Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 March 1884 — HORRIBLE CRIME. [ARTICLE]

HORRIBLE CRIME.

Shocking Slaughter in a Remote Section of Tennessee. 4 Whole Family Murdered—Swift Justice Overtakes the Butchers. [Springfield (Term.) Telegram.] Perhaps the wont crime ever committed has just been perpetrated in this (Robertson) County. Twenty-five miles from this place, near the Kentucky line, lived John Martin, his wife, and three children, two of them grown young women, the other a boy of It. Martin was in his seventieth year, and had lived in the neighborhood nearly bis entire life. He had eked out a moderate living on bis little farm, quietly doing his work and having the respect of every one. Yesterday he returned from Nashville, where he went to,procure the final settlement of his pension having been wounded in the late war. It is presumed that this trip was learned of by certain rough characters living near, who, bent upon robbery, planned and executed this most horrible crime, Martin's log house was situated a quarter of a milo from the Springfield road, about ten miles northwest from Adams’ Station. A heavy growth of cedars and underbrush hides the house from the view of the travelers on the main road. This isolation prevented the tragedy from being discovered until this afternoon. A peddler who came to the house gave the first alarm, and the whole neighborhood was aroused. The door was broken as if struck violently with an ax. This door led into the main bedroom, where Martin and his wife slept. The scene upon/ entering the room beggars all description. Martin was dead upon the floor, his gray hair matted and soaked in a pool of blood. The head was SDlit open in two places by blows from an ax. The forehead was crushed, end the glaring eyer were forced from their sockets. Upon every side were evidences of the frightful struggle that must have taken place. The walls and the floor were bespattered with blood. Mrs, Martin must have been killed as she started from the bed. Her arms were broken and her face horribly mangled by the blows of the ax. There was one stream of ghastly blood. The most pitiable sight was tho little boy, who occupied a trundle-bed in the room. Evidently he had been taken by one of the murderers during the struggle with tho others and choked to deathIn the next room, where, the girls lay, the sight would have melted a heart of stone. Everything indicated a most desperate struggle for life. Evidently the murderers added. a worse crime to their misdeeds. The disordered clothing of the poor girls told plainer than words of the outrages that had been perpetrated upon them. After the brutal assaes ns had satisfied their lust they crushed the skulls of the two girls with the ax, which was found upon the floor, red with blood. It was a sad experience, and every eye that witnessed the sad spectacle was full of tears. The house had teen ransacked from one end to the other, and tables and chairs were overturned. The entire neighborhood was filled with horror at the fearful sacrifice of human life. A confusion of footprints was found leading away from the house into the neighboring woods. Search parties were formed, and the country fo,r miles around was scoured for a trace of the murderers. A farm-hand. named George French was arrested by one of the County Constables upon suspicion. A crowd gathered and soon swelled Into a mob of frenzied men. His contradictory replies convinced them that he was guilty. A rope was brought and placed about his neck, and the mob swung him up to the nearest tree. He was let down half insensible, and on coming to confessed that he and Jim and Doe Carter, two negroes, workmen upon the farm of ’Squire Davis, had planned the murder. He gave sickening details of the assassination, and confessed that all three of them hud outraged the girls. They found $!,- 200 in money, and divided it between them. He had hardly finished his story when he was jerked up and strangled to death. Twenty shots were fired into his body. The mob made a break for Davis’ farm, where the two negroes were found. Although both of them protested their innocence, the mob hanged them to the same tree and shot them while they strangled.