Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1521025
SIGNATURE MONTANA | 23 Shoebox Annie carried a shoebox out of which she sold cosmetics, soap, Klim powdered milk, and shoelaces. She also carried her moonshine in the box. Some recall that she had a pet magpie whose split tongue allowed it to talk. She oen had clients in her home and sometimes went door to door with the magpie, selling her wares. Residents claimed that if you invited Annie into your house, she would steal things. e bird knew how to pick up jewelry off dressers and fly out of the house with it. e only way to get rid of Annie was to buy her soap. During Annie's time in the 1920s in Anaconda, neighbors reported a woman's screams in the night, dense black smoke belching from the chimney of the ramshackle dwelling, and a horrible stench like burning flesh emanating from the house in the wee morning hours. ese events were more than enough to fuel stories that Annie and her son Skidmore supposedly killed people, cut them up, and buried them or burned them in the stove, or disintegrated the remains in a tub full of acid. As it turned out, there was probably truth to these tales. Annie's real name was Mary Eleanor Smith, and at least three people, last seen with her son, had vanished. In 1923, Dorothy LaCasse took a ride in an automobile with Skidmore and was never seen again. In 1921, Ole Larson handed over a bank dra of $750 to Skidmore and was never seen again either. And in 1920, Skidmore, under the name of Montaigne, married Ruth Hardwick, the daughter of an Idaho rancher. She, too, went missing soon aer. By 1938, authorities suspected Annie and Skidmore of killing several more people who went missing while the pair lived in Anaconda. Authorities believed Annie and Skidmore in fact dismembered several bodies in the bathtub and burned and disintegrated the pieces with acid. Eventually, the pair was arrested in California for possession of the car and personal belongings of A Sanborn insurance map of Anaconda shows the rental house and the block in 1950. Commercial Avenue is at the top, Alder Street is on the right side with yellow indicating frame construction, pink is brick, and blue is stone. "D" indicates dwelling. Library of Congress. Mother and son posed together for the St. Louis Dispatch, May 29, 1938. Newspapers.com