Greenbrier County, West Virginia. January, 1897. Zona Heaster Shue is found dead at the foot of her own stairs, and her husband Erasmus, a blacksmith and drifter who had already buried two wives, weeps over the body and will not let the doctor near it.
The doctor notes nothing. Erasmus dresses her himself, in a dress with a high, stiff collar. He ties a scarf around her neck. He is very particular about the neck.
Then Zona's mother, Mary Jane Heaster, starts dreaming. Four nights running, her daughter comes back, turns her head all the way around on her shoulders, and says: he broke my neck.
Cass will tell you the ghost didn't testify. The mother did. He's right, and he's insufferable about it. But here is the part that keeps me up at night: they exhumed the body, and the neck was broken. The windpipe crushed. The doctor had missed it completely.
Erasmus Trout Shue was convicted of murder that July. The mother's testimony about the ghost was admitted into evidence. It remains the only murder conviction in American history with an assist from the afterlife.
Sometimes the dead are better witnesses than the living. They have nothing left to lose.