In 1922, Otis A. Bean, a 37-year-old guide and letter carrier, was murdered near his garage, pictured here, in Oquossoc. Authorities arrested two itinerant lumberjacks, Norman Mawson and Jeremiah Wheaton, whom neighbors found on the road outside the garage at the time of the murder. Several months later, authorities released the men from a Farmington jail without charges.

The investigation then shifted to Bean’s wife, Ethel, who witnesses described as "intensely jealous" of her husband’s involvement with other women. Forensic analysis and circumstantial evidence led the state to drop charges against her in March 1923. The case drew intense public and media attention, with Evening Express journalists documenting the suspects and crime scene in articles such as “Persons and Scenes That Figure in the Otis Bean Death Case,” where this photograph was published. No one was ever convicted.