Murder Will Out

The proverb “murder will out” became a reality for one Leesburg woman. She had harbored the secret of her murderous deed for twenty-five years and refused to die until she confessed all her sins. An 1811 edition of The Lady’s Miscellany carried her deathbed confession.

In 1786, the body of nineteen-year old Joseph Hoge was found in the dense forest just outside of Leesburg. In the dark of the night, his throat was slashed from ear-to-ear, his life blood draining quickly and silently into the forest floor. The vicious act was the work of a strong, angry, unstable person and the surrounding community was immediately afraid that a madman was among them.

The case remained unsolved for twenty-five years. Although a jury of inquest was unable to determine the murderer, suspicion fell on the boy’s mother, Betty Hoge, whose physical strength from years of hard labor surpassed that of many men. When Betty ran to a neighbor’s shouting “Joe is bleeding to death,” her short gown was splattered with blood and a bloody handprint stained her left sleeve as if she had attempted to wipe the guilt from the hand that committed the act.

Betty Hoge died in 1811. As was the Scottish custom, three attendants took turns waiting for Mrs. Hoge to draw her last breath. Late into the night, an attendant determined that Mrs. Hoge had finally passed and called in the other two to help lay her out in preparation for burial.

Mrs. Hoge suddenly revived and “said she could not die until she had communicated something that lay heavy on her mind.” She asked that everyone except one attendant leave the room so she could confess her sins before dying. That person was very afraid of Mrs. Hoge and refused to be left in the room alone with her. The other two huddled in the safety of the doorway as the feared woman confessed her sins.

Years earlier Mrs. Hoge suffocated her husband with a feather bed, but it was not this act that weighed heavily on her guilty conscience. It was the murder of her son, her own flesh and blood, that kept the old woman from resting in peace.

As a young child, Joseph Hoge witnessed his father’s murder. The years passed and the son grew into a strong, formidable man. He threatened to tell of his mother’s evil deeds if she did not give in to his every whim and fancy. On the night of his death, Joseph left the cabin for his usual evening activities at the nearby grog. His mother lay in wait a short distance from the cabin in the dense forest lining the path to town. When young Joe passed, she jumped him from behind, slashing his throat from ear-to-ear in a cut so deep it nearly decapitated him.

For many years Betty Hoge lived feared and suspected by the residents of Leesburg. Her guilt festered and grew as she lived out her days isolated in her cabin in the dense forest on the edges of Leesburg, until the day she revived herself from the cold grasps of death to confess her sins. Twenty-four hours after her grisly confession, she finally died. The undertakers took no chances of her once again reviving and quickly buried her.