I Hope I Burn Forever

The Cameron (MO) Daily Observer reported on December 17, 1907, that Mrs. Albert Filley, living five miles southeast of Cameron on the road that separated Clinton and Caldwell counties, had been kicked in the head by a horse and seriously injured on the 14th, but, as future events and testimony would reveal, that’s not what happened.
On December 21, exactly a week after Mrs. Filley had supposedly been kicked by a horse, the Filley neighborhood was horrorstricken when they awoke to learn that Albert Filley had killed his wife, his little girl, and his brother. He’d also tried to kill his sister-in-law, but she had escaped in her nightclothes and raced to the neighboring home of J. W. Chaffin to give an alarm.
A local constable was summoned, and he and a small posse arrested Albert Filley without incident as he emerged from his house. Inside the Filley home, the neighbors found Albert’s wife, Fannie, lying dead in her bed. Her skull was crushed from several blows to the head, and a bloody hammer was found nearby. Lying partly beneath the bed was the body of seven-year-old Dolly Filley, the couple’s daughter, and her head also showed evidence of having been struck with a blunt instrument.
Clay Filley, who’d been staying with his brother to help out with the chores ever since Fanny had been injured, was found dead on the floor near the doorway separating Albert and Fanny’s bedroom from the room where Clay and his family had been sleeping. He’d apparently died of a single gunshot wound, as no other marks of violence were found on his body. Clay’s wife, Elsie, had been knocked senseless, but she regained consciousness while Filley was outside at a well. Still bleeding from her head wound, she had escaped to the Chaffin residence, taking her infant child with her.
After his arrest, Filley was guarded at his home until the Caldwell County sheriff could arrive and take him to the county jail at Kingston, almost twenty miles away.
Recuperating at a neighbor’s home, Elsie Filley soon rallied enough to relate the crime in more detail. She said her husband, Clay, was sitting up with Fannie when his brother suddenly burst into the room without provocation about 4:00 a.m. and shot him with a revolver. The wounded Clay sprang up, and the two men wrestled over the pistol. Albert Finney finally broke loose and fled outdoors, while Clay went to the kitchen, where his wife and child were sleeping. He awakened Elsie and told her what had happened. She and Clay barricaded the house to keep Albert out, but he soon returned with a hammer and a stick of wood and smashed the glass in the kitchen door. Elsie and Clay fought with Albert at the door to keep him out, and he soon retreated to the well and started pumping water. By now, Clay Filley was so weak from his bullet wound that he sank to the floor dying. When Elsie heard her crazed brother-in-law returning to the house, she grabbed a bottle of carbolic acid and threw it on him, but it didn’t keep him from forcing his way into the house. Albert struck Elsie down with the stick of wood and stalked into his wife’s room. As Filley went to work smashing in the brains of his wife and daughter, Elsie revived, snatched her baby girl from bed, and dashed out of the house toward the Chaffin place.
A newspaperman called at the county jail in Kingston on December 22 to get Albert Filley’s side of the story. Albert said that he, Clay, and Elsie were all sitting up with Fannie on the night in question. Near morning, he went outside to check on his chickens. When he returned after about thirty minutes, he found his wife and child lying dead, and Elsie immediately attacked him with a wooden club. Clay, also armed with a club, promptly joined his wife in the assault. After fighting the pair a short while, Albert managed to get the revolver he’d taken with him to the chicken coop out of his pocket and shoot his brother. Despite being shot, Clay continued fighting, and he and Elsie knocked Albert down. Clay collapsed about the same time, and while Albert lay stunned on the floor, Elsie escaped.
The prisoner denied having assaulted his wife in the barn a week earlier in an attempt to kill her, as nearly everyone now suspected.
Filley’s first-degree murder trial for the death of his wife got underway at Kingston on June 22, 1908. The state’s theory of the crime was that Filley had tried to kill his wife a week before the murders, clubbing her in the barn and falsely reporting that she’d been kicked by a horse. When he realized that she was likely going to recover from her injuries, he determined once again to kill her. The doctor who treated Fannie after the December 14 incident testified that her injuries were more consistent with having been struck repeatedly with a board than with having been kicked by a horse. Neighbor Chaffin said that Filley came to his house to tell him his wife had been kicked by a horse and that he (Chaffin) hurried to the scene but that Filley himself showed virtually no inclination to help his wife. Another neighbor testified he saw the couple having an altercation at the barn.
Filley’s lawyers pursued an insanity defense, but the jury came back on June 27 with a guilty verdict, fixing punishment at death. After an appeal to the Missouri governor, the execution was set for September 21. Three days before the fateful date, Filley refused an offer to see a spiritual advisor, explaining, “If I did what they say I did, I hope I’ll burn forever.”
Filley was hanged at Kingston on the 21st and afterwards buried in McDaniel Cemetery beside the wife and child he’d killed.
This post is condensed from a chapter in my book Yanked Into Eternity: Lynchings and Hangings in Missouri.