“THE GHOST THAT SOLVED ITS OWN MURDER” > Page 1, 2

The Wake and the Ghost

Mary Jane Heaster was beside her self with grief. She felt that Zona's marriage to Edward would come to a bad end... but not this. Were her apprehensions about Edward more dreadful than she imagined? Were her motherly instincts correct in not trusting this stranger?

Her suspicions deepened at Zona's wake. Edward was acting strangely; not exactly like a husband in mourning. Some of the neighbors attending the wake noticed it, too. One moment he seemed grief-struck, another moment highly agitated and nervous. He had placed a pillow on one side of Zona's head and a rolled up cloth on the other, as if keeping it propped in place. He refused to allow anyone near her. Her neck was covered by a large scarf that Edward claimed was her favorite and that he wanted her buried in it. At the end of the wake, as the coffin was being prepared to be taken to the cemetery, several people noticed an odd looseness of Zona's head.

Zona was buried. Despite all of the strangeness surrounding her daughter's death, Mary Jane Heaster had no proof of any kind that Edward was somehow to blame, or that Zona's death was in any way unnatural. The suspicions and the questions might have been buried along with Zona and eventually forgotten had not some unexplained phenomena begun to take place.

Mary Jane had taken the rolled up white sheet from Zona's coffin before it was sealed. And now, days after the funeral she tried to return it to Edward. In keeping with his peculiar behavior, he refused to take it. Mary Jane brought it back home with her, deciding to keep it as a memory of her daughter. She noticed. however, that it had a strange, indefinable odor. She filled a basin with water in which to wash the sheet. When she submerged the sheet, the water turned red, the color bleeding from the sheet. Mary Jane jumped back in astonishment. She took a pitcher and scooped some of the water from the basin. It was clear.

The once-white sheet was now stained pink, and nothing Mary Jane would do could remove the stain. She washed it, boiled it and hung it in the sun. The stain remained. It was a sign, Mary Jane thought. A message from Zona that her death was far from natural.

If only Zona could tell her what happened and how. Mary Jane prayed that Zona would come back from the dead and reveal the circumstances of her death. Mary Jane made this prayer every day for weeks... and then her prayer was answered.

Cold winter winds swirled around the streets of Greenbrier. As the early darkness crept into Mary Jane Heaster's home every night, she lit her oil lamps and candles for light, and stoked the wood stove for warmth. From out of this dim atmosphere, so Mary Jane claimed, the spirit of her beloved Zona appeared to her on four nights. During these spectral visits, Zona told her mother how she had died.

Edward was cruel and abusive to her, Zona said. And on the day of her death his violence went too far. Edward became irrationally angry at her when she told them she had no meat for his dinner. He was overcome with rage and lashed out at his wife. He savagely attacked the defenseless woman and broke her neck. To prove her account, the ghost slowly turned its head completely around at the neck.

The Proof

Zona's ghost had confirmed her mother's worst suspicions. It all fit: Edward's strange behavior and the way he attempted to protect his dead wife's neck from movement and inspection. He had murdered the poor woman! Mary Jane took her story to John Alfred Preston, the local prosecutor. Preston listened patiently, if skeptically, to Mrs. Heaster's story of the telltale ghost. He certainly had his doubts about it, but there was enough that was unusual or suspicious about the case, and he decided to pursue it.

Preston ordered Zona's body exhumed for an autopsy. Edward protested the action, but had no power to stop it. He began to show signs of great stress. He said publicly that he knew he would be arrested for the crime, but that "they will not be able to prove I did it." Prove what?, Edward's friends wondered, unless he knew she had been murdered.

The autopsy revealed - just as the ghost has said - that Zona's neck was broken and her windpipe crushed from violent strangulation. Edward Shue was arrested on charge of murder.

As he awaited trial in jail, Edward's rather unsavory background came to light. He had served time in jail on a previous occasion, being convicted of stealing a horse. Edward had been married twice before, each marriage suffering under his violent temper. His first wife divorced him after he had angrily thrown all of her possessions out of their house. His second wife wasn't so lucky; she died under mysterious circumstances of a blow to the head. Once again, Mary Jane's intuition about this man was verified. He was evil.

And maybe he was a bit of a psychopath. His jailkeepers and cellmates reported that Edward seemed to be in good spirits while in jail. In fact, he bragged that it was intention to eventually have seven wives. Being only 35 years old, he said, he should easily be able to realize his ambition. Apparently, he was certain that he would not be convicted of Zona's death. What evidence was there, after all?

The evidence against Edward may have only been circumstantial at best. But he didn't count on the testimony of an eyewitness to the murder - Zona.

The Trial

Spring had come and gone, and it was now late June when Edward's trial for murder came before a jury. The prosecutor lined up several people to testify against Edward, citing his peculiar behavior and his unguarded comments. But would that be enough to convict him? There were no other witnesses to the crime, and Edward had not been placed at or near the scene at the time the murder allegedly took place. Taking the stand in his defense, he vehemently denied the charges.

What of Zona's ghost? The court had ruled that prosecuting testimony about the ghost and what it claimed was inadmissible. But then Edward's defending lawyer made a mistake that perhaps sealed his client's fate. He called Mary Jane Heaster to the stand. In an attempt, perhaps, to show that the woman was unbalanced - maybe even insane - and prejudicial against his client, he brought up the matter of Zona's ghost.

Seated on the witness stand in front of a packed courtroom and an attentive jury, Mary Jane told the story of how Zona's ghost appeared to her and accused Edward of the foul deed - that her neck had been "squeezed off at the first verterbrae."

Whether or not the jury took Mary Jane's - or rather Zona's - testimony seriously is not known. But they did hand down a verdict of guilty on the charge of murder. Normally, such a conviction would have brought a sentence of death, but because of the circumstantial nature of the evidence, Edward was sentenced to life in prison. He died on March 13, 1900 in the Moundsville, W.V. penitentiary.

The Questions

Was the jury swayed, even a little, by the story of Zona's ghost? Was there even a ghost at all? Or was Mary Jane Heaster so convinced that Edward Shue had murdered her daughter that she made up the story to help convict him? In either case, without the story of Zona's ghost, Mary Jane may never have had the courage to approach the prosecutor, and Edward may never have been brought to trial. And Zona's ghost would have remained unavenged.

A highway historical marker near Greenbrier commemorates Zona and the unusual court case surrounding her death:

Interred in nearby cemetery is
Zona Heaster Shue.
Her death in 1897 was presumed natural until her spirit appeared to her mother to describe how she was killed by her husband Edward. Autopsy on the exhumed body verified the apparition's account. Edward, found guilty of murder, was sentenced to the state prison. Only known case in which testimony from ghost helped convict a murderer. 

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