Inside the Mind of Eugene Butler: Paranoia and Murder on the Farm

A Quiet Farm with a Dark Secret

Niagara, North Dakota, is one of those places where if you blink, you might miss it. Around fifty people call it home, and the landscape looks like the kind of peaceful farmland postcard you’d expect: rolling green pastures, animals grazing like they don’t have a care in the world. Nothing about it screams dark or twisted.

But appearances can be deceiving.

Back around the turn of the 20th century, Shawnee, a tiny farming village just a few miles from Grand Forks, welcomed a new neighbor. Eugene Butler rolled into town with his brand-new 480-acre farm, and Shawnee has never quite been the same since.

Eugene came from Royalton, New York, a good stretch from his new dirt patch and the two brothers he left behind. Still, he wasn’t a rookie. He knew his way around a farm, and within a few years, folks noticed his place was booming. The herd was thriving, the land was shaped up, and the money was flowing.

Eugene was making a killing. With no wife or kids to split the take, every penny stayed right in his own pocket.

The Penny-Pinching Farmer Who Preferred Solitude

Eugene earned a reputation for being notoriously cheap. His neighbors remembered him griping about how much his housekeepers cost him. Even though cash seemed to flow like the Missouri River, Eugene quickly put a stop to what he called “costly luxuries” and fired all his staff. Instead, he took on the farm work and house chores himself, managing the large farmhouse he built with his own hands.

Only during the busy summer months, when the farm work piled up, would he reluctantly hire a few seasonal farmhands.

At first, this setup seemed to suit him. Neighbors described Eugene as friendly, even a bit charming. But as the years passed, he retreated further into himself. People who once considered him a friend chalked it up to the lonelier lifestyle.

When he wasn’t paying farmhands, Eugene could go long stretches without talking to or even seeing anyone. His world shrank to cattle, crops, and chores. He rarely made the trip into town.

But when Eugene did show up in public, that’s when things started to raise eyebrows.

When Eugene’s Charm Faded Into Paranoia

By the time people did catch sight of Eugene, he looked worn down—disheveled and on edge. He kept saying someone was after him, though he couldn’t always say who.

Things got strange enough that in 1904, Eugene made the Grand Forks Herald. The local paper called out his odd behavior and reported that Eugene claimed every widow and “old maid” in the country was desperate to marry him.

In some ways, he might’ve been right. His farm was crushing it financially. Just the land alone was valued between 40,000 and 50,000 dollars back then, which would translate to making Eugene a millionaire today.

He’d taken a rundown patch of dirt and turned it into a cash machine. But Eugene himself was clearly unraveling.

It’s safe to say any woman who actually knew Eugene wasn’t rushing to say yes, and no one could expect every widow and old maid in the country to even know he existed. So those marriage claims? Let’s just call them optimistic.

The Start of Eugene’s Paranoia and the Nighttime Battles

Eugene’s neighbors were seeing the first signs of serious paranoia. He talked nonstop about invisible men chasing him and believed they were always trying to break into his farm.

By day, he tended his animals and worked the land. But at night, he was a different person.

Neighbors saw him standing guard outside his house or acting even more erratic. He’d race his horse through the farm after dark, screaming like he was charging into battle.

This terrified the community. They’d wake up, convinced something was wrong—only to find Eugene fighting enemies nobody else could see.

Eventually, they called the sheriff. When he arrived and saw Eugene, he decided the man needed help.

Eugene was admitted to the North Dakota State Hospital in Jamestown. He’s likely the richest person ever sent to a mental institution in North Dakota.

Looking back, it was the right decision.

Life Inside the Asylum and Eugene’s Final Years

When Eugene arrived at the North Dakota State Hospital, it didn’t take long for staff to realize he was in no condition to care for himself. He was consumed by fear, constantly talking about the invisible men who were chasing him, the ones only he seemed to see. His paranoia was so deep that he refused to have his photograph taken, convinced the camera would suck out his soul. Whether you believed in ghosts or not, this was a man clearly trapped inside his own private nightmare.

Despite all the fear and confusion, Eugene wasn’t violent or aggressive. In fact, hospital staff described him as mostly a model patient. He never hurt himself or others and rarely showed anger. Instead, he carried a quiet kind of sadness, like someone weighed down by a mental illness too powerful to overcome on his own.

One surprising detail from his time there was his fondness for the hospital dances. It’s hard to imagine, but Eugene found moments of joy in those gatherings. He even fell deeply in love with one of the nurses, showing a tenderness that seemed at odds with the dark thoughts that haunted him.

Over nearly a decade in the hospital, Eugene remained in this fragile state. Then, in 1913, he passed away quietly in his early sixties. His two brothers, still living back in New York, received his remains, which were sent to Middleport for burial.

This gave some measure of closure to a life overshadowed by mental illness—a chapter that had kept Eugene from the world and from himself.

But as Eugene’s story wrapped up, a new question came into focus. What was going to happen to that highly profitable farm he had left behind?

Dividing the Estate and the Start of Renovations

Eugene’s legal guardian, a lawyer named Wilbur Houpt, took charge of dividing what was left of the farming empire. The land and assets were split between Eugene’s brothers and their children.

About two years after Eugene died, work began on the farmhouse to bring the property back to life.

The Gruesome Discovery Beneath the Cellar

About two years after Eugene’s death, a workman named Leo Verbulehn was digging under the farmhouse cellar when he stumbled onto something unexpected. He found what looked like a trap door in the ground. Curious, he opened it and saw layers of red clay and dark dirt.

Leo started poking around with his shovel to figure out what the space had been used for—but he had no idea what was waiting below.

Lined up in shallow graves were six bodies.

The sight was brutal. Since Eugene had spent nearly a decade in the asylum, those remains had been underground at least that long. The bodies were too decomposed to pinpoint exactly when they’d been buried.

Each victim had been killed by a blow to the head with a sharp object, crushing their skulls. Some had broken legs, likely to fit inside the cramped cellar.

At first, investigators thought Eugene had killed an entire family since two of the remains appeared to be female. But neighbors had no memory of anyone going missing, no family, no strangers.

The truth was darker.

Eugene’s victims were young men, aged between fifteen and eighteen. They’d been killed, stripped, and buried in his cellar. No one came looking for them.

Most likely, they were seasonal farmhands Eugene had hired. Transients desperate for work, with nowhere else to call home.

Motive and Mystery: Why Eugene Killed

With Eugene long gone, figuring out why he might have killed those young men is like trying to solve a puzzle with half the pieces missing.

Money quickly came up as a possible motive. Eugene was notorious for being stingy. He complained about every penny spent and kept large sums of cash hidden around the farmhouse. When authorities searched the place after his death, they uncovered roughly 6,000 dollars stashed away. That’s about 215,000 dollars in today’s money, a small fortune just lying around.

One theory is that the boys, likely seasonal farmhands with little else, might have been tempted to steal from Eugene. If that’s true, he didn’t hesitate to use deadly force.

There is also the possibility that Eugene’s paranoia spiraled out of control. Maybe he saw threats where there were none and killed in a panic or out of fear that cannot be fully understood now.

A more complex theory touches on Eugene’s sexuality. Some believe he might have been struggling with his identity and punished these young men either for tempting him or rejecting advances. Back then, such things were hidden in silence and shame, and it could have added to his turmoil.

Ultimately, none of this is certain. No clear answer has ever surfaced. The motive remains buried beneath layers of mystery, just like the victims themselves.

Lost Victims and Missing Evidence

Identifying the victims proved impossible. Their remains were collected into a box, but several went missing, likely taken by souvenir hunters.

The box and much of the evidence have since disappeared.

In 2016, the Grand Forks County Sheriff’s Department made a public appeal for new leads or information, showing this case still haunts the community.