In Greenbier County Cemetery, West Virginia, stands a 125-year old tombstone with a historical marker. It commemorates the death of one Elva Shue in January, 1897, with an unusual pronouncement, “only known case in which testimony from [a] ghost helped convict a murderer.”
The murderer so exposed by the ghost was a local blacksmith called Erasmus Edward Shue, whom the victim had unfortunately chosen to marry just three months prior to her death. She was his third wife, the second having died and the first one was divorced and would later disclose his violent and cruel streak. Elsa was likely unaware of his sadistic personality, and it was revealed much later that during one of his sojourns to the local jail, Erasmus boasted he would marry seven women in his lifetime.
Elva’s body was discovered on a cold January morning on the staircase of the Shues’ rural log house by the young son of a neighbour. Erasmus had gone to to market and had himself sent the young lad to find out whether Elva needed anything from there.
On the body’s discovery, Erasmus appeared shattered. So much so that by the time the local coroner Dr. Knapp arrived, he had already removed the body from the stairs and laid it on their bed, preparing her body for burial in a high-necked dress with a stiff collar and a veil over her face. He did not allow Knapp to examine her body in deference to the dignity of his dear departed wife. A perfunctory examination would be made and in good faith, Knapp would record the reason for death as “everlasting fainting”, to be elaborated subsequently to “complications due to pregnancy”.
She was buried at her birthplace in Little Sewel Mountain, Greenbier County. No one could fail to notice that Erasmus appeared very much in grief and overly protective of her body. He put an additional shroud of cloth around her face and neck and never left her side for a second. He constantly fiddled with her collar and neck, which was dismissed as bizarre, but acceptable behaviour of a loving, grief-stricken husband.
Elva in her life had been most attached to her mother. Mary Jane Heaster was not only suspicious, she was convinced her daughter has been murdered. After the coroner’s report however, there was nothing she could do. And then, something extraordinary happened.
Elva appeared in her dreams for four nights continuously. According to accounts later to appear in newspapers, the spirit came first as a bright light, filling the room with a chill and gradually taking a human form. Elva’s ghost told her mother that Erasmus cruelly abused her, and one night had attacked her in a rage when he thought she hadn’t made any meat for dinner. He had broken her neck. The ghost would then turn her head completely around and walk away, disappearing into the night while staring back at her mother.
After four nights of this, Heaster went to the local prosecutor, John Preston, and spent the afternoon at his office trying to convince him to reopen the case. It is not clear whether he believed her story about the ghost, but she was persistent enough to convince him to make additional inquiries. Erasmus’s neighbours and friends disclosed his strange behaviour at the funeral, and Knapp admitted that his examination of the body had been incomplete.
Preston felt justified in ordering a complete autopsy, and a few days later the body was exhumed despite Erasmus’s objections. Knapp and two other doctors laid the body out in the town’s one-room schoolhouse to give it a thorough examination. A local newspaper, The Pocahontas Times, later quoted their observations as, “on the throat were the marks of fingers indicating that she had been choken [sic]; that the neck was dislocated between the first and second vertebrae. The ligaments were torn and ruptured. The windpipe had been crushed at a point in front of the neck.”
The trial, while sensational, did not last long. Heaster’s invoking her daughter’s ghost was met with scepticism by the defence, but she established that guided by the ghost, she could describe the injury marks on her daughter’s body exactly as they were to be found subsequently, even before the autopsy had taken place. Despite persistent badgering during cross examination, she remained unwavering and steadfastly sincere.
Most people in the community believed her story, and the corroboration of facts plus cause of death brought forward by the autopsy tilted the scales further against Erasmus. He did himself no favours taking the stand in his own defence, rambling and appealing to the jury “to look into his face and then say if he was guilty.” The Greenbrier Independent reported that his “testimony, manner, and so forth, made an unfavourable impression on the spectators.” The jury deliberated for just seventy minutes before returning a guilty verdict.
Erasmus was sentenced to life in prison, but died soon after an epidemic tore through the prison in the spring of 1900. Heaster, however, survived till 1916, without ever recanting her story about Elva’s ghost. The fact her story swayed the prosecutor and then the jury and won the conviction is doubtless. But did her daughter really speak to her from beyond the grave? Maybe the ghost was a figment of her imagination? Or maybe just a strategic lie? But no matter who saw or believed what, without the ghost story, Heaster may have never gotten to Preston, and Erasmus may have never gotten to trial.
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