew between 4pm-12am and ate nothing throughout the entirety of this drinking binge.

At 7:00pm, Harry realized half his keg was gone because he drank it. So, he went to the store, bought 1 pound of hops and molasses and later went out again for tobacco. On the way back, he ran into a small bunch of rowdy teens. They had a verbal exchange regarding a recent election and things got heated. Harry was emotionally invested in this election so he was triggered easily by these kids who were taunting him. They threatened him with chants of “drag him out!” and he feared they would steal his money and kill him because they had threatened him physically during their interaction.

When he was done brewing his homemade beer, he moved the keg he just filled, from one part of the room to another, basically dragging it across the floor and making a ruckus. The sound roused Mrs. Randall in a neighboring apartment and she asked him to quiet down because her son was sick & sleeping. A couple of other close neighbors who shared either a wall, ceiling, or floor heard nothing or were completely unbothered. It was just Mrs. Randall who had a complaint.

By the time night had set in, Harry’s clothes were set out, his $24 was in his pants pocket draped over the chair in front of the window and the revolver was on the stand in front of that same window. Harry didn’t move these items away from the window and was acutely aware of their importance in his life if he were to make a successful trip to Massachusetts and back.

The shooting of Officer Lishness happened on Tuesday November 11, 1884 around 3:00am.

According to Harry, someone knocked on the door and he asked what they wanted. They said they wanted to come in. Harry responded “you shan’t tonight!” and claimed to have never said “Warren”. Harry was quick to clarify he knew Warren Bruce very well, but was also very clear in his messaging he never heard anyone say they were cops.

Harry swore he never thought the people at the door were cops. He thought they were the teenage boys coming to “drag him out”. Harry was scared to find someone opening his window and believed they were going to take his money – literally all of his money was in his pants pocket – which he needed to get to the doctor’s in Boston.

Harry testified he didn’t know Rufus Lishness was the person in the window. He fumbled at the window trying to push the person out and close it but the person grabbed him back, so Harry got away, grabbed for his gun, stumbled to his bed in a panic and shot at the intruder. Harry said he tried to push Lishness back out the window before grabbing his gun in the bureau drawer at the window. He said he shot Lishness while standing away from the window, 2 feet from his bed, not at point-blank range directly at the window.

Mrs. Burns woke up at the sound of the gunshot. It was pitch-black-dark inside, and outside, so neither party could identify each other and neither could see the extent of the injury inflicted on Officer Lishness.

Harry Burns knew Rufus Lishness and all of the other police officers personally. He’d been arrested a few times previously by all. He had never once tussled with the law – and had either paid his fine or did his jail time without any issue.

Harry and his wife had lived in the tenement for the last 5+/- years, or so. He admitted to making and drinking his own beer, which was not illegal. But he’d never been involved with the law outside of drunkenness. The defense – his legal team – reiterated he had never hurt anyone nor intended to hurt anyone in his life and if he would’ve known there were cops at his door he wouldn’t have fired his gun. The Defense was really focused on pushing the “self-defense” angle. However, another cop testified that when he was arresting Harry for drunkenness, not too long ago, Harry threatened to “fix” the next officer who would try to arrest him.

After he shot Officer Lishness, Harry went back to bed thinking he’d scared off the intruders. When Officer Warren Bruce and Marshal Frank B. Farrington broke in through the exterior door and then the bedroom door to Harry’s room, they saw Harry had his gun in his hand, ready to defend his life. The officers had lanterns this time and Harry said the moment he saw their badges he let down his guard. They said they had to wrangle the gun away from him and he was out of his mind with drunkenness, so because of this, he didn’t recognize their badges. Harry said he could have shot them if he wanted to.

Mr. Burns claimed the gun was not cocked, yet the police said it was. He also said his door was not locked but the cops say they couldn’t just open it even though they tried repeatedly, so they determined it had to be locked. Marshal Farrington said Officer Bruce tried to open the bedroom door but it was locked, so they shoulder-slammed it open.

Harry claimed, emphatically and repeatedly, that he hadn’t had a hard liquor drink for around 2 years.

Trial-Wise it’s important to make mention that Mrs. Burns was present when everything happened the night Officer Lishness was killed, but Legal Counsel for the Defense never called her to testify. She could have cleared her husband of accusations made against him if they were lies, or corroborated witness testimony on her husband’s behalf, but she was never given the chance.

After the Shooting and Arrest

The day after the crime, police went to the scene and spoke with Mrs. Burns, who explained that her husband Harry often drank a homemade “hop beer” to excess, sometimes consuming 2 gallons a day. She also mentioned that he’d been speaking loudly about the election before the shooting but by the time the police arrived – directly before the shooting happened – she had already fallen asleep. When police later spoke with Harry in his holding cell, they noted that his breath smelled strongly of alcohol, suggesting he had consumed something stronger than hop beer. Regarding the legal case against Mr. Burns for the murder of Officer Rufus R. Lishness; The jury started deliberations on Tuesday December 23, 1884 at 4:50pm and by 9:15pm it had returned with the verdict. Harry Burns had been found guilty of manslaughter and was sentenced to 7 to 14 years in Thomaston State Prison.

The post [1884] The Murder at Fort Western first appeared on Maine Ghost Hunters.