TRAGEDY OF THE HERBERT FULLER
The death of Lester H. Monks, early in 1927, recalls one of the most mysterious crime cases in the history of the country. It was that of the murders committed on the barkentine Herbert Fuller, which in 1896 sent a chill of horror down the spine of everyone who read the details of these wicked murders.
Somewhere between the port of Halifax and Delaware Breakwater, on a starlit night in early June of that year, the captain and second mate and the captain’s wife were brutally murdered with an axe, in the cabin of the Fuller. This vessel was carrying a cargo of lumber to Cuba.
The arrival of the barkentine off the port of Halifax with the three bodies of the murdered victims in a canvas covered boat towed behind the Fuller, unfolded a tale of horror to shock humanity and unequalled in criminal history.
The ship was in charge of Monks, a young Harvard student who was taking this trip on the Fuller for his health, while the first mate, Thomas Bram, a colored man, and a seaman named Charles Brown, were in irons.
The Halifax authorities locked up Monks and the entire crew. Monks was the son of fine people, respected and well-to-do ship owners, and he was quickly given his liberty on parole, but the other members of the crew were held until an investigation could be made.
It appeared that upon the night of the murders only six persons were aft. On deck were Bram, the first mate, in charge of the ship, and Brown, the helmsman. The other four were below, only half a level lower than the after deck. They were Captain Charles I. Nash, asleep in the chart room; Augustus Blandburg, second mate, in his bunk in the room adjoining the chart room; Mrs. Nash, in her stateroom leading from the main cabin; and Monks, whose room was between the chart room and the captain’s cabin.
In the middle of the night, Monks testified that he was awakened by a woman’s scream, loud and piercing. Dressing as quick as possible, he seized his revolver from the table—and it was discovered later it was the only one on board—and rushed up the companionway stairs to the deck. In doing so he had to run through the chart room, and on the floor he saw the body of the captain. As he reached the deck he said he saw Bram at the head of the stairs holding in his hand a heavy piece of board which he threw at Monks. Bram said afterwards that seeing the passenger rushing up the stairs with a pistol, he became frightened and threw the board as a matter of protection.
The entire crew was then aroused and the cabin inspected. The second mate’s body was found on his bunk and Mrs. Nash’s body in bed in her cabin.
Monks’ escape was considered miraculous in view of the fact that he alone of the four persons below decks at the time escaped the slaughter. All of the rooms here practically opened into the main cabin.
In the panic which followed the finding of the bodies, Monks and the cook, Jonathan Spencer, took charge. Every man, particularly Bram and Brown, were watched. On the morning of the fourth day Spencer became suspicious of Bram and had him put in irons.
After being ironed, Bram declared that on the night of the murders, he had, through a window of the chart room, seen Brown murder the captain. Brown in turn accused Bram of the killing. There was considerable doubt whether Brown could have left the wheel, committed the murders and returned to the wheel without the course of the ship being very evident to the others of the crew.
For a few days after the murders the bodies were lying in the cabin where they fell. Then they were sewed up in canvas, placed in the ship’s jollyboat and towed astern.
About this time some member of the crew found the blood-stained axe, with which the murders were committed, hid away in the lumber of the vessel’s deckload, and it was thrown overboard, fearing that some person on board might get it and use it as a weapon for further killing.
Bram and Brown were accused of the murders. It developed that Brown’s real name was Leopold Westerburg, and that he once shot a man in Wurtenburg, in Germany, but had escaped by pleading insanity. Later the charge was dropped and he was accused of only having concealed the crime which another had committed.
Bram went to trial in Boston, October 29th, 1896. After a sensational and hard fought battle by some of the most prominent lawyers in the state, he was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged, but his counsel got a new trial on a writ of error. Meanwhile the United States had passed a law permitting a jury to return a verdict of murder in first degree, but with a recommend of life imprisonment instead, and though again Bram was found guilty, life imprisonment was given him and he was committed to Charlestown State Prison for life.
In November, 1906, Bram was removed to the Federal Prison at Atlanta. He always protested his innocence of the crime, and this coupled with good behavior, secured his pardon, August 27, 1913.
On receiving his pardon he asked the citizens of Atlanta for a chance to vindicate himself. He opened a restaurant there and became a highly respected citizen and business man.
Monks got his degree from Harvard in 1898, and he became a prominent figure in the business world.
Though this story was not closely connected with the coast of Cape Cod, the writer had seen the Herbert Fuller many times in her voyaging up and down the coast.
Later reports of Bram find that after he had sold his restaurant business in Atlanta he purchased a four masted schooner and engaged in the transportation of lumber on the coast and made many successful voyages.
