By November, the Thayers had apparently made good on repayment of their debt, because Love had moved in again with them, evidently not noticing, or not choosing to notice, the men’s changed attitude toward him.
One cold day in early December 1824, the Thayers slaughtered their hogs at the house of young Israel, whose wife had been “sent away.” Love had been invited to join them, although he was not expected to participate in the butchering. As darkness fell, having no better place to work, Nelson and Isaac dragged the bloody hog carcasses into the small, low, log house to cut them up in the warmth of a roaring fire. They worked on the hogs at the far end of the room, away from the fire, while Love sat in a fireside chair, his back to the hog operation. He was wearing the Navy pea jacket that he had worn during the war, and which Joseph himself had occasionally worn during night watches on the lake. About 8 PM, the muzzle of a rifle was eased through one of the darkened window openings, and Love was shot through the head.
Bennett gives the version he had later heard of what happened after young Israel pulled the trigger.
"Love . . . did not stir from his position. One of the boys behind him, thinking he was not hit with the bullet, struck him with the ax he was using, cutting meat. Love fell from the chair dead . . . The three young men with their father, all implicated alike, took the dead body, buried it in a ravine some distance from the house, it being up on the hills in the Town of Boston.
In a day or two they removed the body to Chestnut ridge."