Rosa Buckstahlen and Ida Bjornstad, servants in the Chicago mansion of Amos J. Snell, were awakened at 2:00 the morning of February 8, 1888, by the sound of a gunshot from the floor below. They heard someone shout “Get out! Get out of here!” followed by more gunshots, then silence. Thinking that all was well—or more likely, too frightened to do anything else—the girls went back to sleep.

Five hours later, Mr. Snell’s coachman, Henry Winklebook, entered the house to attend the furnace fires and found evidence of a break-in. Snell’s basement office was strewn with scattered papers, his safe was open, and a broken strongbox lay on the floor. Winklebook hurried upstairs to inform his employer and found his lifeless body lying in a pool of blood in the hall, 

APRIL 20, 2021 BY LAURA SHIMEL

Amos J. Snell, a wealthy real estate owner in Chicago, was murdered in his home in 1888.  The identity of the murderer remains unknown to this day.  Listen to learn what we do know about Amos J. Snell, his murder, and the aftershocks of his death that affected his family for generations.  Is it Fact or Fiction?  You be the judge! 

Amos J. Snell, the West Side millionaire, was shot dead yesterday morning by burglars in his residence, at the northwest corner of Washington boulevard and Ada street. The murder was committed shortly after 2 o’clock in the morning, but was not discovered until nearly 7, when the coachman entered the house from his quarters over the stables and stumbled over his master’s dead body. The only clew to the murderers is a box of burglar’s tools which they left behind them. About an hour before the murder occupied Sergt. Hartnett arrested two suspicious characters who were hanging about the premises. These are believed to be the outside confederates of the burglars who robbed the safe in the office in the basement floor and murdered its owner. The booty is valueless to them, as it consists of $1,600 worth of county warrants and $5,000 in checks son indorsed that it has been possible to to stop payment on them. No money, jewelry, or plate was taken.

The near-west side in the 1880s had no shortage of villains. E.A. Trask was operating on Washington street, possibly in conjuction with H.H. Holmes. A block to the south had been the offices of the notorious Dr. Thomas N. Cream. A block west of all of this stood the mansion of Amos J. Snell, a local millionare who owned hundreds of houses, including most of what is now Milwaukee Avenue, which he turned into a toll road that made him a fortune. He lived at the Northwest Corner of Washington and Ada (where a vacant lot now stands).

A millionare with a streak of paranoia, Snell kept a pistol by his bed and was known on several occasions to wake up, grab the pistol, and run off to investigate any strange noises he heard. Usually, it turned out to be nothing but the wind. But in February of 1888, Snell heard a strange noise in his house at 2 in the morning, came down to investigate, and was shot to death by burlgars – who stole nothing. The only clues were scattered views of coaches running by in the freezing street reported by servants, two sets of footprints in the snow, and a bag of tools – the kind used by burglars – left on the scene.