Laura Jane Harvey Murder: Prologue

 

1870 map showing Appanoose Island and the ferry

It was 6 a.m. Friday morning on the 30th of March, 1860 when Obediah Aumack drove his horse and wagon into the Des Moines River at lower ferry of Ottumwa on his way to do his daily milk deliveries. As he drove the team through the shallow water, he saw the body of a young girl laying in the river slightly downstream at the head of Appanoose Island.

She was laying on her side with her face down in twelve inches of water and her head pointing downstream. Her red calico dress was hooked on a tree stump beached on a towhead at the head of the island.  Sand had already partially buried her body. Her skull had been broken and blood matted her auburn hair and small gold drop earrings. One eye was black and blue and the face swollen. Deeply indented finger marks were still visible on the fair skin around her throat. Aumack shouted for some help from some people on the town side of the river but the distance was too great to be heard clearly so he ended up enlisting the help of ferry owner John Prosser who lived nearby. Together with some help from Prosser's men and a small skiff, they retrieved the young girl’s body from the river and rowed to the ferry landing on the town side.

There among a growing crowd, the body remained until the city coroner, Mr. Calvin G. Packard arrived and ordered the team to move the body to a vacant building that used to house the Lawrence storehouse on the corner of Front and Court Streets were an inquest and post mortem examination was held.  A three-person jury subpoenaed a large number of witnesses for their testimony and then watched as doctors Thrall and Williamson conducted the post mortem examination. The jury returned a verdict that the young woman had been murdered by blows inflicted upon the head and was dead before she was thrown in the water. The death was ruled a murder.  Officers and groups of men set out to find the unknown perpetrators and rewards were offered for their capture.

For the next five years, the United States would be entering into a bloody civil war that would capture the attention of the world but in Ottumwa, the hunt to capture the killers of this young murdered girl was the story in the newspapers.