Carney Murders

My book entitled Desperadoes of the Ozarks , which is more or less a followup to my Ozarks Gunfights book, will soon be released by Pelican Publishing. In fact, I think it's already available for pre-purchase on sites like Amazon. Each chapter in the book, as was the case with the gunfights book, is devoted to a different notorious character or incident. So, for the next several posts, I'll briefly describe some of the chapters.
The first chapter is about the killing of Jackson Carney and his wife, Cordelia Carney, by Carney's cousin George Moore at Shell Knob in December of 1869. Moore had grown up in the Carney home almost like a brother to Jackson, but he had left home about a year earlier and had apparently led a wayward life during the intervening year. He showed back up in Barry County in December and on the fateful day hung around Carney's store all day apparently just waiting to enact his murderous design. After the store closed, he killed both Carney and his wife, stole a couple of hundred dollars, and took off. He was captured a day or two later and taken to the Barry County jail at Cassville. A day or two after that, he was strung up on a corner of the Cassville square by an indignant mob bent on vengeance for the foul murders. Carney and his wife were buried at the Carney Cemetery, now called the Old Carney Cemetery, which is located about ten or fifteen miles south of Aurora just a few miles off Highway 39.