Frank Dawson Murders His Girlfriend

Frank Dawson and Anna Hartman of Monroe County (MO) were planning to get married in the summer of 1903, but when the appointed day arrived and all arrangements for the wedding had been made, the prospective groom failed to show up. At the urging of her father, Anna broke the engagement and wouldn't have anything more to do with Dawson. 

Dawson persisted in his attentions to the young woman and pleaded with her to give him another chance, but she refused. Angry and defected, Dawson was overheard to vow that he'd kill Anna before he'd let her marry anyone else.

On Friday evening, December 4, 1903, Anna, accompanied by a young man named Obe Hughes, went to a dance near Madison at the home of George Ownby. About 7:30, Dawson showed up drunk, uninvited, and packing a revolver. He mingled with some of the other young people present and was heard to say that he meant to "kill some son of a bitch before they danced two rounds."

About 8:30, his friends succeeded in getting Dawson back on his horse and started toward home. However, he showed back up a half hour later flourishing his weapon. This time, his friends took the weapon away from him, but they handed it back to him a short time later when he promised to give it to another friend. 

Dawson started off again but reappeared at the door of the dance hall about 9:30 or 10:00. Just as a new dance was beginning, he strode across the dance floor, pointed his revolver at Anna Hartman, and fired. Anna started to run but slumped to the floor. Her dance partner tried to wrestle the assailant to the floor, but during the scuffle, Dawson got off two more shots. Of the three shots, two struck Anna, one of which passed through her chest, gravely wounding her, while her companion suffered a minor injury. Dawson, thinking he had killed both Anna and her partner, strode rapidly away.

He was arrested a short time later at his brother's house, which was located not far from the Ownby place. Taken to Paris (MO), he was lodged in the Monroe County Jail and charged with first-degree murder after Anna died of her wounds. Rumors of vigilante justice soon prompted authorities to move the defendant to the Macon County Jail, where Dawson gave a statement, saying he had no memory whatsoever of the killing. 

Dawson entered a plea of emotional insanity, but he was convicted of first-degree murder at his trial in Paris in late January of 1904 and sentenced to hang in mid-March. The sentence was stayed pending an appeal to the Missouri Supreme Court, and the high court overturned the conviction in early 1905 on the grounds that the prosecution and judge should have provided instructions for the finding of a lesser verdict. 

On retrial in mid-1905, Dawson was found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to 99 years in prison. The sentence was commuted by the governor in 1918, and Dawson was released after serving only 13 years of the supposed 99-year sentence.

John Stansberry the Uxoricide

In the fall of 1885, John Stansberry (aka Stansbury) married 27-year-old Mary "Mollie" Eubank in Newton County, Missouri. In the spring of 1889, Stansberry visited the Indian Territory, rented a farm, and bought the crop that was growing there. He returned to Newton County, and in August of 1889, he and his wife, along with their one-year-old daughter, headed back to Indian Territory to make their home on the rented farm. 

They stopped for a while near Eufaula, and Mollie went to a neighboring home for a visit on September 20. When she came back to where her husband was staying, she found her baby "in a dying condition with a ghastly wound in its head, and it soon expired."  Stansberry claimed the child had fallen from a chair, but the differing statements he made regarding the incident caused some people to believe he had killed the little girl himself.  

Mollie stood by her husband, though, at least to the extent that she packed up a short time later and moved with him to the farm he had previously rented fourteen miles from Eufaula. On October 13, sometime after dark, Mollie was murdered, her skull crushed with an ax as she lay on a pallet in her room. 

Stansberry went to a nearby home and reported that someone had broken into his home, murdered his wife, and stolen $300 from him. The neighbor and others went to the Stansberry place and found the dead woman, a bloody ax nearby, and a pail of bloody water on a table. Again, Stansberry told so many conflicting stories that people's suspicions were aroused. As soon as Mollie was buried, some of the men present at the funeral took Stansberry into custody while he was still at the gravesite. He was later taken to Fort Smith, where he was lodged in jail and charged with murder.  

The defendant was tried in Federal Court in late February 1890 and found guilty of first-degree murder. Although the evidence was all circumstantial, it was so strong that the jury was out only a short time before reaching its unanimous verdict. The prosecution said Stansberry's motive was that he had met a Native-American woman during his earlier stay in the Territory and that he wanted to marry her in order to inherit some land she was entitled to. 

A couple of months after the trial, Judge Isaac Parker, the so-called "hanging judge," pronounced sentence. After giving Stansberry a harsh lecture and then asking God to have mercy on his soul, Parker ordered that the convict be hanged by the neck on July 9, 1890, until he was dead.

Refusing all spiritual aid and still proclaiming his innocence, Stansberry went to the gallows as scheduled on July 9 and "died game."