Vengeful Killer Husband Claude M. Reppert: 1874-1932
Cheating Wife Maude Reppert: 1886-1978
Reppert Children:
Daniel G. Reppert: 1903-1933
Grace M. Reppert 1904-1918
William E. Reppert: 1908-1928
At the end of my previous post on dead-beat dad and
all-around scoundrel William Herniman, who was murdered when discovered by his
mistress’ enraged husband, I admitted to being curious about the fate of his
murderer’s family. I couldn’t resist investigating. Tragically, it appears
Claude Reppert’s February 17, 1917 act of violence shattered and eventually
destroyed his entire family.
When William Herniman first began his affair with Claude
Reppert’s wife Maude in 1916, she was already a troubled soul. A 1912 news
article reported that she was being committed to a mental institution for the
second time. She was first declared insane in August 1908 and was
institutionalized until May 1909. She was probably suffering post-partum
depression at the time of her first episode of mental illness, since her fourth
child, William, had just been born a month earlier in July. While she was
locked away, her 22-month-old daughter Ethel May died, so she returned home to
the demands of a young infant and two older children, while she was weighed
down by grief and probably a lot of guilt at not being with her Ethel when she died.
The family seem to have struggled financially as well. When
the Herniman affair began, the Repperts were living in a “tent house on the
dance platform near the Kennett Hotel” in the mining boom town of Kennett,
California. The family moved to Kennett from the hamlet of Castella; both towns
were in Shasta County in northern California near Redding. Reppert was working
long, hard hours in a zinc mine in Kennett, but he couldn’t have been earning
much if the best home they could afford was a tent. February in the mountains
near Shasta Lake would have been miserably cold even with wood or stone
walls—with only canvas as protection from the bitter wind, it must have been
bone-chilling. Trapped in such a horrible place while raising three young
children. Maude must have been desperate and depressed, so she was easy prey
for a sweet-talking older man.
Apparently Maude had planned to steal away with William
Herniman on February 17, but the night before she either confessed to her
husband on her own, or he forced her to admit to the affair. A news article
after Reppert was set free by the grand jury reported:
“Mrs. Reppert knew full well what was coming. She confessed
the night before to her husband that she and Herniman had been intimate. ‘You
leave it to me,’ said Reppert to his wife. ‘He’ll be my meat.’ Mrs. Reppert was
forbidden to give Herniman any warning.”
She must have felt extremely guilty about her lover’s death
and about the trauma her older children had suffered. Herniman had sent them
away on a freight train by themselves—they were 12 and 13 at the time. It is
unclear as to Herniman’s attentions. Did he plan to run off with the children
in tow, or was the train trip an attempt to abandon them? Did their absence the
night before the planned elopement clue their father in on his wife’s affair?
I
suspect the children may have feared their father; the daughter, Grace, told the
newspaper she witnessed meetings between her mother and Herniman, and yet she never told her father about it. She seemed to feel no great loyalty to him. I like to think William Herniman hatched his plan to run away in order to save his lover and her
children from a violent man. However, there is no information about Reppert’s nature
and behavior to support or refute my speculation.
What we do know is that shortly after Reppert was freed
after the grand jury refused to indict him for murder, Maude Reppert had
another breakdown. Claude had her committed to the state hospital in Stockton. Less than a
month after the murders, Claude took this three children to Grass Valley. The
March 15 Sacramento Bee reported that “he will place them in a convent, there
to be cared for at his expense.” He wasted no time before abandoning his
children. The oldest was 13 and could have helped care for his siblings while
Claude worked. Why didn’t Reppert seek out relatives that might have
helped? His parents and siblings lived in California. I think that his choice to dump them at the convent, which was
basically an orphanage, is quite telling about the type of father he was.
The convent did not prove to be a safe haven. Here is the
fate of each of the children:
Grace Reppert 1904-1918
Grace arrived at the convent just as the Spanish Flu
epidemic swept through the United States. The December 28, 1918 issue of the
Sacramento Bee reported that 100 cases of the flu were reported in Grass
Valley, with 70 of the cases at the two convent schools. “The children are
taken down very rapidly…One death has occurred, that of Grace Reppert…She was
aged 14 years.” Poor little Grace.
William Earl Reppert 1908-1928
It is not clear how long William remained at the convent, or
the terms under which he left. Was he kicked out? Did he run away? He didn’t
age out, since he appears at the tender age of 14 as a hardened car thief in
Sacramento, Along with two other boys, he had stolen several vehicles over
several weeks, taking them joyriding before abandoning them. He also stole
items he found in the cars. He was living at an address in Sacramento with one
of his partners in crime; the home may have been a foster home or group home.
He was sent to a detention center.
His criminal activities must have continued as he grew older,
for by 1928 he was an inmate at the Preston School of Industry, a reform school
or juvenile detention facility. This “school” rented out the inmates as
laborers, which was typical of the facilities of the era. William and five
other inmates were digging a ditch for a sewer line at a construction site. The
13-foot-deep ditch collapsed and William and a new inmate were crushed and
smothered under the dirt. It took four hours to dig out their bodies. The other
four prisoners were injured but were pulled out. The article describing the
incident notes that William was “serving a term from San Francisco”.
 |
| Preston School of Industry in Ione, now abandoned |
Daniel Reppert 1903-1933
Like his younger brother, Daniel turned to a life of crime
at a young age. The Sacramento Bee reported he was arrested for vagrancy at a
rooming house in November 1920. He had a large number of keys and a check for
$25 in his pocket. I inferred that he was using the keys to gain access to
other rooms or buildings, and was stealing things, including the check. Less
than a month later, he was arrested again for burglary. The December 10 article
said he was returned to the custody of the Preston School in Ione; he had been
sent there for delinquency in 1918 at age fifteen. Obviously, he had left the
convent soon after his father abandoned him there the year before.
He continued a life of crime, ending up in San Quentin
prison for passing bad checks/fraud in 1929. He never left. He died in San
Quentin on May 21, 1933. Cause of death was not indicated on the record. Daniel
was only 30 years old.
Daniel barely outlived his father. Claude Milton Reppert
died March 6, 1932 at age 58 in Sacramento. He was a former carpenter with a
railroad, but was out on disability when he was killed by a “paralytic stroke”.
He was buried in the Odd Fellows Cemetery in Sacramento with three of his four
children—Daniel was buried at San Quentin.
Maude divorced Claude at some point between 1918 and 1930.
She was working as a housekeeper in 1930, but by the 1940 census, she had been reinstitutionalized
at the Stockton State Hospital for the Insane. She remained a troubled, lonely
soul after the mental institutions were emptied, finally dying in 1978 at the
age of 92. Her obituary lists no relatives, only a friend.
I wonder what might have happened to this tragic family if
William Herniman had managed to run off with Maude and her children. Would the
three children have avoided becoming criminals and dying young, or were their
fates already set early in childhood? Did the sins of the father doom these
children?
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