Ocey Snead

Oceana Wardlaw Martin Snead (September 1885 – November 29, 1909) also known as Ocey Snead, was an American woman who was drugged and drowned in East Orange, New Jersey by her own family to collect $32,000 in insurance money.

Birth and family Oceana was born in September 1885, probably in New York City, to Caroline Belle Wardlaw (1848–1913), and Colonel Robert Maxwell Martin, who had fought for the Confederacy in the American Civil War. Her mother had a career in education, at one point being removed from a position for unstable behavior. Ocey was the common accepted nickname in that time for Oceana.

Caroline Belle Wardlaw had three sisters. Mary Elizabeth Long Wardlaw (1849–1937) married Fletcher Tillman Snead (1829–1891). Together they produced a son, Fletcher Wardlaw Snead (1875–1955), who was Ocey's first cousin and would become her husband. The second sister was Virginia Oceana Wardlaw (1852–1910), who never married. Both sisters were also involved in education and were also implicated in Ocey's murder. The third sister, who was not implicated in the death, was Bessie Gertrude Wardlaw (1867–1954) who married Richard Spindle (1855–1928). There were two brothers. John Banks Wardlaw (1854–1881) who was a journalist and also taught at the Christiansburg school with his aunt and sisters and married Mary Elizabeth "Lizzie" Davidson (1857–1880). Both John and Lizzie died in Christiansburg while John was working at the school as an English Language professor. The second brother was Albert Goodall Wardlaw (1856–1936), a reverend who married Harriett Lee Field; he wasn't involved with the school.

The siblings were the children of Martha Elizabeth Wardlaw, née Goodall (1828–1910), and John Baptist Wardlaw (1817–1896), a minister and South Carolina Supreme Court justice. Caroline, Mary, and Virginia were known for dressing in black and behaving secretively. Several strange deaths followed the women in their later lives.

Marriage Ocey married Fletcher Wardlaw Snead, her first cousin, in Louisville, Kentucky in 1906. The wedding took place in secret because the family was originally opposed to the union. A second ceremony was held on January 13, 1908, at Jersey City, New Jersey after the sisters had been "won over", shortly before the birth of their first child. She returned home and, after a period of time, obtained a divorce. Fletcher then came to the college and married Ocey.

The three sisters entered into several fraudulent business deals in Christiansburg and the surrounding communities, eroding any trust the residents of that area had in them and sparking much speculation about their habits. Rumors spread in town that the sisters were engaged in secret rituals at Christiansburg's Sunset Cemetery, around the graves of their brother John and his wife Lizzie. Attendance at the school dropped, and chaos reigned in the classrooms. By 1904, the Montgomery Male Academy had closed, and male students were now also attending the Montgomery Female Academy, the name of which was now Montgomery Hall. Vandals wreaked extensive damage on the school and, by 1908, all three sisters, along with Fletcher and Ocey Snead, left Christiansburg for New York City and New Jersey.

Treatment and death For some unknown reason, after the death of their first child, and while Ocey was early in her pregnancy with their second, Fletcher Snead moved to Canada under an assumed name, and never contacted his wife again, but left her in the care of these women.

Ocey had apparently always been the object of scorn from her mother and aunts, who deliberately tried to starve her to death virtually from the day she was born. Subsequent to the departure of her husband, Ocey's health began to fail. Dr. William Pettit was called in to look at the sickly pregnant woman. He found her suffering from depression, "general weakness", and malnutrition. "She seemed depressed and indeed afraid of those about her," he told police later.

Pettit visited the Wardlaw household several times and repeatedly found that his instructions for Ocey's care were not being followed. Because the sisters were not cooperating, nor were they paying him, he stopped visiting. The sisters called another doctor, who smuggled food to Ocey when he saw her condition. Not long after Ocey's baby was born, he sneaked through a window to check on her, but Virginia threw him out. A lawyer subsequently told him there was nothing that could be done. Several months later, Pettit was once again summoned and found Ocey to be even weaker than before, and no longer pregnant. The baby, named David, had been taken to a hospital, where he was in poor health. He was later placed in an orphanage by the sisters; however, he died when just 9 months old and is buried next to his mother.

Virginia told Pettit to inform Ocey that she was dying and to tell her to make a will. Instead, Pettit had a nurse brought in to care for Ocey; the nurse stayed just one day before being removed by the sisters. Rather than pay the $100 bill presented by the doctor, the sisters offered to make him a $1,000 beneficiary in Ocey's will. He declined and decided to take steps against the family, believing that Ocey was "under some hypnotic influence." What he did not know was that Ocey was being given regular but unnecessary doses of morphine for her post-partum pain by her mother and aunts. When Pettit returned to check on Ocey before he reported the strange case to police, he found the place abandoned and the sisters gone.

The family next surfaced in another Brooklyn neighborhood in September 1909, when Virginia, wearing a thick layer of black veils, visited Julius Carabba, a New York attorney, and asked him to help a dying woman prepare a will. Carabba came to Ocey's bedside while her mother and aunts chanted prayers over her. After the prayers, Virginia asked Ocey if she wanted to make a new will, to which Ocey agreed. Carabba told the women that Ocey needed a doctor and some food. The sisters said they could afford neither. Carabba offered to write them a check and, while the sisters left the room in search of a pen, talked to Ocey. She told him that she was dying, reached under her pillow and gave him her will, in which she left everything to her grandmother and asked him to make himself executor. The sisters offered Carabba $7,000 to make them the beneficiaries. Carabba refused and the sisters dropped him as their attorney.

In October 1909, Virginia was served as defendant in a lawsuit for nonpayment of the price of a new piano. Her response to the plaintiff was "wait until we bury our dead." At this time, Ocey was near death from lack of food and medical care and was moved to an apartment at 89 East 14th Street, East Orange, New Jersey. There was no heat or gas for cooking and the place was furnished with just two cots, a rug, a chair, and a barrel for a table. The police were called by the family on November 29, 1909, and told there was an "accident". The police then sent a physician to their home. Virginia led Dr. Herbert M. Simmons, the Assistant County Physician, to an upstairs bathroom where Ocey's naked body was sitting in a tub of water with her head tilted under the faucet.

A suicide note pinned to her clothes was beside the bathtub. It read as follows:

Ocey was buried on December 7, 1909, at Mount Hope Cemetery, beside her father, 7-year-old brother, and 2-day-old infant daughter Mary Alberta, in Hastings-on-Hudson in Westchester County, New York. Her infant son, David Pollock Snead, who had been taken by the sisters shortly after birth and placed in an orphange, died July 18, 1910, at the age of 9 months, and is buried with his family.

Investigation and trial Simmons deemed Virginia's answers to questions about Ocey's death suspicious, so he called the police to investigate. Ocey's death was identified as drowning, with starvation as a contributing cause. Suspicion for the death quickly focused on her family, particularly her mother and two aunts. The investigator who originally arrived at the home noted that it was cold and appeared unoccupied, and that the victim had been dead for at least 24 hours, prompting investigators to wonder why there was a delay in discovering the body. The evidence against the sisters consisted of several life insurance policies that had been taken out on the young woman, several suicide notes found in the possession of Ocey's mother that were written in the same hand and similar style as the note alleged to have been Ocey's suicide note, and the family's treatment of Ocey prior to her death. All three were arrested and charged with murder. Virginia Wardlaw starved herself to death in prison in 1910, while awaiting trial. Caroline Martin, late into her trial, finally pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was taken to jail, then transferred to an insane asylum, where she died in 1913. Mary Snead was released on a technicality, since there is no charge for accomplice to manslaughter and went to Colorado to live with her youngest son, Albert Charles Snead. They later moved to California, where she died in 1937.

Suspects Fletcher Wardlaw Snead (1875–1955), Ocey's husband, was located under the name "John Lucas" cooking at the New Murray hotel in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada and questioned. No incriminating evidence was found against him and he was never charged in connection with his wife's murder. He died in Los Angeles, California, on January 12, 1955, under his own name. Virginia Oceana Wardlaw (1852–1910), Ocey's unmarried maternal aunt, had attended Wellesley College and had never married. She taught at the Price School in Nashville, Tennessee, then, in 1892, became the head of the Soule Female College in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Around, she moved to the Montgomery Female Academy in Christiansburg, Virginia. She died of self-induced starvation on August 12, 1910, while waiting for the trial to begin. Her body was sent to Christiansburg for burial in Sunset Cemetery. Caroline Belle Wardlaw Martin (1845–1913), Ocey's mother, had a career in education, at one point being removed from a position due to unstable behavior. She was considered to have been the instigator of her daughter's murder. She pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of manslaughter as part of a plea bargain. She was sentenced to seven years in prison and sent to the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton. She was declared mentally unstable on May 18, 1912, and then transferred to the New Jersey State Lunatic Asylum in Trenton, where she died on June 20, 1913. Years later, evidence emerged that suggested she had poisoned her husband to collect on a $10,000 life insurance policy. She was also suspected of pushing her 7 year old son, Hugh Hodge Martin (1881–1888) down a flight of stairs, for which she collected on a $22,000 life insurance policy. Mary Elizabeth Long Wardlaw Snead (1849–1937), Ocey's maternal aunt and mother-in-law, was cleared of all charges on a technicality. Her oldest sister had pleaded guilty to manslaughter; Mary could not be charged as an accessory. She moved to her son's ranch in Colorado and was living with her son in California when she died October 1937.

Other potential victims Hugh Martin (1881–1888), Ocey's brother. He may have been pushed down a flight of stairs and died a few days later.