Note 17 — The Harpes—Mysteries and Fate of Survivors

Whether or not the Harpes were brothers and Big Harpe’s two “wives” were sisters is a question that can never be decided definitely by history, but it is one over which psychologists may long argue. If the two men actually were brothers and the two women actually were sisters, it is an anomaly in nature. The Harpes were not ordinary criminals. They were abnormalities in a type that is itself abnormal. It is well recognized that abnormal products of all kinds in nature are exceptions or variations and are not the rule, and that genius in creation, in destruction, in crime, in art, etc. is very seldom duplicated by the same parentage. Abnormal criminals are extremes of a type opposed to abnormal geniuses of the creative or imaginative type. Brothers or sisters in either class occur seldom, if ever. For these reasons, a parental connection between the two Harpes and between the two women may properly be doubted. It is true that Big Harpe was the heartless leader and that Little Harpe might have been an ordinary weakling, obedient to Big Harpe because he feared him or because he failed to recognize the inhumanity of the crimes he was called upon to commit. No other record is now recalled showing such a horrible partnership between blood brothers.