Hannah Mary Tabbs

Born into slavery in the 1850s, she escaped northward and settled in Philadelphia, where she and accomplice, George Wilson, were accused of murder after the discovery of a headless, limbless, mutilated torso.

[citation needed] Tabbs became involved in an adulterous affair with 24 year-old Wakefield Gains, a mixed-race Philadelphia man.

[2][3] Gains' mutilated torso was discovered in Colonel William B. Mann's ice pond, on February 17, 1887, in Eddington, PA by Silas Hibbs.

[4] Philadelphia Police investigators Frank Geyer, James Tate, Thomas Crawford, and Peter Miller determined Tabbs, in conjunction with 18-year-old George Wilson, murdered Wakefield Gains.

Philadelphia Police Department investigators Frank Geyer, Thomas Crawford, Tate, and Miller, accompanied by George Wilson searched the river but never recovered the dismembered body parts.

[15][16] The Hannah Mary Tabbs case was partly dramatized on an episode of the 2022 BBC Radio podcast series Lucy Worsley's Lady Killers.