The evening times. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1906-1914, 1912-01-29
washington Cor. Chicago Record
Herald.)

The e of novels and detective
stories may he scanned in vain for a
more thrilling adventure tina that
narrated in the apers on file in the
department of justice in the case of
Arthur Adams and Robert Sawyer,
two West India negroes, pardoned by
President Taft Il few weeks 6 from
the Atlanta p~enitentiary, where they
were serving life terms for murder on
the high seas. Jurists and criminal
lawyers will refer to it in discussions
of the unreliability of circumstantial
evidence in murder cases. and the two
British subjects involved will long
thank the kind Intervention of an in
fiuence which caused people directly
Interested in the peculiar features of
their adventure to give them the bene-
fit of the doubt.
Seven years ago n coast-line vessel,
noticing signals of distress flying upon
a lumber schooner near the Bermu.
das. stood by and took off three men,
Adams, Sawyer and another negro.
named Henry Scott, the surviving
members of a crew of eight. Adams
and Sawyer delivered Scott, securely
bound. and charged him with having
murdered the captain and three other
white men, the officers of che lumber
schooner. and one negro. a sailor.
This wholesale slaughter of five men
upon the high sea aroused the indig-
nation Of the people of Wilmington.
\. c., where Adams. Sawyer and Scott
were landed. Adams and Sawyer
were consistent in their oft-repeated
variations of the terrible vengeance
Scott had wreaked upon his superiors,
and how. made bIo%odthirsty by his
deeds, he shot down II of his COM
panions. They declared that n on
t... 49, p,- i,l r~sr~ -, &hN <oxy~
negro sailors and the white captain
regarding the quality and quantity of
food supplied. and also with regard
to their treatment in other respects.
The log of h schooner bore out the
statement that the crew became mu-
tinous and, unfortunately for Adams
and Sawyer. the captain had written
down in the log as the names OF the
men who were causing trouble Adams
Scott conceived the murder plot with
out consultation with the other sail
ors, and executed it without their aid
and in spite Of them. He had armed
himself at Mobile before sailing and,
dying in wait. he shot down the cap
tain, after having worked himself up
to a frenzy over his real and imagined
wrongs.
Adams and Sawyer. together with
Coakley. the other member of the
crew, learned of the murder of the
captain upon hearing the pistol shot,
but they desisted from efforts to over
power Scott when, with a revolver in
each hand. he drove them into the
cabin. His warning that he would
kill the first of them who came upon
the deck was sufficient and permitted
him to give his entire attention to the
three white officers OF the schooner.
They were unarmed and without
means to revenge the death Of the
captain or defend themselves. They
took refuge in the galley and Scott
took up his post neal by, from a van
tage point where he picked them of
by n as they emerged.
Having killed the white officers and
disposed their bodies in the sea. Scott
ordered Coakley to h wheel. Adams
and Sawyer bided their time. and.
when the opportunity offered. over
powered Scott. who had placed some
confidence in their support of his lead
ership because they had Joined him