Killed Strangely: The Death of Rebecca Cornell

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Killed Strangely is an engaging read that will entrance and inform readers who are at once murder mystery and history buffs. Cornelia Hughes Dayton Common-Place "It was Rebeccas son Thomas who first realized the victims identity. His eyes were drawn to the victims head and aided by the flickering light of a candle he clapt his hands and cryed out Oh Lord it is my mother. James Moills a servant of Cornell... described Rebecca lying on the floore with fire about Her from her Lower parts neare to the Armepits. He recognized her only by her shoes."from Killed Strangely On a winters evening in 1673 tragedy descended on the respectable Rhode Island household of Thomas Cornell. His 73-year-old mother Rebecca was found close to her bedrooms large fireplace dead and badly burned. The legal owner of the Cornells hundred acres along Narragansett Bay Rebecca shared her home with Thomas and his family a servant and a lodger. A coroners panel initially declared her death "an Unhappie Accident " but before summer arrived a dark web of eventsrumors of domestic abuse allusions to witchcraft even the testimony of Rebeccas ghost through her brotherresulted in Thomass trial for matricide. Such were the ambiguities of the case that others would be tried for the murder as well. Rebecca is a direct ancestor of Cornell Universitys founder Ezra Cornell. Elaine Forman Crane tells the compelling story of Rebeccas death and its aftermath vividly depicting the world in which she lived. That world included a legal system where jurors were expected to be familiar with the defendant and case before the trial even began. Rebeccas strange death was an event of cataclysmic proportions affecting not only her own community but neighboring towns as well. The documents from Thomass trial provide a rare glimpse into seventeenth-century life. Crane writes "Instead of the harmony and respect that sermon literature laws and a hierarchical/patriarchal society attempted to impose evidence illustrates filial insolence generational conflict disrespect toward the elderly power plays between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law and adult dependence on (and resentment of) aging parents who clung to purse strings." Yet even at a distance of more than three hundred years Rebecca Cornells story is poignantly familiar. Her complaints of domestic abuse Crane says went largely unheeded by friends and neighbors until at last their complacency was shattered by her terrible death.