Haunted Cave in Rock Hideout of American Killers

The year 1799 was the Harpes’ most unrestrained and bloodthirsty. The brothers headed north toward Cave-in-Rock, Illinois, where the infamous Samuel Mason and his river pirates stayed. An “unprecedented manhunt” met with no success. 23) Around April, one posse tried to persuade Colonel Daniel Trabue to join their search. While they discussed the possibility, the Harpes killed the Colonel’s thirteen-year-old son, Johnny, for flour and beans. His body was “macerated by their blows, almost dismembered by their knives.” On April 22, Kentucky’s Governor Garrard issued a proclamation with a three-hundred-dollar bounty on each Harpe. The report reached the public around mid-May. By then, the pair had killed a man named Dooley in Metcalfe County, Kentucky. 24) They camped out on Barren River across from Frederick Stump, who welcomingly rowed across in his boat with a fiddle and a whole mess of fish. The Harpes stabbed him, disemboweled him, stuffed his body with rocks, and dumped him in the river.