Jasper County Democrat, Volume 4, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 September 1901 — JAMES M’CULLOUCH PARDONED. [ARTICLE]

JAMES M’CULLOUCH PARDONED.

After twenty-nine years of confinement in the northern prison, James McCollough, who was given a life sentence on the charge of murder by the Benton circuit court, is soon to be given his liberty. The request for his parole, which has been on file for ten years, has been granted by Governor Durbin. The parole will first go to a relative and then be taken to the prison. McCullough is an old man and it is feared that the parole has come too late to do him much goo’d. If it had been granted when it was first applied for, ten years ago, the old man would have come out from behind the grim prison walls with a good number of years yet to live. For several years after the first efforts to have him paroled Mr. McClullough was buoyed up by the hope that he was soon to be allowed to walk out a free man the remainder of his days. The months of hope and expectancy merged into years and still no parole came. Feeling that he would die in the disgrace of the prison walls, giving up all prospect of ever being free again, he settled into despondency and gloom. Now the parole has been grruted, but perhaps too late. The poor prisoner has lost faith in the world and in men, and it is, the hope that he can live a few years yet, to somewhat reconcile himsel to the world again. He will be taken care of by relatives living outside of this state, who have worked so long for his release. McCullough was sentenced on entirely circumstantial evidence. His arrest was made eight years after the death of the man he is charged with murdering. By reason of this skeleton-like evidence, and his model life in the prison, the governor felt justified in setting McCullough free. The prisoner served in the civil war in an Indiana regiment. After the close of the war he lived several years in Illinois and then returned to Indiana making his home at Middletown. He was ariested nine months later on the charge of murdering W. C. Morgan, whose skeleton was found in a marsh in Benton county, where McCullough had formely resided. The body was identified by a piece of wagon bow Morgan owned at the time of his disappearance. The charge preferred against McCullough was that he bad murdered Morgnn, put his body in a wagon, the piece of which was found near his skeleton, drove the wagon into the marsh where the horse floundered in the mire, and left the horse, wagon and the body of the murdered man to sink into the earth. The board of control of the prison voluntarily applied to the governor for McCollongh’s release. It stated in its communication that McCollough has always been a model man in prison and thnt it whs their desire that he should be indefinately paroled. The application was also signed by fifty citizens of Benton county, Middleton and Michigan City.