Peter Conover Hains Jr. (January 9, 1872 - February 5, 1955) was a

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...

captain Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police department, election precinct, e ...

convicted of killing his wife's lover. The case became a sensational

murder Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification (jurisprudence), justification or valid excuse (legal), excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought. ("The killing of another person wit ...

trial in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

in 1908. He was the son of Major General Peter Conover Hains and the father of Peter C. Hains III. Hains attended the

United States Naval Academy The United States Naval Academy (US Naval Academy, USNA, or Navy) is a federal service academy in Annapolis, Maryland. It was established on 10 October 1845 during the tenure of George Bancroft as Secretary of the Navy. The Naval Academy ...

from 1889 to 1893, but did not graduate. He was commissioned into the United States Army in July 1898 with the rank of second lieutenant, serving with the artillery and achieving the rank of captain in December 1902. In 1908, abetted by his brother, the novelist

Thornton Jenkins Hains Thornton Jenkins Hains (1866-1953) was an American sea novelist best known today for his role in the murder of William Annis. Hains later used the pen name Mayn Clew Garnett. Hains' father was General Peter Conover Hains, a prestigious engineeri ...

, Peter Hains gunned down prominent magazine editor and Harper's contributor William Annis at a yacht club in Bayside, Queens. The crime, known as the Hains-Annis Case or the "Murder at the Regatta," played an important role in the development of criminal and matrimonial law. Peter Hains was convicted of manslaughter and received an eight-year sentence, but later received a pardon from the governor of New York. His brother pleaded temporary insanity and was acquitted of manslaughter. The murder, committed while Hains was still an active duty Army officer, did not disqualify him from military service; after he had been convicted and incarcerated, following the passage of a Congressional act which would have allowed the dismissal of convicted service members, Hains resigned from the United States Army in 1911. It was one of the last cases in which a defendant pleaded Dementia Americana, the psychiatric pathology that allegedly drove American men to kill the lovers of their unfaithful wives.

Harry Thaw Harry Kendall Thaw (February 12, 1871 – February 22, 1947) was the son of American coal and railroad baron William Thaw Sr.. Heir to a multimillion-dollar fortune, the younger Thaw is most notable for murdering the renowned architect Sta ...

used a similar defense during his trial for the murder of architect Stanford White.

The trial was front-page news across the country at the time and ranks with the trials of

Josephine Terranova Josephine Pullare Terranova (April 21, 1889, in San Stefano, Sicily, Italy – July 16, 1981, in Marin County, California) was the defendant in a sensational murder trial in New York City in 1906. After years of alleged sexual abuse at the han ...

and

Richard Bruno Hauptmann Bruno Richard Hauptmann (November 26, 1899 – April 3, 1936) was a German-born carpenter who was convicted of the abduction and murder of the 20-month-old son of aviator Charles Lindbergh and his wife Anne Morrow Lindbergh. The Lindbergh kidn ...

as among the most widely watched and reported American criminal trials of the first half of the twentieth century.

References

1872 births 1955 deaths American people convicted of manslaughter United States Army officers Recipients of American gubernatorial pardons {{US-crime-bio-stub

See also

References