"It was Rebecca''s son, Thomas, who first realized the victim''s identity. His eyes were drawn to the victim''s head, and aided by the flickering light of a candle, he ''clapt his hands and cryed out, Oh Lord, it is my mother.'' James Moills, a servant of Cornell... described Rebecca ''lying on the floore, with fire about Her, from her Lower parts neare to the Armepits.'' He recognized her only ''by her shoes.''"-from Killed Strangely
On a winter''s evening in 1673, tragedy descended on the respectable Rhode Island household of Thomas Cornell. His 73-year-old mother, Rebecca, was found close to her bedroom''s large fireplace, dead and badly burned. The legal owner of the Cornells'' hundred acres along Narragansett Bay, Rebecca shared her home with Thomas and his family, a servant, and a lodger. A coroner''s panel initially declared her death "an Unhappie Accident," but before summer arrived, a dark web of events-rumors of domestic abuse, allusions to witchcraft, even t
