For the Love of Ella ~ Law & Order in Itasca County 1911

10.8.2023

Stillwater prison photo of Vincent Wood ~ 1911

On April 19, 1911, Vincent Murphy was shot and killed by Vincent Wood in Wirt, Minnesota. Wood was sentenced for life, but eventually married the woman he believed he had defended.

The Characters

Vincent Murphy – 37.  He was a camp foreman for the Namakan Lumber Company. His permanent address was in Minneapolis. Lillian, his bride of ten months, had spent the early spring with Vincent in the north woods where he had overseen a log drive. She returned to Minneapolis on Sunday April 16, and Vincent was expected to join her by the end of April.

Ella Wood – 40. She was the wife of James Wood and mother of their five children: Lowell, Altie, Goldie, Olga, and James. Based on the birth places of the children, the family had moved from Iowa to Nebraska and then to Wisconsin between 1894 and1905. The 1905 Wisconsin State Census has the Woods living in Gay Mills, WI. James was listed as a farmer. His younger half-brother, Vincent, was living with them.

No record of the Wood family is found on a 1910 census, but in April 1911, Ella appears to be separated from James. She and the children were living with Vincent Wood in Wirt. The pair was managing the kitchen of a boarding house and had resided there for at least six months.

Vincent Wood – 25. He is the half-brother of James. He is known to have resided with James and Ella Wood in1905. According to the Grand Rapids Herald-Review dated 4-26-1911, he and his sister-in-law Ella Wood were living “as husband and wife.”

The Crime

Murder at Wirt ~ Itasca News 4-22-1911

“Another murder affair at Wirt has brought attention to that spot on the map forty miles north of Deer River, at the terminus of the northwest branch of the Minneapolis & Rainy River Railroad.

The victim is Vincent Murphy, an old woods and river foreman who of late years has been employed by the Namakan Lumber Company and was in charge of that company’s log drive at Wirt when he met his death.

The report is that while Murphy had his crew and wanigan [boat used to cook and feed loggers while on the river] in the town he was about the hamlet considerably.  On Wednesday evening he had been missing for several hours and a search for him was instituted.  At about 9 o’clock of that evening [timeline incorrect] his body was found by Ole Nelson and another river driver, lying on a brush pile, and partly concealed by brush on the edge of the right of way of the branch railroad running to Dora Lake, at a point about a hundred rods from the station.

The news of the tragedy was phoned by D.M. Price, superintendent for the Namakan Company, to the M&RR office, here, and a special train with undertaker Herreid aboard was dispatched to the scene and brought the remains down yesterday.  The body is at the morgue and the marks are plain that the bullet that caused his death entered his chest just below the throat from over the left shoulder and passed out right about two inches to the right of the right breast, lodging against the suspender buckle.  The bullet still clung to the shirt in a clot of blood where it stopped.

This morning by special train, Sheriff Riley, Coroner Russell, Marshal Fraelick and others went to Wirt and made an investigation.  It was found that Murphy had his mackinaw on though the day was warm; that he had no business to take him up that road; he was sober, and had been associating with one Vincent Wood and a woman living with him, Ella Wood, people of unsavory reputation living at Wirt; two shots were heard in the direction of the spot where the body was found, Wednesday afternoon. [timeline incorrect]

The sheriff and party returned by the special train this afternoon bringing under arrest as suspects Vincent Wood and Ella Wood, and as witnesses, Jack Ebe, Charles Goreing and Zade Cochran.”

Suspicion pointed to Vincent Wood as the murderer. Ella Wood was questioned but not arrested.

The Investigation and the Trial

The primary focus of the investigation was observations of several other Namakan employees, including Horace Carnahan and Zade Cochran.

Horace Carnahan who oversaw another camp in the town of Wirt for the Namakan Lumber Company, said that he was also in Wirt waiting for supplies. He said he saw Murphy there two or three times and on Wednesday evening when the crime was supposed to have taken place, heard two shots about 9 o’clock from the direction of the river. 

Carnahan thought nothing of it at the time and an hour later he went up to the room he shared with Zade Cochran. When he entered, he found Cochran awake and concerned about a conversation he had heard from his room about Vincent Murphy. Cochran believed he heard Ella Wood and Vincent Wood discussing what Vincent Wood might have hit when he had fired his gun earlier in the evening. The next morning, Carnahan and Cochran looked around town for Murphy, but couldn’t find him. It was then that a search was organized, and Murphy’s body was found the following day. In October 1911, the grand jury at Grand Rapids indicted Vincent Wood for the murder of Vincent Murphy.

The trial of Vincent Wood started on November 9, 1911, in district court before Judge McClenahan at Grand Rapids.  Nearly two dozen witnesses were subpoenaed in this case, and two special venires were needed to select the jury. The men selected as jurors were Charles A. Aldrich, A.E. Durham, E.R. Elliot, F.W. Estabrook, A. Haglee, William Hanson, John C. McKusick, L.F. Roman, Henry Simpson, John Van Cotter, Henry Washburn, and William Willis.

Opening statements began on Tuesday the 14^th.  According to several local papers, even though there was only circumstantial evidence, there was definitive sentiment against Wood. 

The testimony of “Cochran was the strongest against Wood.  Others testified to hearing the shots and comparison of Wood’s guns made a strong chain of evidence against the accused.

He said he heard a murmur of voices in the bedroom below; that he could distinguish the voices of the defendant, Mrs. Wood and the chatter of her little children; that he could catch a word now and then when Mrs. Wood and the defendant talked. The floor of the room he occupied was also the ceiling of the barroom, the witness stated, and that he became interested when these words were mentioned and placed his ear to one of the cracks.

After that, the first thing he heard was Mrs. Wood saying ‘Vince, you never shot at him at all.  You shot up in the air.’

Wood then replied: ‘I didn’t.  I shot at him, and I shot to kill the—’

Mrs. Wood then asked, ‘Which side of the track was he on?’

Wood: ‘I know which side of the track he was on.’

Mrs. Wood: ‘I’m going to have some fun with Murphy in the morning when he comes back.’

The witness said the balance of the conversation was unintelligible, it being just a confusing murmur…” [GRHR 11-22-1911]

The Verdict

The jury began deliberations Friday evening November 17^th and on Saturday at 9:00 o’clock, returned a verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree. Less than two hours later, Judge McClenahan sentenced Vincent Wood to serve the balance of his natural life in the state prison at Stillwater at hard labor. 

“It is presumed he [Vincent Wood] became jealous of Murphy believing he was paying too much attention to her.  The arguments were attended by a large crowd and much interest in the case had been taken through the trial. Wood took his sentence very calmly. [Itasca News 11-18-1911]

In October 1916, Wood’s attorney presented information to the Pardon Board in hopes of an appeal for a pardon or sentence commutation of his client’s lifelong sentence. The attorney claimed that Wood had attempted to play a practical joke on his friend Jacob Ebe and had accidentally shot a bullet that hit Vincent Murphy. No action was taken by the Pardon Board.

Fifteen years later, another hearing on Wood’s application for a pardon was held, and the board denied his application for parole.

The Continued Relationship

Twenty-seven years after Vincent Wood killed a man he allegedly thought was romantically interested in Ella Wood, the woman he loved, they were together again.  It is likely that he was paroled in October 1936, and after James Wood died in Canada in 1937, Ella and Vincent were free to marry.  The ceremony took place on April 6, 1938 in Polk County, Minnesota.

We can only speculate as to how and when they stayed in touch during the intervening years. After the trial and imprisonment of Vincent, Ella returned to her husband James, and they made their home in Canada, at least for a while.  The 1921Canada Census indicates the Wood family was together in Winnipeg.  In 1928, Ella returned to northwestern Minnesota. 

By 1940 Vincent and Ella were farming in the community of Warren. No children were living with them. Vincent died July 28,1950 at the age of sixty-five. Ella was eighty-years old when she died two years later. They are buried at the Greenwood Cemetery in Warren, Minnesota.