A cabin lays in ashes, and a horrible secret lurks underneath the floorboards. This is the incredible true story of the Justice family. Our story begins in 1909 in Buchanan County, Virginia. A rugged and sparsely populated wilderness, where an endless sea of untamed virgin forest stretched across the ancient ridges of Appalachia.

 Towering stands of oak, chestnut, poplar, and hemlock, these majestic timberlands were so rich that this isolated mountain jungle became the crown jewel and operational headquarters for the WM Ritter Lumber Company, the largest hardwood timber operation on planet Earth. At its peak, Ritter controlled more than 300,000 acres of prime forest land across Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky that were connected by a vast network of narrow gauge rail lines that snake deep through the hollers, where a fleet of 72 steam locomotives thundered day and

night as these iron beasts relentlessly stripped the natural riches from the mountains. Train after train with the finest hardwoods that were now destined for furniture factories, shipyards, and growing cities far beyond the ridges. Nearly everyone who called this rugged corner of Buchanan County home worked for the lumber company and with Mr.

Ritter paying top dollar, most landowners had eagerly sold their properties to the timber baron. Entire ridges and hollers changed hands almost overnight and the old farms gave way to bustling lumber camps. Yet, not everyone sold out and the stubborn few still clung to their land and refused to trade their pioneer lifestyles for a few coins.

 One such woman was Aunt Betty Justice, a feisty, sharp-tongued widow who lived in a weathered log cabin along the banks of Laurel Creek just a few miles downstream from those massive sawmills. Her husband, Hiram, had been a proud and stubborn mountain man who had spent the better part of two decades fighting tooth and nail to keep the family’s 150-acre farm out of Ritter’s hands.

However, it had been six long years since Hiram’s death and now Betty was carrying that burden alone. In fact, her daughter, Lydia, and son-in-law, George, had recently moved in along with their three young children to help tend to the place. And let’s face it, the old cabin had grown quiet and lonely after Hiram’s passing and now it once again rang with the sound laughter, bare feet running across the floors, and Aunt Betty, well, she cherished every moment of it.

 But alas, even the strongest mountain folks can only hold out so long. The reality of hard-scrambled poverty and the tempting lure of fast cash finally proved too much. In July of 1909, Betty Justice made the long trip down to Hurley, Virginia. And there, she stood inside Mr. Ritter’s grand office, where she signed away the timber rights to her beloved land for a sum of $1,300, the equivalent of roughly $50,000 in today’s money.

Now, like most mountaineers of that time, Aunt Betty had never laid eyes on that much money in all her born days. And because she didn’t put much faith in bankers with their sheepskins and fancy suits, she did what any sensible mountain woman would do. That’s right. She brought every last silver dollar home and tucked it into an old tin milk pail and hid it away beneath the floorboards of her cabin.

 And just a few months later, in the summer of 1909, a narrow-gauge rail line had been blasted and laid straight into the heart of the Justice property. And now, the once isolated farm was connected to the bustling main line and to the outside world beyond the ridges. Almost overnight, logging was in full swing with hundreds of rough and tumble workers and drifters that were brought in by the railroad from flatland country.

 Just like that, Aunt Betty’s property was scalped of its riches. Now, you have to keep in mind that even in the wilds, without electricity, telephones, or paved roads, rumors and gossip still spread on swift wings, the old-fashioned way, carried on the wagon tongues of neighbors, down at country stores, grist mills, and even church meetings.

 And soon, word of that fortune now it spread like dry leaves in a wildfire. And before you could say scoot, everyone in Buchanan County knew that the Justice farm had finally been bought out. And for a staggering price. Why, $1,300? That was almost a mythical sum in these parts. And some men would do anything for that amount of money.

 Maybe even kill for it. Now, I need to remind you that this is a true story. Every word of what follows actually happened. So, brace yourself, my friend, because what comes next is one of the darkest and most brutal crimes in American history. The horror that visited upon that lonely cabin along Laurel Creek was so complete, so merciless, that no eye, no pen, or no tongue could ever describe.

 And even today, more than 115 years later, it remains one of the greatest who done it mysteries ever told. It all started on the night of September 21st, 1909. Around midnight, several neighbors along Laurel Creek were jolted awake by an eerie orange glow lighting up the sky over the Justice farm. And as the glow grew brighter, the unmistakable sound of crackling flames broke the still mountain air.

 Now, they knew something was bad wrong. Two farmers, Ned Jenkins and Thomas Kegel, grabbed their lanterns and rifles and rushed through the darkness. And what they found when they arrived on the scene would haunt them for the rest of their lives. There in the yard laid Betty’s son-in-law, George Meadows, face down in a spreading pool of blood.

 He had been shot twice in the back. And then dealt a savage blow from an axe that nearly severed his neck. Just ahead, the family cabin was a roaring inferno with flames shooting high into the night sky. And as the men grew closer, the horror deepened. Just inside the burning doorway, piled one on top of the other in a gruesome bonfire, were the bodies of Aunt Betty, her daughter Lydia, and the three young grandchildren.

 Each of them had met their demise with an axe before the flames were set. The heat was so intense that it was impossible to even attempt to pull them out of the fire. The crime scene laid just a few miles from the Virginia-West Virginia border. And by morning, word of the massacre had already raced across the ridges as lawmen from both states converged on Laurel Creek.

Yet, all that remained in the smoldering coals were charred bones. What monster had done this? Wasting little time, 20 bloodhounds were brought in and a posse of 300 men, lumber workers and farmers, who were armed to the teeth, were quickly assembled. Within hours, they set out fanning across the hills and combing every holler.

 And by the next morning, the dogs had led the posse straight to a remote, ramshackle cabin tucked high on a wooded hillside that belonged to none other than Silas Blankenship, a notorious moonshiner and outlaw who had little use for lawmen and no regard for their authority. In fact, as soon as the mountaineer heard those hounds approaching, Silas and his two grown sons barricaded themselves inside their cabin.

 And when the posse approached, the Blankenships opened fire. A tense 7-hour standoff followed where officers told of the crimes from the night before, but Silas swore he didn’t have nothing to do with it. And it was only after the lawmen promised that the Blankenships would be treated fairly and given a chance to prove their innocence that the three men finally agreed to lay down their guns and surrender.

 Yet, the moment the sheriff stepped forward to handcuff Silas, the crafty old mountain man had a sudden change of heart. He wasn’t about to spend a single second behind bars. And in a lightning-fast move, Silas yanked the hidden pistol from inside his coat, opened fire, and chaos erupted. An all-out gun battle tore through the mountainside as the Blankenships made a desperate break for freedom.

 And when the smoke cleared, Silas and his boys had somehow vanished into the thick green ocean of mountain laurel. And just like that, the chase was on. For the next 2 days, the men hunted the outlaws through some of the roughest country in Appalachia. But by the third morning, Silas had finally run out of bullets where he and his boys were hauled back down to town under heavy guard to face a grand jury.

Authorities were confident that they had their man. After all, if Silas and his boys were innocent, why had they fought like cornered wildcats? No honest man would blast away at the law and then run for 2 days unless he had blood on his hands. >> As the investigation unfolded, the Blankenship clan produced a rock-solid alibi.

 Multiple witnesses, including a saloon owner, swore under oath that Silas and his boys had been gambling and drinking heavily down at a watering hole several miles away on the night of the murders. And as for shooting at the law, well, Silas warned the sheriff that next time he set foot on his property without good cause, he’d greet him again with buckshot.

 So, the Blankenships were released and the law was back to square one, all while the killer was still out there. Days went by and the trail grew cold while outrage in the community grew as newspapers across the region picked up on the story. In response, the Virginia governor offered a reward of $3,750 for any man the cold-blooded killer to justice.

 Now, that was some serious cash, nearly $140,000 in today’s money. Almost overnight, Laurel Creek was crawling with bounty hunters from across Kentucky, West Virginia and Virginia. Among these men were the notorious Baldwin-Felts detectives out of West Virginia, a feared agency known far and wide as the hired guns of coal barons and railroad owners.

 Well, they were ruthless and more than willing to bend the law anytime it suited their purposes. And with the scent of that fat reward in the air, those boys had come to Laurel Creek to hunt. Now, this agency was more of a gang of professional gunslingers than true detectives. That’s right. They were men who fought on both sides of the law.

Deputies one day and outlaws the next. They thought nothing of beating, shooting, or even killing a man if the price was right. And by September 26, just 5 days after the murders, the Ball and Felt boys wasted no time getting to work. They descended on the lumber camps like wolves, pulling the bosses aside and questioning every man in the camp.

And it didn’t take long for several men to speak up. Several told the detectives how they had overheard a fellow named Howard Little making repeated comments about how much money Aunt Betty Justice had hidden away. And then, another stepped forward and admitted that he had loaned Howard his .

38 caliber revolver just a couple of days before the killings. And when the detectives finally tracked down Howard Little, he was clearly shaken and gave evasive answers. And what was that on Howard’s leg? Well, I’ll be darned if that ain’t a fresh ax wound. But old Howard swore that it was from chopping wood a few days earlier.

 Yet, the investigators weren’t convinced. Something about Howard Little’s story didn’t sit right with him. So, they decided to dig a little deeper. And that’s when they paid a visit to his wife and interrogated her about her husband’s whereabouts on the night of the murders. Miss Little told them that Howard had left the house around 6:00 that evening, saying that he was going out hunting.

 In fact, he stayed out all night and didn’t return home until breakfast the next morning. And sensing weakness, the Ball and Felt men pressed harder. Miss Little, where are the clothes that your husband wore that night? We’d like to have a look at him.” And finally, Ms. Little broke, and she finally admitted that when Howard came home, his clothes were soaked in blood.

 So much blood that she could barely stand to look at him. He told her that it all came from dressing the raccoons that he had killed. It was then that investigators demanded to see the exact spot where he supposedly cleaned those animals. And they searched the area carefully, and that’s where they noticed an expensive brass lantern sitting on a workbench.

 Something about it seemed out of place, and upon closer inspection, they found fresh filing marks on the metal where someone had tried to grind away a name that had once been carved into it. All that remained were three clear letters, J U S. The beginning of justice. And when the wife produced the clothing, it was obvious that she had scrubbed it clean, but it still couldn’t hide the truth.

 There on Howard’s overalls were the dark, telltale stains that looked unmistakably like blood. The lantern must have been taken from the crime scene and carried through the dark woods to light the killer’s path as he made his escape. With the bloody clothes, the fresh ax wound on his leg, the borrowed revolver, and the suspicious lantern combined with his nervous behavior, the case against Howard Little was growing heavier by the hour, and authorities, well, they believed they had their man.

 So, they arrested him and charged him with six counts of murder. But just who was Howard Little? On the surface, he seemed like any other newcomer that had been drawn by the lumber boom. He had only been in Buchanan County for just the few years, working as a logger. And he was recently assigned to the very crew that was stripping the Justice Farm.

 But Howard actually had a much darker past. You see, before crossing into Virginia, Mr. Little had lived just over the state line in Pike County, Kentucky, where he even wore the badge of a United States Marshal. Now, that sounded honorable enough, but in truth, he had used his position as an officer of the law as a free pass to commit a string of crimes, including the cold-blooded murder of a man named Jacob Kinney.

 And that killing was so vicious that a jury sentenced him to life in prison. He should have died behind bars, and he would have, but just 5 years into his sentence, something suspicious happened. While the governor of Kentucky was conveniently attending a lunch just over the state line in Virginia, the lieutenant governor quietly issued Little a full pardon, and he was instantly a free man.

 Many folks said that that pardon was straight-up illegal, but Howard never stuck around to find out. Instead, he slipped across the state line and reinvented himself. And as a tall, strikingly handsome man, it was said that Howard had his pick of any woman in the hills, and he took full advantage of it.

 Even after marrying, his one good eye and smooth tongue never slowed down. In fact, Howard himself pointed to his infidelity as the sole reason his wife had lied to detectives about the bloody clothes. “On the contrary,” Howard said, “she simply lied out of revenge because he had been sleeping around. By God, I’m innocent. He insisted to anyone who would listen.

And even as Howard sat in his jail cell and awaited his day in court, the evidence against him continued to mount. That’s when the Ball and Felt boys petitioned the court to have the body of Georgia Meadows exhumed from the fresh grave. And then, under a gray autumn sky, his coffin was lifted from the cold earth.

 And then, it was pried open right there in the churchyard, where two bullets that had passed through Georgia’s back were carefully removed. Lo and behold, they matched the exact caliber and type of revolver that Howard Little had borrowed just days before the murders. All the pieces all fit together like a deadly puzzle. And so it was, on November 18th, 1909, Howard Little’s murder trial began in a packed Buchanan County Courthouse.

Throughout the proceedings, Little sat stone-faced while maintaining his innocence. Because, in a risky move, his lawyers had advised him not to take the stand in his own defense. But the prosecution sensed blood in the water, and they zeroed in on two key pieces of evidence. The first was the mysterious brass lantern that had been found at Little’s home, the one with the name crudely filed off.

 One witness, who was a woman that visited the Justice Cabin many times, swore under oath that it belonged to Aunt Betty. She recognized it instantly, especially the homemade wick that had been made from a scrap of an old felt hat. It was an exact match. But the second piece of evidence proved to be far more damning because when Ms.

Howard Little took the stand, the courtroom fell silent as she described how her husband had come home the morning after the murders. >> It was about sunrise. I heard the dogs barking outside. So, I went out to the barn and that’s where I saw Howard tying up the horse. His clothes were soaked with blood and he started taking them off and told me to take him to the creek and wash them clean.

I knew something was wrong and I asked him what happened but he told me to keep my mouth shut and never speak of it again. And that’s when I saw the axe wound on his leg. I swear to God, I know Howard did it and I can see it in his eyes right now as he looks at me. Those are the eyes of a killer. >> By the time Ms.

 Howard concluded her testimony, the courtroom was full of murmurs. Those in attendance were absolutely convinced that she was telling the truth. So, the prosecution rested its case and the judge placed the fate of the defendant in the hands of the jury. And that jury took less than 4 hours to return with a verdict. We the jury find the defendant, Howard Little, guilty of six counts of first-degree murder.

 And then the judge sentenced Howard Little to become the 23rd man in Virginia history to be put to death in the electric chair. An open and shut case, right? Well, not so fast because it’s here that this story takes a dark and mysterious turn. >> Give someone you love the gift of old-fashioned storytelling. Five books for the young and old alike that will make your heart smile.

 Click the link below to order your copy of the Appalachian Storyteller today. >> You see, while the law was focusing all their efforts into prosecuting Howard Little, they were completely unaware that just 80 miles away another horrific and unsolved murder had taken place. Even more alarming, the new victims lived along the very same railroad tracks that ran past the Justice Farm.

It happened on Halloween night, exactly 40 days after Hent Betty and her family were slaughtered. In Beckley, West Virginia, an 82-year-old Civil War veteran and his three children were brutally hacked to death with an axe. Then they were shot with the exact same caliber bullets that had been used in the Laurel Creek killings.

 And once again, the killer set the cabin ablaze, burning the bodies and the evidence in a roaring inferno. And just like before, the murderer vanished into the night without a trace. And all these killings, well, they took place while Howard Little was locked up in jail awaiting trial. Could it be that a serial killer was riding the rails? Well, none of this evidence was ever presented during Little’s trial.

 And astonishingly, the law enforcement agencies of West Virginia and Virginia never shared information about the two crimes in spite of the chilling similarities. And so, on February 11th, 1910, despite maintaining his innocence to the very end, Howard Little was led to the death chamber in Richmond, where he was strapped into Old Smoky, and a wet sponge was placed on his shaved head.

And when the jailer gave the order, a switch was thrown, and a surge of high voltage ripped through Little’s body, where he paid the ultimate price and was cast into the unknown on the other side of eternity. A hundred years ago, the wheels of justice turned much quicker, and the cries for instant revenge were carried out swiftly.

 But, in the case of Howard Little, the question remains, did the courts get it right? Could it be that Howard Little was an innocent man whose only real crime was cheating on his wife? Was he sent to the electric chair by nothing more than a scorned woman’s bitter revenge? Right up until the final moment, Little swore that he was innocent.

 And in his last words, he issued a grim warning. “Boys, stay away from bad women, or you’ll end up right where I’m at.” Hm. Finally, I’d like to leave you with this to consider. During my research into this case, I discovered that between 1887 and 1912, at least 14 unsolved murders occurred along the rail lines and lumber camps of the W.M. Ritter Lumber Company.

 And in nearly every one of those killings, the victims were attacked with an axe and finished off with a .38 caliber pistol. And then, their homes were burned. Is this a coincidence, or was it something far more sinister? Is it possible that this was the work of a railroad serial killer who was never caught? I look forward to reading your thoughts below.

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