Late
Thursday afternoon, May 25, 1905, a young man named William Spaugh entered Robert
Rasche's restaurant in Ironton, Missouri, and started bedeviling some of the
customers by throwing peanut shells at them. He then caught one of the
customers, William Edgar, by the leg, pulled him from his seat, and started
dancing around the floor taunting Edgar and trying to get him to dance, too.
After Edgar reclaimed his seat, Spaugh told him (Edgar) that the more he looked
at his face, the more he hated it and struck him in the eye, inflicting a cut.
He again jerked Edgar by the foot, pulling him to the floor. Here Rasche
interceded and put Spaugh out of the restaurant.
Spaugh went to his home in
Ironton, and the Iron County sheriff, John W. Polk, informed of the outrages on
Edgar, went to the Spaugh home to arrest the assailant. William Spaugh was
sitting on the front porch with his younger brother, Arthur, and another young
man, William Brown, when Polk arrived. William Spaugh, according to Brown's
later testimony, announced to the other two young men that the sheriff was
there to arrest him, and Arthur got up and went inside the house. At the gate
leading into the front yard, Polk hollered to William Spaugh that he needed to
see him and for Spaugh to come to the fence. Spaugh demanded to know whether
the sheriff had a warrant, and when Polk admitted he didn't, Spaugh got up and
followed his brother inside.
Sheriff Polk then went inside
the gate, stepped onto the front porch, opened the door to the house, and
started to walk across the threshold when four or five shots rang out. One of
them was a shotgun blast that reportedly blew a hole in Polk's side big enough
to stick a fist in. Polk was also shot with a ball to the heart and one to the
head, and he was given yet another wound with some sort of sharp instrument,
apparently after he had already fallen dead to the floor.
The Spaugh brothers left the
premises immediately after the shooting, and search parties sent out in pursuit
of them finally brought them to bay, with the help of bloodhounds, at an
isolated cabin in Madison County about five days later. After a gun battle that
lasted several minutes, the two fugitives finally surrendered and were arrested
and charged with murder. Their mother had previously been arrested, and she
also was charged with murder for allegedly urging her sons to resist Sheriff
Polk.
In early July, a mob broke
into the Iron County jail where the brothers were being held, tied up the newly
appointed sheriff, and shot the brothers several times in their legs. By order
of the Missouri governor, the Spaughs were then transferred to St. Louis for
safekeeping while awaiting trial.
The three Spaughs were
scheduled for trial in late 1905 in Reynolds County on a change of venue from
Iron County. William Spaugh was tried, convicted of first degree murder, and
sentenced to hang. Arthur's trial and his mother's trial were postponed until
the following summer. In mid-1906 Arthur was convicted of second degree murder
and sentenced to 55 years in prison, and the mother was convicted of second
degree murder and sentenced to ten years in prison.
All three convictions were
appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court, but the verdicts were upheld in each
case. However, the mother was later granted a new trial and was acquitted upon
retrial. Also, William Spaugh's death sentence was later commuted to life in
prison.
In 1913, when William Spaugh
was dying of tuberculosis, Arthur tried to take the blame for the killings in
order to secure a parole for William so that he might die at home, but the
request was denied and William Spaugh died in prison at Jefferson City in
mid-1913. Later, Arthur also died in prison of tuberculosis after serving just
a few years.
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