Bad Boy Meets Bad End
William Henry Herniman: 1856-1917
It’s not often that genealogy research leads to a lurid murder case. I had recently broken through a “brick wall” researching my third great-grandmother Nancy Ann Herniman. I was thrilled to find her parents and numerous siblings. One of those siblings was John Herniman, father of an amazing 14 children. His oldest child was William Henry, making him my first cousin three times removed. A quick search turned up his Findagrave entry, which stated he was murdered.
Of
course I’ll confess to being excited, especially when my Newspapers.com
research turned up several articles from across California—it was quite the
story!
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| Santa Cruz Evening News 17 Feb 1917 |
First,
some background on William. He was born February 22, 1856 in Buffalo, New York
to John Herniman and his wife Jane McCann Herniman. The family moved several
times during his childhood, always further westward, first to Michigan, then
Wisconsin, then Minnesota. By the late 1880s, William had moved to Oregon,
where he met Emma Jane Black. They were married in Hood River in 1889; William was
33 and Emma only 21. They quickly had a child, and relocated to California,
where Emma was born and still had family. They had seven more children, the
last, Robert John, was born in 1908 when Emma was 40 and William 52.
Apparently
William deserted his family shortly after Robert’s birth. When Emma was
interviewed for the 1910 census, she claimed she was widowed—she probably hated
to admit her husband had abandoned her and their eight young children. She was
living in Napa near her siblings.
Meanwhile,
William had scampered off first to Colfax, California, and then to the tiny
town of Kennett in Shasta County. He was working odd jobs and had started
romancing a married woman with three children, a Mrs. Maude Reppert. He was
trying to persuade her over several months to run away with him; she was
reluctant. Her daughter reported later that he came to the house every morning
and “forced” Mrs. Reppert to sit on his lap.
William decided to push
her into leaving her husband by using her children. He somehow persuaded her 12
year old son and 13 year old daughter to get on a freight train to Chico. There
are conflicting explanations of why he did this. At first the cheating wife
claimed he’d sent the children ahead and said they would join them. Later she
implied he was trying to get rid of the children. And what of her third child?
What were the cheating couple’s plan for him?
The
poor older children became a story in and of themselves. They were caught
hitching a ride on another train, and told a wild story to the police of being
abandoned by their parents, sent to live with foster parents, and that couple
abandoned them as well. They gave false names to the police, curiously using
the first name “William” for the name of both their supposed birth parent and
foster parent. Their real father’s name was Claude Reppert. Later when their
true identities were discovered, the children said that William Herniman
threatened to kill them if they didn’t leave town; that he bought them a ticket
on the train and forced them to leave their home.
Whatever
the case, on the morning of February 17, 1917, William Herniman went to the Reppert
house. He expected Claude to have left for work at a local zinc mine, and that
Mrs. Reppert would be ready to elope with him. Instead he found an armed and
angry Claude Reppert waiting for him. Claude shot him twice in the head,
killing William.
While Reppert was arrested for murder, he was released days
later after a grand jury refused to indict him. This jury of his peers sided
with Reppert, feeling a man who was trying to steal another man’s wife had
earned getting shot.
William’s
sister-in-law had contacted police by this time to let them know that William
had deserted his wife and eight children eight years earlier. This helped to
inflame public sentiment against him I am sure. The newspaper erroneously
claimed the children were grown for some reason, despite the fact that in 1917,
the three youngest were only 9, 12 and 14 years old.
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| This story from the Santa Ana paper gets the victim and killer confused--very amusing! |
Emma’s hometown newspaper exhibited a Fox News-like bias,
pontificating that “any man deserves to die like a dog who enters a happy home
to leave shame and sorrow like the slime of a viper.” The writer also claimed
that William intended to “lose” the Reppert children and “when he tired of the
deluded mother would have deserted her as he did to his wife and eight children
in this county.” Not exactly factual, reasoned reporting, but certainly
salacious good fun for the reading public.
None of
William’s family members claimed his body, which was not surprising. As a
result, he was buried in Potter’s Field at the County Hospital in Redding. I
wonder what happened to the Reppert family—I can’t imagine any either parent or
the two oldest children feeling any sort of security or trust in one another after
the events of February 1917.
Sources:
Santa Ana Register, Feb 17-1917, pg 1, https://www.newspapers.com/clip/57484244/backwards-story-with-victim-as-killer/
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