I discovered this article in the Saturday, 24 May 1856, edition of the Southern Morning Herald, a newspaper published in Goulburn, New South Wales.
FRIGHTFUL MURDERS BY A MANIAC
The Newhaven (U.S.) Journal gives full particulars of a most frightful case of double murder at Woodbridge (Connecticut). It appears that a crackbrained fellow named Sanford, who had been several times in a lunatic asylum, waylaid a gentleman named Sperry, as he was travelling in a sleigh near a gloomy piece of wood, contiguous to a crossroad, and murdered him with an axe.
It would seem that Sanford, with the head of the axe, struck Mr Sperry on the temple, inflicting a severe wound about three inches long over the right eye.
It is supposed that this felled him to the ground beside his sleigh. Sanford then struck him again upon the back of his head, cutting a fearful gash behind the ear. As he rolled in the gutter upon the north side of the road, Sanford proceeded to cut his throat, which was evidently done with the axe.
While the murderer was thus despatching his victim, the horse belonging to Mr Sperry quietly walked on towards the turnpike. The murderer then went on to the house of Mr Ichabod Umberfield. He went into the kitchen, and there found Mrs Denning, a woman who does the housework for Mr Umberfield, washing the floor.
He put her arm around her waist and told her he wanted her to go into the entry or hall, where he had deposited his axe and a hickory club when he came into the house. She slapped him across his face with her hand and immediately left the room. He then went into the entry and took the axe and club and passed into the other room, placed them upon the floor and sat down by the stove.
A little girl in the room ran into the bedroom, and lifting up the sash, called out to Mr Umberfield,—‘Charles Sanford is in the house with an axe, and he is crazy—you must come in.”
Mr Umberfield came into the house immediately and sat down by the stove. He spoke to Sanford, asked him how he was, &c. Sanford made no reply to Uberfield, but sat in a sullen mood, apparently, for about two minutes, and then arose and took up his axe and club, as the people in the room supposed, to go away.
He passed behind Mr Umberfield, towards the door, then suddenly turned around, lifted his axe and struck him a powerful blow upon the head. Mr Umberfield fell to the floor with a groan when Sanford struck another blow, and then deliberately cut his throat with the axe, nearly severing his head from his body. Only about four inches of skin upon the front part of the throat, and his windpipe, were all that connected his head to his body. The first blow probably killed him, as it fractured his skull extensively. The blood flowed freely upon the floor, and the room looked like the den of a murderer.
The little girl screamed and ran out of the room, and he followed her across the floor, saying, ‘Stop your noise, you’ll all get your heads chopped off.’ Mrs Denning opened the door just in time to see the murderer strike the last blow.
Sanford went out of the house to wipe the blood from his axe upon the snow, and while he was doing so, the inmates of the house fastened the doors and prevented his coming back again. He then left the house and passed out onto the road, and following it but a short distance, soon struck off into the woods at the foot of West Rock. The ruffian was pursued and captured after a desperate resistance.
One of the party who was armed with a pitchfork thrust it into Sanford’s chest and held the maniac at bay for a moment until another struck him with a club and knocked him down. There were eight men in the party, and it was with the greatest difficulty they could secure and bind him.
They finally got him secured and took him to the house of Mr Umberfield, and thence he was taken to gaol by Officer Doolittle. He said he turned to go back to kill the whole of Mr Umberfield’s family, and would probably have done so if he had not immediately been arrested.
He said on his way to gaol, that he killed Mr Sperry because “He had a cramp; and he killed the man to prevent the cramp killing him.’
He talked incoherently all the time, and when he arrived at the gaol, presented the appearance of a raving maniac.
Ichabod Umberfield and Enoch Sperry were murdered by 26-year-old Charles Sanford on New Year’s Day 1856. Historians have asserted that Sanford was ‘triggered’ by the Christmas Day strangling death of an uncle by one of his aunts. Sanford was sentenced to be hanged, but before the sentence could be carried out, he died of smallpox.
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© Mark Young 2026
Hellish Fiends, and Brutish Men 
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