Please support the sponsors of The Batavian

It looks like you've got a few new ones on there. Nice work Howard. Supporting our local businesses is important to me and I will definitely consider your sponsors first.

I just went to the Holland Land Office Museum today and bought the book about the Linden Murders and one about Lilydale. The book about the Linden Murders is almost sold out and this was the last printing so if you ever wanted to read that book, you'd better get one soon. They have a lot of other books about the history of WNY so I'm sure I'll be going back soon.

I also signed my daughter up for all of the summer programs which are a great deal. I believe they are all $4 -$5 a piece including transportation for the field trips.

Why on earth would you want to buy a book about the linden murders ? I can sum it up for you in one paragraph for free. I hope the book you bought was in the fiction section ! They should sell a book on the Dellinger ave murder a few years ago. Now there is a story.

You should write it Gabor! I would buy it.

I cant it might conflict with the the powers that be....Its a done deal.

Bill was associated with WBTA at one time; he was also the Public Relations Officer for Batavia Downs. You can find many of his articles in Horsemen Magazine along with fantastic photographs taken by V. J. (Brownie) LaRussa. His books are fun to read and bring back many, many memories.

I meant nothing against the author. I guess when there is something that happened many years ago and nothing is going on now it is important to keep interest about it. I hope that Perry NY (where it happened) gets some proceeds of every book sold. By the way does Bill Brown live in Genesee County? Did he ever ? Just wondering.

Why are you saying this happen in Perry? Mr. Brown's reputation as a talented writer, local business man, and benefactor to Batavia is well known. I'd be interested in how you feel that is book is fiction. Do you know the real story?
As an aside, Tim Russert, came to Batavia to address a graduating class at Notre Dame because of his friendship with Mr. Brown and his family, http://www.ndhsbatavia.com/NDNOWSummer2005.pdf
It sounds as if you are not familiar with the family, or the man. I'm curious why you would judge his literary offerings as fiction.

The Linden Murders - Unsolved!
William F. Brown Jr. published the book from which the following excerpts have been taken. This introduction presents the story of five brutal slayings in a rural area of Genesee County (NY) in a span of seven years and two months. This carnage, which snuffed out the lives of four women and one man, ocurred in a remote region of Genesee County where neighbors always know what neighbors are doing and no stranger goes unnoticed. The comings and goings of every deliveryman, every salesman, are charted and unconsciously recorded by men and women in fields, barns, kitchens and front porches.

Yet no one was ever arrested for any of these five murders. No motive was found. No connection among the killings was uncovered. No clues that could even suggest the identity of the slayer or slayers were ever found.

These five murders were, to the dismay and frustration of policemen, two sheriffs and two district attorneys, the perfect crimes.

Today, the hamlet of Linden is a cluster of thirty-six homes tucked among tree-covered hills in south-central Genesee County. Linden is nine miles south of Batavia and eight miles east of Attica. It is near no major highways. It has no churches, no schools, no gas stations, no Post Office. The rock-strewn Little Tonawanda Creek wanders sluggishly north through the valley that separates the two areas of Linden. A single railroad track bisects the community.

Seventy years ago the name Linden evoked the instant recognition that the name Attica has stirred since September, 1971. Seventy years ago Linden was the center of attention, unwelcome and unwanted attention. Linden then had about 100 residents. Within 17 months four of them met violent deaths. The crimes were never solved. No motive was unearthed. No suspect was arrested. No trial was ever held.

The Linden murders began October 16, 1922 when a frail 73-year-old spinster, Miss Franc Kimball, was killed in her home. Her head was beaten to a pulp and her body stuffed under a fruit cellar shelf. The crime was never solved.

Seventeen months later, March 11, 1924, three more residents were brutally slain, again in the early evening hours. Mrs. Mabel Morse went to a neighbor's for milk. The Whaley family lived only fifty yards from the Morse store and when Mrs. Morse failed to return, some men gathered at the store to listen to a radio program went looking for her.

They went to the Whaley residence and saw smoke seeping from the lighted small frame house. The doors were locked but someone broke a window and the men entered. They put out the smoldering fire in a first floor bedroom and, as the smoke cleared, saw three bodies in a pile covered with kerosene-soaked rag rugs and paper.

Thomas Whaley, a section hand on the Erie Railroad that ran behind his home, had been shot in the neck. His wife had a single gunshot wound in her head. Mrs. Morse had been clubbed to death with an adz handle found nearby. All three bodies were burned but recognizable.

An intense investigation followed. Several tramps, a common sight along the railroad in Linden, were questioned. Linden was overrun by police ( the Genesee County Sheriff's Department and the fairly-new New York State Police shared the investigation), reporters from throughout Western New York and sightseers who clogged the narrow snow-rutted roads.

Gradually, the frenzy abated. the newspaper headlines grew smaller. Soon it was the "first anniversary of the Linden triple murders." No connection, if there were any, could be deduced between the Kimball murder of 1922 and the triple slayings of 1924.

Gruesome and perplexing as they were, the Linden murders soon faded from the public's memory. In the Daily News edition of March 11, 1925, one year after the triple slayings, a four paragraph story on the front page said: "No clues were ever found that led to the arrest of the slayer." The final sentence read: "Genesee County authorities and clever detectives carried on during the next several weeks (after the murders) the most thorough murder investigations that could possibly be made, but the Linden slayer still goes unapprehended."

The most common belief was that a local resident went to rob the Whaleys and, in fear and panic, shot them. Mabel Morse happened by and was clubbed to death to remove the only witness to the crime. The intruder then tried to destroy by fire the evidence of his horrible crime. If the killer was a man (no woman suspects were ever mentioned) in his early 20's, he probably has been dead for decades. The average life expectancy of a man born in the early part of this century was 47 years.

I definately stand corrected on this one. I probably am the one whom recieved the fictional version of these murders mainly from word of mouth from people that lived in Perry, and didnt live too far from the actual spot it happened (supposed). I do appreciate these posts because it does explain what I can believe to be the truth, not all the folklore I had heard from various people.

no problem, David. It is just that Mr Brown's reputation as someone who has chronicled the history of our area for a long time was in question.

Several years ago, I lived next door to Mr. Brown and his wife, in Batavia. Very nice man. I also worked at Hodgins Printing here in Batavia when they printed the very first copies of the "Linden Murders". So there's yet another example of local business patronage.

About 12 years ago, a friend had the book The Linden Murders. He took me for a ride to Linden, and we went by the house, next to the railroad tracks, where the people were butchered. It was pretty scary, and the smalll house, on the small hill, was old and rundown. I thought how the murderer was probably on a train that passed through the small town. We also went to the cemetery where some of the victims are burried. "The forever unsolved brutal murders of our area". Spooky!!!!