A Middleburg Murder Became a Landmark Case

A Middleburg Murder Became a Landmark Case

By Denis Cotter

Readers of Ellen Crosby’s murder mysteries set around Middleburg might well be convinced that homicide is a regular occurrence in the Northern Virginia Piedmont. Although the legacy of Cain is not entirely absent from the area, thankfully, it’s relatively rare in the town and its environs.

There have been just a handful of murder cases over the past few decades, though one of the most consequential in Middleburg occurred during the depths of the Great Depression. It happened in a cottage behind what is now Royston’s Funeral Home. The location is said to be haunted and is featured in ghost tours of Middleburg led by guide Heather Kyle.

In the early hours of Jan. 13, 1932, a wealthy widow, Agnes Boeing Ilsley (39), and her maid, Mina Buckner (65), were brutally beaten to death. Historian Eugene Scheel devoted three pages to the murder in his bicentennial “History of Middleburg and Vicinity” (1987).

Ilsley and Buckner were White; the suspected perpetrator, George Crawford (34), was an AfricanAmerican ex-convict. Ilsley had met him when she was doing volunteer work for the prison system.

At the time, Crawford was on a chain gang at a Loudoun County work camp. Released from prison in November, 1930, he convinced Ilsley and the Middleburg town doctor, Richard Holt, to hire him as their chauffeur and handyman.

Ilsley was a member of the Association of Women for Prohibition Reform, an anti-prohibition group that met in Upperville. In early September, 1931, she fired Crawford for stealing a bottle of whiskey from her liquor cabinet, which he denied.

On Christmas Eve, when Ilsley, her brother, Paul Boeing, and Buckner, the maid, were out of town, there was a break-in at their manor house in Middleburg. Clothes and jewelry worth about $500 were stolen.

On Dec. 28, Ilsley swore out a warrant before a local magistrate charging Crawford with the robbery, but he could not be found. On Jan. 12, 1932, Ilsley drove into Washington and hired a private detective agency to investigate the robbery and track down Crawford.

At a party that night, she told her friend, renowned World War I airman Billy Mitchell, she was scared of Crawford. When the murders were discovered the next day by her brother, Mitchell joined the manhunt for Crawford.

Ilsley’s stolen car was found abandoned in a coal yard near Alexandria. Speculation was that Crawford had boarded a northbound freight train in the nearby Potomac Yards.

A year later, Boston, Massachusetts police arrested an African-American man for stealing $8 from a store. He gave his name as Charles Taylor. However, fingerprint evidence—a new science in the early 1930s—identified him as George Crawford.

The rest of the story is legendary in American jurisprudence. Time Magazine covered it extensively in its pages. A federal judge in Massachusetts, James Lowell, refused to extradite Crawford to Virginia because African-Americans were not allowed on juries in the Commonwealth.

Several southern Congressmen demanded Lowell’s impeachment. His decision was reversed on appeal and Crawford was returned back to Virginia for trial.

Charles Hamilton Houston, a widely-respected African-American attorney, represented Crawford at the trial in Leesburg. Crawford claimed he wasn’t in the area at the time, but changed his plea to guilty when multiple witnesses stated they saw him in Middleburg shortly before the killings.

Houston managed to convince the judge not to impose the death penalty and Crawford was sentenced to life. In 2023, the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors renamed the historic Leesburg courthouse to honor Houston’s work in a landmark case that challenged the all-White jury selection process.