The Hall-Mills Murder Case: The Minister and the Choir Singer

...have very different meanings. William Kunstler was a hero to me; that's an awful thing for a conservative Republican Nixon supporter to say. I seldom agreed with the causes Kunstler fought for, but I sure respected the way he fought for them...the man had guts, and he had Style, with a capital S. A friend from Church had to try a case against him once...Dave was very glad all the facts were on his side. And at that, Kunstler got his client off with a very light sentence. I bought this book after reading about it in a Nero Wolfe novel ["A Right to Die"]....Wolfe may, or may not, have been real, but the books that Rex Stout had him read were.... On the morning of Saturday September 16, 1922, the Reverend Edward Wheeler Hall and Mrs. Eleanor Mills, the lead singer in his Church choir, were found dead in a field in northern New Jersey after being missing for about 36 hours; they had been shot, and their throats cut. Reverend Hall and Mrs. Mills had been having a rather public affair; Mrs. Mills' husband Jim was a pathetic dunce who probably couldn't see the signs, but Mrs. Hall was far from dull.....After an investigation, the incompetence of which would have made the OJ case look textbook perfect, the police and prosecuters of Middlesex County, where the victims lived, and Somerset County, where the bodies were found, got in a jurisdictional tug-of-war that assured that nothing would be solved..... Four years passed, and "something had to be done"....Mrs. Hall, her two brothers and her cousin were arrested on little or no evidence. After a circus trial, they were acquitted, and the case joined the ranks of the eternally unsolved. William Kunstler could not only try a case, he could write...this is an excellent, well written, account of stupidity and futility. There is even comic relief; the pathetic witness "Pig Woman" and Mrs. Hall's eccentric [dimwitted?] brother Willie Stevens provided some humorous moments. But, Kunstler is a good enough writer to let us smile at two pretty sad characters without poking fun at them. I could have easily given this fine book five stars, but Kunstler messes that up with a final chapter providing a "solution". The KKK did it? Please. No evidence, no names, just speculation about an orginization. A great lawyer should have known better, but he was young at the time. Reverend Hall and Mrs. Mills are dead; God rest their souls. I have no idea who killed them, or why, and Kunstler didn't either. Despite a dud of a last chapter, I can still heartily recommend this book.

Of the two books and numerous articles I have read on the Hall-Mills case, Kunstler's is the most excitingly written, even though it leaves one not wholly satisfied. Boswell and Thompson's trashily titled volume The Girl in Lover's Lane, (Gold Medal paperback original; Fawcett Books: Greenwich, CT: September 1953 [no title on spine]) seems fairer and is more tempered but is also less thoughtful and analytical. Kunstler's solution is dramatically wrong because he writes The Minister and the Choir Singer like a whodunit: the guilty must be among the dramatis personae. To bring in an outside third party, as Kunstler does (and as many Perry Mason mysteries do, by arranging for the Drake Detective Agency to find facts no reader could extrapolate), violates one's sense of literary fairness. Of course, life is not obliged to follow the laws of literary form.Curiously, in his earlier Oceana Publications book (New York: 1960) First Degree, Kunstler hints strongly at the guilt of Jim Mills. And Boswell and Thompson, on page 24 of The Girl in Lover's Lane, casually dismiss the answer for which Kunstler earnestly argues. They also hint that the vestryman Ralph Gorsline knew more than he told; unfortunately, Gorsline had died by the time they assembled their story. Barring an unlikely disclosure--e. g., a word from one of the Mills descendants, a diary by the murderer, or a contemporary report that contains fresh data, the Hall-Mills case will probably always be unsettling and unresolved, so it seems unlikely that any solution could be more convincing than Kunstler's, however disappointing it may be.

In chapter eight of THE RIGHT TO DIE by Rex Stout, Nero Wolfe is reading this book on his assistant's recommendation. To quote Archie Goodwin, "At dinner we discussed it and agreed that the New York Police Department and district attorney's office had never made such an awful mess of a case and never would." Whether or not you think that these world-famous fictional detectives thought too well of the NYPD and D.A.'s office, after reading this book you'll probably agree that the case was seriously bungled. For those of you who have never heard of it, on 14 September 1922, an Episcopal minister named Edward Wheeler Hall and one of his choir singers, Eleanor Reinhardt [Mrs. James F.] Mills, were murdered. His rich widow and her brothers, Willie and Henry Stevens, were tried for the crime. The chief witness against them was Mrs. Gibson, known as "the Pig Woman", who was poor. They were acquitted. Charlotte Mills, the older daughter of the choir singer is quoted as crying bitterly, "I am not surprised. Money can buy anything." Was this a case of money sparing the guilty from having to pay for their crime? Or was this something worse, three innocent people on trial for their lives while the killers stayed free? Think about it: you're married. Whether or not you love your spouse isn't the issue. Your spouse is cheating on you and doesn't even have the decency to be discreet about it. Your town has been gossiping about the affair for some time. Then your spouse and partner in adultery are found murdered. You didn't do it. You're trying to hang on to your dignity while you're being hounded by the media. The killer(s) aren't found. The case is finally dropped and you're trying to get on with your life. Then, almost exactly four years after the double murder, you and one of your bothers are arrested for the murder you didn't commit. Later, your other brother is arrested. You've been a respectable and law-abiding citizen, but now that's stripped away from you. You're in prison for months. You have to spend big bucks on legal counsel to save yourself and your bothers, whose only crime is being your brothers. Your good name, no matter that you were acquitted, will have mud clinging to it for the rest of your life because the true killers have never been found. Quite a nightmare, isn't it? Is that what happened to Mrs. Hall and the Stevens? Although more modern cases have proved the author's statements that the defendents were not the sort of characters who would commit such a crime is nonsense, Mr. Kunstler does make out a good case in their favor. I appreciated the historical references because they help to place the crime in context. This can be very important to understanding a historical case. I remember flubbing a big clue in an old fictional mystery because I forgot that the device in question wasn't capable then of what its successors can do today. The modern reader needs to keep in mind what could and cou

How lucky we are that this great book is in print. Filled with illicit sex, political self-seekers, hapless prosecutors, inept police investigations, it could be today's news. Two people were murdered & their bodies left in a field with secret love notes arranged around them. Innocent people were charged with the murders & tried in one of the most botched & unjust trials ever staged in New Jersey. Kunstler digs through the story as it was reported & as it was not. He shows the sinister connections involved. At the conclusion, he offers a credible & remarkable possible solution to these unsolved killings.Sometimes justice in America is like a western movie where the sheriff shouts, "Let's give em a fair trial & then hang em!" This is the kind of justice that was almost dished out in the Hall-Mills case. All his life, Kunstler devoted himself to insuring justice for even the most despicable characters. We are all presumed innocent. Bob Rixon, WFMU-FM

Growing up in New Brunswick, I had heard about the Hall-Mills mrdrs but, due the years that have passed since they occured, I have only heard vague recollections from older members of my family. After reading The Hall-Mills Mrdrs, the Minister and the Choir Singer, the story is certainly more clear. Despite the frequent and annoying need Kunstler has to make historical points of reference in order to somehow keep the reader aware of the fact that the events took place in the twenties, the story does flow. Kunstler uses snippets from court transcripts in an interesting way to provide an account of the proceedings. He is thorough in his description of the local streets/parks/buildings to the point of delight to a native, but I could see such pointed description boring the out-of-towner. The maps and photos in the book are helpful in gaining an overall understanding of the mrdrs.