35. Baby Killers
The Harpe brothers eventually made their way to Cave-In-Rock, a cave in bluffs overlooking the Illinois bank of the Ohio River. It was the stronghold of a ruthless river pirate named Samuel Mason, and the Harpes joined his crew. However, even deadly cutthroats like river pirates soon grew appalled by the Harpes’ sadism. Among other things, the brothers enjoyed taking captives to the top of the bluff, stripping them naked, and kicking them off. So Mason forced them to leave.
They returned to Tennessee and continued piling up the bodies. Among them was Big Harpe’s own infant daughter, whose head he bashed against a tree in August 1799, because her crying annoyed him. That same month they disemboweled a man, and when an unwary family, the Stegalls, gave them shelter in Kentucky, they repaid the hospitality by murdering one of their house guests. They also slit Mrs. Stegall’s four-month-old baby boy’s throat because his crying annoyed them. When a horrified Mrs. Stegall screamed, the Harpe brothers murdered her too.