Mokena has the proud reputation of being a peaceable place, a name built on the relationships built by longstanding neighbors and friends who care for their community. Nevertheless, readers of this page have seen that the chronicle of our village’s history is dotted with islands of miscontent. Various things have happened over the years that are looked back upon with unsavoriness, be they theft of property, targeted arson, and various other distasteful deeds. Once in a lifetime, however, comes along an act so heinous that it sticks out prominently on the annals of time like a sore thumb. Parting the cobwebs and brushing away the dust, we find a case so salacious, so ghastly, that one has to read it to believe it. On that note, the author would like to introduce the 1889 Dall murders.
The story begins across a storm-tossed sea, in what is now western Germany. It was almost halfway through the first half of the 19th century, and Jonathan Dall and Amalia Hartkopf were a married couple, making their way in the world as best they could. Like so many of their generation, the Dall family had been compelled to seek a better life on America’s shores at a time when their German home was rife with instability and revolution. The Dalls were natives of the area around Solingen, long renown for the high-quality knives produced in the region. There the elder Dall worked as a cutler, before picking up stakes with his family in 1848 as unrest reared its head and sailing across the choppy Atlantic for seven weeks. Eight children would be born to Jonathan and Amalia’s union, among whom were young Bertha, Ida, Eduard, Emma, and Jonathan. The names of the others, who don’t appear to have reached adulthood, are lost to time. The new Americans made their way to the Prairie State by way of New Orleans, where Jonathan Dall Sr. came into possession of a sizeable tract of land in Kendall County, before trying his hand at blacksmithing for a spell. All roads led to farming, however, and after tilling the soil again in Kendall County, the Dall family made their way to Will County at the end of the 1850s, before ultimately settling outside Mokena, then a neat little hamlet on the new Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad.
Having already established itself as a center for Germanic settlement, the Dalls’ presence in the newly-formed Frankfort Township was something of an anomaly with their status as Rhinelanders, as most of their Teutonic brethren in our midst were Bavarians, Hessians and Mecklenburgers. They found a place with the German United Evangelical St. John’s Church in Mokena, and had a great deal of success after establishing a 160-acre farm on the eastern side of today’s LaPorte Road and Route 45. In 1860, it was estimated to be worth $5,500, and was quite a bustling operation – with three horses, eight cows, and four swine. Things were humming along that year, as Jonathan Dall Sr. estimated that the farm has produced 500 bushels of Indian corn, 300 pounds of butter, and 40 tons of hay. While living on this farm, he also served as path master and road commissioner, two prominent positions in township government, while one contemporary simply stated that the Dalls “were people of the highest character.”
Sometime around the end of the Civil War, the Dalls sold the farm and moved to a new one just a short carriage ride west of Mokena in New Lenox Township. It was down a country lane that bisected the estate of old settlers, the Marshall family, that also ran along the edge of that clan’s family cemetery, of which just to the northwest the Dalls lived. Bigger than their last farm, the new home property measured in at a stately 196 acres, and would later be cleaved by the new Wabash Railroad. It was here that Jonathan Dall Sr passed away on June 30th, 1885 after a battle with pneumonia. The 72-year-old’s earthly remains were borne to St. John’s Cemetery, where they were laid to rest. So it was that Eduard and Jonathan Jr then became the men of the farm. It bears repeating to the modern reader that nineteenth century life was far from easy, and fate once again struck the Dall family when Eduard too succumbed on October 15th, 1887 on the family farm at the young age of 34 years. He was a casualty of the dreaded malady of typhoid fever, and thus his younger brother, 31-year-old Jonathan Jr, described as “quiet, unostentatious, and hard-working” became the sole head of the farm.
The old farmhouse on the Dall place, as it appears on modern-day Regan Road.
By 1889, “peace, prosperity and plenty” abounded at the Dall homestead, and as that year was wrapping up, the household consisted of Jonathan, his 71-year-old mother Amalia, and a 17-year-old housekeeper named Sabina Schenkel who was there on and off, whose parents and siblings lived close to Mokena. Also present on the estate was a farmhand named John Scheffler, who remains a shadowy figure on the historical narrative, the only details having survived are that he was about 24 years old and a recent German immigrant. As such things happen when a man and a woman are in each other’s circles for an extended length of time, Jonathan and Fena, as Sabina Schenkel was called, became an item. Some would later say that they were actually engaged. As fate would have it, however, there was more to the situation than would meet the eye. There was a third person in the mix. Enter at this point the hired man John Scheffler, who also vied for Fena’s eye, and was consumed with a burning jealousy for Jonathan Dall. He maliciously plotted his boss’s undoing.
Christmas had come and passed, and Monday, December 30th, 1889 had bloomed uneventfully at the Dall domicile. That morning, Amalia got to work making breakfast for the house, part of which was made up of bounteous helpings of hot coffee and fresh beef. As the first cups were poured, the Dalls and hired man Scheffler noticed right away that something wasn’t quite right with it. This batch was hastily gotten rid of, and a second pot brewed. Something was still off with it though, it being described as “bitter and bad”, but all were resigned to the matter by this point, and mother and son Dall and Scheffler nevertheless drank it down.
At this juncture in the story, there is an abrupt change in the day’s events, when, with alarming rapidity, all three became ill, John and Amalia Dall violently so. The two took to their beds, and grasping at straws, John Scheffler put forth the idea that the copper kettle that the meat was stored in must have caused it to go bad. Sinking rapidly, Amalia Dall suggested to him to have some sweet milk, at which point he felt better. Being able to be up and about, his employers sent him into Mokena to bring Dr. Edmund Lynch to the farm. Upon his arrival, the medicine man was flummoxed as to the cause of their sudden illness, and did the best he could for them, which after all was said and done, still provided precious little comfort to the suffering man and elderly woman. While tending to his quickly failing patients, the Dalls made a riveting revelation to the Civil War veteran: both of them separately told him that this was no case of tainted meat, that they believed Scheffler had poisoned them.
That afternoon, young Fena Schenkel came to the Dall house from Mokena and helped nurse her fiancé and future mother-in-law. Jonathan confided to her in the same way he had to Dr. Lynch, but this time went into a little more detail, adding that the first pot of coffee that had been drank from had a strange white powder in it. Someone in the house examined the used coffee grounds, and it would be remembered that they were “of an unusual appearance.” The coffee pot was given a good cleaning, and yet a third serving made, of which this time Fena took a cup. She immediately became ill. Luckily, Dr. Lynch was able to quickly give her an antidote, and she was soon back on her feet.
Neighboring farmer Chester Marshall was also helping in any way he could, while Dr. Frank Searles of New Lenox was also called in, but try as the two physicians may, Amalia Dall expired at eight o’clock that night. Jonathan Dall strongly kept fighting even though his body was wracked with intolerable pain, but lost his battle the next morning, the frosty last day of 1889. With their dying words, until the very end, Jonathan and Amalia Dall pointed the finger at John Scheffler.
As the new year dawned over Will County, newspaper readers were greeted with ghastly headlines. “A Horrible Crime” shouted the Joliet Republic and Sun, while the Chicago Daily Tribune’s masthead read “Love, Poison and Revenge.” The dreadful events received widespread media coverage, having made not only the papers in those two nearby places, but were carried in publications from as far away as Kansas and Massachusetts. Headlines were also garnered in the Abendpost and the Illinois Staats-Zeitung, two of the state’s foremost German papers.
On New Year’s morning, an inquest was held by Coroner Andrew J. Mills at the Dall house. The jury was made up of a veritable who’s who of Mokenians: cattleman Christian Bechstein, farmer John Huwiler, retired gentleman Nicholas Marti, attorney Arthur W. McGovney, and constable Charles Schiek, with former mayor Ozias McGovney serving as foreman. The testimonies of the doctors present, Chester Marshall, Fena Schenkel and even John Scheffler were taken, through an interpreter in the case of the latter. Scheffler, who the Chicago Daily Tribune described as “a dull, stupid-looking fellow (who) has nothing to say” stayed by his story, that the deaths were caused by tainted meat from the copper kettle. Dr. Searles had a chance previously to examine the kettle, and testified that there was nothing about it that could have caused such ferocious illnesses. Scheffler’s claims were not given much credence, and at the end of their deliberations, the coroner’s jury recorded that the Dalls “came to their death through the effect of some poisonous substance supposed to be administered by one John Scheffler and would recommend that he be held to the grand jury.” With that, Coroner Mills issued a warrant for his arrest, and the farmhand was whisked off to the county jail.
Many questions remained unanswered after the deaths, such as what exactly the poisonous substance was that caused the Dalls’ demise. In an effort to get to the bottom of this matter, a postmortem examination was held on them by Dr. Lynch and his colleague, Dr. William Becker, also of Mokena. Dr. Becker removed their stomachs and brought them to a laboratory at Rush Medical College in Chicago, in hopes that the chemist there could shed light on the issue. If any new leaves were overturned, the results have disappeared like sand into the winds of time. Mother and son were buried at St. John’s Cemetery, just south of Mokena, on January 2nd, 1890. In the entries for the Dalls in the church’s German language Totenregister, or Registry of the Dead, long-standing pastor Carl Schaub wrote “Math: 24,42” in the margin next to Jonathan’s name, likely a reference to Matthew 24:42, “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come.”
The Dall family plot in St. John's Cemetery. Amalia and Jonathan Dall Jr. are buried under the monument at left. (Image courtesy of Michael Philip Lyons)
In the aftermath of the Dalls’ untimely passing, there remained the not-so-small issue of settling their estate. There were a few open accounts from area merchants that hadn’t been cleared up, such as that of John Zahn & Son of Mokena, Front Street hardware merchants who had sold Jonathan Dall a soup ladle, skimmer and tin pan earlier in December. Especially prominent in the proceedings of the probate court was the aforementioned Dr. Becker of Mokena, who billed the estate $10 each for the transportation of the Dalls’ stomachs to the Garden City, 85 cents for his train fare, and a further $4.25 for his hack and hotel bills.
Before long, a fateful day came, and what should have been a moment of reckoning, instead turned out to be what may have been one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in Will County history. The grand jury convened in Joliet and closed their work on Saturday morning, February 1st, 1890. Most of their time had been taken up with the Dall case, and the jurors had heard an abundance of testimony from many different witnesses, including the Chicago chemist who examined the victims’ stomachs. In a wild, unexpected turn, the grand jury ruled that all the evidence was circumstantial, and John Scheffler, who had been in custody since the inquest, was ordered released.
Then, as is the historian’s lament, all impressions, jottings and reports of this dreadful case disappear from the pages of the historical record. As intensely as it had captivated journalists of the day, their interests were drawn elsewhere as quickly as their gazes had focused on the farm west of Mokena. In retelling any story of this age, certain details fall victim to the ages and are gone forever, and countless bits and pieces have fallen between the cracks, where they’ll stay forever. As such, it’s unknown how Fena Schenkel, the woman in the middle, moved on with the rest of her life. Five years after that awful end of 1889, she married an out-of-towner and went on to have at least four children. She moved to Chicago, where she spent the rest of her days before passing on in 1948. Incidentally, her older brother Conrad Schenkel would wear a star as Mokena’s constable for a long span in the early 20th century. Most frustrating, however, is determining the fate of John Scheffler. After February 1890, his name is wiped clean from recorded history. Did he stay in Will County, or decamp to a far-off place? Did the dreadful stigma of this case and the accusations leveled against him follow him for the rest of his days? There is no one living who can say.
The monuments in the Dall family plot are easily findable in St. John’s Cemetery, being among the tallest on the grounds. The German words spelled in gothic lettering, chiseled by hand into the stone, have been nearly obliterated by the decades of extreme Midwestern weather, but can still read in just the right amount of sunlight with the help of patient fingertips. The old Dall house still stands on today’s Regan Road, bearing silent witness to the horrors of 130 years ago, its current inhabitants likely unaware of the cruelty that played out within its walls.
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