Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1842-09-16
From the ". o. .Picoy0ne.
A MURDERER,S ARREST.

Under this caption, in our paper of Tues
day, we briefly noticed the arrest of one
Wiley Freeman, for the murder of his wife.
The particulars we received at too late an
hour on the previous evening, to give them
in full. They were yesterday crowded out,
TO use technical phrase, by news from Mex
leo, Texas, &c. They are of on eAtraordi-
nary character and insomuch as they show
that the Omnlsclent eye is ever on the muir
derer, they point to moral on which it is
well to reflect.
Freeman is about forty-eight years of age
his countenance bespeaks shrewdness and
intelligence, and it also plainly tells us of
mind narrowed up with feelings of intense
agony and bitter, biting remorse. lie was
raised in Edgeiield, South Carolina and
was married at the early age of twenty-one
or twenty-five years. His wife he had known
from early inlancy-they went to school to-
gether, and together participated in the vii
lage sports. Their union seemed to be such
one as would ensure perpetual happiness
undying love. The poet says
But happy they, the huppest of their kind,
Whom gentle stars unite, and in one fate
Their hearts, their fortunes and their beings blend
But alas though early association, and
have combined to render Mr.. Freeman and
his wife blssiul and happy, feelings appar-
emily at war with nature, rose up and made
them miserable. After having lived togeth-
er for some twenty-five years, and after
having given to the world eleven children,
the marriage vow, mutually taken, was brok-
en-, and the parties who pledged themselves
to live and love together, in sickness and in
health, through good and evil fortune, be-
came severed-dlsunited.
Freeman, it appears became the scottish
slave of intemperance, and as a necessary
consequence, failed to discharge the duties
incumbent on every husband--on every
father. The mother, Mrs Freeman as
mothers ever do chung to her children, and
used her every exertion to supply them with
those necessaries, aud that education and
protection which it was the duty of father
to provide.
Freeman would sometimes come and
take from his wife the youngest members of
the family; and this would seem to have
been done more with a view of narrowing
the mothers feelings, than from any pater-
nal affection which he felt for his children.
On one occasion he took off the two Young
er children and placed them at the house of
sister of his. Their mother, feeling So
ticltous for their welfare, sent one of her
sons, young man seventeen years old after
them, who brought them back to their moth
er. They had not long left when Freeman
returned to his sisters and found them gone
his mind dethroned by rum, and his soul
fred by an unfounded jealousy, (for this
cursed passion, too, preyed on hm) he
hastily seized his rifle, swearing that he
would take the life of his own son. He
loaded his piece with two balls, hurried after
his children with the determination of spill
ing their blood but failed to oyertake them.
Having so failed, and having determined
to do foul and bloody deed he went to
the house of his wife, whom he found en-
gagged at her domestic duties he leyelled
his rifle at her, and ere she had time to say,
"God have mercy on me" he lodged the fa-
tai bullets in her body She lived but few
hours afterwards.
This, as we said on Thursday, was on
the tenth of June, 1887. He fled. The au-
thorities of the state offered a reward for him
and he was taken in the state of Alabama
He was sent back and imprisoned in the
district Jail of Edgefield. From this he
managed to escape before the time for his
trial came on, and made his way through
Tennessee and Mississippi to this city. Here
being an active mechanic he worked for a
considerable time with Mr.. Sewel, the bull.
der, and in the construction of the Nashville
Railroad. But though he found employ.
ment, he found not peace--the canker worm
81 of guilt gnawed at his heart, and the spirit
81 of murdered wife haunted his waking
thoughts and sleeping hours. Urged on
therefore, by spirit of disquetude he
went to Texas from thence he travelled
* with caravan to Mexico-worked at variou,
employments there, but still so perturbet
was his mind that the labor of the day brough
no sleep to his eyelids.
In endeavoring to fly, as it were, from hi
own infamy he came back to this city-re
NAMED we know not how long-leit ant
was making his way through the interior o
the state, when he was arrested in the parish
of Rapidese, on the 18th inst.
And here a new feature in the extraordi
nary story presents itself to the renecin!
mind and one showing forth, in colors too
perceptble to be mistaken, the retributiv,
justice that belongs to Omnipotence.
At the time that Freeman murdered hi
wife, she had an only brother named JOIN
a Crawford, residing in the state of Alabama
some five hundred miles distant from Edge
field. Having heard of the fatal affair an,
of Freeman's escape from prison, he left hi
home, resolved to pursue him unto dealt
and avenge sisters blood, He followed il
his wake in this city, Texas and elsewhere
but never could he lay his eyes on him.
After four years crusade of this kind