Zora Burns.

Illustrated Police News, Nov. 10, 1883.

Zora Burns was a beautiful and captivating young woman with “…abundant hair of yellow-golden tint clustered about features as perfectly regular as those which Phidias chiseled from the marble of Greece. Her form was grace and symmetry personified, and despite her lack of educational advantages, her natural tact and quickness of intellect atoned in great measure for her deficiencies.”  She was 19 years old in 1881 when she left her home in St. Elmo, Illinois, and took a job as a domestic servant for the family of Orrin Carpenter in Lincoln, Illinois.

Zora was unhappy and left her employer in 1883. She returned to her father’s home in St. Elmo, but on Friday, October 12, she went back to Lincoln, telling her father she was going to get $20.00 that Orrin Carpenter owed her. The following Monday, her body was found on the road outside Lincoln. Her head was bruised, and her throat had been cut from ear to ear. There was no apparent motive for the murder and no suspects.

The mystery cleared somewhat when a post-mortem examination revealed that Zora had been several months pregnant. Orrin Carpenter became the prime suspect in Zora’s murder.

Carpenter was tried for murder, but the evidence was slim and circumstantial. The jury found Carpenter not guilty, but he was convicted by the court of public opinion. 4,000 citizens of Lincoln agreed to banish Carpenter from Logan County and drove him out of town at gunpoint.

Read the full story here: The Mystery of Zora Burns