A small group of men row across the Great Salt Lake toward the Fremont Island to check on its sole inhabitant. Landing upon the shore, they search for the criminal doomed to exile on this desolate speck of land. They find… nothing. Jean Baptiste, the grave robber, has vanished.
The story of Jean Baptiste, his crimes, and the mystery around his fate is one of the most bizarre tales in Utah’s history. No one’s sure who exactly Baptiste was or where he came from, with some saying Ireland, others Australia, and some claiming he was French. What we do know is that in the 1860s he was living in Salt Lake City and working as a grave digger.
In 1862, a man named Clawson was killed after being accused of attacking Governor John Dawson. No one initially claimed Clawson, so a local man offered to have the man buried. That might have been that were it not for Clawson’s family eventually claiming his body. The family wanted him exhumed so he could be buried back in his hometown.
When Clawson was dug up by his brother, he discovered that the corpse was laying face down in the grave, minus all his clothing. An investigation led to the grave digger, Jean Baptiste. At his home, boxes were discovered full of soiled clothing and the last earthly possessions of many of the recently deceased, over 300, in fact.
There aren’t many records of the legal proceedings against Baptiste, but the outcome was his exile to Fremont Island. One theory for this punishment was that if he went to prison, his fellow inmates would murder him for such a disturbing crime. The island was empty except for some cattle and a small shack. It was there that Baptiste was meant to spend the rest of his days.
Several weeks passed after Baptiste’s exile began. He was spotted on the island once by visitors checking on their cattle. Yet, a second trip to the island found that Baptiste was gone. Parts of the shack had been dismantled, leading some to believe he built a raft and tried to escape. No trace of him was ever found.
Rumors of where the grave digger was swirled, with some saying Baptiste escaped and made his way to Montana. Disturbingly though, reports of a gaunt figure stalking the shores of the Great Salt Lake began cropping up. A story in the Salt Lake Herald from 1895 says that “The Indians who visit the lake never remain after sundown near the island because of fear of evil spirits.” Visitors to the island claimed to hear inhuman cries in the middle of the night. Their animals became agitated at some unseen threat and huddled close to the campfire. In the morning, they find that some of their possessions have gone missing. The reports of weird happenings continue to this day.
Skeletal remains and chains were found near the Jordan River in the 1890s and some claimed that this was Jean Baptiste, yet no evidence was ever brought forward to support this. No, the reality is that we’ll probably never know what happened to the exiled grave robber, keeping the fate of Jean Baptiste as one of Utah’s most enduring mysteries.