A Little Less Mess: Blood Under the Crabapple Tree [New Jersey]

Cara (0:20)

Hey everyone, welcome to Bless This Mess and the True Crime Podcast. I'm Cara, just Cara. This is A Little Less Mess. These are our Monday mini episodes where I go solo and tell you a little story that's outside of the South. This is where we unpack strange, scandalous, and chilling mysteries from other corners of the country. Before we get started, here is a quick reminder of our weekly schedule. On Thursdays, me and Stuart are back together for our regular full-length Southern True Crime cases. And if you want early ad-free access to those main episodes, plus our Friday bonus show Sit N Sippin N Bullshittin, come join our Patreon family. You can also follow us on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube for True Crime and Dinner Time, Cozy Mystery Movie Club, and our weekly True Crime documentary recommendations. And as always, the best free way to help support the show is to rate, review, and subscribe wherever you are listening. So grab your mason jar, settle into your rocking chair, while I'll spin you a little tail. Today, we are turning back the clock more than a century to the autumn of 1922 in the state of New Jersey. Long before the OJ. Simpson trial or the Lindbergh kidnapping captivated the nation, there was a case that essentially invented the American tabloid media circus. It had everything you could possibly imagine in a jazz-age Gothic mystery. An aristocratic, episcopal rector, a passionate choir singer, secret love letters torn up and scattered like confetti, an eccentric pig farmer riding her mule through an abandoned orchard in the dead of the night, and an unsolved double murder that rocked high society to its core. This is the infamous Hall-Mills Murder Case.

Our story takes place in the twin communities of New Brunswick and Franklin Township, New Jersey. In 1922, New Brunswick was a respectable, buttoned-up community dominated by Rutgers College and the wealthy elite. Standing at the center of this social hierarchy was the Church of St. John the Evangelist. The rector of St. John's was 41-year-old Reverend Edward Wheeler Hall. Reverend Hall was handsome, soft-spoken, and by all appearances the model of pious devotion. Seven years earlier, he had married Frances Noelle Stevens. Frances was seven years older than Edward, plain in appearance and extraordinarily wealthy. She was an heiress to the Stevens family fortune, a dynasty of industrialists and inventors whose estate funded much of the church and community. But socially and romantically, the marriage was ice cold. They had no children, slept in separate bedrooms, and friends noted that Edward treated Frances more like a wealthy benefactor than a wife. And that is where 34-year-old Eleanor Mills enters the picture. Eleanor was married to James Mills, a quiet, unassuming man who worked as the sexton and janitor at Reverend Hall's church. Eleanor was completely different from Edward's aristocratic wife. She was vivacious, passionate, possessed a lovely soprano voice, and sang lead in the choir. Around 1918, the handsome preacher and his choir leader began a torrid, reckless love affair. In a small town like New Brunswick, a secret like that doesn't stay secret for very long. Soon, parishioners noticed the lingering glances during choir rehearsals. They noticed Reverend Hall making unusually frequent pastoral visits to the Mills' residence when James was away working. Rumors swirled in the pews, anonymous letters were whispered about, and Frances Hall began hearing the gossip from her high society peers. On Thursday evening, September 14, 1922, around 7:30 p.m., Reverend Hall received a phone call at his home.

He told his wife and his mother-in-law that he needed to step out for a short while to attend to church business. He walked out the front door wearing his tailored dark suit and overcoat. Eleanor Mills left her house around the same time.

Neither of them would ever be seen alive again.

Two days later, on Saturday morning, September 16, a young couple, 22-year-old Raymond Schneider and 15-year-old Pearl Balmer, were walking down Day-Roosey's Lane, an overgrown, rutted dirt road, on the abandoned Philips Farm just outside of town. The area was well known to locals as the secluded Lover's Lane. As they walked past an old gnarly crab apple tree, Pearl pointed down toward the grass, lying side by side beneath the branches were two figures. At first, the teenagers thought they were seeing a couple sleeping off a night of heavy drinking. But as they walked closer, Pearl screamed.

The scene beneath that crab apple tree was like something out of a twisted theatrical production. Reverend Edward Hall was lying flat on his back, his hands neatly folded across his lap, his legs straight. His eyeglasses were still perched on his nose, and his Panama hat had been gently placed over his face to conceal his fatal wounds. He had been shot once in the head with a 0.32 caliber bullet.