Noah Benson and the Kurtz and Biggs Families: Delaware & Montana

In 1891 Noah Benson, a Black farmhand and a father, was murdered, and his body was pulled from the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal. His head was never found. In 1889 in Montana Territory, five settlers were murdered and left in the Judith River, and James Wilber, the guide the record names as their killer, died in jail before any trial.

Noah Benson worked the land around Delaware City. He had a son named William, and an employer called him an exemplary man. He was last seen alive on Thanksgiving night, November 26, 1891, and a lock tender towed his body ashore in December. He was identified by an old bullet the doctor found lodged in his left hand, between the third and little fingers. Doctor William Jacobs told the coroner's jury there was no water in the lungs: Benson was dead before he went into the canal. In June 1892 a jury convicted three men of second-degree murder and acquitted a fourth defendant.

Joseph and Sarah Kurtz, farmers from Iowa, their friends Edward and Lucina Biggs, and Ida Schaus, the six-year-old the Kurtzes had adopted that January, left Helena for the gold town of Maiden with Wilber as their guide. They were killed at their camp near Lewistown on the night of June 7, 1889, and their bodies were dumped at Samples Crossing. A cowboy from the Moccasin roundup reported the first body on June 15. Sheriff Clary traced the traded horses to a ranch near Stanford, followed the trail to Great Falls and, with a Cascade County deputy, took Wilber into custody. Wilber died by suicide in jail on June 21. Within three weeks of his burial at Highland Cemetery in Great Falls, the grave was found disturbed and the coffin empty. Montana became a state that November.

Content note: the murder of a six-year-old girl, a death by suicide in a jail cell, and a body that came out of the water without its head.

Foul Play, Season 40: America's 250th Anniversary. Fifty states, fifty crimes. This is Episode 17.

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