A STICK, A WIRE AND A BLOB OF LEAD

“According to the psychologist, (Osterhout) may have some borderline personality problems which are hard to treat.”-  Judge in the trial of Jason Osterhout accused of kidnapping and rape of his wife in Georgia, 2001

    There’s more than a few Osterhouts and Jennings (sane or insane) still sitting in prison cells today. Their stories of crime and mayhem resist any compassion or sympathy. Perverts, incestuous child molesters, rapists and cold blooded killers, there’s no way I want to become pen pals with any of these kin. But there is one in particular, whose coincidental attachment to the alien tree by place, pathology and circumstance is rather remarkable. This would be Jason Osterhout.  

Quoting directly from the Court of Appeals of Georgia, Osterhout v. State No. A03A2243:

   “Jason Osterhout was indicted for kidnapping with bodily injury, rape, six counts of aggravated assault, possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime, and possession of a knife during the commission of a crime. Following a jury trial, he was convicted on all counts (substituting a few lesser charges on the kidnapping and aggravated counts). He was sentenced to a total of thirty five years on the various convictions….the evidence demonstrates that at the night before the incident at issue, Osterhout’s wife told him she wanted a divorce. The following morning, October 24, 2001, she was awakened when Osterhout climbed onto the bed, straddled her, and handcuffed her hands together. She screamed for him to stop, but also tied her feet to the bed with a rope. Osterhout told his wife that she would make things harder by struggling, but she continued to fight him. After he finished tying his wife to the bed, Osterhout held a “black handled butcher knife” to his wife and had sexual intercourse with her……Afterward, Osterhout picked up a .22 rifle and threatened to kill her; he then pointed the gun at himself and said that he would make her watch him die. He told her that he could not have her, no one would and that if she left, he would give her something to remember him by.

       He turned away and started punching the wall with the knife. When he was facing the wall, his wife managed to escape from the ropes around her feet and ran out of the house….and called 911. When the policed responded, Osterhout refused to come out of his house…saying he was going to kill himself. The officer observed Osterhout drinking what appeared to be rubbing alcohol and beer and taking ibuprofen and cold pills. Osterhout gave the officers a suicide note. After Osterhout threatened to cut his throat, and put a gun barrel in his mouth, the police used a concussion grenade to gain entry and arrested Osterhout.” 

  In his appeal Jason Osterhout argued, among other things, that “that trial counsel was ineffective for failing to pursue an insanity defense….Osterhout was evaluated at Central State Hospital and nothing in the report supported the insanity defense.” The report concluded, “As I recall Osterhout was in Central State for a while, living among psychologists, psychiatrists, sociologists, whatever their field is, then I had not seen anything to give me an idea that maybe we’d have a really good chance to have him declared mentally incompetent or so insane that he’s not responsible for his actions legally.” According to the experts, Jason Osterhout was a brutal criminal and may have had some mental issues, but far from legally insane.

Judgement affirmed. Appeal denied. DOC status: active. 

     Crazy or not, Jason Osterhout lived in Eatonton, Putnam County Georgia, a few miles from the old Major Alexander plantation where Rosetta Alexander was born. The corpses are stirring.   

     

   Back in Monticello, Van Buren lost the Hardenbergh case, but was able to stay the execution for a short time. The attorneys appealed the guilty verdict to the New York Supreme court and received a temporary stay, until the court could determine “the correctness of introducing “traditionary” evidence in regard to insanity of remote ancestors.” Ultimately the Supreme court deferred to the prosecution and Atty. Gen. Willis Hall; the original sentence upheld. The prisoner was sentenced to hang by the neck until dead on July 14, 1842. Once sentenced, Cornelius W. Hardenberg really got down to the business of writing his memoir….in between attempting to break out.

    John Van Buren had brought up the fact that C.W.’s great grandfather (a Wynkoop) had been clinically insane and although Judge Ruggles granted his motion for a stay, it would not be enough to get C. W. off. Just because your great grandfather was crazy didn’t necessarily mean you legally had any excuse for your own crazy crimes. C.W. Hardenbergh’s insanity plea on heredity grounds was not going to fly in a county where many residents exhibited the same passed down, anti-social lunacy. I know from what I speak. As Ted Rosenthal put it, “the toughest stains seem generational, and they do hide in our dreams…and on our boots.” But C.W. was not quite ready to go “from whence he came.”

    Somehow during his trial, C.W. Hardenbergh procured a kitchen knife, a stick, a piece of wire and a blob of lead. With the knife he popped the rivet on his shackles, made a key with the lead and wire—picked the lock to his cell—and was almost out the door before the Monticello Sheriff woke up. The startled sheriff caught C.W. by the scruff of his neck and returned him to his cell. There the sheriff found the key and broken shackles, but not the knife. 

    On the morning he was executed, before climbing the gallows steps, “crazy” C.W. Hardenbergh, gave the Sheriff his own steak knife back; proudly stating that he could’ve killed him at any time. Hardenbergh went to his death at peace; with a sly smile on his face.

     Before the trap door dropped C.W. gingerly removed his jail issued slippers. Just like Claudius Smith’s execution in Goshen, he would refuse to “die with his boots (slippers) on.” He asked the deputy to bury his favorite footwear alongside him, between his father’s house and barn in Liberty; as the executioner put the rope around his neck. Presumably, C.W.’s bones and those jailhouse slippers are still there and thankfully the “sane” Jason Osterhout is still in prison.