ST. PAUL, MN — F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda moved through a world of wealth, affairs and gossip on Long Island in the early 1920s, just as a notorious New Jersey double murder was dominating headlines.
Literary scholars say the Hall-Mills case may have helped shape The Great Gatsby, the novel Fitzgerald began during his Great Neck years and published in 1925.
Hall-Mills murder case drew national attention after a priest and singer were found dead
The case centered on the Rev. Edward Wheeler Hall, an Episcopal priest in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and Eleanor Mills, a married choir singer in his church. They were having an affair when they disappeared on Sept. 14, 1922.
Two days later, their bodies were found beneath a crab apple tree in an abandoned field. Hall had been shot once in the head, while Mills had been shot three times and had her throat cut.
Suspicion quickly fell on Hall’s wife, Frances, and her family, but no one was charged in 1922 and the case became a national spectacle.
Fitzgerald was in Great Neck when the scandal filled newspapers and gave him material
Fitzgerald was 26 and already famous when he and Zelda settled in Great Neck in fall 1922. His first two novels had made him a literary celebrity, and he was beginning work on a third book he hoped would be even better.
Great Neck and the nearby wealthy communities across Manhasset Bay gave him a front-row view of money, status and social climbing. At the same time, newspapers were full of the Hall-Mills case, with its mix of adultery, class tension and murder.
The overlap does not prove direct copying, but it gave Fitzgerald a vivid real-world backdrop for the social world he later created in the novel.
Scholars point to similar themes and a shared scandal book inside the story
Sarah Churchwell argued in her 2013 book Careless People: Murder, Mayhem, and the Invention of The Great Gatsby that the Hall-Mills case was one of the real-life events Fitzgerald absorbed while writing.
She notes that both the case and the novel revolve around adultery, class differences, jealousy, deception and death. One smaller overlap stands out: Eleanor Mills was said to have been reading Simon Called Peter, a scandalous bestseller that also appears in The Great Gatsby.
Other Fitzgerald scholars say the novel drew from many sources, including Zelda, Long Island society and contemporary news. Hall-Mills may have been one ingredient, but not the only one.
The novel outlasted Fitzgerald and the Hall-Mills case remains officially unsolved
Fitzgerald finished the novel after moving to France in 1924, and The Great Gatsby was published on April 10, 1925. The Hall-Mills case later returned to the headlines in 1926, when Frances Hall and her brothers were indicted, then acquitted after a heavily covered trial.
A local pig farmer known as the “Pig Woman” gave dramatic testimony, but conflicting accounts weakened her credibility. No one was ever convicted, and the murders remain unsolved.
Fitzgerald died in 1940, but the novel later surged in popularity and became required reading for generations of American students. More than 150,000 copies were distributed to U.S. servicemen during World War II, helping turn a disappointment into a classic.
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