On September 16, 1922, two mushroom-picking New Jersey lovers wandered down an abandoned road and stumbled across a scene so grisly it soon became a national landmark. People from all over the country flocked to see where two dead bodies were discovered under a crabapple tree—that of the local reverend and a singer in his choir. For years, the two had been engaged in a passionate affair.
Reverend Edward Hall and Eleanor Mills, both dead of gunshot wounds, had been positioned to lay in embrace, with steamy love letters scattered around them. “Oh, honey, I am fiery today. Burning, flaming love,” read a letter from Mills to the reverend. “[The Lord] is always near—in whatever we do, even in physical closeness … for we know He meant for His children to taste deeply of all things,” read another.
It wasn’t long before these incriminating missives were splashed across newspapers and read aloud by a blushing court clerk, revealing an intensely spiritual romance. Hall and Mills seemed to believe that, far from removing them from divine grace, their bond pulled them into its orbit. They compared their romance to prayer and exchanged notes through a hymnal. And it was Mrs. Mills’ songs of worship that had entranced the minister. When Reverend Hall wrote sermons in his study at St. John the Evangelist in New Brunswick, he could hear the soprano’s voice drifting above the others into the rafters. There was “something divine about the way [she sang] hymns,” he thought. As she climbed octaves, the Holy Spirit came over him, and then the words poured from his pen.
The killer or killers presumably knew that Mills’ vocal talents had attracted the minister, removing her tongue and larynx after death.
Wide-eyed Americans eagerly consumed news about the case. So did narrow-eyed religious figures, including the popular preacher Billy Sunday. The evangelist chalked the affair up to a jazz-mad generation, known for its pleasure-seeking ways. The year of the murders, dance halls, racetracks, and speakeasies abounded—sure signs that the End Times were nigh, according to Sunday. But what really peeved the evangelist and other like-minded authorities was the fact that the couple had laid claim to religion. It was one thing for two people to commit adultery; it was quite another for them to commit it in the name of their Christian faith—especially at a time when Protestantism was rapidly modernizing.
