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· 243 · 31 Who committed the outrage on Emma Bond? —Decatur Daily republican, January 3, 1884 Despite emma’s obscure deathbed recantation, her world was left to ponder what really happened on June 29, 1882—the day her life came crashing down. Today, the Bond case still raises the same questions that captivated the nation more than 125 years ago. Who did it? And why? or was there some truth, perchance , to the vague but persistent charge leveled against the victim in the aftermath of the crime—namely, that absolutely nothing happened to her in the schoolhouse and that she fabricated the whole story as a cover-up for whatever circumstances she was facing? it is essential to put this last idea to rest. First, to embrace that notion one must ignore an abundance of clues to the contrary. young Charlie heard noises in the loft and saw muddy footprints on the classroom wall, and there was no reason for him to invent any of it. Beyond that, many clues were found in the loft itself: the carved opening, the newspaper page, the piece of envelope, the tufts of hair, and the nail paring. emma’s belongings were found not only in the classroom but in the hard-to-reach attic. exactly how, without a ladder and a knife, would she have ascended into the loft to plant the physical evidence and carve the hole? There was also the perplexing note scrawled across the chalkboard , written in what looked nothing like her handwriting. Blood was noted in several places besides the attic platform: on the classroom floor, on the victim, and on her clothing. one might argue that a young woman desperate to save her reputation could have easily inflicted superficial knife wounds on her own neck and wrists. But that did not explain the extensive bruising on her knees, wrists, arms, shoulders, thighs, and back—all confirmed by Dr. Cornell under oath. it’s even harder to imagine how the victim could have given herself the kind of neck injuries that her doctor described in this way: “The neck was considerably 244 · nameless indignities swollen from the pressure, and the skin showed signs of the marks of the villains ’ hands. The windpipe had been nearly crushed.”1 And just what manner of agonizing contortions would the victim have had to put herself through to cause that severe spinal injury? or the fractured rib? or the internal injuries to her abdominal area? Cornell attested to all these things at the August hearing, and he later confirmed that her spleen was enlarged as a result of her injuries. if that wasn’t proof enough that a crime had been committed against emma, then there were the newspapers’ repeated veiled references to those “nameless indignities”—wounds so repugnant in nature that the Victorian press couldn’t bring itself to share the specifics. Without a doubt, breast mutilation or amputation would have fallen into that category. in the end, the omission of the goriest details mattered very little, for, when taken as a whole, Cornell’s testimony left no doubt about emma’s overall condition. Her body was badly abused, and she was subjected to unspeakable atrocities. Those are the fundamental facts, and there are simply too many of them to be explained away. Likewise, it would be preposterous to ignore them just to legitimize one of the alleged alternatives. so presuming that a crime was, indeed, committed and that the recent disclosures from the anonymous informant were true, then the more precise question ought to be: Who was this so-called boyfriend who stole not only emma’s innocence but her entire future? These newest revelations demand a closer examination of the obvious suspects: The montgomery brothers, Pettus, Clementi, Vermillion , and the soldier elliott Hobbs. And it would be remiss to ignore sonny Bond, given his oddly timed suicide. Finally, there was Adams, the missing fianc é. Who among these men had motive, and who did not? And where and how did they conduct the rest of their lives? Fortunately, almost every American who has lived in this country since the mid-1800s has left a paper trail. Government records and other historical documents are bursting with clues about the past. so it wasn’t surprising that these sources contained some startling and pertinent details about certain men suspected in this case. The last two men on the list of possible suspects were, of course, never charged with anything. it seems sonny only fell...
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