The daily phoenix. [volume] (Columbia, S.C.) 1865-1878, 1870-09-16
Execution OF a FiendI.h 1urderer.

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Execution OF a Fiend,sh a1urderer. :.
On Friday, was hung at West Union,
Iowa. Andrew Thompson, for the muir
der OF Mrs. Haggerty and her three chil,
dren. The story is: john Haggerty.
who lived near McGregor, Iowa, went to
the war, and Thompson seduced his
young wife. This became known in the
vicinity, and when Haggarty came home.
finding it out. he left the country, not to
return. Thompson, who had wife and
eight children, took Mrs. Haggerty to
his farm, where she resided in q cottage.
In the fall OF '68, she becoming preg.
nant, and he growing tired of her, lie
first removed her to the neighboring
town, and thence one day in mid-wintcr
he took her and her children, under the
pretence OF moving them to q comforta-
BILE home. Meeting persons, he said he
was moving family to Illinois. He
crossed the river, and for DAYS and
nights drove the poor woman and her
little ones about, evidently tor the pur-
pose of freezing them to death.
A few nights after he commenced this
terrible journey, people near the Missis-
sippi beheld bright light on its shore.
and pitied the poor family whose house
they supposed to be on fire that pitilessly
cold night AS that fire burned, Andrew
Thompson was driving his horses rapidly
away towards home, under tho secret of
dark winters night. He was all alone,
and the coverings, straw, furniture, and
trunks, which had been in the sleigh
before, were missing-they had made
the fire on the bank of the river. Mrs
Haggerty, with her infant, her daughter,
aged fourteen years, one son, aged eleven
years, and another, aged eight, were
under the ice. Either they had been
turned upon by the fend and stabbed
or beaten to death, one by one, or they
had been taken, numbed and helpless,
owing to the cold, and forced through q
hole IN the ice to be drowned. The
theory that they were first murdered or
partially killed in the sleigh, is the more
plausible, as in the other case, there
would have been no blood stained robes
and furniture to be destroyed by fire.
All of Thompson's acquaintances sup
posed that he had been to Illinois, and
left the unfortunate family in comfor-
table home, and he was not suspected of
any crime. In the spring of 1869, the
frozen waters of tho Mississippi began
breaking up, and the boatmen went to
work caulking and re-painting their
boats. Some of them were working at
the shore of the river rear Prairie du
Chien, when they discovered several
trunks, half rotted by the water. They
were pulled out, and on being opened,
they were found to contain two like
nesses and sundry articles of woman's
apparel.
The ikenesses proved to be those of
Andrew Thompson's father and mother.
and the other articles we're the former
property of Mrs. Haggerty. Only few
days after, the body of Mra Haggerty
and the bodies of her children were
found in slough near the rivers bank
at Cassville. The remnants of fire was
discovered on the shore near by, and in
the ashes were PARTICLES of the clothing
which formerly belonged to the murder
ed woman. Every scrap of circum-
stantial evidence was collected, and q
perfect chain was made, link after link,
proving the murder of tho whole family
to have been committed by Thompson.
He was tried. convicted, and was hung
on Friday. He stands in the criminal
calendar as one of tho most brutal of
murderers.