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."