The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1874-11-24
AN ILLINOIS MYSTERY.
THE MURDER OF YOUNG WILLIE HARRIso
THE MURDERERs III JAIL.

H MURDER OF YOUNG WILLIE
THE III JAIL.
A letter to the st. Louis Globe from Cham
paign, H., the 13th,. contains the following
account of a strange murder near that place:
On Friday, October %, 1873, Willie Harrison,
aged Is, and the son of Thomas Harrison,
then a carriage-maker of Champaign, but
since removed to Kinmundy. ILL.,, went out
hunting in a belt of timber, north of Urbana,
taking with him a bouble-barreled shotgun
and a supply of From that
| expedition he never returned alive. Night
came, but not the son. His loving
parents sat up until midnight, worrying
about their absent boy, and then retired.
On Saturday morning the father started
to find his son., directing his steps over the
same ground traversed by him and Willie
in a hunting excursion on the Monday pre-
vious. When he had nearly reached the
creek that runs through the timber north of
Urbana, he came across two boys nutting,
! and inquired if they had seen his son, to
which they replied in the negative. He then
requested that should they ard see
him to inform him, which they promised to
do. Mr.. Harrison then pushed forward a
half mile or so further, and was
about TO return, when the boys came
running after him, saying they had
found his son only a few yards
4 from Wn6T6 tQ6Y 1dO a Duob nlms AO
returned in breathless haste with the boys to
the spot, and there, sure enough, he found
| his darling son a stihened corpse, lying on
/ his left Size in a pool of bleOd, with a hole
i'm the back of his neck. and a dead squirrel
tied into one of the button holes in his coat.
suspicion at once flashed across his mind
that somebody had killed him for his gun,
which was q choice ~stub-and-twist,
manufactured in Prussia and val
ued at 500. The father was
shocked beyond description and over
whelmed with grief, but a wagon was o
procured, the body taken home, and a
c~oroner's inquest held, but no fact developed
tending to show who bad perpetrated the
crime. All was Swallowed in mystery. Mr..
Harrison, indeed, suspected a certain col
ored man who had once manifested consld-
cradle admiration of the gun, but that was
all. No clue having been obtained to the
perpetrators of the crime, the county OF
Champaign at length offered a reward
of $500 for their apprehension
and conviction. With this incentive
before him, John f. Rittenhouse, a notori-
Gus criminal detective in these parts, COM
mencei to work up the case. Keeping his
eye on the people of the timber region,
where the murder was committed, he
learned, after a while, that a hard case, by
the name of John White, aged about TWEEN
weight wears, had been seen with a double
barreled gun,w which he would put under his
coat whenever he was approached by any
stranger.
THE DISCOVERY.
From that hour White was Swallowed by
Rittenhouse, who now only waited his OPP
portunity. This was afforded by the culprit
himself, whose criminal instincts seemed to
be always cropping out. On Friday, Nov.
8, White delivered 600 sounds of charcoal in
Urbana, and got q ticket for the same. but
before presenting it for payment changed the
! 600 to i,6OO. Being detected in this he was
Immediately lodged in Jail, and made to
believe by Rittenhouse that he was arrested
for the murder of Willie Harrison. When
charged with the crime he betrayed great
emotion, trembled, and declared hedidn'td do
it, but knew who did. On being pushed for an
answer, he laid it on to a young companion