People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 March 1894 — CONFESSED A CRIME. [ARTICLE]

CONFESSED A CRIME.

An Ohio Convict Owns l)p to a Double Murder. Columbus. 0., March 0. —Charles Murray. a colored prisoner serving’ a twelveyear sentence for burglary in Greene county, attempted suicide Monday night by dashing his bend against the cell and thrusting a pointed poker into his neck. Thinking he was dying he confessed to Warden James that in 1887 he killed a farmer and his wife near Xenia. Ue says there was no one at home but the wife, and, hiding in the farmer’s baru until she came out to the barn on an errand, he threw a rope' over her head and strangled her. Just then her husband came driving up. Murray told him there was something wrong with his horse’s foot and as he was stooping down to look at it the rope was thrown over his head and he was soon strangled too. The bodies were taken into the house and the house burned. His object was robbery, but he was so alarmed that he did not stop to see what was in the house. lie was arrested and tried, but acquitted of the crime. If he lives, as he probably will, he will be tried again.