Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 July 1884 — IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT. [ARTICLE]

IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT.

The Murderer es Mrs, Mollie Gherkin Suspended to ft TelegraphPole. He Was Taken from the Jail at Vincennes, Ind., by a Mob of Men. [Vincennes (Ind.) telegram.] The threats made last evening by angry citizens to summarily punish Oliver Canfield, the young miscreant who shot Mrs. Mollie Gherkin last Tuesday night, were not idle ones. As the horns went by the knots of men who stood talking quietly at the street corners were gradually re-en-forced until several hundred were gathered in the vicinity of the jail. There was no loud talking or noisy display of any kind, but the grim, set features of those who had assembled to avenge the murdered woman boded ill for the unhappy wretch who cowered in his coll, fully alive to all that was transpiring and to the dreadful hopelessness of his case. At midnight the avengers, a body some fifty strong, composed of tho best citizens, moved through the inky darkness toward the jail. The stout doors were quickly crashed open with a pieoe of railroad iron that had been brought from the track for the purpose. Meeting with no resistance, the avengers rushed on to Canfield's cell, the door of which was battered down with three or four blows of the ram. The prisoner, cowered down in a comer and attempted to pray, but was roughly hidden to prepare to come out. Trembling in every limb, and with features ghostlike in their sickly pallor, he complied, and was marched slowly between the two masked leaders out of the jail into the open air. The first proposition made on the outside of the jail yard being reached, was that Canfield should be strung up then aud there, but, with strange persistency, he pleaded to be pnt to death on the same spot where his hepless sweetheart met her fate at his hands. His proposition was received with deafening yells of approval by the crowd, and he was rushed off to a convenient telegraph pole within a stone’s throw of the murder. A stout rope was slung over the lower cross-ties, a noose made, and the victim placed in position. His aspect was pitiable but it called forth no expression of mercy or sympathy from the determined men around him, and he was told if he had anything to say to say it qnickly. He faltered forth that he was guilty, and was sorry he killed the woman. He begged that his mother be told that he tried to be reconciled to the Almighty, but that be should never go to heaven. He was given a minute to say his prayers, but he had by this time sunk so low that he could scarcely be roused. The rope was soon adjusted arouud his neck, and, amid the applause of the crowd, he was drawn to a height of ten feet and left to hang. Thero was scarcely a struggle perceptible, but the victim probably lived thirty minutes. A card was pinned to bis coat requesting the Coroner to leave the body hanging until 12 o’clock to-day. No resistance whatever was made by the jail officials. The Sheriff merely refused to deliver up the keys of the jail when requested quietly to do so, bnt after the doors had been battered down the lynchers were not interfered with. The crime for which Canfield suffered his terrible punishment was committed last Tuesday night. He had been paying marked attentions for a year past to Mrs. Mollie Gerkin.a beautiful widow. Canfield wished her to marry him, bnt as a divorce suit Was pending between the woman and her husband, she was unable to comply. A week ago last Friday Canfield and the woman came to Vincennes from Washington, Ind. She obtained work in a boarding-house, while he spent his time in idly loafing about. Tuesday evening he called at the house where she was staying and requested his sweetheart to take a walk with him. She compHed with apparent willingness, and the two strolled down Main street and turned in the direction of the bridge. Suddenly, without a moment’s warning, Canfield threw his arms around Mrs. Gherkin’s neck and kissed her. At the same moment he drew a revolver from his pocket and sent a ballet crashing into the marble forehead that rested lovingly and confidingly on his shoulder. His victim sank to the earth without a groan, but not satisfied with the result of his devilish work he fired four more shots at her as she lay prostrate on the ground. A great crowd gathered and in the excitement Canfield escaped. He fled to Washington and went to his sister’s house, telling hei what he had done, at the same time handing her a knife and revolver. These his sister threw into a vault. The murderer spent the night hidden in the woods near his mother’s house, and was captured early Thursday morning by the officers, who had foUowed closely on his heels. Brought back to Vincennes, be refused to give any motive for his deed, but declared that he was sober and rational at the time of its commission. Canfield was but 22 years of age. He was known as a hard character, and had spent most of his time working in coal mines. Mrs. Gherkin died yesterday morning, and the plans for lynching her murderer were immediately consummated.