American Monsters: Samuel Mason and the Harp Brothers

0:00 Speaker 1: Warning. Kind of Murdery contains adult themes, explicit language, and descriptions of violence. It is not suitable for anyone, and we recommend you stop listening.

0:09 Speaker 2: Now True Crime with a dash of the paranormal, the garish, the strange in the darkly comic, a podcast that's about more than just murder. It's my very own pocket dimension, home to a curated collection of bizarre and compelling stories, the unsolved, the unsettling, and the unbelievable. I cover it all just so long as it's kind of murdery. I'm back on the mic solo today and I've got quite a story for you. It's a story of pirates, serial killers, and millions in gold treasure hidden perhaps still out there somewhere today along the banks of the Ohio River in Illinois.

0:52 Speaker 2: Now, if you're anything like me, when you hear the terms serial killer or pirate, you don't think of frontiersmen, legends of the American Way. For pirates, it's shiver me, timbers, maybe some old salty brit who sounds like long John Silver. And serial killers are people like Jack the Ripper, John Wayne Gacy, or maybe TV's Dexter. Well, it's time to confound those expectations, because today I bring you a story from the decades surrounding the American Revolution featuring the Harp Brothers, America's first serial killers.

1:22 Speaker 2: Now, the Harps were wanton, slaughtering monsters who murdered everyone from American patriots to their own children, and they are thought to be responsible for at least forty murders. In fact, the murderer is evil they inflicted on the fledgling American Republic has rarely, if ever, been matched by a single individual or two, with the possible exception I guess of Samuel a little, but the Harps delivered a lot more general mayhem along with their murdering. Also, I mentioned Dexter a moment ago, the TV serial killer who kills serial killers, And although they were lacking in Dexter's noble intent or sense of duty, the hideous Harps had a extra moment of their own when one of their victims, River Pirate Captain Samuel Mason turned out to be a serial killer himself, with at least twenty murders to his name.

2:10 Speaker 2: Just these three men, this unholy trinity of pirates, bandits, and killers, were responsible for murdering at least sixty people in the two decades or so leading up to the dawn of the nineteenth century. And yes, of course I can't forget that one of the three left millions of dollars in unclaimed gold treasure buried somewhere along the banks of the Ohio River, treasure that might still be there now. Two articles by Kathy Alexander, written for Legends of the American West dot com were integral to putting this episode together.

2:40 Speaker 2: As always, you can find all my sources in the show notes. So today I bring you a story about an unholy trinity of American serial killers connected to buried treasure on the banks of the Ohio River. And also, by the way, there are witches involved. So hopefully I've piqued your interest. We've got revolution, pirate serial killers, buried treasure, and witches. I'm not sure what other elements I could possibly hope to find it a true story to get you excited. If you're not excited now, and if you're not excited now, you're probably listening to the wrong show.

3:14 Speaker 2: But if you know that you're listening to the right show, if kind of murdery is exactly your jam, then I ask you to please join me, as together we uncover what truths we can and solve what mysteries we may kind of murderies. Unholy Trinity, the serial killing trio behind the legend of the Ohio River Pirate treasure that's a mouthful starts now earning the dubious distinction of being the United States first documented serial killers. Mackayja Big Arp and Wiley Little Harp were murderous outlaws who operated in Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, and Mississippi in the late seventeen hundreds.

4:07 Speaker 2: Often referred to as the Harp brothers, they were cousins who generally passed themselves off as brothers. Their fathers were Scottish immigrants who settled in Orange County, North Carolina. Now Mckaja Harp was born to John Harp and his wife, while Wiley Harp actually named Joshua and was born to John's brother, William and his wife. Soon after the arrival of the Harps in America, they changed the spelling of their original name from Harp Harpe to just Harp Harp, like the instrument. Now growing up near each other, the boys soon took up the nicknames of Big and Little Harp, as Wiley was much smaller than Mcaja.

4:43 Speaker 2: The two left North Carolina in seventeen seventy five for Virginia, intending to find jobs as slave overseers. So the Harps were clearly a morally dubious duo from the absolute get go, since as very young men they set out to make their fortunes in their chosen career of being slave overseers. Yikes. But they never got to be the overseers they dreamed of being, because the American Revolution interrupted their career. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the pair sided with the British, but their interests seemed to be more in violence and criminal activities than in any sense of patriotic duty or reverse patriotic duty, depending on how you look at it, along with other like minded irregulars, which in this case I think can be shorthanded to along with other violent associopaths as opposed to like minded irregulars maybe a regularly low empathy quotient.

5:33 Speaker 2: I suppose the Harp brothers were guerrilla fighters for the British, thrilling in burning farms, raping women, and pillaging the American revolutionaries. When Little Harp attempted to rape a girl in North Carolina. He was shot and wounded by Captain James Wood. However, he survived. In seventeen eighty, the Harps joined the regular British troops and fought in several battles along the North and South Carolina borders. The following year, they left the army and joined a group of Cherokee Native Americans, raiding settlements in North Carolina and Tennessee and continuing their pillaging.

6:07 Speaker 2: It was clear that the Harps were not at all beholdened to some larger cause. They just were looking for opportunities to murder, rape and steal and set things on fire. And for psychos like mckaga and Wiley, a late eighteenth century war was a literal playground. The brothers decided to take revenge on Captain James Wood, who, as I had mentioned earlier, had previously shot and wounded Little Harp when Little Harp tried to rape a girl. For their revenge, they kidnapped his daughter, Susan Wood, and another girl named Maria Davidson and forced the women to become their wives.

6:47 Speaker 2: The Harp brothers, the brutalized women, and four other men began to make their way to Tennessee. During a trip, a man named Moses Dass had the audacity to be over concerned for the brutalized women. For his con he was killed by the Harps. The group then settled in the Cherokee Chickamuga village of Nikajack, located southwest of modern Chattanooga, Tennessee. For the next dozen years, the Harps, along with their quote wives, lived in the Native American village. During that time, both captive women became pregnant twice, and the fathers the Harp brothers cousins, killed their children.

7:24 Speaker 2: These guys were so messed up. After the British surrendered at Yorktown in seventeen eighty one, the Chickamugga and a breakaway band of Cherokee continued to make war on American patriots, and the Harps were only too willing to help them, fighting in the Battle of Blue Licks, Kentucky on August nineteenth, seventeen eighty two, and other more minor skirmishes. In September seventeen ninety four, the Americans planned to take the offensive against the Native Americans in Nikajack, but somehow the Harps got wind of the attack and fled before the Americans wiped out the village, The Harps and their women settled down at a new camp nearby, where they stayed for the next nine months, once again pillaging local villages in Tennessee.

8:05 Speaker 2: Then by spring seventeen ninety seven, they lived in a cabin on Beavers Creek near Knoxville. That same year, Little Harp married a local girl, a minister's daughter named Sarah Rice, and the other two women that had been living with them for years now became the wives again in quotes of Big Harp. Just over a year later, in late seventeen ninety eight, the Harps would begin their murder spree, one of the most violent in the nation's history. They first killed two men in Tennessee, one in Knox County and one on the Wilderness Trail.

8:34 Speaker 2: Then by December they'd moved to Kentucky, where they killed two traveling men from Maryland. Unlike most outlaws, they seemed more motivated by blood lust than financial gain, often leaving their victims disemboweled and filling their abdominal cavities with rocks and then sinking them in a river geez. Next up, a man named John Langford, traveling from Virginia, to Kentucky, turned up dead, and a local innkeeper pointed the authorities to the Harps. The criminal pair was then pursued, captured, and jailed in Danville, Kentucky, but they managed to escape when a pose was sent after them.

9:06 Speaker 2: The young son of a man who assisted the authorities was found dead and mutilated. On April twenty second, seventeen ninety nine, the Governor of Kentucky issued a three hundred dollars reward on each Harp's head, which inflates up to about seventy three hundred dollars today. Fleeing northward, the Harps killed two men named Edmonton and Stump. Then, when they were near the mouth of the Saline River, they came upon three men who were encamped and killed all three. The pair then went to Cave In the Rock in southern Illinois, the stronghold of a river pirate named Samuel Mason.

9:38 Speaker 2: In the meantime, the pose aggressively pursued them, but unfortunately stopped just short of Cave In the Rock. Along with their three wives and three children, the Harps hold up with the Samuel Mason gang, who preyed on slow moving flatboats along the Ohio River. Earlier in his life as an honorable man, Samuel Mason served as a militia captain in the American Revolution. Later, however, that later being a little before and around the time that the Harps camped with him, he would turn pirate on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and lead highwaymen along the Natchez Trace Trail.

10:12 Speaker 2: However, although the Mason Gang could be ruthless, even they were appalled by the actions of the Harps. After the murderous pair began to take travelers to the top of the bluff, strip them naked, and throw them off the bluff, the Mason gang asked them to leave. The Harps returned to eastern Tennessee, where they continued their vicious murder spree in Earnest. In July seventeen ninety eight, they killed a farmer named Bradbury, a man named Harden, and a boy named Coffee. Soon more bodies were discovered, including William Ballard, who had been disemboweled and thrown in the Holton River.

10:45 Speaker 2: James Brassel, whose throat was viciously slashed, was discovered on Brassel's knob in Kentucky, and another man named John Tully was also found murdered. In south central Kentucky, John Graves and his teenage son were found dead with their heads acted, and in Logan County, the Harps killed a little girl, a young slave, and an entire family asleep in their camp. In August, a few miles northeast of Russellville, Kentucky, Big Harp killed his infant daughter by bashing her head against a tree because the baby wouldn't stop crying.

11:16 Speaker 2: Big Harp would later say that that was the only one of all the murders he committed that he regretted cheese these Harps. That same month, the man named Trowbridge was found disemboweled in Highland Creek, and when the Harps were given shelter in the Steegle home in Webster County, the pair killed an overnight guest named Major William Love, as well as Missus Steegle's four month old baby boy, whose throat was slit when it cried. When Missus Steegle screamed at the sight of her infant being killed, she too was murdered.

11:48 Speaker 2: These guys are just like the absolute worst. What the hell? The killings continued as the Harps fled west to avoid the Posse pursuing them, which included Moses Steegel, who who his family, as I just mentioned, the Harps had killed earlier in the month, while the Harp brothers were preparing to kill yet another settler named George Smith. The Posse finally tracked them down on August twenty fourth, seventeen ninety nine. When the Posse called for their surrender, the two sped away, but Big Harp was shot in the leg and in the back.

12:18 Speaker 2: The Posse soon caught up with him and pulled him from his horse. As he lay dying, he confessed to twenty murders, and mister Steegel slowly cut off his head while he was still conscious, which, considering that Big Harp had slit Steegle's baby's throat just for crying, as brutal as that sounds, I have a hard time blaming him. Later, Big Harp was hanged on a pole at a crossroads near Henderson, Kentucky. For years, the intersection where the pole stood was called Harp's Head. In the meantime, while the Posse was otherwise occupied exacting terrible vengeance, terrible and deserved vengeance upon Big Hearp.

13:00 Speaker 2: Wiley Harp escaped and rejoined the Mason Gang pirates at Cave in the Rock. And the mention of the Mason Gang pirates is a convenience segue because it's time now, I think, to take a little break from the Harp story and talk about a man whose own story is nearly as incredible, though not nearly as horrible as the Harps, and that would be Pirate Captain River Pirate Captain Samuel Mason. Now, I'm sure you've guessed by now when I mentioned at the top that this story included three serial killers.

13:31 Speaker 2: I'm sure you guessed that the first two were the Harp brothers MCAJA and Wiley Harp. We know how Macaja died, beheaded and hung up at Harp's head in Kentucky. Last we heard Wiley escaped the posse and went to hole up with the Mason Gang at Cave in the Rock. So before we hear the rest of Wiley's story and how it intersects with Samuel Mason, I think it's time that we give Mason a spotlight of his own. Samuel Mason was born in Norfolk, Virginia, to a distinguished family on November eighth seventeen thirty nine and raised in Charlestown, West Virginia.

14:05 Speaker 2: He married Rosanna Dorsey in about seventeen sixty seven, and the couple would eventually have eight children. In seventeen seventy three, he moved his family to Ohio County, West Virginia, and during the American Revolution, he became a captain of the Ohio County Militia of the Virginia State Forces. In January seventeen seventy seven, he was given command of Fort Henry on the Ohio Frontier in present day West Virginia. In the summer of seventeen seventy seven, while colonial soldiers to the east were fighting the War for Independence, Mason feared attacks by the Native American allies of the British.

14:38 Speaker 2: On August thirty first, seventeen seventy seven, he was proven correct when a band of Native Americans from several eastern tribes attacked the fort. Initially, they fired on several men who were outside the fort rounding up horses. When Mason heard the shots, he gathered fourteen militiamen and rode to their rescue. This, however, was exactly what the warriors had hoped for and quickly ambushed the rescue party, every last man except for Captain Samuel Mason. The captain, however, was severely wounded and escaped death by hiding behind a log.

15:07 Speaker 2: He was soon rescued and recovered from his wounds to command Fort Henry for two more years. In seventeen seventy nine, he moved to Washington County, Pennsylvania, where he bought a five hundred acre farm. In July of seventeen eighty one, he was elected Justice of the Peace and was named an associate judge just a few months later in seventeen eighty two. Mason appeared to be successful as he paid taxes on his five hundred acre farm two horses, four cows, six sheep, and four slaves. So what happened to cause American Revolutionary Fort Henry, captain, gentleman, farmer, justice of the peace and judge a series of descriptions that could not possibly be more upstanding law and order pillar of the community.

15:51 Speaker 2: What happened to cause Samuel Mason to become a notorious serial murdering river pirate? Where the heck did he hide all that gold treasure? And how exactly beyond occasionally harboring them at Cave in the Rock. Does his story intersect with those bloodthirsty pieces of human garbage? The harps never fear will be answering all those questions here today, starting with how did such a pillar of the community wind up becoming a river pirate? What the heck happened? The answer is debt. Debt happened.

16:28 Speaker 2: Mason was struggling financially, and he became deeply indebted. After having been repeatedly accused of being a thief, he made his way from Pennsylvania to Kentucky. In seventeen eighty four, his Pennsylvania farm was sold at a sheriff's sale to pay for part of his debt. The following year, in seventeen eighty nine, the Pennsylvania court sent a man to Kentucky to collect the remaining debt, but that man was unsuccessful. By the early seventeen nineties, Mason was set up at Red Banks, now known as Henderson, Kentucky.

17:03 Speaker 2: Later, he moved downriver to Diamond Island, where he began to engage in criminal activity. By seventeen ninety seven, he moved his headquarters further down to Cave in the Rock on the Illinois shore. By this time he had gathered several followers who openly based themselves at Cave in the Rock. Here, Mason and his men would warmly welcome riverboat travelers to rest and eat. However, while these visitors enjoyed their hospitality, Mason's men checked the visitor's supplies and goods for anything of value.

17:34 Speaker 2: If they found something, they'd wait until the next day, and when the visitors continued down the river, they'd rob them as they made their way around the bend. As I previously mentioned, while at Cave in the Rock, Mason and his men briefly harbored the notorious Harp brothers, who were perpetually on the run from the law. We've already discussed at length the various horrifying ways in which the Harps were two of them the most brutal outlaws of the time, and they distinguished themselves as America's first serial killers.

18:06 Speaker 2: While as for the Mason gang, although they could be ruthless, even they were appalled by the actions of the Harps, especially when the two psychotic cousin brothers began to make a habit of taking travelers to the top of the bluff above Cave Rock, stripping the travelers naked and throwing them off the bluff. This was the last straw for Mason, who asked the brothers to leave. In the summer of seventeen ninety nine, the Mason gang itself was forced to leave Cave in the Rock when they were attacked by a group called the Exterminators.

18:39 Speaker 2: Sounds like a Sylvester Stallone movie, which in some ways is not terribly far off. The Exterminators were a group of vigilante bounty hunters led by Captain Young of Mercer County, Kentucky. In response to repeated attacks by the Exterminators, Mason moved his operations downriver and settled his family in Spanish Louisiana. Mason and his men became highwaymen on the Natchez Trace Trail in Mississippi, robbing and killing unsuspecting travelers. You've likely deduced this by now, but the trio of serial killers in the title of this episode were the Harp Brothers and Mason himself, who, during his career as an outlaw, was credited with twenty or more murders, mostly of unsuspecting travelers that he and his gang robbed.

19:26 Speaker 2: Now I know there may be an impulse to refer to someone like that more as a bandit than a serial killer. However, Mason did have a consistent MOO, a consistent target profile, and essentially all the other requirements to refer to his repeated murders as serial killings. Even if he was ostensibly killing for personal enrichment, he was killing over and over the same type of person in the same manner, which made him America's third, I suppose, or second serial killer. If the Harps were a ma Arka's first serial killers one, two, three, that makes Mason number three.

20:04 Speaker 2: All right. So there he is with his gang on the Natchez Trail in Mississippi, robbing and killing unsuspecting travelers. When in April of eighteen oh two, Mississippi Governor William C. C claiborne was informed that Samuel Mason and Wileye Harp had attempted to board the boat of Colonel Joshua Baker between Yazoo and Walnut Hills now Vicksburg, Mississippi. The governor responded by ordering Colonel Daniel Burnett, with fifteen or twenty volunteers to track down Mason and his men a reward of two thousand dollars was offered for their capture.

20:38 Speaker 2: This was a heftier sum than it perhaps sounds like at first, as two thousand dollars in eighteen oh two is roughly equivalent to forty nine thousand dollars today. Although dozens of men searched for the Mason Gang, the outlaws continued with their evil deeds. Along the Natchez Trace. They struck a caravan of travelers with such horrific brutality that in response, another posse of residence and a few bounty hunters were raised to go after them. The posse quickly pursued, learning that Mason and his men were hiding less than a mile west of the trace near Rocky Springs, Mississippi.

21:14 Speaker 2: When they came upon the Mason Gang's camp, they found that it had been hastily abandoned. Though the outlaws trail was fresh, most of the posse chose not to follow, instead remaining at the camp searching for any hidden loot that the outlaws may have left. However, a few men did continue pursuit, but ultimately abandoned the search when they lost the gang's trail. Later Spanish officials were more successful in January eighteen o three, they arrested Mason, four of his sons, and several other men at the Little Prairie Settlement now Carruthersville in southeastern Missouri.

21:48 Speaker 2: Mason and his family members were taken to the colonial government in New Madrid, Missouri, where a three day hearing was held to determine whether Mason was a pirate. Although Mason claimed that he was simply a farmer who had been maligned by his enemies, the presence of seven thousand dollars in currency and twenty human scalps in his baggage see serial killer convinced the Spanish he was guilty. Mason, his family, and the other men then boarded a boat to New Orleans, where they would be handed over to the American governor in Mississippi Territories.

22:22 Speaker 2: So to clarify, they were captured in a part of Missouri that was Spanish territory at the time, and then they were to be transported via boat to Mississippi to be handed over to American authorities. Note. If it were up to me, I'm not sure I would put the nation's most notorious river pirate on a boat when I was transporting him. As a prisoner, but hey, it wasn't up to me. So they got on a boat in New Orleans and they were supposed to be handed over to the American governor in the Mississippi Territory.

22:55 Speaker 2: However, in one of the least surprising developments of this story, while being transported, Mason and Wiley Harp Wiley being Little Harp, who at this point had rejoined the Mason Gang and was a member of the gang using the alias John Sutton. While Mason and Wiley overpowered their guards and fled, and although Mason was shot in the leg, he made good his escape, his escape from the authorities. That is more on that in a moment. When Mason escaped, Governor William C. C. Claybourne immediately added an additional five hundred dollars reward for his recapture, making the total reward twenty five hundred dollars or close to sixty two thousand dollars today.

23:41 Speaker 2: This was an absolutely staggering amount of money, and it prompted Wiley Harp aka Little Harp aka John Sutton, current member of the Mason Gang, along with another man, to attempt to bring in Mason's head and claim the reward in September eighth three. So there you go. Good reasons not to harbor the Harps or be friends with the Harps. They're happy to kill you for the reward money. Many historians believe that Samuel Wolfman Mason was in fact yet another victim of Wiley Harp. So there you go. That's the connection.

24:18 Speaker 2: Besides hanging out and robbing together between the Harps and Mason. The Harps, well one of them. Wiley actually killed Samuel Mason, the runner up for America's earliest serial killers, but other historians assert that Mason actually died from the leg wound he received when he was shot escaping the authorities alongside Harp, and the question of how exactly Samuel Mason died has never been definitively settled. He was either murdered by Wiley Harp in an attempt to retrieve the reward money, or he died from an infected leg wound when escaping with Wiley Harp, So one way or another, in a certain sense, anyway, Wiley Harp had something to do with Mason's death.

25:02 Speaker 2: So anyhow, when Mason died, Wiley and the other man cut off his head and brought it into the authorities and tried to collect that whopping twenty five hundred dollars reward. However, cunning, cruelty and a pension for violence doesn't necessarily correlate directly with intelligence. And as you may have suspected, and as Wiley and his partner should have suspected, they were both recognized by the authorities. I mean, after all, Wiley was one of the most notorious killers of the time. He was recognized by the authorities, arrested, tried in federal court, found guilty of piracy, and hanged in Greenville, Mississippi in early eighteen oh four.

25:47 Speaker 2: There would be no bounty money for Wiley Harp. His only reward for killing and beheading and delivering the head of notorious River pirates Samuel Wolfman Mason was a quick and much deserved death at the end of a rope, and so the ultimate fate of American founding serial killer fathers mckaja Big Harp, Wiley Little Harp, and Samuel Wolfman Mason, Notorious River Pirate, had been decided. As you'll likely recall with a shiver, mckaja died when he was beheaded by Posse member Moses Steegel in seventeen ninety nine, Stiegel, who was avenging the murder of his infant son, killed by the Harps for the grievous sin of refusing to stop crying.

26:38 Speaker 2: This was an infant. As for Samuel Wolfman Mason, he was beheaded by Little Harp. He either died from the infected leg wound that resulted from the gunshot he received while escaping from the Spanish riverboat in eighteen oh three and was then beheaded by Wiley Little Harp because Harp wanted to collect the mass of reward, or he was killed by Harp and then beheaded. But whether he died from the infected gunshot wound or by Harp's hand, I tend to think it was the latter. Either way, he was definitely beheaded by Wiley Harp.

27:15 Speaker 2: And again that's the connection besides doing crimes together between Mason and the Harps, he was the serial killer victim of the serial killing Harps, a law dexter, and then of course Wiley Harp was hanged for river piracy in eighteen oh four. So although Mason was the river pirate and the Harps were just serial killing monster outlaws, it was Wiley Harp who was hanged for river piracy and Mason who was killed by the Harps, et cetera, et cetera. You get it. It's just all a little jumbled, not quite the outcome one might expect.

27:51 Speaker 2: Now we've covered the lives, crimes, and deaths of the serial killing trio, the Unholy Trinity, if you will, But we've got a couple more important things promised things to cover. One, what became of that Ohio River pirate treasure? Two? What about that witch that I teased you with in the show notes and at the beginning of the last episode. And then, in case you're curious, because I know I am, what about the Hart brothers three wives, Big Harps, two wives and Wiley's wife, the women that they outraged and forced to become their wives, or at least fill the role of their wives.

28:27 Speaker 2: What about their story? What became of them? Well, it's time to cover all of that, starting with the pirate treasure. Cave in the Rock, where the Mason gang had their headquarters, is on the northern bank of the Ohio River, right by the Illinois Kentucky border, a couple miles south of a place called Love's Corner. It is now a state park, in Hardin County, Illinois. Cave in the Rock had been used for thousands of years by Native Americans, but is known better in Anglo history for the many outlaws at Harvard.

29:00 Speaker 2: In addition to the Mason Gang and the Hart Brothers, other famous outlaws known to have hidden out at Cave in the Rock were highwaymen James Ford and Isaiah Potts, several counterfeitters, and the post Civil War bandit Logan Belt, as well as others. In this fifty five foot wide cave, which leads a short distance into the bluff, it's said that over one million dollars worth of stolen loot, gold, cash, and counterfeit bills changed hands between seventeen ninety and eighteen thirty alone. In eighteen hundred, the Mason Gang was rumored to have hidden a large stash of gold in Cave in the Rock, but Mason was killed before retrieving it.

29:40 Speaker 2: In addition to the gold allegedly hidden by Mason, more catches of gold and silver are said to be hidden along the cliff face. Now, if the hidden treasure itself isn't enough of a legend, Cave in the Rock is also said to be haunted, but that's another story. Let's stick with the pirate treasure here. The most persistent legend that it's hidden somewhere in cave in the rock. But there's another legend that says that Mason's cash is hidden near Rocky Springs, Mississippi, the area where Samuel Mason and Wiley Harp had their hideout well raiding the Natchez Trail in the early eighteen hundreds.

30:16 Speaker 2: After having made a large robbery on the trace, they returned to their campsite. This is Mason and Harp, and although they often carried their stolen loot on the backs of a couple mules, they knew at the time that they were being aggressively pursued by law enforcement, so this time they decided to bury their cash near the camp and retrieve it later. However, neither Samuel Mason nor Wiley Harp would be able to retrieve the treasure because, as you know, they would both be dead. Mason killed by Harp, Harp hanged for showing up with Mason's head and trying to collect the reward.

30:48 Speaker 2: According to this legend, there are said to be some seventy five thousand dollars in stolen gold and silver coins buried somewhere between the old church and the cemetery of Little Sand Creek. It would be hard to look for today, as the land is either privately owned or belongs to the National Park Service. There's another tale that Samuel Mason buried a very large chest, a chest that was some seven feet long. He buried it four miles northwest of Roxy, Mississippi, and the chest is supposed to be full of stolen valuables, including gold, coins and jewelry, which was allegedly buried near an artesian well on the Reaber Dove Farm.

31:26 Speaker 2: If the story's true, this catch has never been found yet. More tales say that mason Lute was hidden in Stack Island, Mississippi, also at the ghost town of Tillman, Mississippi in Claiborne County, and that there's as much as two hundred and fifty thousand dollars somewhere near one of the gang's favorite drinking spots, the Colbert Tavern and Inn on the Natchez Trace near Bissel, Mississippi. So if you want to go treasure hunting, you've got yourself multiple starting points. Just make sure you don't break any laws or get attacked by any angry landowners or other treasure hunters.

32:02 Speaker 2: While you're at it, I hate to fear for your safety. All right. Now, it's time to find out what happened to the Harp's wives and what, if anything, that has to do with both witches and ghosts. On the day Big Harp was killed in August seventeen ninety nine, the Harp's wives were left at the camp. The three women, each having one child, were taken to Henderson and placed in an empty blockhouse. On September fourth, all three were charged with being parties to the murders of Mary Steegel, her infant son James, and Captain William Love.

32:37 Speaker 2: They were bound for trial in Russellville, but were tried and released in October. Thank goodness, it seems so unfair to treat those women who had been essentially kidnapped and repeatedly raped as accomplices. Sally Rice Harp returned to Knoxville to be with her father. She later married a highly respected man and raised a large family. Susan Wood stayed in the Russellville area, where she lived a respectable life and died in Tennessee. As for Maria Davidson, by then going by the alias of Betsy Roberts.

33:08 Speaker 2: She married a man named John Huffstutler in September of eighteen oh three. By eighteen twenty eight, they'd moved to Hamilton County, Illinois, where they raised a large family and lived until they died in the eighteen sixties. The Harp's wives were not the only ones who changed their names following all the atrocities committed by the Harps. In fact, many of the Harp family members changed their names so as not to be connected to the heinous, violent murderers. So, I know that's not a lot of detail, but essentially, at least to some extent, the Harp's three wives seemed to have lived more or less happily ever after.

33:42 Speaker 2: So something small to be thankful for there. Now, what about the witches? What about the ghost what's going on with that? Right? Well, with the violence surrounding the vicious Harps, it's really no surprise that a ghostly legend is attached to them. In particular, the notorious mckajah Big Harp, who I'm sure you'll recall, was beheaded by Steegel, avenging his infant son and wife. So, in addition to terrorizing the States, of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Illinois. The Harps were often known, and we've talked about this too.

34:13 Speaker 2: Have traveled along the nach Just Trace trail through Mississippi, now between Tupelo and Houston, Mississippi. Yes, there's a Houston, Mississippi. There's a place called witch Dance. A witch dance has been steeped in mystery for centuries. It was not only the home of the mound builders of Mississippi, but it's also said to have been used by a coven of witches who would gather for nighttime ceremonies. Lore has it that wherever the witch's feet touched the ground during their dances, the grass would wither and die, never to grow again.

34:45 Speaker 2: At some point before his death, Mcaja Big Harp was traveling along the Natchez Trace with a Native American guide who showed him the bare spots on the ground and told him the legend of the witch dance. Big Harp only scoffed at this and began to leap from spot to spot, daring the witches to come out and fight him. Of course, nothing happened, at least not then. Eventually, Big Harp returned to Kentucky, where the posse tracked him down in August seventeen ninety nine. After he was decapitated and his head placed in a tree.

35:15 Speaker 2: The skull was said to have been removed by a witch, ground into powder and use his a potion to heal a relative. Words soon got around, and when travelers retold the story along the trace, they would swear they could hear cackling laughter from nearby bushes and trees. So the revenge of the witches for the disrespect of mckayjah Harp was to steal the head from his corpse and grind it into a potion. And to this day, if you walk through witch Dance on the Natchez Trail, you can hear the ghosts of those witches cackling, pleased to have exacted their revenge on Mackajah Harp.

35:58 Speaker 2: I for one, would like to personally thank those witches, and with any luck, they are still tormenting the souls of both Mackayja and Wiley. Side note. Macaja Harp's head was actually taken twice. First it was taken by Stiegel in vengeance, and then it was taken by witches who grounded up into a healing potion. I'm Zevan Odelberg and this has been kind of murdery.

36:31 Speaker 1: If you like the show, please subscribe, review and tell your friends. You can find us on social media at kinomurdery or email at kinomurdery at gmail dot com