When James Germond failed to show up with his daily milk delivery to the Borden Company dairy for a couple days, workers there knew something was wrong. Germond, a 46-year-old dairy farmer, had always been punctual with his deliveries. On Nov. 28, 1930, the dairy dispatched Willard Coons to the Germond farm in Poughkeepsie, NY, to see what was going on. When he arrived, Coons discovered the Germonds were dead. Coons found James’ body in the wagon shed with his 10-year-old son, Raymond. The two were soaked in blood from multiple stab wounds over their entire bodies. Inside the house, Coons found Germond’s wife, Mabel, 47, and his daughter, Bernice, 18, in the kitchen. They too had been stabbed repeatedly, leading to their deaths.
Bernice was the last member of the family seen alive when she got off a bus from Poughkeepsie the evening of Nov. 26. She’d come home from Eastman Business College for the Thanksgiving holiday. Police investigating the case did not find much in the way of clues. They did find the presumed murder weapon, a large butcher knife, but it had been wiped clean. They picked up a suspect in Brooklyn, but witnesses failed to pick him out of a lineup and he was released.
In 1933, Germond’s neighbor, Arthur Curry, was arrested and charged with killing the Germonds. According to the case against him, Curry killed the Germonds after an argument with James about hunting rights on land he was leasing to Curry. However, all of the evidence against Curry was circumstantial and the charges were eventually dismissed. Curry died in 1955. Who killed the Germonds remains a mystery.
