Harpe Brothers

""....they revealed by their violences, or by their heroisms, how different they were by other men.""

- Robert M. Coates "The Outlaw Years", 1930 Micajah "Big" (1768? - August 1799) and Wiley "Little" Harpe (1770? - February 8, 1804) were murderers, serial killers, highwaymen, and river pirates who operated in Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, and Mississippi in the 18th century. Their crimes appear to have been motivated by blood lust than financial gain and they are likely America's first serial killers (reckoned from the colonial era forward).

As young men, they lived with renegade Creek and Cherokee Indians who committed atrocities against white settlersand against their own tribes. By 1797, the Harpes lived near Knoxville, Tennessee. However, they were driven from the town after being charged with stealing hogs and horses. They were also accused of murdering a man named Johnson. who was found in a river, covered in urine, ripped open, and weighed with stones. This became a characteristic in the Harpes' murders. They butchered anyone at the slightest provocation, even babies. R.E. Banto in the The Ohio claims that Micajah even bashed his infant daughter's head against a tree because her constant crying annoyed him. This would be the only crime for which he would confess genuine remorseful. From Knoxville they fled to Kentucky. They entered the state on the Wilderness Road, near the Cumberland Gap. They are believed to have murdered a peddler named Peyton, taking his horses and some of his goods.Then they murdered two travelers from Maryland.

In July 1799, after a scuffle for a tomahawk, Big Harpe was decapitated, and his head was hung from a tree for 10 years before being stolen. Little Harpe was captured and hung in 1804.