A Fatal Affray Near Brighton

The February 13, 1879, edition of the Springfield Leader reported that a young man named H. L. Maylock had been shot and killed by another young man named Bud Low at a party at a residence near Brighton (MO) the night before. Low was arrested, said the Leader, and brought before a justice of the peace, to whom he admitted the deed, before making his escape. A special dispatch from Springfield to the St. Louis Globe Democrat described the incident in similar terms, claiming that Maylock struck Low in the face and that Low immediately drew his revolver and shot Maylock dead. 

Another report the next day said that Low's body had been found dead in the woods between Brighton and Springfield. A brother of Maylock and another man had supposedly gone in search of Low after his escape and had returned, saying they could not find him, but it was presumed that they did find Low and had "inflicted this summary vengeance." 

The only problem with these initial reports was that they turned out to be entirely erroneous. It was left to the Springfield Weekly Patriot to straighten out the story in its February 20 edition. It was, in fact, Maylock who had killed Low after Low got drunk and boisterous and started threatening people at the party. Low was being escorted from the room by his brother when he, in some way, bumped against Maylock. Maylock made some remark in return, and Low struck him a blow above the eye. However, Maylock, who was described as a normally peaceful young man, abided even this insult and did not fight back. 

Later in the evening, though, Low became boisterous again, and someone at the party said to him, "Low, you've blacked one eye, and you had better be quiet." Maylock, who was standing nearby, added, "You must not black mine again." In response to this remark, Low "rolled up his sleeves" and made a lunge toward Maylock. According to some witnesses, Low had a knife in his hand at the time. Matlock stepped back until his retreat was blocked by a bed, at which point he drew his revolver and shot Low, killing him almost instantly.

Maylock was arrested and brought before two justices of the peace a week later for a preliminary examination. After a two-and-a-half day hearing, he was dismissed without charges, as nearly all the testimony showed that he had acted in self-defense. 

Killing of Vellie Driscoll

On October 5, 1897, the Forepaugh and Sells traveling circus made a stop at Rich Hill, Missouri. That evening during the performance, some local men, mostly miners, got into a dispute with some of the circus employees, and a 16-year-old boy named J. R. "Vellie" Driscoll, son of one of the miners, was hit on the head with a blunt object and killed during the melee. One of the circus men involved in the dispute was quickly taken into custody, and he had to be secretly whisked out of town to prevent a lynching. 

The person spirited away from Rich Hill reportedly implicated Victor Lee, operator of and main performer for one of the circus sideshows, in the Driscoll killing, and Lee was arrested in Joplin on the evening of the October 7 and charged with murder. The blunt instrument used in the killing was identified as a tent stake, but Lee denied killing Driscoll and said he thought the boy was not murdered at all but rather kicked by one of the circus horses. 

Ultimately, Charley Bell, who was manager of the circus and who also operated a candy stand, was identified as the person spirited away from Rich Hill, and he was charged as the actual murderer of Driscoll, while Lee was charged as an accomplice.

The two defendants were tried together in Bates County in early December. Lee claimed he was only drawn into the unfortunate affair because he left a bundle of his belongings at the candy stand, where the melee occurred, and happened to return to the stand to retrieve the bundle just when the fighting broke out. He said he had been questioned and released on the night of the incident because authorities were convinced that he was telling the truth. After relating his story to the jury, Lee was found not guilty and released.

Bell was turned loose before Bell's trial ended, and I have not found a definitive answer to what happened to Bell. From the lack of available evidence to the contrary, I conclude that he was probably also found not guilty.

 

Murder-Suicide or Double Murder? (The Sensational Story of Lillie Colcord)

About 1:15 p.m. on Saturday, August 17, 1878, a woman's scream issued from Room 4 of 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 been dishonorably connected to her. Yet, it was apparent to the people Colcord 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, 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.

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. Williamson'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!"