The Ottawa free trader. [volume] (Ottawa, Ill.) 1843-1916, 1882-05-27
CRIMINAL VARIETIES.
culIed Here and There from the Columns Of
tho Daily Press.
Hangnan's Day.

Hangman's Day.
The celebration of hangman's day on Fri
day of last week involved three subjects who
were duly dispatched on the road to glory
The work in each case however seems to
have been singularly bungled and attended
with more or less horror.
w. w. Rea was hanged at Pulaski. Tennes'
sac. Through some awkwardness or inexpe
rience on the part of the hangmsn, when the
trap was sprung the roap slipped over his lace
tearing out his beard and lacerating his throat
and cheeks, upon which he uttered blood
curdling shrek of pain three times In rapid
succession, which some in the crowd interpret
ed to be the Masonic sign of distress.
The crime for which Rea was executed was
the murder, on the night of July %, 1881, OF
Young man named Goodrum. He was store
clerk, and at the rear of the store, about . o.
clock in the evening, while talking to neigh
bors across the way, a load of buckshot was
fired into his breast by some unknown person.
and he fell dead in his tracks. The tracks OF
the assassin were discovered in the sand and
dust and led to Rea's house, and gun and
buckshot were found III his possession; bu
most conclusive of all, part of the waddingt
with which the gun had been loaded stuck to
the victims clothes, and this proved to have
been torn from newspaper the balance of
which was found in Rea's pocket There
seemed to be no adequate motive for the crime,
but the circumstances pointed SO overwhem-
ingly to Rea's guilt that he was convicted,
though to the last day he protested his lnno
Cence.
Augustus d. Leighton, mulatto, 2S years
old, was executed at the Toombs in New York
city, for numbering his mistress, the hangman
again doing cruelty bungling job. The
roap around his neck was SO adjusted that
when he was jerked into the air, the knot
slipped round under his chin, ana he slowly
strangled to death His hands clutched at the
air, his form was convulsed,i his chest heaved,
and his body swayed to and fro under the pro-
pulsIon given by his struggles Physicians
present declared that life was not extinct TIL
the body had hung for more than nineteen
minutes.
The crime which Leighton thus expiated
was committed June.30th 1880. He had been
living for over year with a young colored
woman named Mary Dean, who had deserted
her husband to consort with Leighton. Two
months before he killed her, they quarreled
and separated. On the evening OF the murder
he went to the tenement house on Twenty
sixth street where his mistress was living, and
had stormy interview with her in the base
ment Suddenly there was loud cry of muir
der and minute later the woman was found
on the floor with her throat cut, and she cxpi-
red without utterlng word. Leighton left
town that night, but next day, after reading in
the papers that the police wanted HIM, he sur
rendered himself at Newark. He claimed
that the woman threatened to BRAIN him with
a curllhglron, and that in selfdefence he drew
a razor and cut her throat
Stephen G.. Filter was hanged at Marion, N.
c. for the murder of his wife in Burke coun-
to, Jan. q, 1881 Five thousand people follow
cd the wagon containing the sheriff and the
culprit from the Jail to the gallows, half a
mile away. After prayer Filter spoke for an
hour, admitting the commission of the crime
and expressing a willingness to die.