I lived in Houston (MO) for a year in the 1970s, and my mother's family was originally from the Houston area. I always thought of the place as quiet, law-abiding community, but I guess even a quiet community can occasionally be disrupted by violence. Such was the case for Houston in the wee hours of the morning of October 30, 1874.
On Thursday night, October 29, Jerry White, John Hubbard, and two or three other men were playing cards in an upstairs room above White's saloon in downtown Houston. Sometime after midnight, Hubbard left the game to go after liquor as Oliver Kirkman took his place at the card table. When Hubbard returned, he shared the liquor with the others but did not resume playing cards. Instead, he just watched.
After a while a shot suddenly rang out without warning, and White cried out that he had been shot. Hubbard dashed downstairs proclaiming, "I have shot Jerry White." He ran to a horse that was hitched to the courthouse fence, cut the rope by which it was tied, and sprang into the saddle to make his getaway, proclaiming once again as he rode through town that he'd shot Jerry White.
The gunshot hit White in the chest, just above the left nipple, and ranged downward toward the spine. He lived just a few hours before dying, but he was fully conscious during this time. He made final preparations for the disposition of his property and arranged other details surrounding his impending death. He even said he forgave his assassin.
It appeared there had been no quarrel between the two men, and nobody seemed able to assign a motive for the crime, except that Hubbard had been drinking heavily. A son of the local doctor, Hubbard was said to have had a good reputation and a mild disposition except when he was drinking.
A large posse went out in pursuit of the fugitive but without success. Nothing more was heard from Hubbard until about a year later when he and two other "rough characters" showed in the Houston area, where they laid low for a while, until lawmen from Newton County came to the Houston area in search of them for allegedly having killed a man at Newtonia. The three fugitives left Houston headed south, and one of them was overtaken and captured on the Eleven Points River.
The captured man said Hubbard had mostly been in Arkansas since the White murder, and he acknowledged the killing the three of them had committed in Newton County. He said they killed the man for his money but found only 25 cents on his person.
Apparently, Hubbard was never captured, or at least I have been unable to find any evidence to suggest that he was.
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