7/25/2005:
Mollie Korbel was shot to death at 7:30 p.m. on this date in 1888 – killed while washing dishes in the home of the Richland County’s Sheriff Miller.
County sheriffs lived pretty good lives back then, and the 260-pound Miller was no exception. He and his family were able to afford servants and other workers. Mollie had been working as one of their hired girls for two years. It’s believed she was a fairly recent transplant to the area.
The sheriff and his family were in Ransom County on the 25th; staying behind at the residence was Deputy Lee Elmer, a quiet man who had been working for the county for less than a year. Elmer had previously worked on the Helendale Stock Farm and also as a Cass County deputy.
Mollie served Elmer and a farm hand a noon meal, and then Mr. Elmer asked Miss Korbel to marry him, giving her “until one o’clock to make up her mind.” She was only about 19; he was approaching 40. It’s not clear whether she gave him an answer or not.
After supper, Mollie began washing the dishes, and the farm hand went out to milk cows. A short time later, he heard three gunshots, ran back to the house, and found Korbel lying dead with a bullet in her neck and two in her chest. Deputy Elmer admitted he’d killed her.
Mollie was laid out in the courthouse the next day. In a dramatically written story, the Dakota Globe described hundreds of men and women filing past her casket to pay their respects. According to the writer, the women cried, and the men got angry. “All day long,” the story read, “ and until the awful end, came the tramp, tramp of heavy feet resounding on the walls about the courthouse while the wretched murderer within paced up and down his cell like a wild beast in a cage...he frequently asked the other prisoners what was going on outside.”
Sheriff Miller was back in town, and Shelby Smith of the Lidgerwood Broadaxe interviewed his wife. Smith wrote, “Mrs. Miller scouts the plea of jealousy… saying Elmer had not been paying attention to the girl, and had no cause to be jealous. She says that Elmer is a very quick tempered man and it is possible that the deed was committed in a moment of anger, without premeditation.”
The Dakota Globe reported, “[Elmer] evinced no contrition for his horrid deed, but said he had one chance of escaping the gallows – the insanity dodge. When it became known outside that he had thus expressed himself, the people were furious, and the public mind, already inclined toward violence, was determined. No power but a regiment of soldiers could have prevented what followed.”
Accounts vary at this point, but between 75 and 100 masked men later arrived at the jail carrying sledgehammers and a battering ram. Sheriff Miller had deputized several men, but when the mob appeared, they were nowhere to be found. The sheriff later said the men in this mob were his friends, and they were worth more to him than the prisoner.
With his defenders out of commission, Elmer quickly fashioned a noose to hang himself, but the mob busted in before he could carry out his plan. Approximately 1,000 people, including Mollie’s parents, watched as Elmer was led to a railroad bridge spanning the Bois de Sioux River.
The coroner cut down the deputy’s body at 4 o’clock the next morning. Elmer was laid out in a viewing room at Rice’s Undertaking, and in a bizarre echo of the day before, hundreds of people filed past the casket to see Mollie Korbel’s murderer.
Sources: Dakota Globe. 2 Aug 1888.
Bismarck Daily Tribune. 28 July 1888.
Smith, Shelby. “Murder at Wahpteon: Special Telegram to the Broadaxe.” Lidgerwood Broadaxe. 26 July 1888.
Fargo Forum. 25 July 1888.
Sullivan, Jack and Wagner, Steven P. “Memorable crimes mark past century.” The Forum. 31 Oct 1999.
Dakota Datebook written by Merry Helm