Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 March 1884 — HORRIBLE CRIME. [ARTICLE]

HORRIBLE CRIME.

Shocking Slaughter In a Remote Section of Tennessee. A Whole Family Murdered—Swift Justice Overtakes the Butchers. [Springfield (Tenn.) Telegram.] Perhaps the worst crime ever committed has just been perpetrated in this (Robertson) County. Twenty-five miles from this place, near the Kentucky line, lived John Martin, hi 9 wife, and three children, two of them grown young women, the other a boy of 12. Martin was in his seventieth year, and had lived in the neighborhood nearly his entire life. He had eked out a moderate living on his little farm, quietly doing his work and having the respect of everyone. Yesterday he returned from Nashville, where he went to procure the final settlement of his pension claims, having teen wounded in the late war. It is presumed that this trip was learned of by certain rough characters living near, who, bent upon robliory, planned and executed this most horrible crime, Martin’s log house was situated a quarter of a mile from the Springfield road, about ten miles northwest from Adams’ Station. A heavy growth of cedars and underbrush hides the Jiouse from the view of the travelers on the main road. This isolation prevented the tragedy from being discovered until this afternoon. A peddler who came to the house gave the first alarm, and the whole neighborhood was aroused. Tho door was broken as If struck violently with an ax. This door led into the main bedrqom, where Martin and his wife slept. The scene upon entering the room beggars all description. Martin was dead upon the floor, his gray hair matted and.soaked in a pool of blood. The head was split open in two places by blows from an ax. The forehead was crushed, and the glaring eyer were forced from their sockets. Upon every side wore evidences of the frightful struggle that must have taken place. The walls and the floor were bespattered with blood. Mrs. Martin must have been killed as she started from the bed. Her arms were broken and her face horribly mangled by the blows of the ax.. There was one stream of ghastly blood. The most pitiable sight was the little boy, who 6ccnpied a trundle-bed in the room. Evidently he had beeu taken by one of the murderers during the struggle with the others and choked to death. In the next room, where tho girls lay, the sight would have melted a heart of stone. Everything indicated a most desperate struggle for life. Evidently the murderers added a worse crime to their misdeeds. The disordered clothing of the poor girls told plainer than words of the outrages that had teen perpetrated upon them. After the brutal aissasslns had satisfied their lust they crushed the skulls of the two girls with the ax, which was found upon the floor, red with lilood. It was a sad experience, and every eye that witnessed tho sad spectacle was full of tears. The liouso had been ransacked from one end to the other, and tables and cliairs were overturned, The entire neighborhood was filled with horror at the fearful sacrifice of human life.

A confusion of footprints was found leading away from the home into the neighboring woods. Search parties were formed, and the country’ for miles around was scoured for a trace of tho murderers. A 1 arm-hand named George French was arrested by one of the County Constables upon suspicion. A crowd gathered and soon swelled into a mob of frenzied men. His contradictory replies conviticed them that be was guilty. A rope wns brought and placed about his neck, and the mob swung him up to the nearest tree. He was let down half insensible. and on coming to confessed that he and Jim and Doc Carter, two negroes, workmen upon the farm of ’Squire Davis, had planned tho murder. He gave sickenihg details of the assassination, and confessed that all three of them had outraged the girls. They found sl,200 in monev, and divided it between them. He had hardly finished his story when he Vas jerked up and strangled to death. Twenty shots wc re fired into his body’. The mob made a break for Davis’ farm, where the two negroes were found. Although both df them protested their innocence, the mob hanged them to the same tree and shot them while they strangled. /