In the dusty archives of the Providence Historical Society, a photograph from March 1904 remained forgotten for over a century. It showed the prominent Underwood family posing in their Federal Hill mansion parlor: Jonathan Underwood, his wife Beatrice, and their newly hired domestic servant. There was something unsettling about the hands visible in the portrait. The servant’s right hand, resting casually on the back of Mrs.
Underwood’s chair, bore distinct scars across the knuckles and palm. Investigators in 1920 did not realize that those same scars had been described sixteen times in police reports spanning nearly two decades—sixteen times by sixteen different witnesses, all describing the last woman seen with their employer’s wives before those women died in mysterious household accidents. The photograph, buried in evidence from an insurance fraud case, would finally reveal the identity of one of America’s most methodical and undetected serial killers. In the spring of 1904, Providence stood as New England’s second largest city, its prosperity built on textile mills, jewelry manufacturing, and shipping.
The Federal Hill and Benefit Street neighborhoods housed magnificent Victorian mansions, testament to the wealth generated by Rhode Island’s industrial boom. The Underwood family represented this new aristocracy perfectly. Jonathan Underwood, forty-three, had built his fortune manufacturing precision instruments for the expanding railroad industry. His wife, Beatrice, thirty-eight, came from old New England stock.
Their mansion required constant maintenance, and like most families of their station, they employed several servants. But domestic help had become increasingly difficult to retain, as younger immigrant women sought better wages and more freedom in the textile mills. It was this shortage of reliable help that led Beatrice to place an advertisement in the Providence Journal on March 15, 1904, seeking an experienced housekeeper of good character with references. Elizabeth Hayes arrived at the Underwood mansion on a gray March morning, carrying a small leather satchel and wearing a simple black dress that spoke of both respectability and mourning.
She appeared to be in her early forties with prematurely gray hair and pale blue eyes that seemed to take in every detail of the room she entered. Her references, written on expensive letterhead from families in Boston and Hartford, praised her discretion and her particular talent for caring for delicate wives who suffered from the nervous disorders so common among the upper classes. What impressed Beatrice most was Elizabeth’s immediate understanding of running a Victorian household. She knew exactly how to tend gas fixtures without creating dangerous leaks, how to manage the coal-burning stove, and how to handle the delicate cleaning required for Beatrice’s collection of crystal and china.
Her hands, though bearing scars she explained away as old kitchen accidents, moved with practiced confidence. The photograph taken that March afternoon was meant to commemorate the completion of a successful hiring process. Jonathan had recently purchased one of the new Kodak cameras and wanted to document their household staff for his business records. The three figures arranged themselves in the parlor: Jonathan standing beside his wife’s chair, Beatrice seated with her hands folded in her lap, and Elizabeth positioned slightly behind her, scarred right hand resting on the back of Beatrice’s chair in a gesture that seemed both protective and possessive.
Neither Jonathan nor Beatrice noticed how Elizabeth’s eyes remained fixed on Beatrice’s jewelry during the long exposure required for the photograph. Elizabeth settled into her role with the efficiency of someone who had perfected a deadly routine. She rose before dawn to tend the furnace, prepared meals with meticulous care, and maintained the household with an attention to detail that impressed both Jonathan and Beatrice. But her most important work happened in the quiet hours when the family slept, when she could move through the house like a shadow, learning its secrets.
Victorian homes were complex organisms of pipes, ducts, and mechanical systems that few people fully understood. Gas lines ran through walls to feed ornate fixtures in every room. Elizabeth studied these systems with the dedication of an engineer, tracing every pipe and wire until she understood exactly how the house functioned and how it could malfunction. During her first month, Elizabeth demonstrated a devotion that made employers feel guilty about their previous complaints regarding domestic help.
She seemed to genuinely care about Beatrice’s well-being, often commenting on how tired the lady of the house appeared and suggesting remedies for her frequent headaches. Her suggestions seemed so reasonable, so caring, that Jonathan began limiting the social events that had always been central to Beatrice’s happiness. The isolation began subtly. Elizabeth would mention to callers that Mrs.
Underwood was indisposed, suffering from one of her headaches. Gradually, Beatrice found herself spending more time alone with Elizabeth, depending increasingly on the servant’s company and care. It was during the fourth week of May that Beatrice first mentioned strange dreams—vivid, disturbing sleep filled with images of suffocation and falling. Elizabeth listened with sympathetic attention, suggesting that perhaps the gas lamp in the bedroom was burning improperly and affecting Mrs.
Underwood’s sleep. Her fingers worked expertly at the fixture’s mechanism, making adjustments she claimed would improve the air quality. What Beatrice couldn’t see was how those same skilled fingers could create a nearly invisible leak that would release just enough gas to cause disorientation and weakness without immediately threatening life. The first serious incident occurred on the night of May 29, 1904.
Jonathan was attending a business dinner in downtown Providence, leaving Beatrice alone with Elizabeth for the evening. After dinner, Elizabeth suggested they retire early, helped Beatrice prepare for bed, and ensured the bedroom was properly ventilated. The gas lamp burned with a steady, seemingly normal flame. Elizabeth kissed Beatrice’s forehead in a gesture that felt almost maternal before retiring to her own room.
Beatrice Underwood was found the next morning at the bottom of the main staircase, her neck broken from what appeared to be a tragic fall. She was wearing her silk nightgown and her grandmother’s gold bracelet, but her diamond earrings and sapphire brooch were missing from the jewelry box in her bedroom. Detective Captain William Brennan arrived at the Underwood mansion that gray May morning, expecting to document another tragic household accident. Victorian homes were notorious for such incidents: gas leaks, falls down steep staircases, accidents with coal furnaces.
His initial examination revealed what appeared to be a straightforward case of accidental death. Beatrice had apparently risen during the night and somehow lost her footing on the polished wooden stairs. Elizabeth provided a clear account of the evening’s events and explained that she had heard nothing unusual during the night. What Captain Brennan noted in his report, though he didn’t consider it significant at the time, were the distinctive scars on Elizabeth Hayes’s right hand.
When he asked about them, she explained that they were the result of a kitchen accident years earlier. The explanation seemed reasonable enough. Elizabeth remained with Jonathan through the difficult weeks following Beatrice’s funeral, helping him manage the household and cope with his grief. By late summer, however, Jonathan decided to move to smaller quarters downtown.
Elizabeth accepted the news with graceful resignation. On September 15, 1904, she departed the Underwood mansion with the same small leather satchel she had carried upon her arrival. Jonathan provided her with generous compensation and an excellent reference letter. She mentioned that she planned to seek employment in Hartford.
What Jonathan couldn’t have known was that Elizabeth’s departure from Providence was only temporary. She would return to Rhode Island within two years, though not to the same neighborhood or social circle where she might be recognized. The industrial expansion of the early 1900s had created opportunities for a woman with her skills and knowledge, particularly among the newly wealthy families who had built mansions in Providence’s expanding suburbs. Between 1906 and 1918, Providence would witness a disturbing pattern of household accidents involving the wives of prominent businessmen.
The incidents shared certain characteristics: they typically occurred when husbands were away on business, the victims were found by recently hired domestic servants, and small valuable items often went missing. But these similarities weren’t immediately apparent to investigators working individual cases separated by months or years. Elizabeth Hayes, now using the name Catherine Lynch, established herself in Hartford briefly before returning to Rhode Island in 1906. Her second Providence victim was Margaret Tillinghast, wife of a textile manufacturer, found on December 12, 1906, apparently overcome by gas fumes in her bedroom.
The ornate gas chandelier had malfunctioned during the night, filling the room with deadly vapors. Captain Brennan, now promoted to lead Providence’s detective division, investigated the death. What struck him as he interviewed Elizabeth was a vague sense of familiarity. Her scarred right hand, visible as she gestured during their conversation, seemed somehow familiar, though he couldn’t immediately place where he might have encountered her before.
When he mentioned this impression, Elizabeth explained that she had previously worked for the Underwood family and had spoken with police following Mrs. Underwood’s tragic fall. The connection seemed reasonable enough. Between 1907 and 1918, Elizabeth Hayes, using various names and slight modifications to her appearance, would claim thirteen more victims across Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut.
She developed an almost scientific approach to her crimes, varying her methods to avoid establishing recognizable patterns. Some women died in falls, others from gas leaks or electrical accidents. A few suffered what appeared to be heart attacks brought on by gradually administered poisons that mimicked natural illnesses. Her success depended on several factors.
She always worked as a live-in domestic, giving her intimate access to her victims’ routines and the mechanical systems of their homes. She chose victims who were already suffering from anxiety, depression, or physical ailments that made sudden death seem plausible. She moved frequently between cities and states, ensuring that no single police department would investigate multiple similar cases. Most importantly, domestic servants occupied an invisible position in upper-class households, essential to daily functioning but largely ignored by the families they served.
Police investigators rarely considered the possibility that a grieving servant might be responsible for her employer’s death. By 1918, Elizabeth Hayes had refined her methods to an art form that would have continued indefinitely if not for an unexpected complication. Her latest victim, Mrs. Eleanor Fitzgerald of Newport, had died in what appeared to be a tragic fall down the servant stairs.
Elizabeth, now calling herself Mary Sullivan, had been employed by the Fitzgerald family for only six weeks. What Elizabeth didn’t know was that Mrs. Fitzgerald’s nephew, Thomas Brennan Jr. , was a recent graduate of Harvard Law School who had developed an interest in forensic investigation.
Young Brennan had heard stories from his father, Detective Captain William Brennan, about the strange series of household accidents that seemed to plague Rhode Island’s wealthy families. When his aunt became another victim, Thomas decided to conduct his own informal investigation. Thomas began examining the physical evidence more carefully than local police had done. The servant’s stairs where his aunt had fallen were in excellent repair with new carpeting and a sturdy banister.
Eleanor Fitzgerald, though in her fifties, had been in good health with no history of balance problems. The supposed disturbance in the kitchen that had drawn her downstairs at midnight had left no evidence. More troubling was Thomas’s discovery that several valuable pieces of his aunt’s jewelry were missing from her bedroom. His legal training had taught him the importance of systematic investigation, so he began researching similar cases throughout New England.
What he discovered alarmed him deeply. Over the previous fourteen years, at least sixteen wives of prominent businessmen had died in household accidents, and in every case, the family had recently hired a new domestic servant who discovered the body. The servants were always women between forty and fifty, always carried excellent references, and always seemed devastated by their employers’ deaths. The breakthrough came when Thomas visited his father’s office in Providence and reviewed the old case files.
As Thomas read through the files, a pattern began to emerge that had been invisible when the cases were considered individually. Sixteen different investigations over fourteen years had documented conversations with domestic servants who bore distinctive scars on their right hands. Captain Brennan studied the files with growing amazement. The pattern was undeniable, but it seemed almost impossible to believe.
Could one woman have been responsible for sixteen deaths across four states over fourteen years? The descriptions varied slightly—different hair color, different names, different accents—but the age was always about the same, and those scars. It was Thomas who remembered the photograph. During his review of the Underwood case file, he had noticed a reference to photographic evidence taken at the scene.
The search for that photograph would lead the Brennans into the dusty archives of Providence’s police department, where sixteen years of evidence from unsolved cases waited to reveal their secrets. The photograph, though somewhat faded, clearly showed the three figures in the parlor of the Federal Hill mansion. Thomas examined it with a magnifying glass, studying every detail of Elizabeth Hayes’s face and posture. Even accounting for changes that sixteen years might bring, he was convinced that this was the same woman who had been working as Mary Sullivan in the Fitzgerald household.
But photographic evidence alone would not be sufficient to build a legal case against a woman who had operated under multiple identities across several states. Captain Brennan used his professional connections to expedite requests for case files from police departments in Hartford, Boston, Newport, and other cities. The breakthrough came in May 1920 when an employment agency in Hartford contacted Thomas about a woman named Helen Murphy who had been placed with a wealthy family in Stamford, Connecticut, just two months after Eleanor Fitzgerald’s death. The physical description matched Elizabeth Hayes exactly, including the telltale scars on her right hand.
Stanford detectives began monitoring the household where she worked. What the surveillance revealed was deeply disturbing: Helen Murphy was already implementing the isolation tactics that had preceded her previous crimes, and she had been observed spending long periods alone in the basement where the house’s gas and heating systems were located. The arrest took place on a bright June morning as Elizabeth was leaving the Whitman house to purchase groceries. Captain Brennan approached her from behind and identified himself as a police officer.
Her reaction was immediate and telling: rather than confusion or surprise, she displayed the calculating calm of someone who had always known this moment might come. “I suppose you finally figured it out,” she said quietly, setting down her basket and extending her hands to be handcuffed. “I wondered how long it would take. ” During the train journey back to Providence, when Captain Brennan asked why she had committed such terrible crimes, she turned to him with those pale blue eyes that had seemed so kind and understanding to her victims.
“You wouldn’t understand,” she said simply. “Those women had everything. Beautiful homes, devoted husbands, security, respect. They had lives that girls like me could never hope for.
And they spent their time complaining about how difficult it all was. ” The jewelry, she explained, was proof that she had taken something from them that they valued. Money was useful, but the real satisfaction was knowing that she had ended their ungrateful lives and taken their precious things as trophies. The trial of Elizabeth Hayes began in Providence Superior Court on October 3, 1920, drawing newspaper coverage throughout New England.
The prosecution presented a methodical case that linked Elizabeth to sixteen deaths across four states through a combination of physical evidence, witness testimony, and documentation of her movements between households. The photograph from the Underwood case served as crucial evidence, establishing Elizabeth’s identity and connecting her to the first known murder in the series. The most damaging testimony came from Mrs. Dorothy Whitman, Elizabeth’s intended final victim in Stamford, who described how Elizabeth had gradually isolated her from friends and family, claiming concern for her health while secretly undermining her confidence and independence.
A psychiatrist from Boston testified that Elizabeth had developed an elaborate fantasy of revenge against the social class she felt had rejected her, genuinely believing that her victims were ungrateful for their blessings. The jury deliberated for less than three hours before returning with their verdict. Elizabeth Hayes was found guilty on all sixteen counts of first-degree murder, making her one of the most prolific serial killers in American legal history. She was sentenced to death by electrocution.
Elizabeth Hayes was executed on March 15, 1922, exactly eighteen years after she had first entered the Underwood mansion and begun her killing spree. Prison records indicate that she remained unrepentant until the end, expressing no regret for her victims. Her final words spoken to the prison chaplain were reportedly, “They never deserved what they had anyway. ”
The case of Elizabeth Hayes became a landmark in American criminal investigation, demonstrating the importance of communication between law enforcement agencies and systematic recordkeeping.
The pattern of her crimes had been visible for years, but only when Captain Brennan and his son Thomas compiled information from multiple jurisdictions did the full scope of her deadly career become apparent. In the aftermath of the trial, employment agencies began requiring more thorough background checks for domestic servants, police departments improved their recordkeeping and communication systems, and wealthy families became more cautious about hiring household help without proper verification of references and employment history. Perhaps most disturbing was the realization that Elizabeth’s success had depended largely on her victims’ own kindness and trust. The women she killed had welcomed her into their homes, confided their fears and anxieties to her, and treated her with the respect and consideration that any employee deserved.
Their generosity and humanity had been turned against them by someone who saw their kindness not as virtue, but as weakness to be exploited.