Edward Bates Soper (February 7, 1855 – March 30, 1899) was an American serial killer. Initially sought for the murder of his first wife and two daughters in Archie, Missouri in 1895, Soper killed a son from his second wife near Portland, Oregon two years later. After his arrest, he confessed to five homicides committed throughout his life, starting with the murder of his father in 1880, but was hanged solely for one of the murders in Archie.
Early life and Missouri murders
Edward Bates Soper was born on February 7, 1855, in Kearney, Missouri, the second of eight children born to farmers John Lewis Soper and Sarah Hyatt Soper (née Estes). Little is known of his life prior to committing his first crime, that being stealing a horse at the age of 20 and selling it in Kansas City. Sometime after committing this deed, Soper hatched a plan to kill his father John, whom he had grown to hate over the years for unclear reasons.
Murder of John Soper
On January 30, 1880, Edward Soper started a literary society near the family home in Kearney, inviting his father to join. Once the elder Soper accepted his invitation, Edward went to hide in a feeding lot, and when he saw his father approaching, he drew his pistol and shot him four times, killing him. Soper then disposed of the murder weapon in a nearby creek, returned to the society and went on to participate in the exercises, acting as if nothing had happened. When the crime was discovered, another man named Mapes was convicted on circumstantial evidence and imprisoned for the murder.
Murder of Ardela Hunt and children
Soper himself was arrested for horse theft and sentenced to a 2-year prison term in a local penitentiary. After his release, Soper returned to Clay County, where he married 35-year-old Ardela Hunt, a divorcée with two children: 6-year-old Maude and 3-year-old Gillis. While the marriage was generally considered a happy one, Soper and his wife would begin to quarrel after the latter decided to join a local Christian church, to which the former objected, as he was supposedly a spiritualist. On April 21, 1891, while Ardela and the two children were sleeping in their respective rooms at the family farm in Archie, Soper grabbed an axe and proceeded to murder all three of them, bludgeoning them repeatedly.
After killing them, he sat down and wrote several letters, claiming that he had exterminated his family because he could not properly take care of them and would rather have them die than to live in misery. He then locked the doors and proclaimed that he was moving out of town because he had supposedly discovered an illegal saloon, which he considered immoral. Three days after his departure, neighbors broke down the family home to find his wife and children's decomposing bodies. Soon after this discovery, an arrest warrant was issued for Soper, who would remain on the run for several years.
In June 1891, three fishermen found the highly decomposed body of an apparent drowning victim in the Missouri River, which was initially believed to be Soper. After a coroner's inquest, the man's body was erroneously identified as that of Soper, and the case was temporarily closed.
Move to Oregon, new murder and arrest
In the meantime, the real Soper had moved to Albina, Oregon (now a district of Portland), where he lived under the assumed name of R. S. "Sandy" Soper and worked as a car cleaner for the Pullman Company. In 1894, Soper remarried to a woman named Catherine Brownleewe, with whom he had a child, Gilis. For around three years, the trio lived a relatively happy life until one fateful day, when Soper accidentally revealed his real name to his wife.
Murder of son
On April 16, 1897, under the guise of going to a shoemaker, Soper took his 2-year-old son with him and went out, but never returned home. A few days later, he sent his wife a letter claiming that the child was "placed where it would be well cared for", and asked her not to worry about him. In actuality, Soper had gone to a bank of the Willamette River, where he then threw Gilis into the river and let him drown, before fishing out the corpse and burying it nearby.