Beatty Wickliffe Kills Evan Warren, Boyle, 1889

Previously:

Click here for a list of my other Pulaski/Rockcastle/Laurel County KY articles

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[July 23, 1889] -

DANGEROUSLY WOUNDED. 

Evan Warren Shot by Beatty Wickliffe, a Negro Hackman, at the C. S. Depot. Wickliffe also Shot by Warren. 

The Condition of Warren is Extremely Critical. 

A difficulty took place at the [Danville] depot Monday afternoon at 3:30 o'clock between Evan Warren and Beatty Wickliffe, in which both were probably fatally wounded. Warren was shot through and through twice. Wickliffe received a wound under the right arm and the ball has not been found. So many reports are current regarding the beginning of the trouble that we are not able to give them with any degree of accuracy further than as reported to a representative of the Advocate by Jno. Crouch, who says he saw a portion of the shooting. Said he: "The first of the trouble that I saw was after the first pistol shot was fired. I then turned around and saw Evan Warren with a pistol in his hand and Beatty Wickliffe running. In running, Wickliffe threw a negro boy on the railroad track and the incoming train came near running over him. The next I saw, Bob Mayo and Flem. Murphy had hold of Warren, having wrenched his pistol from him. My attention was then attracted by two pistol shots fired rapidly at Warren while he was held by the two parties mentioned. Warren was shot in the back. He then broke loose and ran and the third shot was fired at him by Wickliffe." Mayo claims that when Warren fired at Wickliffe they grabbed Warren to keep him from shooting, and that when Beatty Wickliffe shot they turned Warren loose. They claim they did not know that Wickliffe was near when he shot Warren. At this writing the doctors are working with the wounded men and both are regarded as dangerously wounded. This is a most unfortunate affair, and from the fact that Warren was disarmed and held while shot down, puts a bad face on the matter for those concerned in it. The difficulty was the termination of a quarrel which the parties had at noon, and in which only fists were used. 

At the time of going to press the physicians stated that Evan Warren's condition is not hopeless, but his wounds are such that his chances for recovery are one in a hundred. One of the balls passed entirely through the body, perforating the liver, while the other struck him squarely in the chest and lodged there. Wickliffe's wound is not considered dangerous. The ball entered the right arm pit and its course was checked after passing a short distance into the flesh. The ball has not been extracted, but the physician says it is near the surface. [1]

The Pearl Bryan Murder: Woman Beheaded Alive by Seducer, 1896

The murder of Pearl Bryan received national attention due to the outrageous details of the crime and the surprising lack of remorse shown by the defendants during their trials.  The facts of the case according to the articles below are basically this:  Bryan became pregnant by one of the defendants. The father refused to marry her, and was adamant that Bryan secure an abortion.  Several botched abortion attempts, including force-feeding her cocaine, apparently failed to produce quick enough results for the father and his accomplice, who then disposed of her in a very gruesome way--by beheading her alive.

There are also a lot of articles claiming that Pearl Bryan's ghost haunts this or that building in the vicinity where she was murdered, and that her killers' ghosts haunt near where they were hanged, and other occult claims, but I have only gathered articles here on the murder investigation and trials details.

The Mary Cloyd murder in Laurel County, 1899, was referred to by papers as the "next Pearl Bryan case." You can read about that murder here. 

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[February 3, 1896] -

MURDER MYSTERY

The Beheaded Woman Still Unidentified.

NUMEROUS THEORIES

Advanced As to the Cause.  The Head Cannot Be Found.

By Associated Press.

CINCINNATI, Feb. 2.-- A hundred different clues to the murder and beheading of a woman near Ft. Thomas, Ky., on Friday night are floating today.  Many of them have been traced to worthless origin.  The Sheriff of Campbell county, Ky., and all the detectives on both sides of the river are working on the case.

Not a single arrest on suspicion has been made, and not a single suspicion has been made, and not a single suspicion settled on any man as the perpetrator; nor has any thread been discovered likely to lead to lead to the identification of the woman.  All the ponds, as well as the Covington reservoir, have been dragged.  The water is going out of the reservoir, but it will be noon tomorrow before it will be empty.  Then search in the mud for the head can be made.

In the meantime rumor is busy on all the streets tonight.  One story generally circulated is that the head has been found, and that the murderer is a Ft. Thomas soldier, who committed suicide.  Ample investigation at hand has shown this to be wholly false.  There is one theory on which there is a general agreement, and that is that the woman was murdered in an attempt to take either money or papers from her person.  This inference is justified by the signs of a struggle and the torn condition of the clothes.

The latest and apparently the most plausible theory of the Ft. Thomas murder mystery is that the murderer was a jealous husband, and the victim a wife.  It is thought he suspected that she had letters from her guilty lover hidden under her corset.  The corset was found some distance from the body badly torn, as if forced violently from the body.

It is believed a butcherknife was drawn as a menace.  The woman's right hand was cut, showing she had grasped the blade desperately two or three times.  Then, according to the theory, the murder followed, and the search for letters failing the murder severed the head, and overcome by remorse, plunged into the reservoir or river and drowned with it. [1]

Wm. H. Harrison and the 'White Slavery Slander'

William Henry Harrison's political opponents during the 1836 and 1840 Presidential campaigns accused him of supporting debt bondage, or "white slavery," laws while serving as Governor of Indiana (1807) and in the Ohio State Senate (1820).  Herein are a leaflet which promotes this claim, and a letter written by Harrison refuting it.

The laws in question legalized forced labor as a means for criminals to work off fines they could not otherwise afford to pay. The leaflet argues that the forced labor is not levied as a consequence of their crime, but as a consequence of the criminal's poverty.  In this way, the law effectively permits debt bondage.  And it makes this argument in an entertainingly over-the-top way:

"Did our fathers of the Revolution fight for MONEY?  On the contrary, did they not pour out their money and their blood also like water for LIBERTY?  Liberty was the watchword and Liberty the prize of a bloody and protracted civil war.  Liberty was achieved and behold a second generation has not passed away, before some of the children of Revolutionary Fathers place this blood bought prize on a level with MONEY!"

According to Harrison, the reasoning behind the law(s) were as follows:

...the proposed amendment of the law presupposed that the delinquent was in confinement for the non-payment of a fine and costs of prosecution (the payment of which was part of the sentence): it seemed, therefore, humane, in respect to the offender, to relieve him from confinement which deprived him from the means of discharging the penalty, and to place him in a situation in which he might work out his deliverance, even at a loss, for a time, of his personal liberty.

Full transcripts of both documents follow after the jump. The leaflet dates from the 1840 campaign, while the letter from Harrison was written in 1836.  The leaflet is from the LoC Printed Ephemera collection, while the letter can be found on google books, published in pro-Harrison campaign literature from 1840 which claims to compare the views of Harrison and Van Buren (the Presidential candidates in 1840).  

Girl and Man Fight a Duel

Mt. Vernon Signal - Aug 18, 1899

Girl and Man Fight a Duel
Mt. Vernon Signal, Friday Aug 18, 1899 

Elwood, Indiana, August 15--George Niccum, who shot Miss Neal Everling, the bullet going through her shoulder, was captured Monday and bound over to court.  Niccum and the girl had a duel, he firing three shots and the girl one.  The bullet from the girl's revolver lodged in Niccum's hip, and can not be located.  He was intoxicated, and while so, visited the girl's home, and insulted her.