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| The image has a typo it's supposed to be 1814 not 1914 |
In 1890, 76-year-old John "Henry" Nurre and his third wife 57-year-old Elizabeth. The couple had been married for 20 years and lived in rural Clinton County near Brown’s Station, Iowa. The area that the couple were living in was mostly Catholic including them. They would seldom miss any meetings at the church.
Henry was also one of the richest men in their area of the state and was highly esteemed by many. He had more real estate mortgages in Jackson County than anyone else. For the last 4 years, he was a member of the Board of Supervisors of Clinton County. It was estimated that he was worth $250,000.
On March 12, 1890, Henry and Elizabeth did not show up to the 13-hour church meeting. This was concerning, however, it wasn't until they didn't show up to the Thursday meeting people got worried. Elizabeth's son-in-law Theo Hullman, and the Priest were worried because the two never showed up to the meeting. This was unusual for them. The two would go home and investigate to see why the two didn't show up.
When they went inside the house they would go into either the kitchen and find Henry dead near the table. He was in a large pool of blood and had a large gash on the back of his head and another which hit his jugular vein in his neck.
Elizabeth was found unconscious in their bedroom in the attic above the kitchen. She had been attacked with a hammer and she had nine deep scalp wounds. She would stay unconscious for several more weeks before regaining consciousness. However, she could not provide any information on what had happened.
It's believed that the attack happened on the evening of March 11th. Henry was sitting in the sitting room responding to a letter from his son. The letter was received on the 10th and the letter Henry was writing was dated the 11th. It seemed Henry was nearly finished with the letter when he was killed.
The murderer or murderers tried to clean up the pool of blood. There were clothes stained with the blood found on the teakettle. They then dragged Henry into the kitchen. It's unknown why they had done this, but maybe they were thinking of destroying the scene and never got to do it for some reason.
Elizabeth must have witnessed the murder as it seemed that she had run to their bedroom in the attic. She had tried to barricade the door, but they had broken it open with a poker. They would then attack her with the poker and then the hammer when they found it. The room was left a mess with the bestead broken to pieces, the bedding scattered and blood covered almost everything in the room. It was a miracle that she survived.
In another bedroom, a safe was found. It was unknown if the killer or killers were able to get it open, but the dial had been broken off. In the same room, there was a little satchel that Henry was known to carry money and papers. One of Elizabeth's skirts was lying over it and it wasn't seen by the killers. Inside was $1,105 and some papers indicating he was planning to go to Preston that night. Likely after he was done writing his letter and eating dinner.
Theo stated that it was not normal for Henry to have that much cash on him at once and usually only carried around $100 to $150. However, he himself had recently paid him the $1,000 on Sunday so it must have been that money in his satchel.
SOURCES:
Iowa Cold Cases
