People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 November 1895 — MURDERERS IN DANGER. [ARTICLE]

MURDERERS IN DANGER.

North Carolina Mob Forming to Avenge a Crime. Abbeville, S. C., Nov. 26. —Notice has been received here that a mob is forming to come to town and attack the jail for the purpose of lynching two prisoners, John Mitchell and Richard Wash, both colored, who are under arrest for the murder of Norissa Bagwell, a white woman, 28 years old. The circumstances indicate that the woman may have been outraged. She was killed Thursday evening on the public highway near her home, fifteen miles from here, and her body was taken to a deserted house and burned. The charred remains were found. Wash says he was with Miss Bagwell at 3 o’clock Friday morning, and asserts that she cut her throat with a razor, and that before doing so she requested him to burn her body in the house. The story is improbable, and it is thought the murder was to secure the proceeds of a bale of cotton which Miss Bagwell had. The jail is under guard.