Her Struggle was Useless.

Artist's rendition of the Pearl Bryan murder from The Mysterious Murder of Pearl Bryan, Or, The Headless Horror. Cincinnati: Barclay & Co., 1896.

Read Pearl Bryan's story in the new book,

So Far from Home: 

The Pearl Bryan Murder.

Now available at Amazon.

Pearl Bryan.

So Far From Home: The Pearl Bryan Murder

Pearl Bryan.

Murder victim Pearl Bryan was the belle of Greencastle, Indiana. She was popular among her peers and admired by all who knew her. Pearl was a girl of the most amiable disposition. Too amiable in fact, said her friends, and inclined to yield to the requests or urgings of others. Though friendly and outgoing, Pearl kept her personal life private. When Pearl learned she was pregnant, she told no one but her second cousin, Will Wood.

Will Wood was Pearl’s confidant, but he was not to be trusted. He was a rude braggart who boasted of his sexual relations with Pearl. The Cincinnati Enquirer summed up Will Wood’s Greencastle reputation saying, “The youth is generally recognized as a cigarette fiend of unbalanced mind and of a totally depraved nature.” Many in Greencastle believed that Will Wood was the father of Pearl’s unborn child and was ultimately responsible for her death.

Will Wood

So Far from Home: 

The Pearl Bryan Murder

by Robert Wilhelm

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Alonzo Walling.

So Far From Home: The Pearl Bryan Murder

Scott Jackson Courtesy of The Cincinnati Enquirer

Alonzo Walling, Scott Jackson’s roommate, was arrested in February 1896 as Jackson’s accomplice in the murder of Pearl Bryan. Cincinnati phrenologist Dr. S. E. Hyndman analyzed Walling’s character by measuring his head and came to this conclusion: “Alonzo Walling is easily led in the direction of friendship and in this, he would often do things which his better nature would revolt against. He would not go back on a friend until the very last, and then only to save his own life if he had promised to stand by him. He likes the society of the viscous better than that of the higher order. He would plunge into danger and calculate the chances afterward. His standard of morals is not of a higher order, his perceptive powers are small and if he were to be influenced, he would have to be managed through flattery.”

Walling’s involvement in the case was always somewhat shadowy, he was accused of actively participating in Pearl Bryan’s murder, but he may have been little more than a knowing but innocent bystander. The public saw Walling as dull, weak-willed, and subservient to Jackson against his own best interest. Whatever his connection was to the murder, he kept the secret to himself and stood by his roommate to the end.

From So Far from Home: The Pearl Bryan Murder by Robert Wilhelm.

Scott Jackson.

So Far From Home: The Pearl Bryan Murder

Scott Jackson Courtesy of The Cincinnati Enquirer

Phrenologist, Dr. S. E. Hyndman, performed measurements on the head of Scott Jackson, accused killer of Pearl Bryan, shortly after his arrest in February 1896. He came to this conclusion: "My analysis of Scott Jackson reveals a bold, fearless, intense organization, with a perverted amativeness, and unwise gratification of this faculty has changed his physical, intellectual and moral condition and debased his higher mental qualities. He readily and quickly reasons from cause to effect; is intensely selfish in whatever he does; would mislead anyone to assist himself and has strong perceptive powers. He is a good planner and a fearless executer; once his mind is made up to do a thing, neither God, nor man, nor the devil, would prevent the attempt, every faculty would be perverted."

Dr. Hyndman’s assessment was probably influenced as much by public opinion as it was by the bumps on his heads In Cincinnati, Scott Jackson was viewed as strong, self-centered, and fundamentally evil. Jackson was the master manipulator who seduced the farm girl, persuaded the preacher’s son to send her to Cincinnati, and enlisted the country boy to help kill her. Some believed that Jackson had hypnotic power to impose his will on others and attributed that power to a property that even phrenology could not measure: his evil eye. 

Every written description of Scott Jackson referred to the power of his eyes. They were steel blue, some said violet, and had a mesmerizing power that he used to beguile Pearl Bryan into an intimate affair that she kept secret from her friends and family. She was—referencing the most popular novel of the time—Trilby to his Svengali.

From So Far from Home: The Pearl Bryan Murder by Robert Wilhelm.