Jasper Republican, Volume 1, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 December 1874 — A Murderer Lynched. [ARTICLE]

A Murderer Lynched.

Associated Press dispatches of the 15th give the following account of the recent lynching at Des Moines, lowa, of the murderer, Charles Howard: Monday afternoon, in the District Court of Des Moines, Charles Howard was.sentenced to imprisonment for life in the State Penitentiary for the murdeY of John Johnson in this city in June last. This morning at three o’clock some 500 Vigilants, with their faces blackened, surrounded the jail, overpowered and bound the jailer hand and foot and took his keys, and then overpowered in the same manner the Deputy Sheriff and the special guard of five men who had been detailed by the Court to guard the prisoner; unlocked the doors and made their way to Howard’s cell, where he was in bed with his wife, the latter being now under indictment for complicity in the murder. The woman, seeing them coming, threw her arms about the. neck of her husband, but was soon thrown off, and a rope placed about Howard’s neck. He was immediately jerked ont of bed, six or eight Vigilants leading him with the rope. At the door some twenty more took hold of the rope, and he was dragged, with no clothing cm but an undershirt, through the hall, down the steps, and out through the Court-house yard, the jail being in the basement of the Court-House, and' hung to a lamp-post at one of the gates. The whole thing did not occupy fifteen minutes. They stood near the body about five minutes, when they departed. The night being very dark, they were soon out of sight. When the policemen reached the body life was extinct. It is supposed the lynching was done by three anti-horse-thief societies in this county, aided by accomplices in the city, but nothing definite has been decided yet. The excitement which has led to this foul outrage has been growing for some time, several mysterious murdershaving been committed here recently—seven in the space of four years.

The trial of Howard was protracted and exciting, the jury being out for nearly four days,- finally compromising on a verdict of murder in the second degree. It was feared Howard would be lynched last Friday night, the jury net then having agreed, and it being generally thought they would agree to disagree. But precautions were taken to prevent it then, and on Saturday morning a verdict was returned. Monday afternoon he was sentenced, and Judge Maxwell imposed upon him the extreme rigor of the law, imprisonment for life. Everybody here in the city seemed satisfied, and the lynching fell upon the city to its surprise and horror. But Howard’s behavior during the reading of the sentence, laughing in the face of the Judge and receiving his doom with firmness, and his attempt to smuggle a revolver into the court-room for the purpose, as avowed afterward, of shooting the Judge as he was delivering the sentence; his boast that he would escape the Penitentiary before six months, and return and kill ail who had appeared against him in the trial, and the appeal of his case to the Supreme Court —all these reached the ears of the Vigilants last night, and the result was as stated above. The wholfe proceeding is most bitterly felt by the citizens here, and the perpetrators are denounced in the most unmeasured terms.