Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 November 1897 — WORK OF A MOB. [ARTICLE]

WORK OF A MOB.

Three Indians Are Lynched in North Dakota. Twenty-five masked men took the law Into their own hands Sunday morning at the county jail in Williamsport, Emmons County, North Dakota. They left the bodies of three men, who hadoeon accused of murder, swaying in the wind as a testimonial of the completeness of their revenge. The men were Paul Holytrack, Philip Ireland and Alec Coudot, Indians, who were under arrest accused of the murder of six members of the Spicer family last winter at Winona, Emmons County., They were aroused from slumber, dragged from the jail to a beef windlass that stood near the jail, and were hanged to a bar that served to suspend the carcasses of slaughtered animals. Williamsport is a little hamlet forty miles from a railroad, and not over fifty persons reside there. The jail where the victims of the lynching were confined is a stone structure and was guarded by a solitary jailer, Thomas Kelly, who was aroused by a light tap on the outer door of the jail. Thinking that it was a summons from some of his friends, who were accustomed to call at night to talk with him, he opened the door, to give entrance to a mob of masked men, who presented a revolver at his head and demanded that he open the door to the cells in which the prisoners were confined. Kelly saw it was useless to resist and ‘Opened the doors and the three men were dragged from their beds, ropes were fastened about their necks and they were hauled from the cells into the open air. No ceremony was wasted on the victims. The beef windlass stood near and this was made to serve the purpose of a gibbet. Two of the men were partly unconscious from the effects of the dragging, but their bodies were speedily raised into the air and the three forms were left to dangle in the moonlight. The crime for which the men were thus executed by the mob was the murder of six members of the Spicer family, near Winona, last winter. The bodies of Thomas Spicer, his wife, his daughter, Mrs. Rouse, and her twin children, and of Mrs. Ellen Waldron, his mother-in-law, were found at the Spicer home, all horribly mutilated. Paul Holytrack and Philip Ireland, two of the men who were lynched, had already confessed having assisted in the murders. Their narrative was so revolting as to arouse indignation to fever heat. The confession of the two implicated Coudot, the third of the victims. Fear that the men would escape punishment for their crime led to the lynching. A terrible accident has occurred near Bielostok, Russian Poland, resulting in the death of thirty persons. A wedding party was returning from the church to the home of the bride. All were in one wagon, a huge vehicle, drawn by eight horses. The road crosses the railway track on the level, and the driver pushed his swiftly moving horses upon the crossing just as the express was coming up. The locomotive struck the vehicle squarely, killing many members of the party outright and maiming others so that they ■oon expired in frightful agony. Not ■ member at the party escaped.