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HARVEY, N.D. — It was just after midnight in the small town of Harvey, North Dakota, on Oct. 2, 1931. Jacob Bentz and his wife Sophia were arguing on this Friday night. Again.

Don't go to bed angry, is the old marriage advice. At least one member of this particular marriage didn't follow it. Bentz went to bed armed with a claw-hammer.

At about 4 a.m., he struck his wife in the head with his hammer, twice. He then carried her body to the family car in their garage. He had a plan.

Bentz, 49, was now a murderer. And a widower. Only one of those titles required a cover up. He returned to the house to get rid of the evidence.

Bentz, a plummer by trade, cleaned up his wife's blood (or at least he thought he did) and gathered up all blood-stained bedding and other items, burned some in a basement furnace and took others to a nearby haystack he set on fire.

Believing the crime scene scrubbed, Bentz drove his deceased wife's body several miles outside of Harvey. He thought he could make her death look like a car accident. So like the haystack, he set the the family car ablaze, Sophia's body inside in the driver's seat.

Bentz walked to a nearby house, and told the resident the couple had been in a car accident and Bentz had been unable to free his dear wife from the vehicle.

Forum file via newspapers.com

The neighbor alerted the Wells County sheriff and the fire department.

Sophia's death was initially treated as an accident by everyone, with news reports detailing Bentz's phony story.

Sophia "burned to death when the automobile she was driving plunged into a ditch and burst into flames. her husband, Jacob Bentz, was unhurt," in a wrap-up of recent death reports.

"The enclosed car left a country road and followed a V-shaped ditch until it came to a standstill. Mrs. Bentz was driving and the crash pinioned her in the machine," the newspaper reported. "Fire broke out and despite efforts of Mr. Bentz to save her, she was burned to death."

Law enforcement initially believed the story, too. But Bentz couldn't help himself. Before he had even left the house that morning, he had made a phone call, boosting the life insurance policy on Sophia to $5,000, or about $100,000 in 2025 dollars.

So far, so good. Nobody was the wiser.

Then Lillian and Alice arrived at the Bentz house. The two were Sophia's adult daughters from her previous marriage to Hugo Eberlein, who had died, leaving her a widow before she married Bentz.

They were well-aware that Bentz, who was several years older than their 41-year-old mother, had obsessively pursued her prior to marriage. They were likely not quite willing to believe his woeful tale.

Inside the house, they immediately found bloodstains on the mattress, floor and elsewhere. This was obviously suspicious and strongly suggested their mother did not, in fact, die in car accident in a ditch.

They didn't confront Bentz. Instead they alerted the authorities.

An in-person investigation by law enforcement revealed how poorly Bentz had covered up his crime. Beyond what Sophia's daughters had found was further signs of a struggle or cleanup, including traces of blood in the floorboards, the smell of burnt fabric in the furnace and burned mattress stuffing or clothing in the nearby haystack.

On Oct. 5, they questioned Bentz and he quickly admitted to the murder.

Bentz took them back to his house to re-enact the crime, and in the bedroom where he killed Sophie, he provided a full confession to the sheriff and a state's attorney. He also said he would plead guilty to his wife's murder.

The public interest in the case was bottomless. Wells County released of Bentz's confession.

On Oct. 6, Bentz was charged with first-degree murder in Wells County District Court, to which he pleaded guilty.

"It all happened through an argument," he told the judge, according to "I love her yet. I lost my head when we argued. I intended to kill myself too. I felt so sorry. It wouldn't have happened if we hadn't quarreled."

Forum file via Newspapers.com

The judge sentenced him to life in prison. Later that day he was moved to the North Dakota State Penitentiary in Bismarck.

"His commitment brought to an end one of the strangest crimes in the state's history and was a climax to the gruesome story of the murder,"

In coming years, Bentz would and was routinely denied. He would die behind bars in 1944 at age 61.

Sophia's funeral was held after the trial, and she was her first married name, Eberlein.

This was not to be the end for Sophia, however.

In 1990, Harvey built its new public library on the location of the Bentz house.

In the coming years, library staff and visitors reported strange occurrences they attribute to Sophia's restless ghost, making the visitor a minor tourist attraction and draw for would-be ghost hunters.

It seems even in death, Sophia Eberlein won't be forgotten.