Weird Island

64. MURDER: Amasa Sprague and the Trial of John Gordon

Episode Summary

On December 31, 1843, Amasa Sprague was found murdered near his home in Cranston, RI. An Irish immigrant named John Gordon was tried and convicted of the crime, but even at the time, many believed he may have been innocent.

Episode Notes

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Episode Transcription

Before I start, today’s episode is about a murder. Please take care while listening.
It was just before sundown on December 31, 1843. New Year’s Eve. And Michael Costello was making his way home from work. He was employed as a servant in the home of a prominent local mill-owner, a man named Amasa Sprague, and each day Costello would walk the mile to and from work along a private path that lead through fields and over a bridge and connected the town of Johnston, where he lived, to the town of Cranston, where he worked at the Sprague mansion.
That evening, a layer of snow blanketed the ground, and Costello walked cautiously with his eyes cast down, paying attention to where he stepped. As he got to a particularly slippery footbridge, he clutched his tin pail in one hand and grabbed the railing with the other, when suddenly something bright red caught his eye. A few feet in front of him, the snow was stained with what appeared to be blood.
His head snapped up, and he saw there was a man lying face down in the snow just ahead, on the other side of the bridge. Now more aware of his surroundings, he looked around and realized footprints and blood were everywhere, as if there had been some sort of fight. The man wasn’t moving or breathing and he was so badly beaten, Costello couldn’t even recognize who it was. But he was fairly certain that, whoever he was, he was dead.
Knowing he shouldn’t disturb a crime scene, he rushed on to find help at the nearest home.
It wasn’t until the coroner arrived that the victim was identified as none other than Amasa Sprague, Michael Costello’s employer and the owner of the A&W Sprague Manufacturing Company. This was a very important local man, and it quickly became clear this was no accident or random robbery gone wrong. The killer hadn’t even taken the $60 Sprague carried in his pocket. No, this attack had been personal, and it wasn’t long before suspicion fell on some local men who might have had a motive.
I’m Sara, and you’re listening to Weird Island. Each week, I’ll be telling you about the strangest stories I can dig up from my tiny, little state of Rhode Island. And this week, I’ll be telling you about the murder of Amasa Sprague and the conviction of John Gordon, the last person executed in the state of Rhode Island and a man that many people, today, believe may have been innocent.
Amasa Sprague was from a wealthy and powerful Rhode Island family. His father was one of the earliest manufacturers of cotton cloth in the state, and Amasa and his brother William joined in the family business when they were young. After their father passed away, the two formed the Amasa and William Sprague manufacturing firm that produced and printed cloth that was sold around the country. The family ran a thriving business, and they also had financial and political power. They controlled a number of banks, and both brothers dabbled in politics. In 1843, the year of Amasa’s death, William was serving as a US Senator while Amasa ran the family business, operating as superintendent of the Sprague Print Works in Cranston, where he also supervised a mill village with a population of 500 or more men, women and children who were all dependent on the Spragues for employment, housing and provisions. So, you can imagine, this was a powerful and important man, and his death sent waves through the community.
The Cranston Town Council met in a special emergency session to discuss the political and social implications of Sprague’s death, and immediately, an investigation began to take place.
The day of the murder was Sunday, December 31st. It was New Years Eve, but it was also Sprague’s wife’s birthday, so the family had enjoyed a nice meal together. Then, early in the afternoon, he’d left his mansion in Cranston to go check on his cattle, which he kept on a farm just about a mile and a half away in Johnston. He walked along that private path through the fields where Michael Costello walked. And the path passed a couple of homes. Around 3 or 3:30, someone spotted him walking by. This would be the last person to see him alive, though they didn’t know it at the time.
It was probably around 4:30 or so when Michael Costello stumbled upon the brutal crime scene, so there wasn’t a huge window in which the murder could have taken place. The coroner called to the scene reported that Sprague had been shot just once, through the wrist, before fighting back. The trampled snow and footprints suggested it was a good fight, but his attacker or attackers had overpowered him, beating him with some sort of dull instrument, perhaps the breech of a gun. He suffered three fractures to the skull, a broken jaw, and a shattered collarbone.
As the coroner assessed the body, another man discovered a pistol in the snow. It appeared as though someone had attempted to fire it and had failed, so they threw it aside underneath the bridge. There was a wad of paper jammed inside, and someone pulled it out, unraveled it and smoothed it enough to read that it was a piece of an Irish Catholic newspaper.
This would have immediately raised flags, because while, today, Rhode Island is both one of the most Irish and one of the most Catholic states in the country, at the time, that wasn’t true. The established elites in Rhode Island were largely Protestants who viewed the newly arrived Irish Catholic immigrants with hatred and mistrust. And that hatred had reached a boiling point.
This was just a couple of years before the Great Potato Famine, but Irish immigration had already begun to accelerate. Between 1815 and 1845, it’s estimated a million Irish immigrants came to North America, with 5 thousand or so settling in Rhode Island. For centuries, British laws in their homeland had deprived Ireland’s Catholics of their rights to worship, vote, speak their own language, or own their own land, horses or guns. Many sought brighter futures in America. But, they faced much of the same discrimination here as they did in Ireland.
Prospects were limited, and many were forced to fill some of the most menial and dangerous jobs, often at low pay. They cut canals, laid rail lines, cleaned houses, and worked in textile mills, like the one owned by Amasa Sprague. The established, Protestant elites feared the new immigrants. They feared Catholicism and the pope, and they feared losing power. And the Irish workers encountered social, economic and religious barriers to their success. In Rhode Island, the Irish held very little power.
A big piece of that was because Rhode Island law was still based on a royal charter issued in 1663 that required voters own land. By the 1830s, Rhode Island was the only state that continued to impose this requirement, and the result was that over 60% of the state’s free white men, many of whom were Irish, could not vote.
In an effort to force change, a man named Thomas Dorr and his followers organized a rebellion that forced the issues of suffrage and broader democracy. They called an unauthorized constitutional convention that established a parallel government alongside the chartered government, and wrote a new constitution for the state.
This rebellion is sometimes referred to as RI’s very own, very small civil war, though no battles were ever fought. The rebellion ultimately failed, and Thomas Dorr was arrested on charges of treason just two months before the murder of Amasa Sprague. But the events of Dorr’s Rebellion convinced the established elites of the strength of the suffragists and made them fear the Irish all the more.
So, this piece of an Irish newspaper pulled out of the pistol immediately cast suspicion on the Irish community, and within hours, the investigators had their prime suspect. That path Amasa Sprague had traveled passed in sight of the home of a man named Nicholas Gordon, and many believed Gordon might have had a pretty good reason to want Sprague dead.
Nicholas Gordon was an Irish immigrant who had arrived in Rhode Island sometime in the 1830s. He settled in Cranston, and opened up a store close to Sprague’s print works. The majority of Sprague’s workers were Irish, and Gordon sold everyday goods to the community, things like groceries, candy, thread, needles, pins and tape. After a few years, he was able to secure a liquor license, which allowed him to sell alcohol by the bottle. This accelerated his success, and by 1841 he was making enough money to buy a parcel of land and build a new store with an upstairs apartment. Less than a year later, he was granted a license to keep an ale house at his store, which would be even more lucrative than selling alcohol by the bottle.
Finally, Nicholas Gordon was successful enough that he could finance the immigration of the rest of his family to Rhode Island. In June of 1843, his mother, sister, niece, and three brothers arrived in Cranston–and his family was together for the first time in years.
But the celebration was dampened a bit, when in that same month, a representative of Amasa Sprague showed up at a town council meeting to formally oppose the renewal of Nicholas Gordon’s liquor license. Sprague blamed Gordon for his employees showing up to work intoxicated. And he wanted to get him shut down.
A month later, he did exactly that. At the insistence of Amasa Sprague, the town council voted to deny the renewal of Gordon’s license. And a few people recalled that Gordon had threatened to get his revenge against Sprague.
So, when Sprague showed up dead just five months later, many believed Nicholas Gordon was the one who orchestrated it. Just one day after the murder, the High Sheriff arrested Nicholas Gordon on suspicion, alone. They also arrest his brother John that same day, and his other brother, William, the following day–suspecting Nicholas had planned the murder and his two brothers had committed it. Two separate trials would be scheduled. First, brothers John and William would be tried for having committed the murder. Later, Nicholas would be tried as accessory before the fact.
In the days following the arrests, newspapers reported on the crime as though the Gordons were already proven guilty, and they stirred up anti-Irish sentiment. The Providence Journal published a story with the headline, “The guilty persons, the Gordons, have been arrested for the murder of Amasa Sprague.” Some papers even reported that Gordon’s ferocious dog had been arrested, and that dog prints at the scene and some of Sprague’s wounds suggested its involvement in the attack. Though Gordon’s dog would later be described as toothless and old. By the time the trial of brothers John and William came about in April of 1844, there was a lot of interest in this case. So much interest, that the trial transcripts were actually published to read.
The focus of the trial centered on John Gordon. That day, Nicholas Gordon was proven to be in Providence, attending mass in the morning and a Christening in the afternoon–which is why he was charged as accessory before the fact. And William was also able to prove he was elsewhere at the time of the murder. But John wasn’t able to prove where he was at the time.
William H. Potter, prosecutor for the state, opened the trial by, first, articulating a motive. “They were moved by a hate long harbored,” he said, “by a spirit of revenge which never forgot its object, and which the life of its victim, alone, could not satisfy.” He then went on to summarize the evidence the state had against the Gordons.
First, there were the footprints in the snow. The day after the crime, several men had returned to the scene to assess it with fresh eyes. They discovered tracks in the snow leading away from the scene, and began to follow them. The tracks appeared long, as though the person was moving quickly, maybe even running. That day, they actually lost track of the footprints in a swampy area. But the following day, they returned and were able to pick the trail back up where they had lost it, and they tracked the footprints to within five or six feet of Nicholas Gordon’s home. A search of Gordon’s home would turn up a pair of boots said to be John’s, which were matched to the footprints. Suggesting John was the one who made the trail.
Then there was a coat. On that second day of searching, when the men picked up the trail again, they had discovered an abandoned coat in the brush. The coat appeared to have blood on it, and in the pocket there was a box of gunpowder and another piece of an Irish newspaper. The prosecutor argued the coat belonged to Nicholas Gordon, but was worn by John on the day of the crime. And the state furnished a witness, a young woman named Susan Field, who claimed to remember John wearing the coat.
And then, after finding the coat, some had discovered a broken gun that had been tossed into the bushes. Pieces of a broken gun had been found at the crime scene, and they seemed to match this weapon. This was a huge part of the trial.
In the courtroom, the gun was presented as evidence, and a witness testified he had seen Nicholas Gordon with a gun “very much like” the one shown. The prosecution also brought in the clerk of a local auctioneer who had found a record of the sale of a gun to Nicholas Gordon just two months before the murder. Nicholas even admitted to keeping a gun in his store. But when the store and home were searched, no gun could be found. Nicholas denied this gun was his, and a friend testified for the defense, claiming he was present when Nicholas bought the gun and that this wasn’t it. But it was pretty damning that the gun belonging to Nicholas was nowhere to be found.
The Irish communities in Providence and Cranston had rallied to support the Gordons, and had raised money for a top tier defense attorney. And the attorney did a pretty good job of poking holes in the state’s case. The defense cast doubt on the validity of tracing footprints, as several witnesses testified the snow was so beaten up one couldn’t reliably trace tracks. While there were other tracks at the scene, only those leading to the Gordon’s home had been tracked. Then there was the coat, which John tried on during the trial. And it was so large on him he was swimming in it. Also, the prosecution’s witness, Susan Field, who claimed to have seen John in the coat and who argued she knew the brothers well, she couldn’t even correctly identify the brothers in the courtroom. She pointed to William and claimed it was John.
And when it came to the gun, the evidence was purely circumstantial. Even if the gun did belong to Nicholas, there was no proof John had it.
In the defense attorney’s closing arguments, he drew attention to the bias during the trial and pointed out that a preconceived conclusion had driven the whole investigation. And, by the way, that investigation had been led by untrained, unskilled volunteers. Just ordinary people, mostly Sprague’s neighbors, who decided to help look for evidence.
When it came to the prosecution’s closing arguments, William Potter acknowledged that the case was wholly circumstantial, but argued that the “links in the chain” were all so close and so strongly connected, that he had never seen a case so conclusive.
Finally, the Judge closed out the trial by providing instructions to the jury, and he used it as a chance to foster anti-Irish hatred. He suggested some witnesses should be believed over others, implying the Irish witnesses were less credible than native-born Rhode Islanders.
The jury deliberated for only an hour and 45 minutes before reaching a verdict. William was acquitted. But John was found guilty and sentenced to death. His execution would take place nearly a year later, on Valentine’s Day 1845. It was a demoralizing loss for the Irish community, who felt an innocent man had been unfairly convicted.
As the judge declared William could be discharged, John turned to look at his brother and he said something that only the two of them understood.
“It is you, William, who have hung me.”
Here’s what John and William knew that no one else did. When the trial started, William had admitted to John that he had hidden Nicholas’ gun. When John and Nicholas had been arrested the Monday following the murder, it immediately occurred to William that the house would be searched for weapons. In Ireland, simply owning a firearm was enough to ensure a conviction, so William hid Nicholas’ gun under the floorboards in the attic of the house, not knowing that it would actually be the lack of a gun in the house that would lead to his brother’s conviction.
William would come forward two weeks before John’s execution to formally admit to what he’d done. But it wouldn’t be enough.
On February 14th, 1845 John Gordon was executed. He forgave William before his death, and on the day of his execution, he expressed even greater forgiveness. Priest Father Brady’s final words to the condemned man were these. “Have courage, John; you are going to appear before a just and merciful Judge. You are going to join myriads of your countrymen, who, like you, were sacrificed at the shrine of bigotry and prejudice. Forgive your enemies.”
And John replied, “I do. I forgive all my enemies, and persecutors. I forgive them for they know not what they do.”
Nicholas Gordon was tried twice, but never convicted of having planned the murder. And John Gordon’s execution was denounced as the murder of an innocent man.
But his death, and the spirit of intolerance that surrounded it, had a permanent impact on the state of Rhode Island. John Gordon was the last person executed in the state. Public sentiment about the death penalty had already been shifting before this trial, and just 7 years later, Rhode Island became the 2nd state to abolish capital punishment. And in 2011, Governor Lincoln Chafee famously pardoned John Gordon and most people today believe John Gordon wasn’t the one who committed the murder.
So, who did? Who actually killed Amasa Sprague?
No one really knows, because there was never really an appropriate investigation into anyone else. There are theories, but nothing can really be proven.
Some think it was actually a man known as Big Peter Dolan, who worked for Sprague in the mills, and had been fired only days before for destroying a loom that had torn his nephew’s fingers off. Some say he disappeared the day after the murder, never to be seen again.
Others suspected there may have been a political motivation to the murder. Amasa Sprague had opposed the Dorr Rebellion, and may have even orchestrated Dorr’s downfall and arrest. Could it have been one of Dorr’s followers that did it?
Or was it perhaps Amasa Sprague’s own brother, William, who disagreed with the way Amasa was running the family business? William wanted to expand, while Amasa was worried an expansion would fail if the economy faltered. In the days following Amasa’s death, William Sprague did resign from his seat in the senate. And he did invest in the expansion of the company.
All of these are reasonable suspects, but the truth is that we’ll never really know.
Thank you so much for listening! And thank you to Kyle and Domenic for suggesting this week’s episode! As always, all episodes are written and researched by me, Sara Corben. If you liked this episode, I would love it if you could share it with your family or friends, or you can send me a note at Weird Rhode Island at Gmail.com or on IG at Weird Island Podcast. And if there’s a topic you’d really like to hear about, let me know! See you next time as we dig up more stories about all things weird and wonderful in the little state of Rhode Island.