George Jefferson Hassell: Serial Family Annihilator
It was early December 1927 when several residents of the small Texas town of Farwell descended on the Hassell farm just outside of town. George Hassell was selling off most of his and his family’s things so that he could raise money to follow his wife, Susie, and their eight children to Blair, Oklahoma.
But many were interested in more than just bargain farm equipment and used clothes. The Hassells’ friends and neighbors were curious — or suspicious — about how quickly Susie and the kids had left. She hadn’t mentioned it to anyone, or even said goodbye.
The Hassells had moved to Farwell only two years earlier, not long after getting married. The two seemed like night and day: George was bawdy, a heavy drinker with “an eye for the ladies” and a short temper, whereas Susie was a devout Christian who read her Bible daily.
The circumstances of their marriage was odd, too. Susie had been married to George’s brother, Thomas, who had been kicked to death by a mule while the brothers were working in the field. George had stayed on to help his brother’s widow — who had seven children at the time — bring in the crops.
After a while, the two married, and six months later, Susie gave birth to a little boy they named Samuel. Soon afterwards, the big family had moved to Farwell, about 60 miles south of Amarillo, and rented a farm.
At the auction, the Hassells’ neighbors found more to be suspicious about. One family’s wagon wheel sank in the soft dirt, as if the ground had been recently disturbed. In addition, there was a new, crudely-built root cellar against one wall of the house — which was odd, since who would build a root cellar just days before moving away?
Inside the house, bidders found trunks and suitcases full of women’s and children’s clothes. They also found Susie’s religious books and pamphlets — which she would never have gotten rid of.
The auction netted George $3,500.
Soon, the property owner rented the farm out to new tenants, but George told them he needed to clean up a room before he could move out. He stacked suitcases against one wall and scrubbed the floor.
But he didn’t leave. The new tenants generously allowed him to stay on for a few days more.
Then, one night after dinner, he told the new tenants he was feeling sick and went to bed early. Minutes later, from his bed, he told them to get the doctor and the sheriff.
The two men were fetched; inside, they found George in his bed, blood pooling around him. He had three self-inflicted stab wounds to his chest and abdomen.
They took him to the nearest hospital, where the surgeons stitched him up as best as they could. Despite his serious wounds, George seemed in good spirits, laughing and joking with the doctors and nurses.
The authorities attempted to send a telegram to Susie, to tell her about her husband’s injuries, but they soon discovered that there was no Susie Hassell in Blair.
This, combined with the family’s suspicious disappearance, led the sheriff’s office to search the Hassells’ former home. In the room where George had been cleaning, they found blood spatter on the wall behind the stacked suitcases.
This alarmed the lawmen. They immediately focused their attention on the freshly dug “root cellar” beside the house. They removed the wooden planks and began digging.
There, they uncovered the remains of Susie and her children. Their bodies had been carefully arranged in their mass grave, wrapped in blankets and still in their nightclothes. Beneath Susie’s body lay an axe.
Susie’s face and skull had been severely crushed. The two older boys — Alton, 21, and Virgil, 15 — had been shot with a shotgun. Russell, the third oldest boy at age 11, had his skull crushed by an axe. All the victims except Alton had stockings tied around their necks.
George, now released from the hospital but still weak, immediately confessed, saying, “I did it; I did it.” He asked if he could wait until he had recovered his strength before making a statement.
George’s confessions expose a monster
Every able-bodied man in Farwell volunteered to help dig graves for Susie and the children. At the graveside service, the District Attorney spoke, urging the crowd not to resort to violence.
But there was a lot of anger among the good people of Farwell. George had to be moved around different area jails under cover of darkness for his own protection.
True to his word, once he had recovered his strength, George gave a detailed confession to the authorities, and, later, to a reporter for the Abilene Morning News.
George told them how he had lived a life of chaos from the beginning. His father was a violent abuser, and when George was only 13, had beaten his mother to death. George ran away after that and became a drifter. He couldn’t seem to hold down a job — usually because he kept stealing and ripping off his employers or customers. He enlisted in the Army, then deserted to join the Navy under an assumed name, before getting caught and serving time in a military prison.
He also went through a string of failed marriages; Susie was his fifth wife.
He told them that on the night of Dec. 5, he and Susie had argued. She had accused him, he claimed, of having “an affair” with his 13-year-old niece/step-daughter, Maudie. He said he had gone out to the barn and drunk some whiskey, then returned to the house, where they continued the argument.
He said he picked up a ball-peen hammer — where it had come from, he didn’t know — and hit her in the face with it twice. Then he strangled her, and when that didn’t finish her off, he wrapped a stocking around her neck. Finally, he hit her in the head with an axe.
He said that once he realized what he’d done, he decided he needed to finish off the rest of the family. He began strangling the children with stockings, starting with the youngest, Samuel, who wasn’t quite 2 years old. Next was Nannie Martha, 4, then Johnnie, 6, and David, 7.
But once he got to 11-year-old Russell, the boy woke up and put up a fight. That woke up 15-year-old Virgil, who also fought with him, and at one point, hit him several times with a brick. But George was able to get the shotgun and shoot Virgil with it. Russell almost escaped, but George caught him and choked him out. When Russell continued gasping for air, George hit him in the head with the axe.
His last victim of the night was Maudie, the girl he had been accused of molesting.
Once he’d killed everyone, he began digging their mass grave next to the house and waited for Alton to return from his job in New Mexico (Susie’s oldest daughter, 24-year-old Nora, was living in California with her husband at the time. Though she had planned to return for the holidays, she had been unexpectedly delayed).
Four days later, when Alton returned home, George told him that the rest of the family had left to visit a relative. He fixed the young man dinner, and the two stayed up late playing cards.
Once Alton was asleep, George snuck into his room, put the shotgun barrel against his skull, and pulled the trigger, splattering blood all over the wall.
But perhaps the most shocking part of his confession was yet to come.
More victims
George had more to get off his chest. He told authorities about another crime, a decade earlier, in California: he’d killed his former common-law wife and three adopted children.
But George refused to give any further details. The Parmer County, Texas, authorities contacted the California authorities, but they didn’t know of any cases matching that description.
Luckily, the Hassell family murders had garnered nationwide attention. In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a woman named Gertrude Hoffman was reading the sordid story in her local paper.
The name “George Hassell” had seemed familiar to her, and when she saw his picture in the paper, she remembered who he was.
Ten years ago, her sister, Marie Vogel, had been living in Whittier, California, with George Hassell and three children. Gertrude recognized him because she had visited them at their farm. But not long after her visit, Marie went missing. The only word Gertrude got about her sister was from George, saying that Marie had taken the children and moved to Australia.
After seeing George’s picture in the paper, Gertrude contacted the Texas authorities immediately. They then contacted the Whittier police, who were able to track the family down using George’s work records.
Interviews with their former neighbors revealed that indeed, Marie and the three kids had suddenly gone missing 10 years earlier, and that George told them they had moved to San Francisco.
The night after they went missing, the neighbors said they saw George carrying a heavy trunk into the garage, and later, several other small bundles. They said they saw him hauling out dirt from the garage for three days, and that they smelled the fumes of burning rags coming from his kitchen.
When George was confronted with these facts, he confessed. He told police that Marie had believed in Spiritualism, and had had visions of treasure buried under their garage. He said she made him dig up the floor to look for the “treasure.”
He said that, like with Susie, he had just suddenly lost his temper with her and hit her over the head with a club, then choked her to death, first with his hands and then with a rope. He then killed the three children — ages 8, 3, and 1 — the same way.
He confessed to burying them in the “treasure hole,” a job that took him three days.
Since the house had long since been demolished, he drew them a map of the property indicating where he had buried them. Indeed, following his map, police found the remains of a woman and three children. In a gruesome similarity to the Hassells, their skulls were crushed and each had a rope around their neck.
Was he insane?
On Jan. 26, 1927, George Hassell’s trial began. Though he had confessed to killing 13 people, he was only indicted for the murder of Alton.
Farwell and its sister city across the New Mexico border, Texico, took on what was described as a “carnival atmosphere.”
Though Hassell pled guilty — and even requested the death penalty — the jury had to decide on his mental state. So he was examined by several psychiatric experts, who declared him a sociopath. But that was not enough to qualify him for an insanity defense.
The jury only took 30 minutes to find him guilty, and then two hours to determine his sentence: death by electrocution.
When the judge handed down the sentence, George said, “Thank you, your honor.”
California, hearing that he was to be put to death in Texas, declined to try him for the murders he committed there.
While in prison, he was described as a model prisoner, always cheerful and cracking jokes. He wove doilies as gifts to visitors, fellow inmates, and even the members of the jury who had sent him to death row. He said his time in prison had been the best time of his life.
When asked why he had killed his victims, he said he didn’t know. He pointed to his head and said that “something was wrong up here.”
On Feb. 10, 1928, George was sent to the electric chair at the Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville. He was smiling and calm to the very end, and his final words were that he was prepared to meet his maker. It took three jolts to kill him; he was finally declared dead at 12:29 a.m. His remains were interred in the Huntsville Prison cemetery.
