GHOST 4: John Keyes c. 1908 - Plymouth, California
August 29, 1918 was like any other sweltering summer day at the Head Ranch on Summit Ridge. The still air hung over the dry sandy earth like a leaded blanket. The trees were stoic. The day quiet. Thunderheads billowed above the mountain ridge high up in the Sierra Nevada’s. Twenty-eight-year-old Albina Bergala Keyes was hanging laundry, while her daughter, six-month-old Marie lay on a blanket under a tree.
Marie was uncharacteristically fussy that day – as later reported by her grandfather Frank Bergala who visited in the early morning hours - bringing eggs for the struggling family. His granddaughter was distracted by something seemingly hovering over her head. She looked up at the sky – gurgling, writhing and swatting away the nothingness above her. Was it nothing, or was something really there?
Frank felt it too, the strangeness in the air, and when he walked over to his granddaughter for a cuddle, she was cold – ice cold. A chill permeated the blistering heat – daring it to cross the child’s path. A shiver ran through the older man.
“The boy,” he mumbled.
Albina wiped her brow. “What’s that Papa?” she asked taking the eggs and putting them in the house.
Frank picked up the baby to follow but recoiled. He looked at his hand – something seemed to bite at him.
“You okay?” he called after his daughter. Something was there – someone – the boy – Frank felt it. Frank felt it, but the baby saw it. Clear as day.
Albina reemerged from the dilapidated house and went back to her laundry. “As okay as any other day.”
“You sure?” Her father was unusually concerned, especially since he knew the circumstances – was responsible for them – at least in part.
Albina was married to John Keyes, and Keyes was not an easy man. Their tumultuous relationship
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| Amador Dispatch - 1908 |
began when Keyes kidnapped and raped Albina years earlier. She said she’d gone willingly, but she was fourteen at the time, and fourteen-year-olds could not consent to being with 28-year-olds. Now, Albina was pregnant, so Frank did the only thing he knew to do. He went to the town Sheriff and charged John Keyes with abduction. The father declared he would drop the charges if John made Albina “an honest woman.” The two were married on the spot.
Back to Summit Ridge - Bina felt it too, the heaviness, long before that fateful day in August. She felt it back in March, at the county hospital, right after she had little Marie when she told the attending nurses that she feared returning home. The cold presence lingered whenever John was around. Albina was now 28 with a new baby, and for the first time, the cold receded a bit. The new baby radiated a glow around her. For the first time in their long marriage, Albina felt somehow protected.
But not that day in August. The cold was back and cold in an Amador County August day is an anomaly.
“We’re fine Papa - just tired of the heat.”
Bergala left.
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| January 17, 1908 |
John’s headache progressed to an echoing rumble and then to voices - voices that told him his young wife and child were anarchist.
With no notice, no warning and no emotion – John grasped the ax he was holding from morning’s work, raised it high above Albina’s head and crashed it down upon her skill – not once, not twice, but several times – splattering the tiny kitchen with his wife’s blood.
Marie was next. With one swift blow, Keyes smashed the ax into his baby’s forehead, bringing her young life to an untimely end.
After the murders, Keyes cleaned up his wife and child, dressed them in their finest clothes and took himself to the County Hospital in Jackson where he asked the Superintendent for some poison. When the superintendent asked what John wanted the poison for, he told the other man he’d killed his wife and his baby and wanted to kill himself. The Superintendent handed Keyes off to a nurse and called the Sheriff. The following appeared in the August 29, 1918 edition of the Amador Ledger.
"Brutal Husband Kills Wife And Child With Axe –
One of the most brutal murders it has been our duty to record occurred yesterday sometime before noon at the Head place, about two miles up the ridge from the Summit House, when Jack Keyes with the blunt side of an axe crushed the skull of his wife, Bina Keyes, aged 24, and then inflicted a fatal blow with the same instrument on the forehead of their 6 month old daughter, Marie Keyes.
The first known of the crime was about 8:30 last night, when Keyes came to the County Hospital in Jackson and asked Superintendent Murphy for some poison. Murphy asked what he wanted it for, and Keyes replied that his had killed his wife and baby with an axe. Murphy told him it was hard to get poison but Mr. Dodd, the nurse, would take him down town for some, and while they walked away from the building Murphy quickly called up the Sheriff, who met Keyes shortly after at the side of the hospital. Keyes told the Sheriff he had killed his wife and baby because a lady told him his wife was an anarchist. The Sheriff placed Keyes in jail and went to the scene of the murder.
When asked why he killed the child, Keyes said he figured the baby was an anarchist also. He said he struck his wife several times with the axe before the fatal blow crushed her skull. After the murder Keyes washed the bodies, dressed and covered them. He sat around the house during the afternoon, until the time he came to Jackson.
Keyes showed absolutely no signs of being intoxicated, as testified to both Superintendent Murphy and Sheriff Lucot and at the inquest held here today by Coroner Dolores A. Potter.
During the inquest Keyes, angered at the removal of a stove poker from his reach, sprang from his chair and attacked Deputy Sheriff Ford. Instantly a dozen men were on the job and a well-directed blow on the murderer's neck by Telephone Manager Watts, a juryman, floored the belligerent.
When asked if he had anything to say, Keyes said he wanted to be hanged. Other than that he made no further statement. Keyes has been in trouble before. It is said he and his wife quarreled frequently. She feared to return to him from the County Hospital, where the baby was born on March 6 of this year." ---Amador Ledger (8/30/1918)
What of the baby 15-year-old Albina had with John that prompted the arrest and shotgun wedding?
What happened to little John? In the “Short Stories for our Busy Readers” section of the Amador Dispatch, dated Friday, August 11, 1911, it was noted that the Sheriff visited John and Albina, while they were living above Plymouth, on the notification from an interested party, that they couple were
John Keyes told Sheriff Davis that on July 3 he and his wife gave the child to some campers, named Mr. and Mrs. Frank Smith; because, given their dire circumstances, the Smiths could better care for the active toddler.
Family lore is much darker and suggests baby John fell victim to his father – just like Albina and Marie had years later. The same lore suggests the child has no rest in the afterlife. After the little John’s disappearance, Albina began sensing cold spots and seeing shadows and flashes of light. When baby Marie was born, she was often soothed by an ominous chill that surrounds her and to this day –when the days are still and the August air is heavy – a vicious cold hovers over the Keyes’ grave in Plymouth, California – where the young boy still searches for his mother – believed to be in the grave in Plymouth simply marked Keyes – where his father rests.
And what of the father? John Keyes, Sr. was declared insane and committed to the Insane Asylum in
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| October 1918 |
What happened to John Keyes is a mystery? Prison records do not indicate he died in San Quentin,while census records of 1930 and 1940 list a John Keyes as a resident of the Napa State Mental Hospital. Family lore puts John in the home relative Marguerite T. Morales on Main Street in Plymouth at about the same time her two grandsons, William J. Keyes and Douglas R. Cavagnaro lived at the same.
No records were found on his death.
As for the Keyes grave in Plymouth – a gripping cold lingers over the simple headstone but only on the usually sweltering night of August 28.
To get the the Plymouth Pioneer Cemetery, follow this link - PPC . The Keyes grave is towards the Northeast corner.
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| Retrieved From Ancestry.com |
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