Daily independent. [volume] (Elko, Nev.) 188?-1915, 1895-10-31
Barnes Scores Durrant.


urt'room was crowded to its great
est capacity and close attention was
paid to the speaker. Mr.. Barnes
spoke in part as follows:
"The individual who penetrated
the hideous murder with which the
defendant stands charged, and which
has narrowed the soul and frozen the
blood OF this community, is no ordi.
nary criminal, and his crime in every
aspect in which it may be consider red
1T without a parallel. 1t was not
committed under a blind and furious
impulse, to revenge some real or
fancied wrong to his person, his prop
erty or his character; nor from mo.
tlves Of gain, nor in the commission
OF robbery, nor yet under the hot spur
of jealousy-that hell of the injured
lover. 1t was in every sense a cold
blooded, vicious munder. 1t was
without the slightest provocation or
excuse or pallliation. The assassin
chose for his victim an innocent and
helpless maiden, in years almost a
child, almost stranger in our city, a
simple school girl, temporarily resid-
ing with relative, and engaged in the
struggle to obtain an education as
teacher in the Normal School. She
was undeveloped in mind, pure in life
and thought, Of simple and unsus-
pect nature and presenting in body
none of the qualities which are SUP
posed to arouse the evil passions of
the seducer and ibertine. For the
scene of his dreadful assault, the MUIR
derer selected an evangelical church,
dedicated to the worship of God, a
temple where the doctrines and the
life of Jesus were taught and illus
trated in Sabbath assembly, in mid
week praycrmeeting and III social
gathering. He took the life of his
victim, not with the savage mercy of
the quick pistol or the silent knife, but
he tortured her with the lingering
process of strangulation, driving his
cruel fingers deep into the tender flesh
of her slender throat; and, so fiercely
did he do his devils work, that the
stigmata of his crime renamed until
the discovery of her corpes, clearly
observable as the cause Of death, not
only by the expert surgical examiner,
but by the most unlearned observer.
What other, if any, wrong was done
her before her soul exhaled and went
to heaven we do not know. The adj
vancement of natural decomposition
batfied investigation and made such
knowledge impossible, but we know
that either living, or dying, or dead,
she was taken by him up the steep
stairs of the steeple of the belfry of the
church, where he supported the poor
body with blocks Of wood and left it
there to rot in nakedpess and wither
in the cool, western wind that swept
through the lofty .spire. He hid the
remains where he believed they would
remain undiscovered and have no
promise of Christian burial. There he
left her. She was dead, but he fanci-
ed himself safe from detection and ex-
posture. The heaven pointing spire
of the Redeemer's church was his only
conlidant and accomplish.
@No human eye had witnessed his
assault upon Blanche Lamont. No
ear had heard her first shrek of ter
ror and amazement, as this monster
fell upon her, or the last stifled moan
of dying agony that. preceded the
awful silence OF her final rest. None,
save the God whom he feared not, had
seen him as he extended the naked
and slender form on the belfry floor,
laid the thin arms across the undevel-
oped bosom, propped the head and
Strengthened the meager body in the
dust. Not a human being had beheld
his retreat from the awful presence
of the death which was his work, and
the secret was safely locked in his