Love letters scattered in the lane — the 1922 murder that made the front pages for years

The note was still pinned to the crabapple tree when the bodies were found.

It read "Mrs. Mills."

Not a confession. Not an accusation. A name, written and left behind.

The bodies were discovered on the night of September 14, 1922, beneath a crabapple tree in a secluded lane called Lovers' Lane, in Phillipsburg, New Jersey, near New Brunswick.

Reverend Edward Wheeler Hall lay with his head resting on his coat.

Mrs. Eleanor Reinhardt Mills was nearby, her throat cut.

He was the married pastor of St. John's Episcopal Church in New Brunswick.

She was a choir singer in his congregation.

Both had been shot.

Love letters between them were scattered at the scene, as if someone had emptied a pocket or a satchel and walked away.

Who wrote the note and pinned it to the tree is not established by the record.

Who left the letters in the open is not established either.

The lane was a known meeting place, a quiet spot for couples, and on that night it held two bodies and a folded piece of paper.

A passerby found them.

The paper was still there, fixed to the bark, saying the one thing the scene already made plain.

She was Mrs. Mills.

The name did not explain the throat cut, or the gunshot wounds, or why a minister's coat was folded under his head like a pillow.

It did not say who fired, or who cut, or who walked out of the lane before dawn.

It only named her.

That would be enough to pull the case onto the front pages for years.

THE FRONT PAGES, 1922–1926

The papers had the story by morning, and they did not let it go.

Front pages carried the reverend and the choir singer for years.

Adultery, a bungled investigation, and two bodies under a crabapple tree: it was a story built for print.

The initial investigation was widely criticized as sloppy.

Police failed to secure the crime scene, and evidence was mishandled.

What exactly the police mishandled is not detailed in the record beyond the general criticism.

That lack of detail did not slow the headlines.

The case went cold until 1926, when a new prosecutor, Alexander Simpson, reopened it.

He based the reopening on the testimony of a woman who claimed she had been in the lane on the night of the murders.

She said she had seen Frances Hall, her brothers, and another man at the scene.

She said it from a hospital bed, dying of cancer, and she had sold her story to a newspaper first.

The mix was everything tabloid journalism of the Jazz Age wanted.

A minister. A choir singer. A widow. A witness on her deathbed.

Class tension ran under every paragraph.

Four years of headlines pressed on a cold case, and the public read each one.

How much of the story was made for print?

The record does not say.

The record shows the criticism, the cold case, and the reopening on one woman's word.

It shows the front pages, year after year, waiting for an answer that would not come for four years.

And then it shows a trial built on that word.

THE WITNESS IN THE HOSPITAL BED

The trial opened in November 1926 in Somerville, New Jersey.

It lasted nearly a month.