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Off the Plank: Murder on Smuttynose Island (Revisited)

The Hontvet house.
Photo Courtesy J. Dennis Robinson (Jdennisrobinson.com)
The Hontvet house.

There’s a 27-acre island off the coast of Portsmouth, New Hampshire called Smuttynose Island. The population in 1873 was six: a family of Norwegian immigrants who rented the only house on the island. So it shocked the country when two of them were brutally murdered. The murder still inspires wild theories — and a bestselling book and movie — a century and a half later.

(This is a rebroadcast of an episode from 2020.)

Davis Dunavin loves telling stories, whether on the radio or around the campfire. He started in Missouri and ended up in Connecticut, which, he'd like to point out, is the same geographic trajectory taken by Mark Twain.