Connecticut western news., 1885-02-11
A REAL LIFE NOVEL.
HE HAS NEITHER MURDERED NOR A
 MURDERER.
A Mystery ot The PennsylyRnlR Lumber
 Woods Unexpectedly Solved.

"That ticket" said he, "is for man who for twenty years has believed him. self to be murderer fleeing from jus tice, and whose friends, on the other hand, have for twenty years thought he was the victim of the man whom he him. self believed he had murdered. His name is Alexander Baer, and it was only 0 few weeks ago that he found out that he was not murderer.
 "Baer worked for me in 1863. He was paying attention to girl named Hathaway, and I think they were en- gagged to be married. She was a ser- want at the inducements boarding house. In the fall of that year Q good-looking young Scotchman by the name of Gray Cameron came to my mills to work. He belonged somewhere in Steuben county, New York. He soon cut Aleck Baer out with the Hathaway girl, and the result was that the two became bitter enemies. They worked in the same logging camp.
 "One day in the winter of 1864 Cam eron came to the settlement with bloody face. He said that he and Baer had got into quarrel over the Hatha- way girl and had come to blows. Baer had knocked him senseless with club, and when he came to he was unable to find his rival. Baer had not appeared in the settlement, and was not seen again about any of the camps. As Baer had nearly $200 due him from our company, and had left $10O in his trunk at the boarding house, his disappearance had an air of mystery about it that puzzled us. The suspicion was pretty general that in the fight between him and Cam eron, the Scotchman had killed his rival and, fearful of the consequences, had secreted his body. Cameron was aware of these suspicious, and offered to pay for the fullest investigation of the affair and all the expenses of @ search for the whereabouts of the missing Iumberman. He employed an officer to follow every possible clue he could find that might lead to the clearing up of the mystery, but nothing could be learned.
 "When the ice broke up in the spring, some boys who were fishing for suckers in the north branch of the river were at- tracted by peculiar-looking object that came along with some ice, and they drew it into the shore with pike pole. On dragging it out they saw that it was the half-clothed body of man. They hurried to the lumber camp and told the men at work there what they had found. The flesh was entirely missing from the face and head of the dead man, and rec ognition of the features was impossible. There wero remnants of plaid coat, or jacket, on the body. Alexander Baer was the only one in the region who had worn such coat. The plaid was made by broad stripes of green and black. An inquest was held, at which the re- mains were declared to be those of the missing lumbermau. The finding of tho dead body aroused anew the suspi- i,ns that he had been killed by Cam eron. The verdict of the Coroner's jury was that the man had come to his death in a manner unkn own.
 "Baer's friends demanded the arrest of Cameron. A warrant was issued, and Cameron ran away. Every one then be- lieved he was guilty of Baer's murder. He was pursued and captured. but while he was being taken to the county seat he escaped from the officer and was never recaptured. It was believed that he en- listed in the army, and a soldier in the Sixty seventh Pennsylvania Regiment sent home the news in 1865 that he had seen tho dead body of Cameron among those who had died in Libby prison. At all events, nothing else was ever heard of the alleged murderer, and the incl. dents connected with the tragedy were gradually forgotten.
 GA few days ago stranger appeared at the Clarion Mills and asked for me. To my great surprise he told me he WAS the missing Alexander Baer, and he suc- ceeded in establishing his identity be. yond doubt. He told singular story. He said that Cameron's version of their fight was true. When he knocked Cam eron senseless with the club. he bee ame frightened and tried to revive him. Fail ing in this, he believed he had killed his rival, and, without 0 thought of any thing else, fled from the place to escape the consequences of his crime. He met on the edge of the camp a man named Perry, who was in the habit of making occasional visits to the lumber regions for the purpose of buying up waste and rags of all kinds. The man was very drunk. Knowing that if he was adver. tised his conspicuous plaid coat would ! lead to his detection, Baer traded it of to Perry for cast-off coat he was wear ) ing. Perry had told Baer that he wa, [ going to cross the ice at the eddy above on his way to Crotty's Mills. He ha6 undoubtedly broken through or stepped , into an air-hole and was drowned, anG | his body, with the remnants of Baer'i plaid coat on, was the one the boyt t found the next spring.
 "Baer went to Pittsburgh, where h, enlisted in the army, under an assumed name. After the war he went to California and other Western States, never having heard word from the mills or settle ment since he fled until the latter part O
 last December. Then he met, in Den
 yer, man named Philip Craig, who wa - working for me at the time of the sup r posed murder. They recognized one an . other, and Craig told Baer the story o t the affair, greatly to his astonishmen B and relief. Baer worked his way gradu ? ally East, to revisit the old scene ant set things right. The Hathaway girl over whom the two men quarreled, wa married in 1867, and died last year. He
 son. a etrappinR chopper, seventeen