Tonopah daily bonanza. [volume] (Tonopah, Nev.) 1906-1929, 1909-05-13
GOES TO PRISON
To PROTECT HIS
SISTERS HONOR
CROWD CHEERS HEROIC LAD ON
WAY TO CELL MAY BE
PARDONED IN WEEK.

Stephen Beasly began today the
serving of a flve-year's sentence in
the Texas state prison for the Staying
of mis- father. He need not have
gone to prison, for every man from
judge to jury who sat in judgment
on him tried to set him free. But
he chose prison to save his outraged
sister the disgrace of telling why he
slew his father.
The Staying was done in the elder
Beasly's cotton field a week and a
half ago. 1t ended twenty years of
such parental cruelty as has seldom
been known in civilized land. Beas-
ly, the father, was immensely
wealthy. His cotton and yam fields
extended for miles along the out
skirts of Fort Worth Bit he never
hired man to till them. He forced
his wife and five children to be his
farm hands, and since they could
first hold hoe not one has remem-
bered day when he or she was not
fiayed to work by the blacksnake or
the whiffetree. Three of these were
girls and on these Beasly vented his
tyranny even more than on the boys.
The climax was approached two
weeks ago when the wife of Beasly
was forced to fee for shelter to a
neighbours and when the young son,
Stephen, ran away from the torture to
take work with another farmer near
by. The next day one of her daugh-
tiers, not yet Is years old, escaped
from the fathers watch upon her and
staggering to the farmhouse where
her mother was living, told fright
full tale of the wrong she had suf-
fered at her fathers hands.
In some way the mother got the
news to Stephen, and when his work
was through the lad took down his
rifle and walked to his fathers farm,
where he hid behind a wall to await
the old mans return from the field.
When Beasly appeared his son
stepped out, raised his gun and de-
liberately shot him dead.
That same afternoon he gave him
self up, declaring himself guilty of
Staying his father.
A grand jury was summoned to in
dict him, but after the mother had
told the revolving story the grand
jury refused to indict. Stephen would
nave been set free on the spot, but
prosecutor Roy declared that he must
be brought to trial.
So a second grand jury was i'm
mediately impaneled. The mothers
testimony was kept out for fear of it's
efect and Stephen was indicted and
brought to trial There was not the
slightest doubt of his acquittal.
But at the last moment Stenhen
heard that if his trial went on his
sister would be forced to take the
stand and tell the wrong the father
mad done her. And to save her that
humiliation and the disgrace to his
family he broke from the officers as
he was brought into court and thrust
ing aside his lawyers at the bar,
shouted:
Killed my father! plead guilty
10 manslaughter and | want TO be
sentenced to prison without trial.
Forced by the law to accent the
plea or try the lad on charge of
murder in the first degree, the Judge
sent out the jury with an order TO
bring in verdict of guilty.
Il sentence you to five years in the
states prison, pronounced the Judge.
but | will be the first to sign a pe-
tition for your immediate pardon"
Hundreds of Fort Worth's hest
citizens cheered the lad today as he
started for the prison. 1t is believed
he viii be set free within a week.