Little Murders
Remarkable Murder Trial in Florida.
A somewhat remarkable murder trial has just ended at St. Augustine, Fla., with the conviction and sentence to death or Mary Ann Keech, alias Newton, and her nephew, William Newton. Three yeas ago, Mary Ann and her husband Henry Keech, then living in Wisconsin, after a quarter or a century of married life quarreled and were divorced, when Keech to escape carrying out a decree of the court settling certain property on Mrs. Keech skedaddled to Florida, where he has since lived with a woman name Ellen Hunt, who passed as his wife. Last May, Mary Ann, learning his whereabouts, induced her nephew, William Norton, by promise of a share of the spoils, to go to Florida and murder Keech and the woman Hunt and obtain the title deeds which the Wisconsin court had decreed her. William went, and while out fishing with Keech shot him, mashed his head with a rock and, to made sure, cut his throat; then going to the house put there pistol balls through the woman Hunt’s head, and getting the desired papers fled. The murder was soon discovered and young Newton captured.
And now comes the estrange part of the affair. Keech, the victim, turned out not to be dead, and recovered to testify against his murderer; a letter which the murderer had written informing his aunt of his success, and which the officers mailed for him without opening it, brought the projectress of the murder to Florida, and another letter, as acidentally got hold of by the officers and opened proved the guilty part of the woman, and she and her nephew were, last week, convicted and condemned to be hanged, while to complete the confusion of this intricate tangle of crimes, the grand jury has sent a true bill against Keech, the half-murdered man, for living in concubinage with Ellen Hunt. The woman’s counsel have appealed to the supreme court, but there is no probability that the appeal will be allowed. The murderess is a burley woman, with a countenance that does not belie her nature. She received her sentence with the most stolid indifference, gazing at the judge with a defiant look, and seemingly anxious to get upon the platform and wring his neck.
And now comes the estrange part of the affair. Keech, the victim, turned out not to be dead, and recovered to testify against his murderer; a letter which the murderer had written informing his aunt of his success, and which the officers mailed for him without opening it, brought the projectress of the murder to Florida, and another letter, as acidentally got hold of by the officers and opened proved the guilty part of the woman, and she and her nephew were, last week, convicted and condemned to be hanged, while to complete the confusion of this intricate tangle of crimes, the grand jury has sent a true bill against Keech, the half-murdered man, for living in concubinage with Ellen Hunt. The woman’s counsel have appealed to the supreme court, but there is no probability that the appeal will be allowed. The murderess is a burley woman, with a countenance that does not belie her nature. She received her sentence with the most stolid indifference, gazing at the judge with a defiant look, and seemingly anxious to get upon the platform and wring his neck.
"Remarkable Murder Trial in Florida." Plain Dealer, Cleveland, Ohio, October 22, 1875
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