The Hontvet House

The scene of the crime on Smuttynose Island

 tBy 1873 Smuttynose Island was largely abandoned in winter. The Ramshackle Mid-Ocean House hotel was closed and there was no one but the Hontvet family living in the two-story duplex that locals called "The Red House. " John and Maren Hontvet had been renting the house, we believe, since 1868, first bringing on John's brother Matthew from Norway to crew on John's fishing schooner the Clara Bella. Maren's sister Karen, who worked at the Appledore Hotel nearby, visited only rarely. Louis Wagner lodged with the Hontvets from roughly April to November in 1872. He lived on the left side of the duplex, but was moved out for reasons not known soon after Ivan and Anethe Christensen arrived from Norway. The Hontvet House burned early in the 20th century andis marked only by a ring of foundation stones and a hand-made sign in the tall grass. (Visitors often mistake the 1770s-era Haley Cottage, home to the island stewards in season, for the murder house. Filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow had a reproduction of the house built for her film WEIGHT OF WATER that is a fictional account of the murders. That building, constructed near Halifax, Nova Scotia, was taken down after the film was completed. The woman standing in the photo above may be the wife of the photographer. Souvenir photographs of the house were popular after the murders and countless tourists visited the site, many carving out chunks of wood until the building was "honeycombed."  (Photo courtesy Portsmouth Athenaeum)