Shot Down in Court.

Police Officers Farson and Conway were patrolling the neighborhood of Orleans and Washinton Streets in Memphis, Tennessee, on the night of April 28, 1890, when they heard a cry of,” Help! Murder!” They hurried to the source and opened the door to find a woman lying on the floor with a heavy-set man over her with a death grip on her throat. They arrested the man and took him to Central Station, where they learned that they had captured Jake Ackerman, one of the most successful and dangerous criminals in the country.

A Cowardly Assassination.

Henry Clay King and David H. Poston, two prominent Memphis attorneys, were bitter legal opponents in a scandalous civil case involving adultery and fraud. The animosity reached a peak when King shot Poston on Main Street in broad daylight. The case took on national significance when Senators, Congressmen, and even a President weighed in on King’s punishment.

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.

A Hidden Skeleton.

Barton Russell and his wife were digging for ginseng in Deer Lick Hollow, half a mile north of Mooresburg, Tennessee the evening of October 16, 1886, when they made a shocking discovery. The skeleton of a young boy lay hidden under the brushwood off the road. The flesh had been torn away by birds and animals and the arm bones were missing. Near the body lay a shirt, a pair of socks, an old pair of shoes and a tattered hat. A depression in the skull indicated that the boy had been killed by a blow to the head with a club or similar weapon. 

In Mooresburg, Mrs. George Armstrong identified the shirt as one she had made for her nephew, sixteen-year-old Charley Young. She said the hat and shoes were not his and said that the missing pants were lined with the same material as the shirt. Young had left her house six weeks earlier to cross Clinch Mountain and visit his uncle and had not been seen since. 

Suspicion fell on twenty-year-old Marcellus Bunch who lived five miles from Mooresburg. About five weeks earlier he had been trying to sell a pair of shoes and a coat he claimed to have won in a game of cards. He had also told several people that he and another fellow had done something on the creek which, if known would put them in the penitentiary. When told that he had better keep it to himself he replied, “I don’t care a damn what becomes of me hereafter.” 

Bunch remained unconcerned when he was arrested for the murder of Charley Young. Young’s coat and shoes were found in Bunch’s house. The hat he was wearing was identified as Young's while the hat found with the bones was identified as one formerly worn by Bunch. 

Marcellus Bunch pled not-guilty but declined counsel. In his trial, he refused to say anything in his own defense and did not question a single witness. It was generally believed that Bunch and Young had met and played cards. With nothing left to bet, Young wagered his suit; he lost and was killed when Bunch took forcible possession of it. Bunch was found guilty and sentenced to twenty years in the penitentiary.

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Sources:
“Deer Lick Hollow,” Atchison Daily Globe, October 22, 1886.
“A Hidden Skeleton,” National Police Gazette, November 6, 1886.
“The Hidden Skeleton,” New York Herald, October 21, 1886.
“Two Cases Affirmed,” The Tennessean, November 14, 1888.

Murder. Fifth Act in a Protracted Tragedy.

Little Murders

 

(From Macon Weekly Telegraph, Macon, Georgia, October 2, 1868)

Murder. 
Fifth Act in a Protracted Tragedy—
Killing of I. C. Willis.
 

From a note from our friend Capt. J. R. Pace, of Rogersville, we learn that on Sunday evening last, Mr. I. C. Willis, who it will be remembered killed the notorious Bill Sizemore, about a year a go in Hawkins county, was himself murdered on Clinch, in said county, by a man named Burton, between whom and Willis, there has been an old grudge. The full particulars of the murder are not given. Willis was shot first in the side. The wound not producing instant death, he asked that he might be permitted to see his wife, but Burton did not spare him. He then shot him in the head killing him instantly. Willis did not fire a shot. The shooting was done while both were on horseback.

This murder calls up a long train of homicides. In 1864, an old and highly esteemed citizen of Russellville (Mr. Cain) was killed by a young Federal soldier, a citizen of the same county, named Bewley. A short time afterwards Bewley was killed by one of the sons of old man Cain. But a short time was left for young Cain to live. He fell victim to the murderous hand of a friend of Bewley’s, Bill Sizemore, who shortly after the killing of young Cain, completed the list of his murders by brutally murdering Lieut. Thurman, of Hawkins county. Sizemore did not long live to gloat over his deeds of blood. The avenger was on his path, and in a very short time Sizemore was sent to eternity by a bullet from the pistol of I. C. Willis. Willis now is murdered, and we may well, in horror, exclaim: Where will the terrible tragedy end?—Knoxville Press.

 

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"Murder. Fifth Act in a Protracted Tragedy - Killing of L. C. Willis." Macon Weekly Telegraph 2 Oct 1868.

Three Little Murders

Little Murders:

Here are three very short stories from the same edition of the Elyria Democrat, Elyria, Ohio:

The Trial of James Sawyer
The trial of James Sawyer at Warren for the murder of William Holcomb has resulted in a verdict of acquittal. Holcomb’s body was found in the woods near the centre of Vernon, on the 27th of May, 1867. He went to hunt some squirrels with a rifle, and was found lying dead with a bullet-hole through his head.
     Sawyer happened to be the person who discovered him, and he was charged with murder, the motive being a suspected improper intimacy between Sawyer and Mrs. Holcomb. This, the testimony showed, was without foundation.
 
Last week, Geo. Foreman, of Woodsfield, Ohio, confessed on his death-bed to the murder of Miss Josephine Allen, of Salem, Ohio, in 1858. He did not intend to kill her at first, but struck her during a quarrel, and finding that he had seriously hurt her, carried her home, killed her with an ax, and secreted the body where it was afterwards found.
 
Dr. G. M. Sandors of Dyersburg, Tennessee, was murdered on Friday.—
Two respectable ladies of that place called upon him the day before for medical advice. He administered chloroform and ravished them while under its effects. His assassin is supposed to be the brother of one of the ladies.

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Elyria Democrat, Elyria, Ohio, August 5, 1868

Big Harpe and Little Harpe

Micajah and Wiley Harpe –known respectively as "Big" and "Little" Harpe—spread misery and terror through the western frontier in the 1790s.  They took what they wanted and recognized no law, leaving a trail of death and destruction through Kentucky and Tennessee.  More heinous than mere outlaws, the Harpes had declared war on humanity, killing men, women, and children indiscriminately; repaying frontier hospitality with arson and death.  The Harpes are considered by many to be the first recorded serial killers in American history.

"Girl Slays Girl."

Alice Mitchell and Freda Ward, aged 19 and 17, had become close friends at the Higbee School for Girls in Memphis. So close, in fact, that they declared their love for each other and planned to elope to St. Louis to live together as husband and wife. When Freda’s family stopped the relationship, forbidding Freda from seeing Alice, events took a dreadful turn. On the afternoon of January 25, 1892, Alice Mitchel met Freda Ward on Front Street and cut her throat with a straight razor. Was Alice driven by insanity, by jealousy, or by “an unnatural love?”