The Love and Death of Maria Rupp, Saloon Keeper

This is the true story of a brutal and senseless murder.  It is also the story of a love that extended beyond the grave.  At the center is a beautiful young immigrant German woman calling herself Maria Rupp who ran a saloon in Sacramento, California. The statue shown here is from her grave. Its hands broken off by vandals, its face disfigured, this damaged angel captures the tragedy of Maria’s murder.

Maria was born Mary Schleider in Hesse, Germany, about 1832.  What little we know of her background was revealed in a deposition given by Eliza Green, hired to work in the saloon, who declared she was Maria’s half-sister. Her sibling she said had emigrated to America in 1855, embarking on a ship from Brussels, Belgium, at the age of about 22.  Perhaps drawn to Sacramento by the news of gold strikes, Maria began running a saloon there in January 1856.  She was accounted a beautiful young woman and talented pianist.  Said to be “a darling of Sacramento’s close-knit German community,” her Sacramento Beer Saloon on K Street, below, was prosperous. 

The historical record does not disclose when Maria changed her name or how an immigrant girl would have the resources to open and run a drinking establishment.  A clue to the latter may be in a statement by Mark Twain who called Sacramento “the City of Saloons.”  In 1866 Twain wrote:  “…I have been in most of the saloons, and there are a good many of them.  You can shut your eyes and march into the first door you come to and call for a drink and the chances are you will get it.”  He implied that a Sacramento “watering hole” could be established for minimal capital.

Quite naturally, Maria attracted considerable attention from the largely male. population of Sacramento but her affections were reserved for another relatively new man in town.  He was Francois Noiset, an immigrant from French-speaking Belgium, a medical doctor about two years older than she.  Although most of the men who frequented her Sacramento Beer Saloon were aware she and Francois were planning to marry, one man — Peter Metz, sometimes given as Welz — refused to accept her intent.

Little is known of Metz’s background, other than he was an immigrant from Germany, that he was in his early 30s, and by occupation he was a cook who may have worked for Maria in the past.  He had developed a mad passion for her that she had rebuffed repeatedly, citing her engagement to Dr. Noiset.  Half crazed by her rejection, on November 18, 1857, Metz told people that Maria had agreed to marry him, fantasizing that he soon would take over her saloon business.   When met with scepticism, he avowed:  “If she did not have him she would not marry anyone else.  She would die first.”  After drinking heavily Metz told his hearers that he would go over to Maria’s “ to see if the business was all right.”

Much of this may have been bravado on Metz’s part.  John Andrew, one of Maria’s bartenders, testified that upon arriving at the saloon, Metz approached him to inquire about a knife he had misplaced there the previous evening.  Having found the blade and stuck it on a shelf, the bartender returned it to Metz who claimed it was his.  After retrieving the knife, the erstwhile suitor joined a group of patrons standing around the piano where Maria was entertaining.  He threw his arm around her as if to give her a kiss, but instead cut her throat.  Dropping the bloody knife, Metz headed for the door unimpeded.

The bartenders and patrons immediately were occupied with the dying Maria. In his deposition, patron Louis Noll attested:  “I was present and saw Peter Metz while Madame Mary was singing and playing upon the piano, put one of his arms around her neck and with the other hand inflict a stab in the right breast or side, with a butcher knife.  I saw him pull the knife out and throw it on the floor…”

Noll then recounted how he had picked her up in his arms from the piano, as she fell back, and placed her on a chair, shortly after carrying her upstairs to a bedroom.

Marie was bloody but conscious enough to say “get a doctor.”  The patron sent for the task initially could not find one but upon going to the Western Hotel, located a physician.  Precious minutes went by until a doctor appeared but found there was nothing he could do.  Fifteen minutes later the lovely and talented Maria Rudd, 25, was dead, the victim of a deranged suitor.

 Meanwhile her killer walked to a friend’s house where he spent the night.  The next morning, telling his host what he had done, Metz was advised to give himself up to the local sheriff whose men were even then scouring Sacramento to find him.  If not, the friend told him, he would raise a “hue and cry” about the fugitive’s whereabouts and an angry crowd would hang him on the spot.  Thus warned, Metz went to the sheriff’s office that morning and surrendered.

The sheriff transferred Metz to the city jail to await trial.  A coroner’s jury composd of five local men was convened and returned a verdict that Maria had met her death from the effects of a wound inflicted by Metz.  A newsman, visiting him in jail reported that the accused: “…stated that he had been acquainted with the deceased some sixteen or eighteen months, that she had promised to marry him, and obtained $500 of his money.  In regard to proceedings subsequently, his remarks were unintelligible.”

After a trial that lasted several weeks, Metz was convicted of murder in the second degree and sentenced to life imprisonment, to be served at San Quentin, California’s maximum security state prison for men.  When he early demonstrated signs of insanity, he was transferred to California’s first mental hospital at Stockton, shown here.  In a matter of days Metz escaped from that facility.  Spotted traveling north through the state, he was captured in Siskiyou County and returned to the Stockton asylum.  He is said to have remarked “very coolly” that all the return travel expenses “would cost him nothing.”

Several days after Maria’s brutal murder, her many friends and admirerers arranged an elaborate funeral for her. Pallbearers wore white scarves and white flowers. Singing was provided by Sacramento’s German Leider Kranz chorus.  Her funeral cortege stretched several blocks as some 23 carriages and buggies accompanied her body.  She was accorded a Requiem Mass at St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church, by the pastor, Father Cassin.  Not long after the church would be destroyed by fire.

Dozens of mourners gathered at Maria’s gravesite, marked by two monuments, one the statue of the damaged angel that opens this vignette, the other a cross with an elaborate description memorializing her life.  The site is set off by itself, surrounded by a brick wall and marked by a proliferation of flowering plants and bushes, carefully tended.

Among the mourners on that sad November day was Francois Noiset, anguished by the loss of his Maria.  The doctor remained unmarried and died six years later, apparently of tuberculosis.  Francois is said to have given his body to a medical college but his heart was buried next to Maria’s.  His gravestone is below in two views. One shows it adjacent to her memorial.  The other shows two hands clasped, one larger than the other, and bears the inscription: “To you Maria.”  Separated in life by a cruel murder, the couple are united in death.

Notes:  Visitor to Sacramento can take a tour of the historic Sacramento City Cemetery with docents dressed to resemble the individuals involved.  The Rudd-Noiset burial site is a “must” stop where their story is told.  This article is based on long articles published at the time in the Sacramento Daily Union and the book, “Sacramento’s Gold Rush Saloons,” (2014), by the Special Collections staff of the Sacramento Public Library.