“BELDING followed her from that room to the front room, in which the murder was committed with a shoemaker’s hammer.”
Sometimes people can separate from the world and be uninterrupted from delusions. They needn’t even move away–they just disappear inside themselves. That can lead to a dangerous, fever dream of a life, one in which a monster grows undisturbed. Such a departure from reality in 1859 led a father and daughter to enter into a religious mania which caused the elder to brutally slay his child. From an article in that year’s New York Times:
“The quiet Sabbath was broken in upon yesterday by the commission of a horrid murder, in the town of Sandlake, about 11 miles from Troy, of a daughter by her father and only surviving parent, a man of 60 years of age, named JOHN BELDING. The scene of the homicide is about 4 miles east of Sliter’s Tavern, and near the steam saw-mill on the Sandlake road. The parties lived in a little house, in which the father earned a livelihood for himself and daughter by following the trade of a shoemaker. The daughter’s name was CHRISTINA. She is about 19 years of age, and is described by the neighbors as a quiet and well-behaved girl. She had been unwell for some time, and, it is said, had been under the care of a female doctress residing in Berlin, in this county, named WEAVER. Her mind, it appears, was somewhat affected, but whether from religious excitement or from some other cause, we are unable to say. She labored under the impression that the devil had possessed her, and used to pray very frequently for deliverance from his grasp. A day or two before the murder, the old man and daughter went over to the house of DAVID HORTON, who resided opposite the BELDINGS, when CHRISTINA said she had taken medicine of MRS. WEAVER, and it made her feel as if ‘the devil was in her and she would scratch him off; but that she had thrown the medicine away, and drove the devil away, too.’ The old man had not done much work recently, as it affected the girl’s head, and it is supposed that in consequence of his care of her and want of sleep, &c., his own mind had become temporarily affected, and while under the delusion [that] ‘Dena,’ as he called her, was the devil, he killed her.
The account which BELDING gives of the affair is that he saw the devil lying upon the bedroom and he struck it in the face. The girl, it appears, was lying down in the back room. BELDING followed her from that room to the front room, in which the murder was committed with a shoemaker’s hammer. Her skull was completely smashed to pieces. Portions of the hair were scattered around the room, and pieces of the skull were lying over the floor. Her face, too, was considerably bruised and disfigured, but no marks of violence were discovered on the other parts of her body, BELDING says he thought she was the devil–that she appeared to him to be four times as large as ‘Dena’–that her face was too large for ‘Dena’–and that from his previous and subsequent conduct there can scarcely be a doubt that the old man imagines he had a fight with the devil, or, as he expressed it, with ‘three devils, and he had all he could do to kill them.’ They lived alone in the house. It is supposed the murder was committed about 12 1/2 o’clock yesterday afternoon. The first person who discovered the murder was NICOLAS RYBERMILLER, who first saw the old man outside the house. He appeared very much excited, and told RYBERMILLER that he had ‘Killed the devil, and it was lying in there,’ pointing to his house. RYBERMILLER looked in and discovered the dead body of the daughter. He asked the old man if it was not DENA that he had killed? BELDING replied that he did not think it was. BELDING’S hands and shirt-sleeves were covered in blood. RYBERMILLER testified before the Coroner’s jury that the father and daughter had lived with him about six months, previously to their residing in the house where the murder was committed, and that they always appeared happy together, and, as the witness expressed it, ‘Never had any crazy times.’ CHRISTINA was a quiet, good girl.
BELDING was raving like a maniac when the Coroner arrived. Several witnesses were examined, and the jury rendered a verdict that, ‘in their opinion said CHRISTINA BELDING came to her death on Sunday, May 1, 1859, from fractures of the skull, and said injuries were inflicted with a hammer in the hands of her father, JOHN BELDING–he at the time laboring under temporary aberration of mind.’
The Grand Jury sit to-day. The evidence in this case will be handed over to them for their action at once. They will probably authorize a commission to investigate the sanity of the murderer, and if he is declared insane, will send him to the Lunatic Asylum; or they will indict him for murder, as in their opinion the evidence warrants.”