In 1919, 36-year-old John Howie Woodruff, a New York state Game Protector, vanished while on duty on Thanksgiving Day. Nearly two years later, a man walking through some local woods discovered John’s remains, but the police were unable to solve the mystery surrounding his disappearance and murder.
Who Was John Howie Woodruff?
John Howie Woodruff was born in Towanda, Pennsylvania, on May 9, 1883, to Jared Ferris Woodruff and Jane Howie Woodruff, one of nine children. The Woodruff family suffered a significant loss when John’s oldest sister, Jessie Phidelia Woodruff, died at age 16, and his mother passed in 1887. John’s father joined them in 1904, followed by John’s other sister, Bessie Bernice Woodruff, in 1908. She was in her late twenties.
At some point, John relocated to Schenectady County, New York, and married Mabel Primmer on September 20, 1916. Mabel was 11 years younger and the daughter of Charles B. Primmer and Harriet West Primmer.
They had two children together – Charles Ferris Woodruff in August 1917 and Ruth Howie Woodruff in April 1919.
The family lived in Scotia, New York. Before joining New York’s Game Protector Force, John worked for realtor J.A. Lindsley on State Street in Schenectady. John took the competitive civil service exam and scored first place. On November 1, 1919, New York State Commissioner George D. Pratt appointed John as a Game Protector.
John’s role as a Game Protector was risky, as the force had been established to safeguard dwindling fish and wildlife populations. (Huss, 2022) He also confronted defiant hunters who flouted regulations by poaching during closed seasons. These aggressive offenders harbored resentment towards John, which deeply concerned his 25-year-old wife, and he endured a barrage of threats on account of his enforcement work.
Mabel’s worries grew when her husband received a nasty letter in which the unidentified author wrote in part, “I’ll get you” and “I’m not afraid of you.” (Huss)
John bravely told his wife, “Well, they’re not going to get me.” Sadly, that may have been what happened next.
Disappearance of John Howie Woodruff
November 27, 1919, was Thanksgiving Day. John, 36, left home at 7 a.m. to go to work while Mable labored to ensure a good holiday meal for him when he returned.
Mabel grew concerned when John failed to return home by dinnertime. Recognizing something was amiss, she promptly contacted the police. The authorities responded swiftly, launching an immediate search.
A large-scale search operation was launched, involving the New York State Police, Schenectady County deputies, Scotia Police, local Game Protectors, and even Boy Scouts. The search teams scoured the areas of South Schenectady, Guilderland, and Carman. However, after several days of intensive searching without any results, the authorities were forced to call off the search.
Investigation
While police had few leads in John’s disappearance, one man came forward with a hopeful sighting.
In 1920, Fred Ferradino was a 20-year-old immigrant from nearby Rotterdam who moved from Italy with his parents to the U.S. when he was three. Fred told the Schenectady District Attorney that he believed he saw John on the day he vanished.
Fred said he was in the waiting room of a railway station near Nine Mile Bridge and Lock #9 at about 11 a.m. on November 27, 1919. He was waiting for a trolley when he noticed two men near the tracks. One of them told the other, a hunter, that he was under arrest. The men were having a heated argument over ferrets, which were illegal to hunt then. Fred noticed the hunter had a shotgun when the two men walked past the waiting room. The hunter fired two shots into the air before the men entered the woods.
Investigators later theorized the hunter fired the gun to signal his hunting dogs to come to him. When the DA asked Fred what the hunter looked like, all he could tell was he was a “foreigner” who spoke with an accent (Huss).
Unfortunately, the authorities later discounted his account due to sightings of John later that evening.
Remains Found
While searching for arbutus in the woods near Amsterdam Road (NYS Route 5) and the Nine Mile Bridge on the Johnson farm, George H. Barrett discovered human remains on April 3, 1921. The remains were those of a male with two gold teeth, pinned down in a depression in the stream bed by heavy slate stones that had been deliberately placed on top of the body, creating a partial tomb-like structure. (Huss)
Law enforcement agencies, including the Schenectady County District Attorney’s Office, rushed to the scene in search of John Woodruff. Governor Nathan Miller instructed the Conservation Commission to assign Game Protector and Confidential Inspector Delbert Speenburgh of Catskill (Huss) to investigate the case. Speenburgh went undercover, spending time with a suspect who had fled to Canada to gather clues about John’s murder.
At the scene where John’s body was found, Speenburgh and the other investigators surveyed the site. Someone had smashed John’s skull open. His hunting boots, clothing, a gold watch, Conservation Commission identification and papers, and a holster for a .38 caliber revolver were with the remains. However, the revolver and Woodruff’s Conservation badge #68 were missing.
Local Coroner Alexander G. Baxter examined John’s remains and determined that a decisive blow to the back of the skull had killed John. That suggested also that John’s killer approached him and struck him from behind. John was a big man and sound with a gun, so the theory states the killer attacked when John had his back turned to him.
Two Men, One Interesting Story
In 1947, two men visited Agent Robert Stone at the Buffalo office to report their stepfather’s confession to a decades-old murder. According to the men, their stepfather claimed he and an accomplice had killed a man in the woods near Schenectady roughly 20 years earlier. The victim tried to apprehend the stepfather for poaching a bird illegally.
According to the informants, the stepfather gave two versions of what happened to the victim. In one account, he claimed he tied the victim to a tree, and the victim later died of exposure following a severe snowstorm. In the second story, he stated that he had killed the victim with a shotgun blast to the head.
Investigators found that a severe winter storm had occurred on Thanksgiving night, 1919, leading them to believe a snowdrift had buried John’s remains. When interviewed in 1947, Speenburgh stated he had observed in 1921 that a portion of John’s skull appeared to have been shot away, likely by a shotgun.
The stepsons took a polygraph test. One of them confessed to fabricating the story in an attempt to remove their stepfather from the home due to a family dispute. However, the state and local police could not make an arrest based on the information gathered from their interviews.
Investigators interviewed Fred Ferradino again. However, he stated that a photo of the stepfather from Buffalo was not the man he had seen with John in 1919. The District Attorney offered to exhume John’s body if sufficient evidence was found to warrant it, but the investigation went cold once more. Decades later, in the early 2000s, a rumor emerged that a deceased Glenville man had confessed to his wife that he had killed John Woodruff. However, this could not be confirmed.
Aftermath
Unfortunately, the authorities never found John’s killer, and his murder remains unsolved 105 years later.
As if losing her husband was not enough, Mabel could not afford to keep their home. What happened to her afterward is unknown, but she never remarried and died in 1970. Her and John’s children are also deceased.
Some reports incorrectly list John’s age when he vanished as 32.
Sources
Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/159606837/john_howie-woodruff: accessed November 27, 2024), memorial page for John Howie Woodruff (9 May 1883–1919), Find a Grave Memorial ID 159606837, citing Vale Cemetery, Schenectady, Schenectady County, New York, USA; Maintained by Susan Seacord Jackson (contributor 47384050).
Huss, Tim. “Fallen Game Wardens of New York State.” New York Almanack. June 5, 2022. https://www.newyorkalmanack.com/2022/06/fallen-game-wardens-of-new-york/
“New York, County Marriages, 1847-1848; 1908-1936”, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FFTW-5D8: Sun Mar 10 11:10:31 UTC 2024), Entry for John Howie Woodruff and Gared F, 20 September 1916.
“United States Census, 1910”, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MRQC-CL6: Mon Jul 22 19:23:02 UTC 2024), Entry for Stephen Ferradino and Mary Ferradino, 1910.