The Harris-Burroughs Affair.

 

A young woman entered the Treasury Building in Washington, D.C. on the afternoon of January 30, 1865. She went to the office of the Comptroller of the Currency and opened the door just enough to peek in and see the clerks at work. After locating the man she sought, she closed the door and waited in the hall for his workday to end.

The man, A.J. Burroughs (Adoniram Judson, sometimes reported as Andrew Jackson), left the office at 4:00. He hadn’t gone more than three feet when he heard the crack of a pistol. Realizing that he had been shot, he turned around to see the female form standing in the hall. “Oh!” he exclaimed and hurried toward the stairway. A second shot rang out, and he fell to the floor. His comrades, thinking he had fainted, rushed to his aid. They conveyed him to a room nearby where he died fifteen minutes later.

Seduction and Murder.

In November 1871, 18-year-old Mary Ann Sevindell filed a lawsuit against Henry H. Howell of Prairie Creek, Illinois, for seduction. They were both in the law office of Beason & Bilan in Lincoln, Illinois, on November 28, where attorneys were hammering out a settlement agreement. The lawyers came up with a compromise that pleased them, but apparently, it did not please Miss Sevindell. As Howell was leaving to have the agreement acknowledged, Mary Anne drew a pistol and without saying a word, shot him in the back. The bullet came out at the left breast.

Dazed, Howell walked a few steps then unbuttoned his vest and saw blood oozing from the wound. He saw the bullet on the floor, picked it up and handed it to one of the gentlemen in the room. He remarked that he was killed then sank to the floor.

It does not appear that Mary Ann Sevindell was ever charged with Howell’s murder.

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Sources: 

“Seduction and Murder,” Plain Dealer, November 1, 1871.
“A Young Girl in Lincoln, Ill., Deliberately Shoots her Seducer,” Illustrated Police News, November 30, 1871.

Betrayal and Mercy.

Little Murders

Two men walking through the woods near Dalton, Georgia, came across the body of a young woman lying in Milk Creek. Her feet were bare, she was clad in old wrapper tied with twine, her chestnut-brown hair hung over her shoulders in disheveled locks, and two deep wounds cracked her skull. No one in Dalton recognized the woman; there was no way to tell where she had come from and who had killed her. Then a liveryman, Robert Springfield, made a startling discovery while taking out one of his buggies. The seat was covered with fresh clots of blood and strands of hair. He had rented the buggy the previous night, to a man named Charles Patton.

“…cut off in her youthful bloom”

In August of 1810, four little girls picking berries at the foot of a precipice near Uniontown, Pennsylvania, discovered the broken body of a beautiful young woman.  She was identified as Polly Williams, last seen walking to White Rocks to meet her fiancé Philip Rogers. Though the mysteries of Polly Williams’s death have endured for two centuries, her story is neatly summarized the words engraved on her tombstone:

Behold with pity, you that pass by;
Here doth the bones of Polly Williams lie;
Who was cut off in her youthful bloom;
By a vile wretch, her pretended groom.