• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Horrible 'Hippie' Murder (Denver; November 1967)

Saucerian

Better not touch the hull pal, it's still hot.
Joined
May 8, 2018
Messages
109
I am hesitant to give the whole details of this crime, which, surprisingly, gave details, in a mainstream, "family" newspaper, that one would expect to find in a detective magazine.

To the best of my memory, this horrible murder occurred in the latter part of 1967, but as with another case here on the message board, sometimes I can be off with dates in my memories as to dates.

I think this case happened in the USA.

A woman, allegedly under the infuence of LSD allegedly stabbed her baby to death in a bath tub, and I won't give those additional details.

I've done some searches on newspapers.com, and have not been able to find the case, but all these years since, I have wondered what court action took place, and what happened to the woman accused of this most horrible crime.
 
There were many stories of 'LSD murders' back then. Babies wrapped in foil and roasted alive in ovens, that sort of thing. Urban legends.
 
There were many stories of 'LSD murders' back then. Babies wrapped in foil and roasted alive in ovens, that sort of thing. Urban legends.
It would be interesting to find a true case of this common ul though, with newspaper sources. I know of someone who ended up in a wheelchair, allegedly from walking off a building while on the influence of a psychedelic. The way it was told to me, they 'believed they could fly'. I've always thought that was a ul.
 
Since the last 2 posts, I have done some net searches and read up a lot on urban legends related to LSD, but have none on a baby murdered while its mother was under the influence of LSD.

However, crimes committed while a person is under the influence of drugs, are common enough that manuals for defending people accused of such crimes have been written for attorneys to use in their defense of clients so accused.

It's going to take some time, but I do have a date and a source to begin checking out all the details of this case, which I would not call an urban legend, although it could be possible that some urban legends, either true or false, could have come out of this case, and I just have not found them so far.

For anyone who can surf newspapers herer is what I found as my starting point:

From the Wisconsin State Journal, Madison Wisconsin, 24 Nov, 1967 page 6.

"Slashes on wrists killed hippie baby."

The dpf copy of the story I saved became blurry when I enlarged it, so it will have to be redone as a JPG file.

Some earlier reports relating to the mutilation of the body were dismissed as false, so any urban legends in that regard were probably nipped in the bud, but once again, some stories can persistantly be retold.

However, I would not call this case an urban legend.
 
The incident occurred in Denver on November 22, 1967.

The mother's name was Carol Metherd. She was a mother in her mid- to late-20s. She was estranged from her husband - James Schellhammer, a copy editor with the Rocky Mountain News.

She was cited as the owner of the house in which the incident occurred.

The house was variably described (if at all ... ) as a "hippie house" or a "hippie halfway house."

The child's name was given as William / "Billy" Metherd. He was 2 years old.

The boy was found dead in the bathtub, with a massive wound to his chest. The cutting instrument employed was described as a bottle, but accounts vary as to whether it was a soft drink, beer, or wine bottle.

Ms. Metherd was found on the bathroom floor, in a hunched-up / "fetal" position.

The only allusions to drugs I could find were:

- an alleged comment by a policeman or detective at the scene to the effect, "This is the kind of thing an acid head might do."
- an alleged police response (at the scene) to a reporter's question whether drugs were involved to the effect, "That's a strong possibility."

Ms. Metherd was described as either in silent shock or mumbling incoherently to herself. She was charged with 1st-degree murder circa December 2, 1967. She entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, whereupon she was taken to a psychiatric hospital for evaluation. I haven't found anything further / later than this.
 
Enolagaia, thanks for posting the story above. It shows that my memory is good but not infallable. And, whether or not LSD or other drugs were involved, I don't think the case could be written off as an untrue urban legend.
 
For the record ... When retrieving pages from newspapers.com, there's usually an option to dump the OCR text content as a mass of text.

If you invest the time and effort to transplant the messy OCR text (some of which is sheer gibberish) into a text file, you can usually tease out the disconnected passages comprising a particular article on the page.

This quick 'n dirty (or at least "dirty") approach is how I pieced together the factoids I posted above.
 
EnolaGaia, I have done the same thing many times myself, opening a web page with the word pad, and wading through through all the formatting guides, to get to the actual content, my most often doing this when a file will not open any other way.
 
Before I proceed further with this thread, a question for the Moderators:

I did find one of the first reports on this crime, and thought I had posted it here as a photo file.

But, I can't find that post.

I do remember seeing the post, with the photo file attachment, and assumed the post had been made, but after logging out and later logging in, the post was not on this thread.

Was there some problem with the post that the Moderators removed it?

Or did I just not finalize the post by pushing the "post reply" button?

I would think that if the moderators had found any problem with the content of what I posted (or, incorrectly thought that I had posted) that they would have notified me, but so far, I have received no such notification, and will not resume adding what I have found on my newspaper searches, until I am sure there is not any content problem with the moderators.
 
I'm not sure you ever succeeded in posting whatever it was.

There's no record of any of your posts being deleted (here or anywhere else on the forum), and I can't find any trace of an attachment being deleted from any of your posts.
 
Thanks for the quick reply, EnolaGaia. I'll re-post the photo file, and be certain that I press the "post reply" button this time.

I'm attaching the first report, from the Grand Junction Colorado Daily Sentinel of 22 Nov, 1967, p. 14.
Baby 60 percent.JPG
 
Well, I definitely pressed the post attachment button this time.

I'm posting the second report, from the Wisconsin State Journal of Nov 24, 1967, p.6.

I also have a third report which is not ready for posting at this time, but I will post before much longer.
Wisconsin_State_Journal_Fri__Nov_24__1967_.jpg
 
I definitely saw and reviewed those newspaper clippings (out on the 'Net) when I was researching the story a couple of weeks ago, but I don't recall them ever being posted here on the forum.
 
EnolaGaia, thanks for the reply. I have not figured out how to edit the title of this thread, if that is allowed, although since we don't really know for sure that LSD was involved in the murder, I think it would be better to delete that term from the thread title.

I had reservations and doubts about starting a thread on this horrible crime story, both because it was so horrible, and out of respect for any surviving family of the victim, and the killer.

And, I knew that it was possible some people would dismiss it as an Urban Legend, although I have done some net searches on crimes related to LSD and other drugs, and dead babies, and have not found this case listed. It seems to have been forgotten in the decades since 1967.

And, who is to say if it would have been better forgotten, or remembered?

Posting about this crime has not been in any way an enjoyble experience, such as the Chris Hodge song about Flying Saucers, or the friendly voice telling Daniel Fry, "Better not touch the hull pal, it's still hot."
 
I finally located a later news story. It was published in the Brownsville Herald (Brownsville TX) on January 25, 1968. Here's my reconstruction of the text. I found it readily after determining the woman's full name (for legal purposes) was Carolyn Anne Metherd.

Hippie Is Committed In Slaying

DENVER (UPI) — A 24-year-old hippie mother, who plunged a jagged wine bottle into the chest of her young son after voices told her to do “terrible things" was ordered committed to Colorado State Hospital Wednesday

Dist. Judge Don Bowman ruled the woman, Mrs. Carolyn Anne Metherd, insane after hearing nearly two hours of testimony from psychiatrists and police. She was charged with the death of her 2-year-old son, William, at a hippie house in Denver last Nov. 21. Psychiatrists testified the woman told them she heard “voices ... telling her to do terrible things.” She had sought medical help three days before the slaying, but decided against it when the voices “told her she didn’t need to see a psychiatrist.” Dr. James MacDonald, who examined the woman at Colorado Psychopathic Hospital, said Mrs. Metherd told him she had slain her son by cutting his wrists and then plunging the bottle into his chest “He’s dead,” Dr. MacDonald said the woman told him. “I killed him because some people were going to tear me apart. It wasn’t so bad they were going to tear me apart, but they were going to tear him apart in the worse possible way.” A detective testifying for the prosecution said Mrs. Metherd told him during a narcotics raid 17 days before the slaying that she used drugs—including LSD, marijuana and peyote— when she was depressed. “She said that was almost every day,” detective James C. Jones testified. Dr. Abraham Heller, another of the psychiatrists, said Mrs. Metherd told him the “voices” commanded her to get some razor blades to cut the boy’s wrists. He said she couldn’t find any in the house and went out to buy some, “but somehow got lost.” The woman returned without the razor blades and substituted the broken bottle, he said. Officials said the woman admitted using the hallucinogenic drug peyote at the age of 17 and was smoking marijuana at the age of 18 while living with a Los Angeles hippie group.

SOURCE: https://newspaperarchive.com/brownsville-herald-jan-25-1968-p-22/
 
EnolaGaia, thanks for the reply. I have not figured out how to edit the title of this thread, if that is allowed, although since we don't really know for sure that LSD was involved in the murder, I think it would be better to delete that term from the thread title. ...

You can't (edit the title once the thread is started), but I can.

I've modified the title to something more generic. I included the "hippie" bit because that's the dominant terminology used at the time in describing Ms. Metherd and the context of the murder.
 
Thanks for the quick replies EnolaGaia, and for modifying the thread title, and doing more detective work to find more data on the case.

So, the woman admitted kiling her son, and also to taking hallucinogenic drugs, including LSD. But, no mention of any blood tests being done soon enough after the crime, to know if she was on LSD at the time it was committed.
 
... So, the woman admitted kiling her son, and also to taking hallucinogenic drugs, including LSD. But, no mention of any blood tests being done soon enough after the crime, to know if she was on LSD at the time it was committed.

Yep - that's the way I read it.

According to the January 1968 news item she confessed to using a variety of drugs "when she was depressed", and that this occurred "almost every day." However, there's nothing in the story to indicate she was confirmed to be high on any drugs the day she killed her son. As you noted, none of the texts we've found to date ever mention testing her for drugs at the time she was taken into custody.

NOTE: Both peyote and LSD remain detectable for anywhere from 12 - 15 up to 24 - 36 hours using today's detection capabilities. I'm not sure there was a reliable or widely used method for detecting either one of these hallucinogens in 1967, so there may not have been any rush to test Ms. Metherd for either of those substances.

The various effects she noted (voices, confusion, etc.) are consistent with (e.g.) schizophrenia - with or without additional drug influence.
 
Thanks for another very good post, EnolaGaia. Here is another newspaper report, this one from The Daily Sentinel, Wed, Dec 20, 1967.
The_Daily_Sentinel_Wed__Dec_20__1967_.JPG
 
Oh, the past! How on earth could a reputable newspaper use such an undefinable term as "hippie"?
This sad tale of a mentally ill young mother does seem to have fed urban legends of horrific baby abuse (gah! microwaves!) and a preachy episode of "Dragnet." Joe Friday laments that a mother "on marijuana" left a child in the tub and the kiddo drowned. The gorey horror and mental illness elements were left out of that simplistic episode--just a strict message--"don't bathe your baby if you'e a hippie drug chick."
 
Back
Top