The Press., 1897-08-05
THE VILLAGE HOODLUM.


 the Shelburne Falls hoodlum and ne'er-do- well, who was convicted last week of the | atrocious murder which was perpertrated in that place in January last O'Neill was what the specialists would describe as true degenerate. He was an idle, worth less drunken, penniless fellow, hanging around the etrances to the village dram shops (of which Shelburne Falls plainly has too many), sponging his food and lodg- ing out of his mother, hard working wash CT woman, and as sure to develop into crim- inal as darkness is to succeed day light. His chronic condition was that of absolute i'm pecuniosity. If he could beg or borrow a dollar it went for whiskey. That he should have in his possession at one time as much as ten dollars was fact sure to become town-talk. Becuse he had never | committed a burglary or a murder his presence was tolerated by the good people | of the town, yet, as the event proved, they might as well have permitted 8 ravenous wild beast to be at large in Shelburne Falls as to have allowed Jack O'Neil to re- | main there.
 All that was needed to turn him into a robber, a ravisher and murderer was an attractive victim and the necessary inflam- ing of his passions. The victim was at | hand in the person of the refined and attractive young widow, Mrs. Mcleod, who gave music lessons, was a frequent patron of the village stores, paid her bills | oYf1 md fO in her purse She lived in her own house, half a mile away from the center, on a road that lay through a piece of woods, and she went and came freely at all hours. It happened on the 8th of January that she was seen by O'Neil to have money | (during the day); that he had been invited to drink by his comrades, and was well loaded with liquor, and that at nightfan he saw her going up toward her home by the road through the woods. He followed her, choked her to death, dragged her body from the roadside into the pasture under the trees, and speedily made his way back to the village gin-mills with all her money. This he began to spend as I freely for drinks as if all the town would not be certain to hear of it next day.
 The discovery of the body occurred the next morning, when Mrs. McClouds father began to look for her, and O'Neil, who had gone to bed early, was up betimes and on the lookout for the coming sensation. | As soon as Mrs. McCloud's death was l made known he began to assert that a murder had been committed and to suggest that it was probably done by two tramps who had been seen in the place the night before. The subject seems to have occu pied his mind to the exclusion of everything else, and before night he was giving al exhibition (volunteered) in one of the vii lage stores of just how she must have beer choked to death. He allowed all his associates to know that during the evening | when the murder was committed he had somehow come into the possession of ten dollar bill, a fve-dollar bill, and some change, which it was subsequently, proved was taken from her purse by Mrs. Me Clouds assailant. Within a few days ot the murder the suspicion that O'Neil was the murderer had become so strong that he was arrested and thrown into Jail.
 | There his conduct very soon demon strated that the officers of the law had made no mistake in experimenting him. Indeed, as appeared at the trial, which closed recently, he promptly furnished the evidence for his own conviction and proved the correctness of the assertion of the criminologists that it is almost i'm possible for a murderer to conceal his crime. In an article on "The Delinquent in Art and Literature'' in the Atlantic Monthly for July, Enrico Terri says
 "* those who have studied criminals know that the imprudent revelation oi their own dark deeds, especially where murder is concerned, is one of the surest data of criminal psychology. So common indeed, is this trait that it is through il rather than threw any miraculous sagacity of the police, so wildly described in the police novels, that murder is almost al ways revealed. Criminals will speak o1 their crime as an honest workman speaks of his labor" These words could not have been more true if they had been written ot the Shelburne Falls murderer himself The sensational incident of the trial was the production of O'NeiPs fellow prisoner from the Greenfield jail, whose repetition of his talk showed that he was wholly in capable of concealing the fact that he was the murderer of Mrs. McCloud.
 The brevity of the trial and the prompt presentation of verdict of guilty in the first degree were creditable in the highest of the Massachusetts court and to the honest and clear-headed men on the jury the murder, some of it, we believe, from Mrs. McCloud's pastor, in favor of lynch ing the suspected murderer. Happily, as the result has proved, the law has brought a just result in the case and the guilty mar will give up his life for his crime. But fl is not so much demonstration of the folly of the would-be lynchers of O'Neil, as O. the moral laxity and failure of the com munity in which such a criminal was pro duced to which we wish to draw attention
 The evidence at the trial in Greenfield showed that O'Neil was only one of gang of youthful "bums" and hoodlums who art tolerated in Shelburne Falls, and who's ill gotten gains furnish considerable supper for a lot of cheap and nasty dram-shopG which disgrace the place. How many other New England villages present tho same conditions2 A good many, to oul certain knowledge. Thus close to tht church and the schoolhouse are all tho conditions which produce thieves, ravisher' and murderers The time for the state tt seize hold of such creatures as O'Neil ii | %I,o{v aft