The Scots cousins who became the first US serial killers
Joshua and William Harper emigrated to the Colonies, where they became the unspeakably depraved and violent Micajah and Wiley Harpe, responsible for at least 50 murders
The Harpes were emigrant Scots who crossed the Atlantic in search of a brighter future. Instead, they were to become the first recorded serial killers in the United States.
Micajah and Wiley Harpe were to claim the lives of at least 50 men, women and children on their rampant killing sprees across frontier territory with the true number of their victims never to be known.
Born Joshua and William Harper, the cousins left the Scottish west coast for America with their fathers around 1760 to settle in Orange County, North Carolina.
Being first generation Scottish immigrants and staunch Tories, the Harpers were loyal to the British crown but the family changed their name to Harpe in an effort to win favour with their patriot neighbours.
But this small, well-meaning gesture was to be violently overturned given the rising tensions of the approaching American Revolutionary War.
Still children at the time, the Harpe boys watched on as their parents were brutally tortured and hanged for their loyalist affiliations.
The trauma was to set the orphaned cousins on a path of gratuitous butchery and depravity.
Illinois historian Jon Musgrave said: “I think they realised early on they were not part of the elect and decided if they were going to hell they might as well make a grand entrance.
“The viciousness of the all but civil war in the Carolinas during the American Revolution didn’t help.
“It certainly led them away to the wilderness and the less than civilised norms they lived over the next couple of decades.”
“Big” Micajah, described as bony and muscular, was the brawn to the brains of red-haired Wiley, who became known as “Little” Harpe.
Despite their differences, both shared an ability to carry out unspeakable atrocities.
The Harpes were part of a Tory rape gang who took advantage of wartime lawlessness to kidnap and rape three teenage girls.
They killed their own children after impregnating two women, Maria Davidson and Susan Wood, in the 1780s.
After relocating to a farm outside Knoxville, Tennessee around 1795, Wiley married a minister’s daughter named Sarah Rice, while Micajah became involved with sisters Susan and Betsy Roberts.
Some believe the two women were held captive and forced to marry against their will.
Unsurprisingly, the Harpes’ attempts at peaceful country living didn’t last with the pair to embark on a brutal 18-month killing spree after being accused of pilfering livestock.
The mutilated body of their first victim, known only as Johnson, was found floating in the Holstein River, his chest cavity ripped open and filled with rocks.
Following two more killings, the brothers and their three wives, who were then pregnant, were imprisoned in Danville, Kentucky in 1799 but the Harpes managed to escape, deserting the women.
From here the cousins lived for a short spell with river pirates at the notorious Cave-in-rock stronghold at Illinois and the killing continued.
Decapitations and disembowelments were routine.
Musgrave said: “The near wilderness frontier west of the Appalachians and the sparsity of settlements allowed the Harpes maximum freedom to commit their depravations.” 0 The Harpe brothers (top) hailed from Scotland; a replica of the Danvill jail where they were held (right) and the cave where they lived while on the run. PICTURES: Wikimedia
Big Harpe was eventually shot in the back by a man whose wife and four-month-old baby were mercilessly killed by the pair. The Scots head was also sawn off by his killer.
Little Harpe rejoined the river pirates at Cave-in-rock but his luck soon ran out when he was captured and beheaded by the authorities.
Musgrave said: “I don’t think the Harpes had an end game, other than to stay alive as long as they could. He added: “But if there ever was a figure of American history demonically possessed, Big Harpe would be at top of my list.”