A Connecticut farmer who agreed to pay his farmhand $53 at the expiration of his service was caught out when the farmhand resigned after six months and asked for the money.
Farmer Gershom Marx was almost broke and couldnt afford to pay his employee, Paul Rodecki. So he gave him the $53, then decided to murder him.
While Rodecki was asleep farmer Marx crept up to his bed with an axe and brought it down on his skull. Satisfied that the farmhand was truly dead, he took back the $53, chopped off the victims hands and legs, stuffed the parts into potato sacks, and hid them in a cellar.
Two weeks later a new farmhand found the sacks. Marx fled, but was caught in New York, and hanged on Thursday, May 18th, 1905.