The Prescott daily news., 1915-02-10
ANTI-CATHOLIC LECTURER BLACK
 AND TEXAN DEAD
Another Resident of Line Star State VIII Die as Result of Gun Fight in Hotel Room at Marshall.
 Shot Through Heart

last night in the hotel room of Will liam Black, Bellaire, Ohio. lecturer and professed critic of he Catholic Church. Black and John Rogers of Marshall were killed in the same shooting. Black claimed to have been former Catholic priest.
 The shooting occurred within two minutes after a committee of Marshall men, Copeland, John Rogers and Geo. rge Ryan, called on Black just before o'clock last night to request him to stop his lectures here attacking the Catholic Church. Black the previous night had talked on Effects of the Confessional Box" and last night was to talk on Convent Life"
 With Black was Miss Sadie Black. aged about IT, an adopted daughter and C. F. Hall, who registered from St Paul, and travelled as Blacks com panion.
 So far as now known, the shooting was between the committee and Hall, Blacks companion. The lecturer him self is not known to have fired. The young woman said she threw her arms about her foster father trying to pro- tect him. Hall, it is said, was either Tn an adpoining room, or in the bath room of Blacks apartment when he committee entered. Ryan, of the com mittee, was charged in the police war rant with killing Black, and Hall is charged with killing Rogers and wounding Copeland.
 Black and Rogers were so close that they fell one over the other Black was shot through the heart and two or three times throug the body, while Rogers was shot in each side of the head.
 The coroner found on the lecturers body seven scans of old wounds, ap- parently made by bullets. One was in the neck. one in the hand and the others in the body.
 The examining trials of Ryan and Hall were set for today. Miss Black said she would take her foster fathers body to Bcllaire, O., tomorrow.
 The first lecture here had created excitement.
 Additional warrants were issued to- day for the arrest of Walter Verhalen and George Tier, They are said to have been about the hotel at the time of the shooting but not in the room.
 During the shooting a pistol fell out of the lecturers pocket. EXami- nation afterwards showed that it had not been fired. Neither had the pis- tol in the possession of Rogers. who fell fatally wounded across Blacks body.
 Marshall, Texas, Feb. 4.-William Black, travelling lecturer, and John Rogers, a local contractor, are dead, and John Copeland, cashier of a bank here, is not expected to live, as the re- suit of a shooting atfray here last eve hing in Blacks room at a hotel.
 Black, who claimed to be an eX- priest of the Roman Catholic Church yesterday delivered a lecture here in which he attacked that church. He ad- vertised that he would speak here again.
 Black, his adopted daughter, and (. F. Hall, his companion, were in the formers room tonight when Rogers, Copeland and another local man visit ed them. The shooting followed. Hall was held in connection with the affair. Local police have not yet found out who shot first.
 After preliminary investigation by the coroner's jury, formal charges of murder were filed against Hall and George Rayn, who accompanied Rog- CTS and Copeland to Blacks rooms. Ryan, who lives here, was released on S10,000 bond, with instructions to report to the coroner's jury tomorrow Hall did not apply for bond.
 Black. who registered from Bellaire Ohio, was to deliver another lecture here last night, which he had adver- tised as an attack upon the Catholic Church. It was said the local men visited him with the request that he from delivering the lecture The shooting followed.
 Copeland was shot three times. Only the two dead men, Hall and Copeland and Rayn, were in the room at the time, according to the coroners Sadie Black. who is said