They’re grisly murders, chilling in their details and gruesome for the weapon of choice: an ax.

And not the rarity in Maine you might think.

“It was unbelievable how many,” said Emeric Spooner, a Bucksport librarian and amateur investigator with a penchant for historical crimes. “They didn’t even bother solving them. They just, like, found a guy dead in the barn, his head split open, and that was it. Mostly around Augusta and Gardiner and that area. All in the 1800s.”

There were hundreds, by Spooner’s count.

“I guess because axes were handy, and they didn’t want to waste a bullet, they just started swinging,” he said. “It was shocking. It was everywhere.”

Spooner began looking into Maine’s 19th-century ax murders last year, when he finished investigating the 1898 unsolved murder of 52-year-old Bucksport divorcée Sarah Ware. He wrote about Ware’s murder on his Web site, Maine Supernatural, and in a self-published book, “In Search of Sarah Ware.”

Soon after finishing with Ware’s murder – he came to believe a local businessman who had been acquitted of the crime was involved – Spooner began looking into other centuries-old unsolved crimes. He began with the 1806 ax murders of a Hallowell mother and six of her children by her husband, James Purington.

Spooner had stumbled upon the crime while he was researching Ware. He spent a month researching, digging through old newspaper articles and a coroner’s inquest. He turned up some intriguing details – two murder weapons, a bloody handprint over the fireplace, a 17-year-old son who was slightly injured but not killed – but those details weren’t enough to fill the new book he’d been envisioning.

So Spooner began looking at other Maine ax murders. Eventually, Purington and two others would be featured in Spooner’s book.

On a cold winter night in 1873, on tiny Smuttynose Island on the Maine-New Hampshire border, two sisters were murdered by someone wielding an ax. A third sister barely escaped, fleeing into the nearby woods until help arrived. The motive: robbery.

Louis Wagner, a 28-year-old friend of the family, was accused of the killings. Over the next two years he was tried and convicted of murder, found religion, escaped from prison, returned to prison and was hanged for the killings. A charming, engaging man, Wagner developed a following of people who insisted he was innocent.

“Even today, people say he’s innocent,” Spooner said.

Later in 1873, another Maine man, John Gordon, was accused of murdering his brother, his brother’s wife and their infant daughter with an ax while they slept in their Thorndike home. He was also accused of taking an ax to his brother’s young son, who survived, and attempting to burn down the house to cover his crime. The motive: inheritance of the family farm and retaliation for a series of disparaging letters that his brother’s wife sent to his fiancée.

Gordon was also tried and convicted, sentenced to execution. Hours before he was scheduled to hang, Gordon tried to kill himself. The suicide attempt wasn’t successful, and he was hanged – unconscious and propped up – next to Wagner.

Although the three gruesome ax murders happened 67 years apart, one thing tied them all together: questions about the killer’s identity.

Was the 17-year-old survivor of the 1806 Hallowell murders involved in the attacks on his family? Was it the third Smuttynose Island sister – and not Wagner – who wielded the ax that winter night in 1873? Did someone other than Gordon kill the young family while they slept in Thorndike?

Pulling together six months of research, including treks to grave sites, Spooner tried to answer those questions on his Web site and in his book, both for his readers and for himself. He believes Wagner and Gordon were rightfully convicted of murder.

But he also believes that it’s possible the Hallowell father wasn’t the only one attacking his family in 1806. Two weapons, an ax and a straight razor, were used that night, Spooner said. To him, that points to two killers.

And the 17-year-old who survived had only minor injuries.

“There are questions,” Spooner said. “If I was there, I would have brought them up.”

He brings them up now. Then lets readers decide.

Spooner’s self-published book, “A Return to Smuttynose Island and Other Maine Axe Murders,” is being sold on Amazon.com. He dedicates the book to the 13 victims and their families.

Done with the ax-murder research, Spooner, 39, considered looking into New England strangulation cases. It’s an urge he’s fighting.

“I don’t want to be known as the murder guy,” he said.

On the other hand, some cases are too fascinating to walk away from.

“I’m still compiling everything I can,” he said.

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