The more things change........The more they stay the same.

Mattie Green was probably as high as a Georgia pine when she did it. That is if you believed the rumors, and rumor was she had a habit. Mattie wouldn't be the first otherwise normal housewife who spent her days shrouded in a misty haze of opiates. A woman gets bored at home, just the kids to keep her company, unless they were in school or off playing. He was home most evenings , unless he was away on business, or seeking treatment for the illness that plagued him. When he was home he might have noticed Mattie's face looking flushed, like she was running a couple of degrees over normal. If he did notice, maybe he just assumed she had been busy in the kitchen. Maybe he happened to notice her eyes seemed a little glassy, a little off, bright and tired at the same time. But that could easily be chalked up to the demands of 3 kids and a sickly husband. Maybe he didn't notice at all. Maybe he knew about her crutch in the closet. It's hard to say, and anyone who could speak with first hand knowledge is dead and buried. What is certain, Mattie's life, just like everyone else, was far from perfect, but it wasn't too bad, at least not on the surface. It was better than most. On the surface.


On an early Wednesday morning on the 26th of August, her husband was away seeking medical treatment, with the 3 children still in their beds, she did it. The kids would have been out of school for the summer, and probably accustomed to sleeping a little later than during the school year. You have to figure Mattie took a trip to that closet beforehand, or maybe she was out, maybe that's what pushed her over the edge. Whatever the case, she walked up to each of her children as they lay in bed, and shot each of them one time in the head. On an otherwise unassuming August morning, she did the unthinkable. She killed her 3 children, then stepped into the hallway between their two bedrooms. Charles 10, lay dead in one room, while 13 year old Willie and 7 year old Mary turned their pillows red in another. While it's impossible to say what went through her mind in the silence that followed, one thing is certain, those thoughts were her last. She put the 44. caliber pistol to her own head, and nothing else ever mattered again.


When the bodies were found Mattie was in the hallway, her head near the entrance to one bedroom, her feet near the other, almost like she was pointing the way to her unfathomable crimes. On the day of the funeral the bodies were transported in 3 white hearses. I wonder if the Mother rode in one, and the children were split up between the other two, like they were in the bedrooms. Charles in one, Willie and Mary in the other. Even though Charles was younger than Willie by 3 years, his marker was the first next to the mother Mattie. You would think the oldest would have had his own room, been the first marker in the line of 3. Maybe Willie was a girl, people have strange names for kids. Three white hearses, one sad story. A million unanswered
questions.


As sad as this story is, it's nothing new. Hell, most of us got over being shocked a long time ago. Susan Smith pushed her car in a lake drowning her children. Mothers and fathers kill their children with such frequency it rarely garners more than a few days of coverage, unless Nancy Grace or some other circus ringmaster takes interest in it. Then we are inundated with every single detail.. So much information that the tragedy and finality get lost in the hype and minutia.
The Internet brings us news almost as it happens, 24 hour news, we are on an instant and constant feed. There is no buffer anymore, we don't have time to digest one tragedy before we are bombarded by a dozen more. So the story of a seemingly normal woman, with a slightly scandalous secret, who murders her children then kills herself, it's hardly news.


This story is different. It happened in Kansas City, just west of main on 34th street. Not exactly an area that is a stranger to bad things. What is different is when it all took place. August 26th, 1896. I came to find out about Mattie Green and her 3 children when I wrote a piece about the Elmwood Cemetery for KC Free Press. I mention them in the story, but only in passing, and only to say that I wondered what their story might be. I knew a tiny bit, but not enough to write more than I did. But I've been curious ever since then, I really wanted to know what secrets were buried there. I asked Leigh Ann Little, a lady who knows more of the history behind this city than the clowns who run it, and the vast majority of people who have spent their lives here, myself included. Leigh Ann pulled up the old press accounts, which are linked here. So she is really more responsible for this story than I am.


What struck me first when I read the accounts was that I am still capable of being shocked, if only a little, at the horrible things we human beings are capable of. But the second thing is what really stuck with me. I've always liked to believe that the bad shit that occurs with such regularity is relatively new. When I read that last sentence, I can't help but think how stupid that sounds, it's beyond naive. We have always done bad shit to one another, the difference now is there are just more of us, victims and perps. And the news travels at hyper speed, from every corner of the globe. The stories stay out there in hyperspace now, they aren't buried in dusty boxes, or like the story of Mattie Green, hidden away under six feet of earth and a roll of microfilm. One hundred and fourteen years after the fact, Mattie, her children, and that otherwise ordinary day have taken their place in perpetuity. If there is a lesson to be taken away from this little piece of history, it's this; We haven't really evolved much, certainly not as much as we like to think. If anything, we've just become harder to shock.


**** The News clippings can be found here. Visit Leigh Ann Little here and at The One Hundred Year Old Weblog.