Murder of A. L. Smith and Hanging of Dr. Harbin

On the Fourth of July 1888, a crowd of people gathered to celebrate the holiday at Potter's Grove on the banks of the Black River near Poplar Bluff (MO). Between eight and nine o'clock in the evening, a shot rang out a half mile or so from the picnic grounds, followed by a yell. Then a second and a third shot rang out. A few people suspected trouble, but most didn't think much about the incident, figuring it was just some boys shooting off fireworks. So, nobody bothered to investigate.

A couple of days later, however, a man's body was discovered lodged at the edge of the river in the area where the shots had come from. The dead person was identified as A. L. Smith, and an autopsy revealed that he had received at least two mortal gunshot wounds.  

One man was arrested and released after being cleared, but the investigation continued. About a month later, in August, a Dr. William Harbin was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. Harbin had not lived in the Poplar Bluff area long, but he had already earned a reputation as a bad man. According to one report, "He claimed to be a doctor and succeeded in filling the minds of many ignorant people with whom he associated with the belief that he had some supernatural power." Apparently, Smith, who also had a less-than-spotless reputation around Poplar Bluff, had sold some land to Harbin, but Harbin had paid only part of the price, while Smith carried a note for the rest. Supposedly, an argument broke out between the two men when Smith demanded a payment on the land. 

Later facts revealed that the Harbin had been in the company of John Hinderlighter and his wife at the time of the crime. Hinderlighter "bore a fair reputation, but...his wife, it seems, did not deserve a good reputation." Shortly after Harbin's arrest, Hinderlighter's wife began visiting the accused man in the Butler County Jail. This seemed to irritate Hinderlighter, who made "some serious charges" against Harbin. However, neither Hinderlighter or his wife were willing to testify against the prisoner. About this same time, Harbin gave a confession, admitting he had killed Smith, but some people suspected that he was just trying to protect the Hinderlighter woman. A few weeks after Harbin's arrest, Hinderlighter and his wife disappeared, and the case against Harbin was continued.

Several months later, Hinderlighter was located and arrested in Arkansas, but his wife had died in the meantime. Hinderlighter was brought back to Missouri, where he gave a statement incriminating Harbin. By the time Harbin's trial finally rolled around in November of 1889, however, both Hinderlighter and Harbin had repudiated their previous statements. Many people felt Hinderlighter retracted his statement out of fear of Harbin. 

Even without the statements, there was still enough other evidence that had been uncovered to convict Harbin of first-degree murder. A couple of days later, the judge sentenced him to hang. The sentence was postponed pending an appeal to the state supreme court. After some delay, the high court upheld the verdict, and Harbin's date with death was reset for August 21, 1891. The governor granted three different stays in order to give himself more time to consider Harbin's case, but he finally announced in early January 1892 that he would interfere in the case no more. The execution date was then set for January 15.

On the fateful day, Harbin calmly smoked a cigar as he was led to the gallows. Still proclaiming his innocence, he was dropped through the trap at 11:27 a.m. and pronounced dead six minutes later.

The Murder of Belle Lucas and Hanging of Howard Underwood

When an African American named Howard Underwood killed one of his neighbors, a black woman named Belle Lucas, in Mississippi County, Missouri, in early August 1881, the crime was scarcely noted in the white press, but when he was hanged in Charleston twenty months later, the event was a spectacle that drew over 5,000 curious onlookers. The murder of a black person by another black person, it seems, was little cause for excitement, but the chance to see a man launched into eternity from the gallows was a festive occasion not to be missed.

On Saturday, August 6, the 48-year-old Underwood, a married man with five kids, was walking along the road with Belle, the 36-year-old wife of Ike Lucas, in the Lucas neighborhood near Belmont. When they drew near the Lucas home, Underwood turned and shot Belle in the head with a shotgun. According to the next week's issue of the Charleston Enterprise, Underwood then "beat her over the head until he broke the gun to pieces..., knocking her brains out." In its brief report of the crime, the Enterprise said it was unknown why the deed was committed. 

Underwood took off to parts unknown, and a reward of $150 for his capture was offered. Nothing was heard from the fugitive until almost a year later, when Underwood was taken into custody near Champaign, Illinois, in mid to late June 1882. A week or so later, the Mississippi County prosecutor traveled to Illinois and brought Underwood back to face a first-degree murder charge.

It was revealed at that time that Underwood had been "criminally intimate" with his neighbor's wife, who "preferred the caresses" of her paramour to those of her husband. Everything went along swimmingly for some considerable time, it seems, until an African American man named Phillips, who was a minister of the Baptist persuasion, arrived on the scene, and "Belle transferred her affections to the minister." Angry at having to play second fiddle to the preacher, Underwood lay in wait on the fateful day near the Lucas home for Belle and her new lover. When Belle appeared alone, he confronted her, demanding that she quit paying attention to the minister. When Belle refused to take Underwood's advice, he killed her in a fit of passion.

Tried at the August 1882 term of court in Mississippi County, Underwood was found guilty and sentenced to hang in late September 1882. The verdict was appealed, and the sentenced was stayed, pending the outcome of the appeal. The Missouri Supreme Court affirmed the verdict in late 1882 and reset the execution for December 29. However, the court granted Underwood a rehearing, and the sentence was again postponed. In early March 1883, the sentence was once again affirmed and the execution date set for April 6.

On the appointed day, an estimated 5,250 people flooded the streets of Charleston to witness the hanging. After walking up the stairs with a "firm step," Underwood made a short speech to the horde of spectators and then was joined in singing "Take the Name of Jesus with You," by two fellow prisoners, who'd been allowed to accompany him on his death walk. After the song, the condemned man's spiritual advisor offered a prayer, and then a hood was slipped over his head. The trap was sprung, and Underwood dropped through the trap at exactly one p.m.  

Crime on the Increase?

The record of crime in this country is without parallel. There is scarcely a newspaper from the most quiet retreats of the country to the most crowded and bustling thoroughfare of the city but is filled with sensational accounts of bloodshed and murder. No age, sex or condition are excepted. The bludgeon of the assassin falls alike on the innocent babe and the infirm octogenarian--the gentle and confiding maiden, wife or mother and the man of strong muscle and manhood.

...In Chicago, New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, Louisville, Cincinnati and almost every other city of the United States...assassins are on the warpath. The daily papers have each day reports of "Horrible Outrages," "Horrible Tragedies" and "Brutal Murders" until the heart sickens....

We are almost ready to believe that ninety-nine men out of a hundred are prepared to take human life. And whilst crime is so rampant in the land, its punishment is inadequate and uncertain. It is hard to convict a man with money and friends of the crime of murder, no matter how plain the proof. The courts furnish so many dodges such as emotional insanity, so that it is impossible to convict the most cold-blooded assassin.

No, the above opinion is not mine, and it's not even recent. It's from the Iron County (MO) Register in June of 1873. I've been saying for a long time that the rate of crime per capita is not that much worse nowadays than it was 100 or 150 years ago, and this editorial is just one more suggestion that I might be right. The one thing that is different I think, is that today's crimes sometimes involve multiple victims, whereas 100 years ago, it was rare for a killer to take the lives of more than one or two people at the same time.  

The immediate impetus for the Register's righteous indignation was an attempted murder that had recently happened in St. Louis. A man named Joseph Fore had tried to kill his wife, not out of rage or because he was drunk, but out of coldblooded, diabolical malice. 

It seems Fore had been acquitted of killing his brother-in-law a year earlier on the grounds of insanity. His wife stood by him during the trial, and, after his acquittal, she tried to reclaim him and their marriage. They moved to Kansas to start fresh, but Fore neglected his wife and spent most of his time in a saloon near their farm. Finally, she returned to St Louis, and he followed her. They met, and she told him she would go back to him and not carry through with the divorce she was seeking if he would promise to reform and give up intoxicating drinks. 

Instead, he took off for Mississippi, and Mrs. Fore took a job to support herself, since her husband would not. When he came back to St. Louis, he went to her place of employment, apparently angered by her independence, and struck her three times in the head with a hatchet. She fell to the ground insensible and bathed in blood. She was alive at the time of the Register's editorial, but her condition was critical. Fore was locked in the Four Corners Jail, where he was again "attempting the insanity dodge."  

The Death of Earl Anderson: Murder or Suicide?

On the evening of September 15, 1932, neighbors of 54-year-old Earl Williamson, a retired naval officer who lived on a farm near Silva in Wayne County, Missouri, heard the sound of a shotgun blast come from the direction of his home and immediately afterward heard a woman screaming. 

When neighbor Sheldon Ward arrived to investigate, he found Williamson lying on the ground in the back yard in critical condition from a shotgun wound. A shotgun and a hatchet were on the ground some distance away. Williamsson's 34-year-old wife, a "comely Ozarks woman," was in hysterics, saying that Earl had shot himself, and the injured man told neighbors that, yes, he alone was to blame. 

On the way to the hospital, however, Williamson told a local undertaker who was riding in the vehicle with him that "Sonny Boy," Williamson's nickname for his wife, did it but that he didn't want anyone to blame her. In addition, investigating authorities concluded that, taking into consideration the trajectory of the shot that wounded Williamson and the location of the shotgun, it would have been  impossible for him to have shot himself. 

After Williamson died the next day, a coroner's jury ruled that the death was not a suicide but rather a murder, and his wife, Edna, was indicted for first degree murder. 

A few weeks after Edna's arrest, an investigation into the background of Mr. and Mrs. Williamson determined that it was highly unlikely that they were legally married. Edna had produced a marriage certificate showing the couple had been married in West Virginia in 1930, but no record could be found of such a marriage in West Virginia records. In addition, the names of the minister and the witnesses listed on the certificate seemed to be made up, as no one by those names could be located. 

 

At Edna's trial at Greenville in February of 1933, the undertaker who accompanied Williamson to the hospital repeated his claim that the dying man said his wife had shot him, and the undertaker's assistant backed up the story. Edna, however, took the stand in her own defense to vehemently deny the charge against her. She said she was inside the house when she heard the shotgun blast, went to the door and hurried out to her husband when she saw him lying on the ground, and picked up the shotgun and heaved it as far as she could.  A neighbor of the Williamsons took the stand to bolster Edna's story, saying that Earl had told him when he first arrived on the scene that he shot himself. 

After a brief trial and a short deliberation, the jury came back with a verdict of not guilty. Upon hearing the verdict, Mrs. Williamson jumped up and shouted, "Glory to God!"