How the Boorn Brothers Received America's First Wrongful Conviction

Small towns are notorious for local gossip, and when Russell Colvin disappeared from the New England village of Manchester, Vt., in the spring of 1812, tongues started wagging. 

Colvin was known in the area for spending most of his days drinking in Manchester’s alehouses, much to the chagrin of his wife, Sally. The couple lived on a poor plot of land next to Sally’s two brothers, Jesse and Stephen Boorn. The family eked out a meager living on their small farm, so the two brothers were often forced to work for other, more prosperous farmers in the area. 

There was no love lost between Colvin and the Boorn brothers, who considered their brother-in-law a lazy drunkard who couldn’t support their sister. There was even talk of a violent fistfight between Colvin and Stephen. So when Colvin disappeared without a trace, some of the local villagers became suspicious of the Boorn brothers.

When asked where Colvin might have gone, Stephen reportedly answered, “He’s gone to hell, I hope.” Upon further questioning, Stephen replied mysteriously, “Colvin has gone where potatoes won’t freeze.”

Suspicions ran high during the years leading up to the War of 1812 since many Americans still harbored loyalist sentiments toward the British, while their neighbors were often staunchly patriotic and resentful of British influence in North America.

When Colvin disappeared, some wondered if he had joined the military, or perhaps been pressed into service on a British warship.

After the United States declared war against Britain in June 1812, talk about Colvin’s disappearance quieted down—until, that is, villagers noticed that Sally had become pregnant, long after her husband had gone missing. At that point, the Boorn family once again became the subject of local gossip and innuendo. 

About seven years after Colvin vanished, a local farmer began telling his friends about three recurring dreams he had in which the ghost of Colvin appeared, muttering that he had indeed been murdered and his remains could be found in an old potato cellar. The farmer was none other than the siblings’ Uncle Amos Boorn, “a gentleman of respectability, whose character is unimpeachable,” a pamphlet from the time notes.

When an abandoned potato cellar on the Boorn property was dug up, a few artifacts including a knife and a button were discovered—and Sally confirmed that these belonged to her missing husband—but no human remains were found. 

Several days after the excavation, a fire of unknown origin destroyed a barn on the Boorn property. And a short time after that, a boy walking with his dog near the Boorn property noticed that the dog was whining near a tree stump. The excited dog kept scratching at the stump until a few large bones were unearthed. Local physicians concluded that the bones were human. 

In the court of public opinion, the Boorn brothers were now condemned as murderers. Gossiping townsfolk concluded that the devious brothers had clubbed, stoned or knifed Colvin to death in the potato field, tossed his belongings into the potato cellar, then moved his body into the barn. After setting the barn ablaze to destroy the evidence, the story went, the brothers then hid Colvin’s few remaining bones under the tree stump.

Stephen and Jesse were arrested and charged with Colvin’s murder. For reasons that remain unclear, both brothers at various times confessed to the murder, perhaps under pressure or torture. Jesse at one point blamed his brother, Stephen, who had moved about 200 miles away to Denmark, N.Y. Jesse may have thought his brother was beyond the reach of local authorities.

But when a constable from Vermont informed Stephen of the charges against him, Stephen willingly traveled back home to clear his name, at which point Jesse recanted his confession. Stephen then confessed that he killed Colvin in self-defense, an admission that he may have thought would prevent his hanging. 

Both strategies failed, and when Jesse’s cellmate, Silas Merrill, told authorities that Jesse had confided to him that he had indeed killed Colvin—a ploy that allowed Merrill to go free for testifying against the brothers—the brothers’ fate was sealed, even after other physicians proved that the bones found under the tree stump belonged to an animal.

In October 1819, a jury found the Boorn brothers guilty of murder. The evidence presented in the case primarily consisted of eyewitnesses who recalled—seven years later—the brothers arguing with Colvin on the day he disappeared. One witness also testified that Stephen had confessed to committing the murder with his brother’s assistance. 

Despite the dearth of hard evidence, Jesse, who appeared to be less involved in Colvin’s disappearance than Stephen, was eventually sentenced to life imprisonment, while Stephen was condemned to be hanged. 

The sensational tale of the two condemned brothers spread throughout the region, appearing in newspapers from Boston to New York. An item in the New York Evening Post about the case was read aloud in a New York hotel lobby. (Newspapers at the time were often read aloud in public because a portion of the population was illiterate.)

By chance, a traveler from New Jersey, Tabor Chadwick, was staying at the hotel and heard the story. Chadwick knew a man named Russell Colvin living in Dover, N.J., who was originally from Vermont. He mailed a letter, offering evidence that Colvin was still alive, to the newspaper.

The New York Evening Post published Chadwick’s letter in December 1819. James Whelpley, a native of Manchester, Vt., living in New York City, read the letter and quickly set off for Dover, where he found Colvin very much alive and working as a farmhand but unwilling to return to Vermont.

With time of the essence—Stephen was scheduled to be hanged in just a few weeks—Whelpley devised a scheme to trick Colvin into traveling back to Vermont. He enlisted the help of an attractive young woman who enticed Colvin to escort her from Dover to New York City. 

Colvin gladly accepted, but upon arriving in New York, he was told by Whelpley he would have to take a different route back to Dover because menacing British warships were gathering offshore, looking for men to press into service. Colvin and Whelpley boarded a stagecoach that was—unbeknownst to Colvin—heading to Manchester, Vt.

All along the route to Manchester, curious crowds gathered to see the stagecoach carrying the “late” Russell Colvin. By the time he arrived at Captain Black’s Inn in Manchester, a massive crowd greeted Colvin with cheers, shouts and musket fire. 

Colvin was taken to the prison where the despondent Stephen had been shackled in iron chains for months, awaiting his hanging. According to a contemporary pamphlet, “Colvin gazed upon the chains and asked, ‘What is that for?’ ‘Because they say I murdered you.’ Russell replied, ‘You never hurt me.’”

Colvin soon returned to New Jersey to continue working as a farmhand, and the Boorn brothers were exonerated of their crimes and set free. Village gossips who swore the two men were guilty soon started spreading a new conspiracy theory: The man who returned on the stagecoach was a look-alike imposter, and those who claimed it was Colvin were liars or fools.

The strange saga of Colvin and the Boorn family remains part of New England lore and marks the first case of wrongful conviction in American history.