04/13/2026
đź‘€ Surreal Sunday
On March 6th, 1868, Parkersburg, West Virginia was already stirring under a cold, rain-soaked sky. What began as an ordinary winter morning quickly turned into one of the most heavily attended and grim public gatherings the city had ever seen. At the time, public ex*****ons were still part of the landscape of justice, but few events in the Ohio Valley drew anything like this level of attention.
Outside the city limits, in a muddy field along the Northwestern Turnpike near the edge of town, a scaffold had been erected for the ex*****on of Joseph Eisele, a German immigrant carpenter known in Parkersburg under the alias “John Schaefer,” and later referred to as “The Parkersburg Murderer.” By mid-morning, an estimated 5,000 to 7,000 people had gathered despite knee-deep mud and steady rain, filling the roads, fields and ridges surrounding the site.
The man being led to the gallows had spent 1867 moving quietly through the same streets he now stood condemned in. Eisele had worked as a carpenter and lived a seemingly ordinary life, but over the course of that year he carried out a series of brutal murders targeting fellow German immigrants. His victims included saloon keeper Joseph Lillenthal in Parkersburg, merchant Aloys Ulrich near Wheeling along the Hempfield Railroad and horse trader Rudolph Tsutor back in Parkersburg. Each attack followed the same pattern of deception, sudden violence with a hatchet and robbery for small amounts of money.
For months, the killings remained unsolved as fear spread through the immigrant communities of the Ohio Valley. It ended on January 6th, 1868, when Eisele attempted to attack coal merchant John White while under his assumed name. The blow struck White’s shoulder instead of his head and his cry of “Murder!” brought neighbors rushing in. Eisele was captured shortly after trying to flee the scene.
While in custody, he initially remained silent but eventually confessed in the presence of a Catholic priest and witnesses, later producing a detailed written confession in German. In it, he admitted to all three murders, expressed remorse and asked forgiveness from both his German and American communities. At trial, he pleaded guilty to all charges and responded to much of the proceedings with quiet “no’s” and head shakes as the evidence was read aloud.
On the day of March 6th, 1868, Eisele was escorted through the mud by militia to the scaffold as thousands watched in silence and anticipation. At 1:00 p.m., the trap was released. Witnesses reported he remained composed as the drop fell and within minutes, he was declared dead. It would become the last public hanging ever carried out in Wood County.
He was later buried in an unmarked grave at Dils Cemetery often referred to in historical text as the "Old Dils and Stephenson Cemetery," his exact resting place lost to time.
What lingered in Parkersburg was not just the brutality of the crimes, but the unsettling realization that a quiet, familiar man had been capable of it all along.
The memory of that winter morning still sits in the darker corners of Parkersburg’s past, where history and unease tend to overlap.
Image Credit: 1868 West Virginia newspaper engravings / Wood County historical archives