Jasper County Democrat, Volume 13, Number 73, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 December 1910 — MURDER AT LEBANON. [ARTICLE]

MURDER AT LEBANON.

Earl Swope Resents Dropping of the “W’\With a Fatal Attack on William Bechtell. Lebanon, Ind., Dec. 19.—William Bechtell was killed, Sunday afternoon, at the Shumaker livery barn in this city, by Earl Swope. Bechtell and Swope had been drinking. Bechtell asked Swope how he spelled his name, and inisted that he should drop the “w,” when Swope picked up <a chair and struck him with it, crushing in three ribs and fracturing the breast bone. Bechtell made an effort to rise and fell back dead. Swope fled, but was captured an hour later ,in a corn field southwest of the city. He is in jail. Bechtell was forty years old and unmarried.- He made his home with his widow ed mother, Mrs. Evaline Bechtell, a wealthy resident of Lebanon. Swope is a son of the late Jesse Swope, who lived near Elizaville, and has a wife and several children.