Louis Wagner (murderer)
Coordinates: 42°58′57″N 70°36′25″W / 42.98250°N 70.60694°W
Smuttynose Island (formerly "Smutty-nose") is one of the Isles of Shoals, located 6 miles (10 km) off the coast of New Hampshire, but actually in the state of Maine, in the United States. It is part of the town of Kittery, in York County. It was named by fishermen, seeing the island at sea level and noticing how the profuse seaweed at one end looked like the "smutty nose" of some vast sea animal.
The island is best known for two murders that occurred there. On 6 March 1873, two Norwegian women, Karen and Anethe Christensen, were strangled and one struck with a hatchet. A third woman, Maren Hontvet, escaped and hid on the island at a place now called "Maren's Rock". Maren, the only witness to the murders, identified a German-born fisherman, Louis Wagner, as the killer. Wagner was tried, convicted and, although he maintained his innocence, hanged. Despite an airtight case, so vehement was his denial that people long believed he was innocent. The story of the murders was told by Celia Thaxter in her account A Memorable Murder and by Anita Shreve in her novel The Weight of Water, later made into a film of the same name, starring Sean Penn and Elizabeth Hurley. The most recent book is Mystery on the Isles of Shoals: Closing the Case on the Smuttynose Ax Murders of 1873, by J. Dennis Robinson.
...
Wikipedia