Hazel G Crance

Evidence relating to the "Donald W. Fether and Hazel G. Crance Murder Case, 1919. Includes: jacket, pants, shirt, shoes, belt, letter, blueprints, purse, wallet, various papers, and notes.

The box contains the evidence from the Fether-Crance murder. District Attorney Adams, who worked on the case, kept the evidence in his office before donating it to the History Center in the 1960s. In 1919, Cornell University sophomore Donald Fether was charged with the murder of Hazel Crance, a high school student. Fether had taken Crance for a canoe ride on Cayuga Lake. She never returned. Fether claimed that he could not rescue Crance when the canoe overturned. However, the prosecution alleged that Fether used his trousers, which appeared to be twisted to form a rope, to strangle Crance. Grapplers searched Cayuga Lake but failed to recover a body. Fether was eventually released due to habeas corpus."

HistoryCenter in Tompkins County online catalog for Objects, object record: https://thehistorycenter.catalogaccess.com/objects/4591

"Hazel, age 18, had grown up in Ithaca and was her parents' only child. She had gone to a party on the 19th of July with Donald W. Fether, a student at Cornell University. They went out on the lake in a canoe, the canoe tipped over, and Hazel drowned. Donald survived.

He was exonerated in her death, but because he had purchased whiskey (Prohibition was in force at the time), he was fined $200.

Hazel's body has never been recovered."

Find a Grave: Hazel Crance, 1901-1919, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/202260925/hazel-crance