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Hall-Mills murders

Also known as: Hall–Mills murder case, The Minister and the Choir Singer

Active
1922–1922
Region
New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA
State
NJ
Kind
Single
Status
Acquitted
Victims
2

The Rev. Edward Wheeler Hall, rector of St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church in New Brunswick, and Eleanor Reinhardt Mills, a singer in his choir with whom he was having an affair, were shot dead on the night of September 14, 1922; their bodies were found two days later on a lane near a farm just outside the city. A 1922 grand jury indicted no one. After newspaper coverage prompted Governor A. Harry Moore to reopen the case, Hall's widow, Frances Stevens Hall, and her brothers Henry and Willie Stevens were tried in Somerville in 1926 and acquitted, and charges against a cousin were dropped. All of them have since died, and the killings were never solved.

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Victims

We remember the people whose lives were taken.

Timeline of locations

  1. September 14, 1922
    St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church, New Brunswick (Workplace, approximate area)

    Hall was rector of the church, and Mills sang in its choir.

  2. September 16, 1922
    De Russey's Lane, Franklin Township (Crime scene, approximate area)

    The two bodies were found on the morning of September 16, 1922, in a field near a farm on a lovers' lane on the outskirts of New Brunswick, on the Somerset County side of the county line.

  3. November 3, 1926
    Somerset County Courthouse, Somerville (Court / trial)

    Frances Stevens Hall and her brothers Henry and Willie Stevens were tried here before Judges Charles W. Parker and Frank L. Cleary. After about five hours of deliberation, the jury acquitted all three.

Watch, listen, read

Read

  • The Minister and the Choir Singer (1964, William M. Kunstler)
  • Fatal Tryst: Who Killed the Minister and the Choir Singer? (1999, Gerald Tomlinson)

Sources

Each location also lists its own sources in the data file.