Joseph LaPage was convicted of one killing, executed for it, and linked in Vermont tradition to a second that no court ever heard. The convicted case is the murder of Josie Langmaid, a 17-year-old from Pembroke, New Hampshire, in October 1875. It went to trial twice. The first jury returned a guilty verdict; the New Hampshire Supreme Court set it aside in August 1876 because of testimony the jury should not have heard; and a second jury convicted him of first-degree murder in March 1877. He was executed at the State Prison in Concord on March 15, 1878.
The second death is that of Marietta Ball, who died at St. Albans, Vermont, in July 1874. Her death was attributed to LaPage by Vermont officials and in popular pamphlets, but he was never charged with it in any court. The Vermont historian J. Kevin Graffagnino wrote in the Rutland Herald in March 2026 that because LaPage was tried and put to death in New Hampshire, Vermont never had the chance to try him. In law the two cases stand apart: the Langmaid killing is a conviction, and the Ball death is an attribution that was never tested.
Little is known of LaPage himself. Reports agree that he was born in Quebec, worked as a woodcutter and spoke little English. His birth date, his family background and the details of his earlier life in Canada are not on record, apart from a single allegation from Canada that became the center of his first appeal.
LaPage came from Quebec. New Hampshire Magazine, in a September 2024 account of a guided tour of the Langmaid case, says he lived in Suncook with his wife and children and was originally from Quebec. The same account says he spoke very little English and made his living cutting wood for the mills of the Pembroke area, and that the family lived in mill housing in Suncook. The Concord Monitor, in an April 2019 column by Ray Duckler, describes him as a Canadian native who was on the run from the law when he settled near Pembroke.
His name appears in several spellings. The New Hampshire court reports and the Vermont Historical Society's photograph record use LaPage or Lapage, while the Concord Monitor and New Hampshire Magazine write LePage. All refer to the same man.
When he crossed into the United States, how long he had been in Vermont before he moved to New Hampshire, and whether his wife and children were with him earlier are not on record. The Monitor's 2019 column dates the Vermont death to about fifteen months before the Pembroke killing, which agrees with the July 1874 date given by the St. Albans museum.
Marietta Ball died in the St. Albans area of Vermont in July 1874. The St. Albans Museum, in its notice for a program marking 150 years since her death, gives the month and year and notes that the case stayed unsolved for more than a year and that many people in the town came under suspicion.
The gap of more than a year explains how the two cases became linked. After the Pembroke killing in October 1875, the Concord Monitor reported in 2017, selectmen in St. Albans pointed to LaPage as a suspect in the earlier Vermont death. The Vermont Historical Society's photograph record for Josie Langmaid, part of the Edmund Royce collection on Digital Vermont, states the connection in the same terms: her killer was also suspected of murdering Marietta Ball the year before.
No Vermont court took the matter further. Graffagnino's 2026 article says that illustrated pamphlets about LaPage, published in both English and French, led public opinion to treat him as guilty of both killings. The only verdicts ever reached against him, however, concern Josie Langmaid. The Vermont death remains attributed and untried. No confession by LaPage to the Ball death is on record; his reported confession, made the day before his execution, concerned the Langmaid killing.
Josie A. Langmaid was 17 and lived in Pembroke. The Historical Marker Database records a memorial in Pembroke whose inscription gives her name and the date of her death as October 4, 1875, and lists it as erected by "the citizens of Pembroke and vicinity." A set of three stereographs held by the New Hampshire Historical Society, made in Pembroke after the killing, catalogs her by name with the years 1857 to 1875. New Hampshire Magazine's 2024 account adds that she is remembered in the town through the memorial and through the tour it describes.
Little else about her life is on record, beyond the memorial the residents of the town raised to her.
The Concord Insider's calendar of local history gives October 14 for the killing, while the Monitor, New Hampshire Magazine, the Historical Marker Database and the Supreme Court report all give October 4, 1875.
Josie Langmaid was killed in Pembroke on October 4, 1875. LaPage was charged with her murder, and the State prosecuted it as murder in the first degree. According to the Concord Monitor's 2019 account, police traced the case to him at Suncook, and he was arrested about nine days after the killing. New Hampshire Magazine says only that he was caught and tried.
The reports differ on where he was held before trial: the Monitor places him in the city jail at Concord, while New Hampshire Magazine places the pre-trial jail at Suncook.
The first trial was held in the Merrimack Circuit Court and lasted ten days, the Monitor reports. It ended in a guilty verdict on the charge of first-degree murder. A sixty-page pamphlet, The Trial of Joseph LaPage, was published in Philadelphia in 1876 by the Old Franklin Publishing House; the Berkeley Law Library catalog describes it as illustrated, with a portrait, and records that its full title also named the Ball death, which helped carry the Vermont attribution to a wide audience.
The State sought a verdict of murder in the first degree. To show intent, the prosecution called a woman from Canada who testified about an earlier, unrelated allegation against LaPage, which she placed about four and a half years before. The trial judge told the jury that the testimony could be weighed only on the question of intent, and that it could not show that he was the person who killed Josie Langmaid. The defense objected and took exceptions. According to the Monitor, the witness was his sister-in-law.
Other witnesses testified that LaPage had been frequenting the neighborhood around the time of the killing. The court later found that testimony was properly admitted.
The exceptions went to the New Hampshire Supreme Court on transfer from the Merrimack Circuit Court. In State v. LaPage, 57 N.H. 245, decided August 11, 1876, the court held that the Canadian testimony should not have been admitted. The reasoning in the opinions was that proof of an earlier, unconnected offense cannot be used to show intent or any other element of the crime charged, because it amounts to proof of bad character or disposition. Judge Smith, in a separate opinion, reached the same conclusion on that testimony and found the other witnesses' testimony properly admitted. Another opinion would have overruled the remaining exceptions while agreeing that the Canadian testimony was an error. The disposition was a single line: "A new trial granted."
The ruling turned on the admission of the Canadian testimony. It did not decide who had killed Josie Langmaid. The first verdict was set aside and LaPage was held for a second trial. The Monitor's 2019 column states the result plainly: the Supreme Court overturned the first verdict because the sister-in-law's testimony was inadmissible. The following year the same court cited State v. LaPage in State v. Gorman, 58 N.H. 77, a case about what evidence of related conduct a jury could hear.
The second trial lasted nine days and ended with a conviction for murder in the first degree. The Concord Monitor gives the date of the verdict as March 9, 1877. New Hampshire Magazine says he was again convicted and sentenced to death. The sentencing date, the name of the trial judge, the names of counsel and the jury's deliberation time are not on record.
A local-history column, The Concord Insider's "This Week in Concord History," carries a historian's remark that the evidence against LaPage "at the best was scant, but his guilt was black as night." The remark is an opinion, not a finding. The record shows that the first verdict was set aside on a legal ground, the admission of unrelated testimony, and that a second jury reached the same verdict after a nine-day trial.
On March 14, 1878, the day before he was executed, LaPage made a confession to two Catholic priests. New Hampshire Magazine reports that he admitted the killing of Josie Langmaid. The Concord Monitor's 2017 account likewise says he made a full confession in March 1878, the day before his execution.
LaPage was executed on March 15, 1878, at the New Hampshire State Prison in Concord, according to the Monitor's 2019 column and the Concord Insider. The Monitor adds that he was not executed at the city jail where it says he had been held. The Insider reports his last words as "Me kill girl." No statement from LaPage about Marietta Ball is on record.
The Vermont attribution. Marietta Ball's death was attributed to LaPage by selectmen in St. Albans and in print, but he was never indicted or tried for it. The Vermont Historical Society's photograph record and the Rutland Herald both use the language of suspicion and attribution, and neither reports a conviction or a confession on that death.
Other victims. New Hampshire Magazine reports that "evidence suggests there were other victims as well and unanswered questions remain," without naming anyone. It also relays the view of the author Avree Kelly Clark, who led the tour it describes, that a friend of Josie Langmaid may have been the intended target and that LaPage may not have acted alone. Neither point rests on a verdict or a court record.
The date of the killing. October 14 appears in one local-history column; every other report gives October 4, 1875.
Where he was held. Concord and Suncook are both given for the pre-trial jail.
The case produced an unusual amount of print for its time. A trial pamphlet reached readers in Philadelphia in 1876, and Graffagnino notes pamphlets in both English and French that shaped public judgment of LaPage. In Pembroke, residents raised a memorial to Josie Langmaid. The case has returned in local history programs: the St. Albans Museum marked 150 years since Marietta Ball's death, and New Hampshire Magazine described a guided tour of the Pembroke sites led in 2024 by Avree Kelly Clark, whose 2023 novel Malice Aforethought, published by Novanglian Press, is a work of historical fiction based on the two cases, according to a library catalog entry.
The legal legacy is the August 1876 decision. State v. LaPage, 57 N.H. 245, holds that an earlier, unconnected offense cannot be used to prove the one on trial, and the court cited it the next year in State v. Gorman.
July 1874: Marietta Ball dies at St. Albans, Vermont. Her death is later attributed to LaPage; he is never tried for it.
October 4, 1875: Josie Langmaid, 17, is killed in Pembroke, New Hampshire.
About nine days later, October 1875: LaPage is arrested at Suncook.
Before August 1876 (date not reported): first trial, ten days, ends in a guilty verdict.
August 11, 1876: the New Hampshire Supreme Court grants a new trial in State v. LaPage.
March 9, 1877: after a nine-day second trial, LaPage is convicted of first-degree murder.
March 14, 1878: he confesses to the Langmaid killing to two priests.
March 15, 1878: he is executed at the State Prison, Concord.