Tragic Tale of Clara and Her Kentucky Grave Site

Cemetery gates of St Stephen’s Cemetery in Kentucky

 

Terror grew in the tragedy which shadowed over the residence of Anton Fischer in Newport, Kentucky during July 1919. Ghouls exhumed the body of his pretty fifteen-year-old daughter Clara, who had died from appendicitis. They snatched the body from its grave in St. Stephen’s Cemetery near the Alexandria Pike at Fort Thomas, Kentucky on the night of her burial. They later replaced her body back into the opened grave site.

This all led to talk about a mysterious “woman in black” who stalked through the gloomy chapters like a spirit from an evil world, and her accomplices who were believed to have violated the resting place of the dead. The detective bureau began investigating the crime. They noted a gray automobile was seen near the cemetery by several men just about the same time the mysterious woman in black frightened away the sexton.

A pin was taken from the shroud—or the cloth used to hold the body in place known among undertakers as a ‘body napkin’—and had been removed. There were stains and mud on the clothing, mostly the stockings and slippers. The body had been mistreated much to the fears of the Fischer family. It was placed back into the coffin, lid closed, with the grave still open.

The girl’s left arm was broken, presumably when the body was exhumed by the ghouls in the silence of the night and dragged to the shelter of a tree several yards away from the grave. A match found in the grave was yet another clue.

Detectives were also confronted with the problem of trying to explain the disappearance of a white lily that was place at the burial in the hands of Clara Fischer. It was believed the mysterious woman possessed either an insane desire, or religious fanaticism to enter the cemetery in the still hours of the night to disturb the rest of the dead in its grave.

They made plans to exhume the body a second time to determine the extent of its mistreatment at the hands of the ghouls according to the theory of the detectives. Fred Blye, the sexton, told how he was frightened from the cemetery at 9:00 PM one evening by the sudden appearance of the “woman in black” at his side while he was digging another grave several hundred yards from the grave of Clara Fischer.

Wearing a black robe of mourning and a curious hat, which reminded him of “the devil’s cap and bells” she told him her late visit to be for mourning a dead relative. Blye dropped his tools, quickly left the cemetery, and returned the following morning. He found the shovel, its handle broken, the spade and the pick—all tools of the professional gravediggers, lying beside the open grave of Clara Fischer.

Witnesses had various descriptions of the mysterious woman. Her peculiar hat, it was said, was of black straw. Persons living near the cemetery said they recognized the description of the woman and saw a likeness of her proceeding toward the cemetery. They claimed she was dressed all in white instead of wearing the three-cornered black hat and dress of mourning.

This was the most unusual crime in the annuals of Kentucky since the murder of Pearl Bryan, whose body was found within a mile of the scene of the ghoul’s operations. The topic was on everyone’s tongue in the neighborhood and surrounding countryside. Hundreds of curious sightseers visited St. Stephens Cemetery and haunted the outskirts of the part of the graveyard containing Clara Fischer’s grave which had been refilled. Souvenir hunters carried away twigs of trees, and clods of earth from the cemetery property.

The detectives questioned many suspects in the case. One of them was a man—a deformed hunchback named Henry Saalwachter—the former grave digger at the cemetery. The man stood just over five feet tall and had never married. Saalwachter was arrested but later acquitted.

Possibility that there might be accomplices in the desecration of the grave other than the “woman in black” and a man who may have been hired by her to open Clara Fischer’s grave added to the theories which many people entertained regarding the motives of the ghastly crime. A Newport woman who suffered from deformities had been told by a fortune teller that a deformity of the kind could be cured if rubbed with a cloth or rag taken from the attire of a dead person.

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Detectives continued to question several men who were seen near the cemetery and remained on the lookout for the gray automobile to unravel the crime. Witnesses also noted they saw two men wearing clay-stained khaki trousers on the Three Mile Creek road about 100 yards where the grave was opened. They were about 25 years old, wore white shirts and straw hats. They avoided his gaze as slowed down his horse when he drove past them. Were they the grave robbers? The case remains unsolved.

St Stephen’s Catholic Church Cemetery
1523 Alexandria Pike

Ft Thomas KY  41075

 

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