In Flagrante Delicto.

A little before 3 o’clock, the afternoon of September 9, 1886, a man rushed into the police station in Memphis, Tennessee and said, “I have just killed a man, and I want to give myself up.”

Captain Hackett took down the information and had the man locked up, then hurried to the address he had given to see for himself what had happened. In an upstairs room, he found a man lying on the floor, very nearly dead, bleeding from a gunshot wound to the chest. “I am to blame,” the man moaned. He died soon after.

Scenes from the Fisk Assassination

Illustrations from the 1872 book Life, Adventures, Strange Career and Assassination of Col. James Fisk, Jr. provide a good graphic presentation of events surrounding the murder of Jim Fisk:

Jubilee Jim

Jubilee Jim Fisk was the consummate Gilded Age robber baron. Together with his partner Jay Gould, Fisk managed to wrest the Erie Railroad from Cornelius Vanderbilt, and by attempting to corner the gold market triggered the 1869 financial panic known as “Black Friday.” But unlike his dour partner, Jim Fisk lived a personal life as large and extravagant as his business dealings. Everything he had or did had to be the biggest and best, so when he cheated on his wife it was with the most beautiful woman in America. When that relationship turned scandalous, it was an epic scandal filled with blackmail, courtroom drama, and finally murder.