Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 February 1891 — A JUDICIAL MURDER. [ARTICLE]

A JUDICIAL MURDER.

WAS AN INNOCENT MAN HANGED? The Incoherent Tnlk of a Demented Woman Says Patsey Devine Was Judicially Murdered—Recalling a Crime* Committed Ten Years Ago. {Alton (Ill.) dispatch.] The Incoherent talk of a demented woman has again brought to light the history of a murder committed tan years ago, for which a man was hanged,who is now proved to be innocent of theCeriine. Aug. 6, 1879, Aaron Goodfeilowof Blooms ington, was mysteriously murdered at his own door, and Jan. 10, 1881, Patsy Devine, of Alton, was executed for the deed at Clinton, DeWitt County. Devine was convicted by a chain of circumstantial evidence furnished by a Mrs. Brown and *her daughter Nellie, both of Bloomington, who that he, in company with another man named Harry Williams, had been at their house the evening of the killing, and they left in a very boisterous state. A few minutes later Aaron Goodfellow was called to his dcor by two men and ordered* to throw up hjs hands. He grappled with his assailants and received a slight bullet wound in the head, but a moment later the assassin who was free shot him fatally iu the back. It ia supposed that the assassins mistook Goodfellow for a man named Woods, whom they knew to havo money. The case was taken in hand by competent officers and Deyine was traced and captured. All through the trial he protested his innocence, and even on the scaffold, with the clergyman standing at his side, he declared that he did not commit the deed. He was hanged, however, and nothing more was said of the case until his accomplice, named Williams, was traced to the State prison at Stillwater, Minn., where he had been sentenced to a term of twenty-five years for another crime. Before proceedings could be instituted against him Williams died in that prison, but ere his death called a priest to his beside and requested him to write to Devine's aged mother, who lived at Alton, and inform her that her boy was innocent of the crime for which he died. This was published, and yet the community generally was loath to believe that the boy—he was about 24 years of age—was judicially murdered. Now comes another chapter in this strange story. Nellie Brown, whose testimony cost Devine his life, has since that time abandoned creature, and is now confined in our city prison, almost a, maniac from the use of opium and liquor. In her ravings she talks of the Devine case, which is consta-ntly preying on her mind. Some time ago she told a companion that she perjured herself as a witness at that remarkable trial, and that this had driven her to drink. She was a child at the time of the murder, and keeps crying: “They made'me testify! I had to do it!” Ihus it appears that this man suffered and left his aged mother without Support in the world for a crime which he did not commit.