Evansville ghost story ended with a wrongfully accused man getting released from prison

EVANSVILLE – The figure staggered into the bean field and reenacted its own death.

It mimicked the stabbing and how it fell to the ground – even the noises it made when the knife entered its throat and cut off its breath.

Its loud moans filled the neighborhood near Lodge and Taylor avenues, causing dogs to hide under beds and residents to grab their shotguns – just in case this wasn’t a ghost, and it was something they could sink a bullet into if need be.

“We thought perhaps someone had broken into our house and was choking one of the children,” Mrs. J.B. Howard said. “We ran into the bedroom, but they were asleep.”

Soon, the noises and visions attracted people from all over Evansville. Even the cops came. They wanted to see this ghost – because they knew exactly who it was.

Ruby Mauzy

Ruby Mauzy was ready to move on. The 20-year-old had been trying to divorce her husband, Emmett, but on Sept. 8, 1924, a Vanderburgh County judge dismissed the case.

It really didn’t matter. The couple had already separated, with Emmett was staying in Newburgh and Mauzy looking for work in Evansville. She’d found a place to stay in a boarding house, and even had a couple new men vying for her affection.

One, nicknamed “Black Tom” Evans for his dark complexion, she liked quite a bit. He’d even given her a watch.

The other, Aubrey Quinn, she wasn't too crazy about. On Sept. 10, two days after some man in a robe dictated her love life, Quinn asked her to move in with him on his houseboat on the river. She told him no. She had other things she wanted to do.

One night later, all that came to an end.

Residents in the Fairview neighborhood were settling in for the evening when they saw a woman lurch into their yards. It was Ruby. Her throat had been cut, and breadcrumbs of blood followed her as she managed to make it about 75 yards before collapsing in the bean patch.

A bloody knife was found nearby. And moments before Ruby appeared, witnesses claimed they’d seen a man in a red sweater fleeing the area.

Dr. H.M. Garrison, who happened to live close, rushed Mauzy to St. Mary’s Hospital, where she scrawled her name on a piece of paper. What she didn’t write down, though, was the identity of the man who cut her. Due to her injury she could no longer speak it either, and she died in her hospital bed, another victim of another mysterious crime.

Of course that’s not the story other people told.

In the days after the killing, the newspapers turned Ruby’s death into a scene from a bad movie, filling it with laughable sensationalism.

“At the hospital a little group gathered around the operating table. The girl looked into their faces, realizing the end was near,” the Evansville Courier wrote on Sept. 12. “She was unable to speak and a thoughtful nurse hurriedly (grabbed) a pad and pencil and asked her to write her name and address and the name of her murderer.

“Friendly hands steadied her as she scrawled: My name is Ruby Mauzy. … I was killed by ____”

The pencil conveniently “trailed away” at that very moment, they claimed, and Ruby died just as she was about to reveal her killer.

Another dramatic scene, though, led to an arrest. Before Ruby was taken to the hospital, neighbors allegedly knelt over her bleeding body and noticed she was clutching a watch. Did the man who killed you give you that watch? they supposedly asked.

According to the Courier, one person saw her shake her head “no.” Another claimed she nodded “yes.”

‘Black Tom’ Evans

Police immediately looked at the husband, Emmett, but found that he had an alibi. So did Quinn, who said he’d been on his houseboat in Dogtown that night, after spending several days digging for clams.

Evans, however, wasn’t so lucky. He was the infamous watch-gifter, and police picked him up that night. Within hours, they had a signed confession.

But by the time he appeared in court the morning after the slaying, Evans retracted it all. He claimed Evansville police beat it out of him, and he pleaded not guilty.

The only evidence against him was a busted confession and a murky nod from Ruby herself, but that didn’t stop authorities from taking him to trial. And on Dec. 13, 1924, a jury in Vanderburgh Circuit Court found him guilty of murder. He narrowly avoided the electric chair and was instead sentenced to life in Michigan City prison.

Even with Evans lodged in jail for the rest of his days, the Ruby Mauzy saga kept churning. Another man, Henry Chapman, started hanging around the murder scene at night, and even confessed to the crime himself. Police dismissed him as “feeble-minded.”

Then the ghost sightings began. On Jan. 15, 1925, Sgt. William Barratt, two Evansville Press reporters, and a gaggle of “ghost hunters” traipsed into the bean field to search for the source of all those eerie noises.

Late in the night, Barratt heard two “muffled grunts.” Clicking on his flashlight, he shined a beam at the culprits: two hogs in a pen.

Others blamed nearby cats, and most left that night feeling the “ghost” problem had been solved. Howard still wasn’t convinced.

“A cat couldn’t make a noise like that,” she said.

An Evansville Press reporter tries to save Black Tom

Not long after Evans’ conviction, Press reporter John Ellert visited him in prison.

“It’s all over now, Black Tom,” Ellert said. “Why don’t you tell the truth and admit you killed her? You have nothing to gain.”

“I didn’t kill her,” Black Tom said. “I’ll say that until my dying day.”

The sincerity in Black Tom’s voice stirred something in Ellert, and he began to wonder if everyone – the police, the jury, the judge, the public – had botched the Mauzy case from the start.

With the help of Evans’ attorney, Benjamin Zieg, Ellert started digging into the case, throwing doubt onto the official story and angling to get Evans a parole hearing.

He couldn’t get anyone to budge for years – until he met David Davis.

Davis and Aubrey Quinn had been good friends, and even lived together on Davis’ houseboat at “Rattlesnake Mine” outside Spottsville, Kentucky.

Another source told Ellert about Davis late in 1931, and he and Zieg were able to track the man down and dictate a signed statement that ultimately exonerated Evans.

In 1929, his friend had died in jail on a “drunkenness” charge, so there was no reason to hide the truth anymore.

“During the time that Aubrey Quinn lived with me on my houseboat, he discussed the murder, or killing, or Ruby Mauzy,” Davis' statement read in part. “He told me on several occasions that he killed Ruby Mauzy because she would not return to his boat and live with him."

Another witnesses soon stepped forward. A rooming house operator said that on the night of Mauzy’s death, Quinn appeared at his door looking “nervous” and asking for a place to sleep.

He was also wearing a red sweater.

“I had known him for 10 years. He seemed very excited and I fixed him a place to sleep in the kitchen,” the operator said. “He stayed there about an hour and as he walked down the stairs I heard him mumble something about ‘that girl had it coming to her.’”

Quinn eventually left without his shoes. He showed back up back at his houseboat the next day, where police arrested and released him on the supposed strength of his alibi – and the newly garnered confession from Evans.

Davis also claimed Quinn had paid Chapman – the other confessor – $10 to skip town the night of the killing. It would make Chapman look guilty, he reasoned, and take suspicion off him.

Police records confirmed that part of the story. When they found Chapman in Princeton, Indiana the night of the killing, he had $9 in his pocket. And he’d spend the rest of his life muttering about Ruby – how he killed her, how he didn’t kill her, how he had something to do with it.

Police scoffed at Ellert’s stories. The State Clemency Commission didn’t.

After taking years to act, they finally decided to release Evans from Michigan City. But by the time he got out, he was battling a rare blood disease and never got to enjoy his freedom. In April 1940, he died in a hospital in Indianapolis.

The story lands on NBC

Ellert lived on to receive praise for his work – and spin it into a new career.

In 1948, NBC Radio used his tale for an episode of “The Big Story.” He was offered promotions at The Press, but the idea of sitting at a desk all day made him sick to his stomach.

Ironically, he eventually left the profession to take the ultimate desk job – politics. He was elected as Evansville’s auditor, serving only half a term before dying in 1952 at the age of 61.

Ruby Mauzy was buried in Oak Hill Cemetery. The bean field where she died is gone now, too, replaced by a row of houses.

Information from the Evansville Courier & Press archives. Contact Jon Webb at jon.webb@courierpress.com

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: An Indiana ghost story ended with a man getting exonerated for murder