Murder Victim. Minnie was the second victim of the so-called "Demon of the Belfry," Theo Durrant. On Good Friday, both Theo and Minnie were supposed to go to a church social that was being held at a parishioner's house, but he somehow lured her into the empty Emannuel Baptist Church instead. There, he sexually assaulted her, stabbed her, and choked her by forcing a piece of her undergarments down her throat with a sharpened stick. When she was dead, he hid her body in the library closet, cleaned her blood off of himself and the library floor, then cheerfully went off to the party. He was eventually tried for Minnie's murder and the earlier murder of Blanche Lamont in the church belfry and was hanged at San Quentin on January 7, 1898. She was originally buried in Laurel Hill Cemetery in San Francisco. But, when a city ordinance outlawed cemeteries inside the city limits, all 35,000 bodies were removed from Laurel Hill and reburied in a mass grave in Cypress Lawn.
Murder Victim. Minnie was the second victim of the so-called "Demon of the Belfry," Theo Durrant. On Good Friday, both Theo and Minnie were supposed to go to a church social that was being held at a parishioner's house, but he somehow lured her into the empty Emannuel Baptist Church instead. There, he sexually assaulted her, stabbed her, and choked her by forcing a piece of her undergarments down her throat with a sharpened stick. When she was dead, he hid her body in the library closet, cleaned her blood off of himself and the library floor, then cheerfully went off to the party. He was eventually tried for Minnie's murder and the earlier murder of Blanche Lamont in the church belfry and was hanged at San Quentin on January 7, 1898. She was originally buried in Laurel Hill Cemetery in San Francisco. But, when a city ordinance outlawed cemeteries inside the city limits, all 35,000 bodies were removed from Laurel Hill and reburied in a mass grave in Cypress Lawn.
Bio by: Karen Valentine
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