The love letters found by a crabapple tree — and the witness who said the bodies were moved

The crabapple tree stood in a place people called Lovers' Lane.

On September 16, 1922, the bodies were found beneath it, in a secluded lane near Phillipsburg, in the town of New Brunswick.

Reverend Edward Wheeler Hall had been shot in the head.

Mrs. Eleanor Reinhardt Mills had been shot in the face, and her throat was cut.

They were arranged in a posed manner.

Love letters between the two were scattered nearby.

The letters were the kind that confirmed what the town suspected: the Episcopal minister and his choir singer were having an affair.

The scene was a tableau.

Someone had placed the dead with care, or with cruelty, or with both.

Who arranges the dead like this?

Who shoots a man in the head, shoots a woman in the face, cuts her throat, and then leaves them posed for discovery?

The answer is not established.

Whether the scene was staged by the killer, or by someone who found the bodies and moved them, is not established.

The case became a national sensation because of the scandal of a clergyman's affair and the gruesome staging of the crime.

It is a story of a botched scene, a witness's claim, and a trial that decided nothing.

But the first thing anyone saw was the tree.

The letters.

The posed dead.

She was on the ground below, and the letters were on the ground with her.

THE BOTCHED SCENE

A local man found them first.

The police did not rope off the lane.

Onlookers walked through the scene before the first detective arrived.

The lead detective collected some evidence, but the ground had already been crossed.

What exactly the onlookers disturbed is not specified in the record.

The letters were still there.

The letters named the affair, and the affair named a motive, and the motive named no one in particular.

A .32-caliber revolver was the likely weapon, but it was never recovered.

That was not definitively established at trial.

The case stalled.

It stalled because the scene had been trampled.

It stalled because the first detective's notes were thin.

It stalled because a scandal this public needed a suspect fast, and no suspect fit.

Public pressure mounted.

A grand jury was convened.

The grand jury heard the letters read aloud.

The grand jury heard about the posed bodies.

The grand jury failed to indict anyone.

The file went quiet.

The crabapple tree kept its place in the lane.