The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-03-20
Man of Rutledge Accused
 of Murder. Horrible story ot Negro Depravity and superstision Come. so Light in Trial of Hardy Tyson at
 Luverne.
By VIII T. sbeehar.

By VIII T. sbechaH.
 Luverne. March Ie-tspecfal Cor respondence)---Wait sykes. accused of murderins young Virgil Walker. will have to stay in the little brick jail of Crenshaw county another six months. for today Jndge Richardson granted a continudnee. because of the absence of material witness.
 in this case hardly less interest is felt than wss centerea In the trial of Oscar Bishop. although the sensational features. which. for good or evil iu- terest humanity at large and which were present in the Bishop ease are missing in the Sykes case. The two young men. the one who sleeps be- heath d mound in the old cemetery at Rut1edge, grave flled too carly by one so young, and tho young man who sat surrounded 5y members of his family in the court room are members of two of the most prominent families in Crenshaw county.
 Virgil Walker was a son of Ex- Probate Judge Frank Walker who served Crenshaw county in the probate office for six years. He was grand SOD of Judge Frank Walker, Sr. who for eighteen years was Probate Judge of the county. Crenshaw county Is thirty-seven years old and of that time the Frank Walkers. father and son have been the county judge of probate for twenty-four years
 The young man at the bar is descended of another old family of Crenshaw county. His father is Thomas Sykes. an old and respected citizen, and the brother of the accused man. W. S. Sykes. is MayorSof Luverne. There are large family connections and so in the case is centered the attention of the county far and wide.
 Six Murder Cases.
 The Sykes case Is the third of a series six murder trials to be heaEd at this term of the Circuit Court of Crenshaw county. At this term the court officials are clearing the docket Of the aftermath of many deeds of violence When the term will have en- ded, six defendants will have stood within the bar and made answer to the charge of murder. Because of which the big brick court house Is now the center of interest for the whole county. For great many citizens of the county have more than the interest of 8 curious citizen in these cases. Many are relatives. many are witnesses. either to the deed Itself or to the character of the prisoner at the bar and many more are summoned as spe- cial jurors. And because of all this the court house is thronged from early morning until late at night.
 The first of these was the now famous Bishop case in which the young business man appealing to the un- written law. which permits the killing Of the man who enters a home and ac- compIishes the wrecking of hus- bands honor, secured 8 triumphant acquittal. Even as the jury was mak- ing up its verdict Hardy Tyson was put on trial. for one of those brutal crimes in which there appears a peculiar admixtuFe of superstition ad savagery and which unfortunately for the race. Is supposed to characterize n certain class of negroes
 The Crime of Tyson.
 A more horrible crime could hardly be conceived than that of which this young Crenshaw county negro was &C., cused To one who understands the peculiar working of an ignorant and brutal negro's mind. it affords material for a story as horribly fascinating as any that Poe or Gaboriau. ever wrote if there were at hand the same genius to dress and finish it.
 Hardy Tyson killed woman. He killed her, he said. because she was go- ing to "cunjur'' him. She was instruct ing another woman how to bake a "cunjur" sake that would kill him, so Hardy Tyson said. He went to her home. he went in the night in dark ness that was fit for such a deed. He slipped open her cabin door and saw the woman asleep upon a pallet saw this by the dying embers upon her hearth. In the corner he found an axe. And then he tiptoed across the blood in the gloom of the half lit cabin where the murderer and his victim were alone
 Raising the axe high above his head he sank the blade of it in her skull. Again he raisel 1t and again he drove the bloody edge of it in the head of the sleeping woman. He piled the axe again and again and now and then after 8 stroke he would have to stop moment to prize the blade from the floor of the cabin. when it had passed through the woman's head and sank in- to the pine floor.
 He picked up the body the body of the woman, shouldered it and started