Nina Vilona was a 50-year old unmarried piano teacher from Mount Vernon, NY who was vacationing at William Gorman’s boardinghouse in Bittersweet when she disappeared on Friday morning, July 9, 1926, less than a week after her arrival in Sullivan County. A search turned up her body the next day, partially buried under a pile of stones on the banks of the Neversink River adjacent to a spot known as “the Black Hole,” a bullet in her brain. 

The murder, which remains unsolved to this day, and the subsequent trail of the young boy accused of the crime, was the subject of considerable newspaper coverage at the time, and Ed Cooke of Monticello recently came across a collection of Sullivan County weeklies from October and November of 1926 chronicling the case.

The papers had presumably been saved because they detailed the election of Mr. Cooke’s grandfather, George L. Cooke, as County Court Judge that year, incidentally, succeeding the retiring George H. Smith, who presided over the Bittersweet murder trial in his last judicial act.

Sullivan County Sheriff Fletcher D. Rhodes and undersheriff George Darling had arrested 15-year old Charles Wise, a so-called “fresh air boy” from Brooklyn —an underprivileged youngster sponsored by the Children’s Aid Society-- who had been living since 1921 at Miss Antoinette Sackett’s boardinghouse.

Although the evidence against Wise was largely circumstantial—authorities never did suggest a motive—he was charged with first degree murder and went on trial in Sullivan County Court in October, with Judge Smith presiding. District Attorney Sydney F. Foster led the prosecution, assisted by former D.A. Henry F. Gardner. Liberty attorney William G. Birmingham represented the defendant along with John D. Lyons and Nellie Childs Smith.

The trial did not go well for the prosecution almost from the outset. One witness, who was expected to testify that a shoe print found near the body of Ms. Vilona matched that of young Wise, testified instead that the print was half an inch larger than Wise’s shoe. Only after some prodding from Foster did he reverse himself and note that the print was likely that of the defendant.

Similarly, while one firearms expert testified that the bullet found in the deceased’s skull undoubtedly came from the cheap mail order revolver found in Wise’s possession, another expert swore under oath there was no way the slug had been fired from Wise’s gun.

By the trial’s end, even Foster seemed to waver in his previously avowed certainty that Wise was the guilty party. Where the prosecution’s closing argument typically demands of the jury a guilty verdict as the only logical conclusion based on the evidence, Foster appeared to leave the door open with his summation.

“He told the jury that the evidence had been placed before them and that the prosecution would ask for no verdict beyond what the jury thought warranted by the facts,” the Liberty Register newspaper reported in its November 11, 1926 edition. Other news reports stated that Foster indicated that prosecuting the case was “one of the most disagreeable tasks” of his career.

Birmingham was masterful in his closing argument, which was so moving even Foster had to admit it was one of the best he had ever heard.

The jury deliberated for just three hours and 15 minutes, including its supper break, before delivering their verdict. The announcement, by jury foreman George V. LaBaugh of Loch Sheldrake, brought a loud round of applause from those in attendance, the vast majority of whom had come to believe in Wise’s innocence.

“The verdict was a popular one,” the Register reported. “Hardly a person in the room but agreed heartily with the verdict. District Attorney Foster and his associate, Henry Gardner, who prosecuted the case against Wise with generous forbearance, were among the first to grasp the defendant’s hand and to wish him well.”

Wise, just 15 when he was charged with the murder, but 16 by the time of his acquittal, did not return to Miss Sackett’s boarding house. The Brooklyn Children’s Aid Society decided it would not be prudent for him to do so, or even for them to bring him back to the borough while the publicity surrounding the case was still so fresh, so he went to Poughkeepsie to live with his sister and continue his schooling. The last public account of his life indicated that he planned to go into the forest service.

The acquittal caused multiple problems for Foster and Rhodes and the State Police, since they were left without a single alternate theory for the crime, which was by then four months old.

“The murder of Miss Vilona remains a mystery not likely to reach a solution,” the Register suggested.  “The district attorney has no evidence against any other person and no one else is even remotely suspected. It is almost certain that no one will ever be brought to justice for the death of the middle-aged Mount Vernon pianist.”

Sheriff Rhodes was at the end of his term as the trial ended, and Darling was elected Sheriff that very year. Rhodes would run for the office again in 1929, but was defeated by Benjamin R. Gerow. 

Sydney F. Foster, elected in 1925, would serve as District Attorney only until 1928, when he was elected to the New York State Supreme Court. He served on the state’s Appellate Court from 1933 until January of 1960, when he was appointed to fill a vacancy on the Court of Appeals by Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller. He was elected to the Court of Appeals the following November, and served on the state’s highest court until 1963, when he reached the mandatory retirement age of 70. Foster died of a heart attack on November 21, 1973. He was 80.

John Conway is the Sullivan County Historian and a founder and president of The Delaware Company. Email him at jconway52@hotmail.com.