Joseph Henry Loveless

Joseph Henry Loveless
File:Loveless Composite.jpg Composite image of Joseph Henry Loveless in May of 1916, created with images of family members.
Born	c. December 3 - December 28, 1870 Payson, Utah County, Utah (currently); Utah Territory (formerly)
Disappeared	May 18, 1916 (aged 45) St. Anthony, Idaho, U.S.A.
Died	c. May 18 - May 23, posssibly as late as May 31, 1916 (aged 45) Idaho, U.S.A.
Cause of death	Suspected homicide
Body discovered	August 26, 1979; March 30, 1991 Dubois, Idaho
Nationality	American
Other names	Henry Loveless Charles Smith Walter Currans Walter Cairns
Known for	Bootlegging, murder suspect, escaped convict, formerly unidentified decedent
Height	5 ft 8 or 9 in height
Spouse(s)	Harriet Jane Savage (m. 1899; div. 1904) Agnes Octavia Caldwell (m. 1905; died 1916)
Children	5
Relatives	Joseph Jackson Loveless (father) Sarah Jane Scriggins (mother)
Conviction(s)	Bootlegging and murder
Criminal charge	Bootlegging (in 1914) and murder (in May 1916)
Capture status	Deceased
Escaped	May 18, 1916
Details
Victims	1 (alleged murder of his wife)
Weapons	Axe
Date apprehended	Six days after the murder of his wife, according to an online source.

Joseph Henry Loveless (December 3, 1870 – c. May 1916), also known as Charles Smith, Walter Currans, and Walter Cairns, was an American bootlegger and formerly unidentified decedent. In 1916, after being accused of murdering his wife, he escaped from jail with a sawblade he had hidden in his shoe. Loveless's dismembered torso was found stuffed in a sack in an Idaho cave in 1979 with more of his remains discovered in 1991 in the same cave. The body was not positively identified until 2019 with the help of the DNA Doe Project, which noted that the identification was the oldest one they had ever made. The positive identification was made using forensic genealogy.

Early life

Joseph Henry Loveless was born on December 3, 1870, in Payson, in what was then Utah Territory. His mother, Sarah Jane Scriggins, was from Massachusetts while his father, Joseph Jackson Loveless, was from Indiana. Both of his parents were early pioneers from the Latter Day Saint movement.

Personal life

In 1899, Loveless married Harriet Jane "Hattie" Savage, with whom he had one daughter. They married in Salt Lake City on October 3, 1899. In October 1903, Harriet, filed for divorce from Loveless citing desertion and non-support. The divorce was granted in May 1904, with Loveless never contesting the charges. By August 1905, Loveless was living in Idaho and had married Agnes Octavia Caldwell. The couple had four children ranging from 1906 to 1913.

Murder of Agnes Loveless and escape from jail

On May 5, 1916, or, May 8, 1916, he allegedly murdered his wife Agnes with an axe. Reports from the time identify her murderer as "Charles Smith", whom some additionally named as her husband. Charles Smith was one of Loveless's many aliases. Loveless was arrested and sent to jail. At Agnes Loveless's funeral, one of their children was quoted saying, "Papa never stayed in jail very long and he'll soon be out". On May 18, 1916, Loveless broke out of the St. Anthony jail, using a sawblade he had hidden in his shoe.

Death

The details of Loveless's death are unknown, and it is an open case with the Clark County Sheriff's Office as of January 2020. However, his final wanted poster after his jailbreak describes him as wearing the same clothes that were found with his remains: a light colored hat, brown coat, red sweater, and blue overalls over black trousers. This caused Lee Bingham Redgrave, a forensic genealogist with the DNA Doe Project, to speculate that Loveless died in 1916. The cause of death is unknown, though multiple sharp tools were used to dismember his body. Samantha Blatt, bioarchaeologist at Idaho State University, speculated that Loveless may have been killed by his deceased wife's family as revenge for her murder.

Discovery and identification of remains

In 1979, a family searching for arrowheads in Buffalo Cave near Dubois, Idaho, discovered human remains in a burlap sack, consisting of a headless torso. In 1991, a girl found a hand in the same cave, prompting excavations which recovered both legs and an arm. Forensic researchers estimated that the man was of European descent, and around 40 years old at the time of death. Identification was thought implausible due to the missing head. His post-mortem interval was initially estimated to be between 6 months and 5 years. In 2019, Idaho State University anthropologists, Samantha Blatt and Amy Michael, along with Clark County authorities solicited help from the DNA Doe Project, a nonprofit that seeks to identify previously unidentified deceased persons via forensic genealogy. Researchers constructed a genealogical tree for the unidentified remains. Because one of Loveless's grandfathers was a polygamist with four wives, the tree was large, with hundreds of cousins and other relatives. Loveless was considered a plausible candidate, though, as his gravestone was found to be a cenotaph (not accompanied by his remains). Loveless's 87-year-old grandson was identified as living in California, and he agreed to take a DNA test, which confirmed that the remains were those of his grandfather Joseph Henry Loveless.

See also

• List of unsolved murders

Further reading

• Potier, Beth (Winter 2020). "Cold Case, Hot Science". UNH Magazine. University of New Hampshire. p. 12. Retrieved March 26, 2020 – via issuu.com.