*TC Shrieks and groans. The clank of chains.
When the Soldiers Delight Nature Center opens later this year, perhaps some visitors will hear such ghastly noises or even see a tormented, shadowy figure.
Maybe so -- if you believe in ghosts -- for the new center is atop Berry's Hill, where the final act of one of Colonial Maryland's most gruesome murder cases was played out 239 years ago.
It was here that John Berry was hanged and his body left to rot. The 20-year-old was the mastermind of the Nov. 20, 1751, ax murder of Sarah Clark and the near-slaying of her husband, farmer John Clark, in their beds.
Justice was swift in those days. Berry and his two female accomplices, one of whom swung the ax while the other held a candle, were convicted Dec. 18. On Jan. 10, 1752, the women were hanged at Joppa, then the Baltimore County seat.
But the brutality of the crime so outraged the Governor's Commission that it imposed a special penalty on Berry. It not only affirmed his sentence -- death by hanging Jan. 15 near the scene of the crime -- but ordered that his corpse hang in chains until nature consumed it.
Such punishment was reserved for the most heinous offenders, and the execution site has been known ever since as Berry's Hill, the subject of local legend. Just over 700 feet high, it sits in the heart of the 1,900-acre Soldiers Delight environmental area near Reisterstown, a wilderness of scrub woods, grassy areas and wildlife.
Berry's Hill's entry into folklore began about 2 a.m. on that Nov. 20 when the bloody scene was discovered at Clark's farm, off what is now Delight Road.
It was big news.
The next week, the Maryland Gazette devoted almost its entire local news section to a graphic account of the incident. The story included the imprisonment of Berry and the servant women, Mary Powell and Martha Bassett, along with Edward Evans, a 13-year-old servant, in the jail at Joppa.
The Gazette identified Berry as Mr. Clark's son-in-law. It said he plotted the killings to get the farmer's estate and had promised to marry Bassett, who was also known as Sarah Catcham.
Later accounts said Berry was stepson to both Mr. and Mrs. Clark through the remarriages and deaths of his natural parents. But his reported motive, greed, was the same.
A 1920 article in the Towson Jeffersonian attributed some of its information to an account by Mordecai Gosnell, a county deputy sheriff.
Berry and the servants claimed that an intruder had attacked the Clarks. But Deputy Gosnell was at once suspicious of the servants and asked Bassett, who was considered simple-minded, where the ax was.
Artlessly, she replied, "Hid behind a log in the swamp."
Once the bloodstained tool was found, Bassett confessed and implicated Powell and Berry, according to the account.
The women said Mrs. Clark had promised them freedom on her death. They said Berry wanted his stepparents' estate and had promised to marry Bassett if she would kill the Clarks.
According to the Jeffersonian version, Berry made them swear an oath and seal it in blood. While they were making their evil compact behind the tobacco house, a high wind suddenly rent the tranquil Sunday afternoon, driving the plotters terror-stricken into the house.
The defendants were tried Dec. 18, 1751, before a special three-justice Baltimore County Court in the Court House in Joppa.
Bassett pleaded guilty. Berry, Powell and Evans pleaded innocent, but the Maryland Gazette reported that Berry and Powell "appeared on trial to be hardened resolute offenders . . . the jury found them guilty." Evans was sentenced to die as well but was later pardoned.
The Governor's Commission reviewed the case, and on Jan. 2, 1752, ordered "dead warrants" issued.
Bassett and Powell were hanged at the Joppa jail Jan. 10. The commission ordered Berry's execution Jan. 15 and said his body was "to be hung up in chains."
It was a cold winter's day when the condemned man and a crowd of spectators climbed the hill. Berry continued to protest his innocence, declaring that the two women had lied about his role.
There is no description extant of the execution, but Berry probably stood on a barrel or in the back of a cart. The prop was pulled away, leaving him twisting on the gallows.
On Jan. 23, 1752, the Maryland Gazette carried a brief report that Berry had been executed according to the commission's order.
The legends began -- that Berry's restless spirit haunted the neighborhood, and that Berry's skull was "kicked around" until a settler found it and gave it Christian burial.
One particularly grim, and apparently fanciful, account was offered by E. Bennett Bowen in the Federation P.T.A. News in 1937.
It said Berry "was chained to a rude cross and exposed in the winter weather to die. Snow was deep but a large crowd gathered to witness his execution and to ridicule him. Food was placed within his sight and fires built for him to view. Death came slowly and old residents formerly recalled hearing that Berry's screams were terrifying during the night when wolves came and snapped at his feet. The body remained unburied and years later Berry's skull is reported to have remained a grim warning to all visitors to the spot."
The Berry case also provided a showcase for a churchman prominent in county history, the Rev. Thomas Cradock, first rector of St. Thomas' Church, Garrison Forest.
Word spread through the countryside when the crime was discovered. Mr. Cradock made the five-mile journey to the Clarks' farm. On arrival, he immediately acted in "an avenging spirit and a setting of superstitious grandeur," according to the Jeffersonian account.
The minister summoned an inquest jury to question the servants and preached a fiery sermon the following Sunday that left no doubt whom he held responsible for the outrage, said the Jeffersonian.
St. Thomas' was founded in 1742 as an offshoot of St. Paul's Church in Baltimore, a "Chapel of Ease for the Forest Inhabitants." The original church still stands on St. Thomas Lane, off Reisterstown Road. It will celebrate its 250th anniversary next year.
In addition to its colorful history, Berry's Hill has long been celebrated for its magnificent vista across the valleys to the west. "I don't know if you can see to Frederick, but on a clear day you can see for miles," said Fraser Bishop, who manages the state-run park.
In the 18th century, however, Soldiers Delight, so-called since the 17th century, looked much different from today, Ranger Bishop said.
There were fewer trees and vast acres of grassy prairie that provided farmland and woods for hunting. Later, chromite mine shafts were driven deep in the soil and the serpentine rock that underlies much of the area.
Wild growth took over as the land was abandoned, creating one of the finest natural-environment sanctuaries in Maryland.
It protects 32 documented rare or endangered plant species and has the largest concentration of rare plants in the East, including the fringed gentian, found in only eight places in the world, Mr. Bishop said.
"We roamed all through these woods," said John Bidinger, 71, a retired firefighter who was born and raised on Deer Park Road at the edge of Soldiers Delight.
"There weren't that many trees then, though more open space than now."
Mr. Bidinger and his friends also grew up with the legend of John Berry. Many years ago, they used to play around Red Dog Lodge, a fieldstone hunting cabin built in 1912 on Berry's Hill by Frederick A. Dolfield, who owned the mines in the area.
Red Dog, near the new nature center, looks as if it has existed since the days of John Berry; it is still used by the rangers, Mr. Bishop said.
William D. Groff Jr., 75, of Owings Mills recalled that when he was a teen-ager he had a confrontation at Red Dog in which he came off second-best, but it wasn't with John Berry's ghost.
Mr. Groff and a group of friends decided to drive up to the cabin for a party -- mint juleps and all.
"Then a big old Cadillac drove up with two women and a man in it. He came over and asked, 'Who are you?' I said, 'Who are you, and why are you on private property?' He replied, 'I'm Frederick Dolfield, and I own all this land.' We left, quickly."