The abominable sexual practices of the Goins brothers – 3 sons who married their own mother

WISE COUNTY, Virginia — Amid the majestic yet unforgiving beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where thick banks of fog often engulf both sound and light, lies a story that has haunted Wise County for more than a century. It is not merely a tale of mysterious disappearances or unjust deaths, but a chilling tragedy about isolation, misguided faith, and the utter moral decay of humankind. The 1912 Goens family case remains a dark scar, reminding us that sometimes the devil doesn’t come from hell, but is nurtured within our own homes.

The Disappearance of Peace

At the end of the 19th century, Goens Ridge was an isolated place, hidden behind dense pine forests. The Goens family, consisting of the widow Eliza and her three sons—Caleb, Josiah, and Benjamin—were once known as hard workers. But after the death of her husband Samuel in a mining accident in 1878, Eliza changed drastically. She withdrew from society, taking her three sons into a closed world where she was the law, the faith, and God himself.

Their isolation, initially perceived as the mourning of a widow, gradually transformed into something monstrous. The locals began to whisper about strange chants emanating from the cabin at night, the blank stares of the Goens brothers, and the disappearance without a trace of lost travelers passing through this area.

The Travelers Without Return

The darkness truly began to descend when Martin Hayes, a surveyor, disappeared in 1898. Then came Reverend Jacob Whitmore in 1902, followed by a series of peddlers and vagrants. They all had one thing in common: they had last been seen heading towards the Crête de Goens.

Sheriff Thomas Compton, a patient and perceptive man, spent years piecing together the facts. He had a hunch that the silence of the hill concealed a heinous crime. Yet, in these mountains, privacy was sacred. Without a body, without witnesses, the law seemed powerless against the Goens’ closed door. “Whatever is up there, Sheriff, it’s not for the eyes of man,” an old farmer had warned him.

The Fatal Brown Bowler Hat

The turning point in the case came in the spring of 1912 with the disappearance of Edmund Pierce, a traveling salesman known for his distinctive brown bowler hat. When a young postman reported seeing Benjamin Goens wearing the same hat while repairing a fence, Sheriff Compton knew the moment of truth had arrived.

At dawn on June 15, 1912, Compton and his men launched a raid on the Goens’ property. They were met with the chilling calm of Eliza and her three sons. “You won’t find what doesn’t exist,” Eliza said in an icy voice. But she was wrong.

The House of Horrors

Inside the strangely tidy cabin, officers discovered a wooden chest hidden beneath the floorboards of Eliza’s room. It contained relics of the dead: Martin Hayes’s silver watch, Reverend Whitmore’s eyeglasses, and the wallets of other victims. But the most horrifying discovery was yet to come, outside.

Near the smoking room, the earth appeared to have been disturbed. When the shovels dug, they found the decomposing body of Edmund Pierce. And even more terrifying, beneath the smoking room floor, they discovered the remains of infants wrapped in rotting cloth. These were the children of incest, tiny lives born of the unhealthy relationship between Eliza and her own sons, sacrificed in the name of a delusional purity.

Faith or Madness?

In her cell, Eliza Goens showed no remorse. She sat there, calm as a martyr, explaining her own “theology” to Sheriff Compton. She believed her family’s blood was sacred, chosen by God, and that to keep it pure, she had to unite with her sons. The murdered travelers were not victims, but intruders defiling holy ground. And the dead newborns? To her, they were “angels” offered to the Lord.

Eliza’s madness was not a momentary impulse, but the result of decades of autosuggestion and brainwashing. She had transformed her sons into blind instruments, obeying absolutely every order, even murder, in the name of devotion.

The Price of Crime

The Goens family trial became the focus of all-American attention. Caleb and Josiah, loyal to the end, refused to testify against their mother, simply stating, “We did what our mother commanded.” They were both sentenced to hang. Benjamin, the younger brother, died of tuberculosis in prison before the day of sentencing.

Eliza, declared criminally irresponsible due to insanity, spent the rest of her life at Southwestern State Hospital. Until her death in 1920, she remained convinced she was right, waiting for God to call her home. She never expressed regret, never shed a tear for the murdered men or for her own grandchildren/children buried in the cold earth.

The Legacy of the Ridge of “Lost Souls”

In 1924, a mysterious fire reduced the Goens’ house to ashes, as if the inhabitants were trying to erase the stain on this land. But memory does not burn so easily. The Goens Ridge remains, wild and haunting. It is now called the “Ridge of Lost Souls.”

The story of Eliza Goens and her sons is a stark warning about the dangers of isolation and blind faith. It shows that when a person severs ties with society and allows delusional illusions to guide them, the line between good and evil, between love and morbid possession, can disappear terrifyingly quickly.

Sheriff Compton, who dedicated his career to justice, retired haunted by this case. He understood that, although the law had been applied, the pain and horror left by the Goens family would forever echo in the wind whistling through the old pines of Wise County. A sad story, a profound human tragedy, where the greatest victims, ironically, were also the perpetrators—human beings stripped of their humanity by the very mother who had given them life.