In the quiet countryside of Fayette County, Ohio, Sarah DeWitt, an 86-year-old widow, had created a life for herself in a small, six-room cottage. For 47 years, the house, situated three miles north of Washington Court House, was her sanctuary. She was a long-time resident of the area, a familiar face in a community where roots ran deep. But the peace of her rural home was brutally shattered on July 1, 1957, a day that would end her life and leave a lasting scar on the small town.
That
Monday, a neighbor named Wilbur Chrisman made a horrifying discovery. After noticing things seemed amiss at Mrs. DeWitt's home, he went to check on her. Inside, he found a scene of violence that was hard to comprehend. Sarah DeWitt was found in an upstairs bedroom, having been viciously attacked and killed. The subsequent investigation, led by Fayette County Sheriff Orland Hays and Deputy Sheriff Lawrence Mickle, determined that her assailant had likely forced entry through a back door. The motive appeared to be robbery; a sum of $250 had been stolen from the home.
The initial investigation left the community on edge, with few immediate leads. Sheriff Hays noted that witnesses had reported seeing an unfamiliar man lingering near Mrs. DeWitt's property on the day of the murder. However, the identity of the killer remained a mystery for months, and the case grew cold. The brutality of the crime—investigators revealed she had been struck multiple times in the head and throat with a hatchet-like weapon—was a stark contrast to the typically peaceful life in Washington Court House.
The break in the case came seven months later, in February 1958, and from another state entirely. Authorities in Virginia arrested a 23-year-old itinerant laborer named Jeremiah McCray for a separate, violent crime. During his interrogation, McCray began to confess to a string of horrific acts committed across several states. He admitted to being responsible for the murder of Sarah DeWitt, providing details that corresponded with the evidence found at the crime scene in Ohio. He revealed that he had not acted alone in the Ohio murder, but had an accomplice with him, though he refused to name his partner.
McCray was what law enforcement would later dub a serial killer, known as "The Itinerant Killer." Born in Georgia in 1935 to a family of sharecroppers, he was illiterate and had drifted from state to state, taking on odd jobs. His travels, however, were marked by a trail of violence. Between 1956 and his capture in 1958, McCray committed at least five murders, primarily targeting elderly women during home invasions in Alabama, Georgia, Ohio, and Virginia. His methods were consistently brutal, involving beating and stabbing his victims.
Following his confession, McCray was charged with multiple counts of first-degree murder, burglary, and larceny across the different jurisdictions. It was decided his first trial would be for his final murder, which occurred in Virginia. A psychiatric evaluation found him to be of low intelligence but legally sane. He was swiftly convicted and sentenced to death.
Jeremiah McCray was executed by electric chair in the Virginia State Penitentiary on April 18, 1958, less than a year after he had ended Sarah DeWitt's life. His execution brought a close to a violent, multi-state crime spree that had left at least five innocent people dead. While McCray paid the ultimate price for his crimes, the identity of the person who joined him in the brutal home invasion and murder of Sarah DeWitt was never publicly revealed.
The case of Sarah DeWitt serves as a chilling reminder of the random violence that can disrupt even the most tranquil of communities. Her death was not just a local tragedy but one piece of a much larger, darker story of a killer who moved through the shadows of society. For the residents of Washington Court House, the memory of the elderly widow who lived a quiet life in her country cottage, only to have it so violently taken, lingered for decades.
