The Weird Case of the Hex House

Описание: The Weird Case of the Hex House // Welcome to Rothline on YouTube.

Images by Lawrence Roth with permission of the Harwelden Mansion https://harweldenmansion.com/

The weird case of the "Hex House" and the mesmerized slave girls took an even more bizarre turn Thursday as authorities hinted at the possible existence of an insurance policy racket and said they would reopen the case 10 years dormant of the peculiar death of the husband of the alleged religious hypnotist, Mrs. Fay H. Smith.

At the same time, two Tulsa World staff members unearthed the embalmed remains of a pet dog the two girls said they had buried. The steel casket and vault which they bought, but never paid for, for the interment of the dog was not in the grave, giving rise to new and significant speculations.

These developments Thursday gave a new twist to the already lurid circumstances which the two young Tulsa women exploded into the open earlier in the week:

County Atty Dixie Gilmer found that Mrs. Smith had taken out a $25,000 annuity on her husband only a short time before he was found dead, supposedly the victim of self-inflicted gun wounds in 1934. He was found shot through the heart on the north Sand Springs road, with a note which indicated suicide.
Mrs. Smith admitted in a statement to Gilmer that she has not been married since the death of Smith. Earlier she had been known as "Mrs. Richard B. Fontaine," and contended her husband was in service in the South Pacific. The girls said the "phony" name was selected from a phone directory.

Gilmer also learned that Mrs. Smith also had collected on an insurance policy she had taken out on Mrs. Beulah Walker, a nurse who was killed by a car in 1934 in what appeared as an accident. Mrs. Smith then said Mrs. Walker was her cousin, but Gilmer said this had since been disproved.
The county attorney also said that Mrs. Smith recently applied for a policy for her supposed nephew, Bobby Gene Folger, 12, who has been living with her; that she was the beneficiary of a $2,000 policy on Willetta Horner, 29, one of the victimized girls; on the other hand, he said, he had not yet learned of any policy having been taken out on Virginia Evans, 31, the second victim of Mrs. Smith's "spell."

The World staff members, suspecting that something besides a dog might have been buried in the baby's casket, located the grave in a flower bed in the yard of the mystery house 10 East 21st, and, with the consent of county authorities, opened it.

Four feet down they found the embalmed body of the dog, but the steel casket was lacking. The body was wrapped in a bedsheet and its coffin was a paper suit box.