About 1:15 p.m. on Saturday, August 17, 1878, a woman's scream issued from Room 4 at the Girard House in downtown St. Louis, and then four shots rang out. The hotel clerk, occupants of the place, and officers who were nearby on the street rushed to Room 4 and found the door locked. Breaking it down, they entered and found a young woman, initially identified as Lillie Smith, lying dead on the floor and Josiah Colcord, a 34-year-old St. Louis lawyer, lying mortally wounded beside her. By the time a doctor arrived, Colcord was also dead.
Colcord had his jacket off and his vest unbuttoned but was otherwise fully clothed, while the young woman was clad only in a chemise and a short, loose-fitting gown, with "no stockings, even, covering her feet."
Investigators quickly concluded that Colcord had shot the woman three times and then turned the weapon, a .38 caliber revolver, on himself, and that's how St. Louis newspapers would report the incident later that day and the next morning. From the very beginning, however, there were those who questioned the official version of events, suggesting instead that the couple had been the victims of a double homicide.
Josiah Colcord at one time had been an up-and-coming attorney with a bright future. He had even served a term in the Missouri legislature. He had married "an estimable young lady" from Greenville, Illinois, and had three children, but according to the St. Louis papers, he had fallen prey to the demon alcohol and had lost his way. The couple had separated about 1875, and Colcord had taken up with Lillie. In recent months, he had reportedly tried to straighten out his life but had relapsed in recent days.
Reporters who hurried to the scene of the double fatality remarked that, despite the bloody circumstances now attending Lillie's death, she was a woman of uncommon beauty. She had a face that could only be described as "of exceeding attractiveness." She had "large brown, dreamy eyes, an oval face, nose slightly retroussé but delicately chiseled, large mouth, fine teeth and a figure voluptuous in the extreme."
Little was known in St. Louis about Lillie, except that she had a reputation as a "woman of the town" who often drank to excess. She had claimed to be married to Colcord, and the couple had registered at the hotel as man and wife. In addition, love notes that the couple had written to each other in which they addressed each other as husband and wife were found in the hotel room. At an inquest held later the same day of the deaths, contradictory testimony was given as to whether the couple was actually married and as to whether they had argued in recent days. The St. Louis newspapers sided with those who believed Lillie to be Colcord's mistress, as they could find no record of the supposed marriage. They seemed to blame the whole unfortunate affair on the "seductive wiles" of the "cyprian" who had led Colcord astray.
It was left to the Bloomington Pantagraph of McLean County, Illinois, where the 24-year-old Lillie was originally from, "to cast light upon her history," as the Pantagraph itself phrased it. Lilah "Lillie" Gibbons was the daughter of a well-known citizen of Heyworth, McLean County. When she was "a growing girl," she attracted "universal attention" with her "rare, rich beauty and grace." When she was only about 16 years old, Lillie, who was said to have a passionate nature, ran away with a young man from Heyworth named John Harrold and lived in New Orleans with Harrold for a year or more as his mistress.
After her time in New Orleans, Lillie returned home and stayed with her parents for a while. Then, in 1872, she met and married a man named Davis from Bunker Hill, Illinois, but they divorced after just a short period. In fact, she and Colcord first met when he represented her in the divorce proceeding, and they became infatuated with each other at that time, while he was still married to his first wife. After her divorce from Davis was final, Lillie once again returned home for a while before moving to St. Louis. When she next returned to Heyworth about 1876, she brought Colcord with her and introduced him as her husband. In fact, she and Colcord, who was now divorced from his first wife, were living together without the benefit of matrimony at this time. However, they did wed in the spring of 1877, with a St. Louis justice performing the ceremony, and the couple had a child together.
Around the first of July 1878, just weeks prior to her death, Lillie came back to Heyworth and stayed there throughout July and into August, but she also spent time in Bloomington. Colcord occasionally visited her, coming and going as his business dictated.
Just a couple of weeks before the tragedy in St. Louis, Colcord went to Bloomington while Lillie was not there to investigate rumors he had heard of her unfaithfulness. He confronted several men "whose names had been connected dishonorably with the name of his wife," but he supposedly became convinced of his wife's honesty and fidelity and vowed to a friend that he was going to make the rumormongers face Lillie and the men who had dishonorably connected to her. Yet, it was apparent to the people he talked to in Bloomington that he was not only angry but also consumed with jealousy. The Pantagraph allowed that it was not uncharitable to the dead to say that there were some grounds for Colcord's jealousy.
Despite the fact authorities were able to establish jealousy as a strong motive for Colcord's alleged crime, there were still those who doubted that he had killed his wife and himself. Foremost among these were members of Colcord's family.
Then, in 1887, a man named Henry Morrison walked into a St. Louis police station and asked to be locked up for murdering the Colcords nine years earlier. He said he'd killed them because he was in love with Lillie and that he fled the hotel before anybody saw him. All the evidence, though, still pointed to a murder-suicide, and Morrison's claim was dismissed as the ravings of a lunatic. Thus, he was sent on his way.
A few days later, however, authorities in St. Louis received a letter from Colcord's sister in Illinois saying that Morrison should have been held because the Colcord family had found letters among Josiah's personal things that seemed to point toward Morrison as a bitter enemy of Josiah and a rival for the affections of his wife.
According to the sister and her father, Morrison was one of the men whose name had been "disagreeably connected" to Lillie in the weeks leading up to her death.
St. Louis authorities, however, placed little stock in either the opinion of the Colcord family or the confession of Henry Morrison, and the case was not re-opened.
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