The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1869-02-28
THE BuRpELL MYSTERY.

In this mornings CRESCENT we publish
very interesting account, taken from the New
York World, of the manner in which the great
Burdell murder mystery was finally solved.
That case was one of the most remarkable In
the criminal annals of the country, not only
for the boldness of the crime, and strang'
escape Of the guilty perpetrators, in SPIT % of
the most determined efforts to convict them,
but for the extraordinary circp. instances
which attended the trial The VICTIM was DR..
Burdell, an eminent dentist, and a man of
wealth. The persons accused were Mrs. Cum
ningham and man named Eckels, who has
recently been sent to tire Penitentiary for
frauds on the revenue. Mrs. Cunningham
kept boarding house, and DR.. Burden was
one of the dodgers. She had been on init
mate terms with her wealthy ledger and
claimed to be secretly married to him but,
as he died intestate, as his widow she would
have been entitled only to her dover or
thirds. She therefore attempted after the
trial to palm upon the court q supposititious
child, which she asserted to have been born DUR
ing the time of her imprisonment. The claim
was disallowed by the court and the marriage
was not proved as to DIR. Burdell, and the
woman consequently lost the game for which
she had played. The theory of the prosecu-
ton was, that in the marriage ceremony,
which was proved, Eckel had personated DR..
Burdell, and that he and Mrs. Cunningham
had conspired to murder the doctor, in order
to get hold Of bis property in the manner above
described. Every effort was made to estab-
lish this theory on a basis of evidence !;
but the attempt to prove that Mrs.
Cunningham participated in the muir
der was unsuccessful. The motive was
made clear, but here the prosecution broke
down Mrs. Cunningham was acquitted in
the face of universal belief in her guilt, and
Eckel was finally discharged without being
brought to trial. The woman, unable to bear
up against the frowns of a public opinion
which convicted her in spite of the verdict of
the jury, fed from the city and buried her.
self and her history in the interior Of Cali
fornia. Several years afterwards young
man named Jeffards murdered his step-father,
Mr.. Walton, by shooting him in the street,
and afterwards killed Mr.. Matthews, who
was pursuing him. Tie history of the Wal
ton murder and its incentives is detailed in
the account which we publish this morning,
because during the operations of the detec-
tive who was employed to track Jeffards, and
to procure evidence against him, it was dis
covered, by the confession of Jeffards him
self, that he was the real murderer of DR..
Burdell, acting as the agent of Mrs. Cunning
hams schemes, and the instrument of her re-
venge. Jeffards was finally convicted of the
murder of Walton, and was not long since
assassinated by fellow-prisoner in the peni-
Tertiary. The peculiarly of the case consists
in the fact that prosecution is shown to have
been practically correct in its theory of the
Burdell murder, and to have been wrong only
in fixing the agency of the crime on the wrong
man. And it is not less remarkable that,
coming so near the truth as it did, the prose-
cution should have been unable to establish
its case in the minds of a jury who were much
more ready to convict than to acquit If any
one should suppose that the final solution of
the mystery justifes the old maxim that
murder will out" he has only to reflect that
this murder came out not by the confession of
a consrite and conscience-stricken criminal,
but through the vain boastings of hardened
desperate.