Photo of the Morner house from 1911. Four members of the family were murdered in 1911, the most notorious unsolved murder in Rensselaer County history.
The Morner farmhouse in East Greenbush today, where four members of the family were murdered in 1911, the most notorious unsolved murder in Rensselaer County history.
Cover of Brad DiBello's recently published book, "O' Mary Don't You Weep: The Morner Road Massacre."
Four identical gravestones for the four Morner family members murdered on their farm on Dec. 12, 1911 in the Blooming Grove Rural Cemetery in Defreestville. A 23-year-old farmhand, Edward Donato, who fled the farm, was the prime suspect.
Long shadows are cast along the Morner family burial plot in Blooming Grove Rural Cemetery, reminders of the quadruple homicide that shocked a nation and set off a massive manhunt. The murderer was never apprehended.
Author Brad DiBello.
Photo of the Morner barn where the quadruple homicide occurred in 1911.
EAST GREENBUSH — Growing up on Morner Road, Brad DiBello did not realize he played in fields a stone’s throw from a barn where the most heinous crime in the history of Rensselaer County occurred a century earlier.
Five decades later, DiBello wrote “O’ Mary, Don’t You Weep: The Morner Road Massacre,” a fictional account of the 1911 quadruple homicide on the Morner dairy farm. The grisly killings of four Morner family members sparked sensational headlines, set off a massive manhunt and spurred Gov. John Alden Dix to issue a $2,000 reward for the capture of the killer — who was never apprehended.
The victims of the Dec. 12, 1911, killings were Mary Morner, a 52-year-old widow, and her adult children: Edith, 23; Blanche, 18; and Arthur, 28. All four were bludgeoned with a hatchet and stabbed with a bale stick — a long, thin wooden rod with a sharpened point for spearing and moving hay bales.
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According to investigators, the three women were dumped in a manure........