Innocent As The Angels: The Spencer Family Murder, #2

By Duane Taylor

After a three-week trial, Young—who almost certainly did not commit the Spencer family murders—was also acquitted.  Nevertheless, three days later he was hanged from his own pasture gate by a mounted lynch mob led by the same bounty-hunting detective who had designed, augmented, and executed Young's frame-up.

 

Attempts to arrest and indict the bounty hunter and others for Young's murder were extraordinarily complicated, involving a ludicrous hearing, a fruitless chase by a sheriff and his posse, the appearance of the state's adjutant-general, the eventual arrest of the bounty hunter in a scheme he himself designed so he could claim the reward, a failed indictment, and the bounty hunter's faked marriage to a teenager in an attempt to ferret out additional suspects.

 

Hearing that he had been secretly indicted and alarmed by the possibility of arrest and confinement, the bounty hunter fled by rail toward the Black Hills, but he was caught near Yankton and hauled back to Missouri in chains.  The girl he had "married" attempted to kill him when he was in custody.  By this time, the highest authorities in Missouri's government were involved with the case against the bounty hunter.  But his lawyer (Felix Hughes, the grandfather of Howard Hughes, Jr.) appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court, the law under which the bounty hunter was indicted was nullified, and he walked away scot-free.  Although the original murders were never solved, Innocent as the Angels argues that two suspects, together by chance or design, committed the crime.

 

Although the book is easy to classify as true crime and unsolved mystery, historical value inheres in its illumination of post-Civil War rural America, especially among modest farmers and tradesmen during a multi-year depression.  Other threads are also evident:  the woefully inadequate state of rural criminal investigation, for example, and the shifting criminal world of bounty hunters masquerading as private detectives—a subject to which historians have given scant attention.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Breckenridge Crossing
• Release date: Apr 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223051886

Book preview

Innocent as the Angels

The Spencer Family Murders

and

The Lynching of Bill Young

Book 2

––––––––

Duane Taylor

assisted by Renee E. Riffle, Meleese L. Young, and James P. Burns

Innocent as the Angels

The Spencer Family Murders

and

The Lynching of Bill Young

Book 2

Published by Breckenridge Crossing

Copyright © 2023 by Duane Taylor

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Published in the United States of America

First Printing, 2023

Breckenridge Crossing

255 N County Road 1200

Sutter, IL 62373

https://www.spencermurders.org/

Chapters 1 & 2 of Innocent as the Angels were self-published as a pamphlet in 2002, copyrighted to the Bill Young Project. Author maintains the rights for the project.

for Mel and Floyd Young

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Gratitudes and Acknowledgements

Preface to Volume 2

Part III: The Trial April 1879 – October 26, 1879

Chapter 13 The Bloody Pants

Chapter 14 Baker for the Defense

Chapter 15 Shredding the Prosecution’s Case

Chapter 16 Final Speeches and a Verdict

Part IV: The Lynching of Bill Young and Further

Outrages October 26, 1879 – October 1880

Chapter 17 The Mob Has Come

The Detective Triumphs

Chapter 18 Accusations and a Botched Bounty Hunt

Chapter 19 A Detective’s Devilries

Chapter 20 Flight with Capture, Politics with Law

Part V: Finale November 1880 – Present Day

Chapter 21 Afterimages

Chapter 22 Chasing the Demon

Who Murdered the Spencers?

Glossary of Persons Mentioned

About the Author

List of Illustrations

Figure 1:  Regional Map

Figure 2:  Clark County, Missouri, Map

Figure 3:  Map of Luray, Missouri, Young’s Farm, and

Spencer’s Farm

Benjamin E. Turner, Clark County Prosecutor, 1880’s

Felix T. Hughes, probably early 1870’s

Kahoka Town Map

Martin Hotel

Clark County Courthouse, late 19th century

Francis M. Drake, older portrait

John M. Wood, older portrait

Andrew Jackson Baker, 1880’s

Figure 4:  Map of the Alleged Trip by Sprouse and Young

through Spencer’s

Exhibit C

Original Verdict from Young Trial

William J. Bill Young, October 25 – 27, 1879

Lydia Ann Bray Young

Patterson House, Keokuk, Iowa

John Young as a Young Man

Depiction of Bill Young’s Lynching, October 29, 1879

Gravestone of William J. Bill Young

Main Street Keokuk, 1870

The John Young Family about 1890

Rosa Jane and Minnie Belle Young about 1880

Spencer Family Gravestone

Gratitude and Acknowledgements

No story of such complexity and depth can be assembled into book form without the help of many hands.

Foremost, we are thankful for working with Meleese L. Young.  She and Floyd, her husband of sixty-one years, began collecting photographs, newspaper clippings, and other memorabilia of the Young family and the Bill Young story in 1972, convinced that Bill Young was innocent and that the whole narrative should be better known.  For the next twenty years they made trips to Ohio, Idaho, and Oregon meeting Bill Young’s surviving descendants and collecting information on the Young family.  Mel made her final research trip in the first decade of the 21st century, with her daughter and her friend Renee Riffle, after Floyd passed away in 1995.  Without her willingness to share with us her collection and storehouse of memories, we could not have written Innocent as the Angels, the title she insisted on.  She generously opened her home and archive to us even as her hearing and vision deteriorated with age.  Sadly, she passed away in 2014, almost ninety-five years old, without seeing the book through to publication.  With her passing, we lost a colleague and valued friend.

To members of Floyd and Mel’s extended family who maintained continued interest in our efforts, we are also grateful:  their nephew the late Leroy Young; his sons Mark and Patrick; their niece Ruby Dodie Simmons, and Ruby’s daughter Paula Miller.

Mrs. Jack (Lois) Herring devoted countless hours of her skill and experience as a genealogist to this project.  She met often with us to talk about the many Clark County families featured in this long story and to thrash out disputed points.  Along with Jack, she was the caretaker of Bethlehem Cemetery, location of the Spencer grave monument, for many years and knows about the families buried there and the history of the church and its early congregations in consuming detail.  Lois’ dogged persistence discovered the later life of Bill Young’s daughter Rosa Jane Young and gave us new information about Minnie Belle Young, both invaluable additions.  She gave us important details about the King and Coffrin families of Luray and devoted many hours attempting to find what happened to Laura Sprouse in later life.  Her disappointment at dead-ending on this particular search was no less keen than our own.  She also pointed us toward a valuable resource recently housed in the Paul T. Rowe Historical Museum that helped us immeasurably.  For her work toward the book and her delightful, edifying companionship through the length of our research, we are forever deeply grateful.

We are likewise grateful to David James, a descendent of the James family of Clark County and a resident of Kahoka, Missouri, who became interested in our project early on.  David provided the contacts to the surviving descendants of Elijah Spencer, Lewis Spencer’s brother.  Those descendants included Judy Beeding and Anne Balmos Sanney, who were in possession of the old Elijah Spencer family album which included tintypes of the five murdered Spencers.  No one knew the identity of the five, although some suspected they may have been the victims of a dark murder which was rarely spoken of among the family.  Today, that identification is virtually certain.  We are likewise grateful to Cathy James, director of the Sevier Public Library in Kahoka, Missouri, and David James’ wife, for directing us to resources in that library which have proved indispensable to our work.

We received unstinting help and encouragement from Kris Fishback, past president of the Clark County Historical Society; from her mother Wyneta Fishback, an extraordinarily energetic volunteer at the Society and a dedicated genealogist in her own right; and from the board of the Clark County Historical Society itself.  Kris and Wyneta for many years were effective curators of the Paul T. Rowe Historical Museum and its many invaluable and unique resources.  Without their enthusiastic assistance and willingness to share these resources and their own considerable knowledge, this project would have quickly withered.

Our debt to the staff of the Keokuk, Iowa, Public Library is enormous.  The library’s well-organized collection of Keokuk newspapers on microfilm, primarily the Daily Gate City and the Daily Constitution, provided a firm foundation for our research and more than a few surprises along the way.  Special heartfelt gratitude goes to Tonya Boltz Irwin, former patron services librarian, who maintained the library’s local history and genealogical collections for many years and could quickly find anything buried in those extensive files.  Tonya’s persistent helpfulness and sunny disposition saw us through countless back-wrenching, eye-straining hours at aging microfilm readers.  Thanks also to Angela Gates who patiently reorganized, re-boxed, and re-labeled the newspaper files soon after she was hired as a library staff member, considerably easing their use.

Mary D. Jones, former Clark County Clerk and de facto Recorder, gave us time from her work to direct us to court records perhaps no one else could find with such ease.  She permitted us to copy surviving documents and allowed us to tour the old Clark County courtroom, providing details that made that large dignified room spring to life.  We are most grateful for her assistance, as we are for the permission of Gary Dial, Presiding Judge of the First Judicial Circuit of Missouri, to publish some of the documents we located in the courthouse.  Thanks also to Shelley Small and Ellen Aylward for their help and courtesies at the Scotland County Courthouse. 

We are grateful to Joanne Ragan, Kahoka, Missouri, who made her extensive private collection of Clark County historical materials available for perusal and use.  Likewise, Mary Jo Sisson March shared with us her broad, deep knowledge of Luray’s history.  Her research detailing Bill Young’s property transactions in Luray was compiled for us, and her sharing of Sisson family memories enriched our story.  Also, Helen St. Clair, former postmaster of Luray and an avid local historian and writer, gladly provided information on Nathaniel Davis, a friend and perhaps distant relation of Bill Young, as well as information about Luray’s history through the years.  We are most grateful for her assistance.  

We appreciate the generous cooperation of the board of the Lee County Historical Society (Keokuk, Iowa) and especially its former president Sue Olson and board member John Cameron, who opened their photography archives to aid our work.  Our thanks also go to L. D. Andy Andrews, president of the North Lee County Historical Society (Ft. Madison, Iowa), for his help locating important resources in the Society’s collection.  Thanks also to Tom Dreasler of Dreasler Photography and Imaging of Keokuk, who digitized our illustrations and exhibits.

We also appreciate the cooperation of the staffs of the following institutional collections:  the Missouri newspaper collection of the State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri (with special thanks to the unknown staffer who knew that a back-up copy of the microfilm of the Alexandria Commercial was kept in a restricted area, the original having disappeared some years ago); the State Historical Society of Iowa, Des Moines, which provided permission to use portraits of A. J. Baker and F. M. Drake from their special collections; the archives of the Illinois State Penitentiary, Joliet; and the local history collection and newspaper archives of the Quincy Public Library.

I am immensely grateful to Jane O’Melia, the best copy editor I could have asked for—trained as an attorney and that rarest of jewels, a lifelong friend—whose insights as an accomplished writer herself improved a text marred by too many infelicities.  I also appreciate the labors of a number of readers whose suggestions have improved the book:  Dianne Andrews, James Andrews, Judge Gary Dial, Tom Gardner, Dr. Donald Nelson, and Jane O’Melia.  The errors that remain are mine alone.

To Teresa A. Beeler, publisher and chief executive officer of Breckenridge Crossing, I owe a debt which I can never repay.  A person of almost limitless energy and drive, she rescued this book and me when I was besieged by swarms of challenges and mired in a seemingly inextricable slough of despond.

On a more personal note, I am indebted to William L. Johnston, who provided insightful criticism of early drafts of some chapters.  More important, Bill’s friendship 50 years ago when we were college students together encouraged my aspiration to work in words.  Finally, this book could not have been written without the forbearance and continuing support of the late Mary Burns, of Brian Cabe, and of my longsuffering wife and willing book widow, Joyce E. Taylor.

Duane Taylor

Warsaw, Illinois

Figure 1

The three-state Midwestern region in which the events of Innocent as the Angels transpired, 1877-1880.  Adapted from contemporary highway and political maps.  Map design by RD Studio/Design for Books.

Figure 2

Clark County, Missouri

Adapted from a present-day map available on the Clark County website, with additions of late 19th-century towns and locations.  Map design by RD Studio/Design for Books.

Figure 3

Northwest Clark County, Missouri, showing the Spencer farm, the Bill Young home farm, and the Luray neighborhood.  Based on 1878 Clark County township plat maps, housed at the Clark County Courthouse, Kahoka, Missouri.  Inset sketch of the Spencer house courtesy of Kayla Byrn-Raney.  Map design by RD Studio/Design for Books.  Map scale varies.  The Spencer farm was approximately 6 miles north of Luray; the Bill Young home was approximately 1 mile south of Luray.

PREFACE

It is mid-October 1879. A gripping murder trial is underway in Kahoka, the county seat of rural Clark County in northeastern Missouri. It’s been more than two years since the entire Spencer family of five was brutally murdered as they slept. The circuit court is now trying the second man accused.

The man who was first accused of and tried for the pitiless, gruesome crime was the one who discovered the murders, but his prosecution collapsed when a doctor and well-known faculty member at a nearby medical college dramatically refused at the last possible moment during the trial itself to testify to scant blood evidence. The evidence was doubtless inconclusive anyway. The accused, an inoffensive farm laborer, brother-in-law and uncle to the murdered Spencers, was exonerated.

Since then, a man claiming to have been a Pinkerton detective—but who was more accurately a bounty hunter—arrived in Clark County ostensibly to find and convict the Spencers’ murderer but actually to claim the substantial reward. Disreputable and with a shady past, Frank Lane co-opted a housekeeper and former lover of Bill Young, a roundly hated local farmer, to weave a circumstantial web around Young and frame him for the murders. After an endless and obviously prejudiced preliminary examination, Young was bound over to the Clark County jail in Kahoka to await an actual jury trial.

Now in that trial, the prosecution had all but rested.

Led by the county attorney, Ben Turner, the prosecution had presented the circumstantial evidence of Young’s former housekeeper, mistress, and chief accuser—Laura Sprouse. A raft of additional witnesses testified either to corroborate Laura’s testimony or to introduce other elements of circumstantial evidence tending to implicate Young as the Spencer murderer. Excluded from the courtroom almost from the beginning, Frank Lane, the self-proclaimed detective, was nowhere to be found, his whereabouts unknown to all except his closest confederates.

Yet Lane was central to the prosecution. The bloody and partially burned overalls which Young was alleged to have worn during the murders—the only physical evidence in the case against Bill Young—were supposed to be in Lane’s possession. But only Lane and Laura had ever seen them (or claimed to have seen them). Both Young’s defense team and Anderson, the trial’s presiding judge, demanded that Frank Lane produce those overalls.

As this epic story continues, Young’s lead defense attorney, the competent and astute A. J. Baker, has just informed the judge that the defense would not open until those overalls were exhibited in the courtroom as evidence of Young’s guilt.

This single most dangerous day for defendant Bill Young opened just after daybreak on a lonely country road near Kahoka.

PART III: The Trial (continued)

The Prosecutors

Benjamin E. Turner

Felix T. Hughes

CHAPTER 13

THE BLOODY PANTS

A half-hour after sunrise on Thursday, around a quarter to seven or so, two men on horseback were heading north toward Kahoka along the road that formed the eastern boundary of Henry Callison's farm, about two or two and a half miles southeast of Kahoka. Around the same time, two other men were walking south on the same road. Both parties had crested small hills and were just descending from opposite directions into a hollow where the road crossed a creek when they noticed something lying in a heap on the west side of the road, in or near the wagon track.[1]

The heap in the road was Frank Lane, the notorious missing detective in the Young case. According to the men who found him, Lane was unconscious and barely breathing. Bill Young's bloody overalls were nowhere in sight.[2]

One of the men had some whiskey, considered by most of this era as the universal nostrum. He tried to revive him by pouring a little into his mouth. A man named Butler—either a neighboring farmer or Callison's farmhand—was sent ahead to Kahoka to get a doctor and a wagon.[3] In the process, the man also spread the word that Lane was lying in a public road almost dead. Butler told the news to everyone he saw, and excitement gathered quickly. The news spread like wildfire, as bad news always does. Having secured a team and wagon and two doctors, J. G. Martin and S. Neeper, the party clattered back to where Lane still lay in the road by Callison's.[4]

Kahoka Town Map

By the time the doctors got there, the whiskey given to Lane had evidently done some good because Lane appeared to be breathing fine, although shallowly. Examining Lane for signs of trauma, the doctors discovered a slight bruising and redness on the left side of his neck, which might have indicated choking, a definite lump on the right side of his head, and a couple of small abrasions near or on the lump.[5] Dr. Martin administered smelling salts and rubbed him with more whiskey, but Lane remained unconscious. By this time, all Kahoka was roused, and many residents and visitors had started for Callison's road. Among them was John B. Cole, the editor of the Kahoka Democrat, whose morning edition was ready to go to press.

Lane was loaded into the wagon, and it started for Kahoka with the doctors in attendance. Seeing the commotion near his place, Henry Callison himself probably rode along with the unconscious Lane, his wife's first cousin. As it traveled, the wagon and its party met the growing crowd from town streaming toward the spot in the road where Lane was found. The doctors said that Lane showed signs of a vicious attack. Some in the crowd turned back and followed the wagon into Kahoka. Others continued on their way to examine the site of Lane's attack and discovery.

A few men, probably members of the local chapter of the Anti Horse Thief Association, took it upon themselves to look for clues to the assailants. Mrs. Callison said that she'd seen a man on horseback go down the road before daybreak and then almost immediately come back and take off through a corn field. Mr. Neal, who had the next farm south on the Callison's road, said he was in position to see someone on the road, yet saw no one at that hour. Many hoof prints were near the spot where Lane was found, but nothing conclusive could be made of them at the time. Later, amateur investigators claimed they saw tracks of a wagon that turned around in the road, but they were likely made by the wagon that conveyed the injured Lane to Kahoka. In short, neither the ground nor available observations yielded any clues to the identity of Lane's attackers. 

Martin’s Hotel, north side of public square, Kahoka, Missouri, about 1875

Frank Lane probably maintained a sleeping room here and was carried to this hotel’s sitting room after he was found insensible on a dirt road east of Kahoka.

Sometime after 8:30 the wagon carrying Lane pulled up to Martin's hotel—a large Kahoka establishment owned by David Martin for both permanent and transient guests—where Lane was laid on a sofa in the hotel's first floor lounge, furnished as a sitting room.[6] By now, six physicians were present.[7] Easily more than a hundred men milled around the long front of the hotel waiting for word of Lane's condition, and the crowd was growing steadily. As they waited, talk was abundant:  Lane was attacked because his assailants wanted to steal the bloody overalls that would have sealed Young's fate, some said. Others maintained that the overalls were still safe; Lane's assailants simply wanted him out of the way. According to J. B. Cole, [e]veryone, of course, believe[d] Young at the bottom of it. Ominously, the hotheads in the crowd talked of storming the jail, removing Young by force, and seeing justice done swiftly and without appeal on the courthouse lawn. Although Cole said that wiser councils [sic] would doubtless prevail, the reporter for the Gate City admitted that [a]t times a leader was all that was required to have made it [Young's lynching] an actual fact.[8] Lynching remained a real possibility all day.

Clark County Courthouse, late 19th Century

When Judge Anderson mounted the bench at eight-thirty, he was probably aware of the early morning sensation, and he wouldn't have been surprised to note that no attorney was present in the courtroom. Except for the circuit clerk, the room was probably deserted because Lane was just then conveyed into town. Cole of the Democrat assumed that the absent lawyers had joined the crowd that went out to Callison's to examine the spot where Lane was found, but his assumption was mere speculation. The activities of Young's attorneys on Thursday are largely unknown. In any case, Anderson's court was not convened on Thursday morning; it's doubtful that Young was even brought up to the courtroom. For Anderson, a judge known for his desire to move things along in a trial, delaying the proceeding for an entire morning must have been galling. But there was simply no remedy for it. With only a slim chance that the excitement of the hour would abate, and the attorneys would be ready to proceed by the afternoon, Anderson forged ahead and informed the clerk that he would call court at one o'clock.

In the meantime, Cole had rushed to his office and printing plant to reset his front page, so the first media notice of the attack on Lane appeared later that morning in the Kahoka Democrat, a small but dramatic story in the far left column, quite a coup for Cole and company.[9] MURDER! the sideline screamed, An Assassin's Stroke! Frank Lane Found Senseless This Morning.

Back at Martin's hotel, the six physicians attending Lane tried everything they knew to revive him. They dissolved twenty grains of smelling salts in whiskey and did what they could to get Lane to drink some, without noticeable success. They rubbed whiskey on the exposed parts of his body, also to no avail. They noted that his pulse had risen to 78 beats per minute. The crowd outside the hotel may have swelled to over 400 as the men who had gone to Callison's trickled back to town awaiting news of Lane's condition. When the news of the attack on Lane traveled outside Kahoka, many more people came to town, perhaps as many as 2,000.[10] Reports about Lane's condition were spectacularly contradictory. Some physicians said gravely that Frank Lane might not live, driving the mob to increased fury against Young. Others said that he seemed to be recovering nicely.[11]

Finally, around nine-thirty, Lane began to come to. As reported in the Gate City and Democrat of the following day, he first swore and thrashed out with his hands and arms as if he were striking at some invisible assailant. Strong men held him down. Then he said distinctly, You've got 'em now, goddammit, let me alone! After that violent demonstration, he quieted down and then exchanged a few words with Henry Callison.[12]

Because newspaper reporters were allowed in the lounge of the hotel, Lane's earliest conversations following his revival were well recorded. Callison asked him if someone had hit him (yes), who it was (I don't know), and if Lane had been on horseback when attacked (yes). Although Lane knew that three men had attacked him, he didn't know if they were on horseback or on foot, nor did he know what was used to hit him.

Informed that Lane was now conscious, Ben Turner arrived at Lane's sickbed only a few moments later. Apparently, they were on a first-name basis with each other. Turner's questions elicited many of the same answers Lane had given Callison:  He was attacked by three men, but he couldn't tell who they were because he had been first struck from behind. Then some of the physicians signaled that Lane needed to rest. I did the best I could, Ben, said Lane pathetically as Turner got up to leave. I know you did, Frank, replied Turner.[13]

Frank Lane slept on the sofa in the lounge of the hotel until about eleven when he again awoke and asked for Felix Hughes, Turner's associate in the prosecution. Could he read a newspaper containing the latest trial testimony to him? he wondered. Knowing his condition, Hughes demurred. But Lane persisted, asking Cole to get the latest copy of the Democrat for him and read it aloud. At this, Hughes consented to read the majority of the relevant testimony in the paper. Afterwards, Lane told him that he had read all the papers every day while he was away and kept himself posted on the progress of the trial until the day before he was attacked.   

His memory apparently clearing, Lane filled in a few more details of his misadventure to Hughes and the Gate City reporter. He was not attacked where he was found, close to Callison's, but more than a mile away, and he must have been carried to the spot near Callison's. He was probably struck at about one A.M. because he had looked at his watch in Chambersburg at 11:30 and it would have taken him about an hour and a half to get to the point where he was assaulted.[14] Lane said again that three men attacked him from behind and knocked him off his horse with a club of some kind, and then struck him a second time while he was on the ground. For the first time, he admitted that a little bundle he had in his possession had been taken. He didn't have to mention that the bundle contained Young's overalls.[15]

––––––––

AGITATED, INDIGNANT, AND NERVOUS

Outside the hotel, the growing crowd was uglier than ever, the feeling against Young intense and punctuated with threats of lynching. Only a few doubted that Young was behind the attack on Lane and his loss of the incriminating overalls, and those who did doubt wisely kept silent especially early in the day. Throughout the morning, small groups of men walked the five or six blocks from the hotel over to the grated window of the courthouse jail to taunt Bill Young to his face with expressions like, You didn't do your work last night very well, did you, Bill? and to threaten him with hanging. Although he tried to keep up a good front, probably giving as good as he got, Young was nearly wild with fear that he would be killed before day’s end. He knew exactly how terrible an effect on his case this startling turn of events would have.

Sometime during the morning his children and his fiancée—Lydia Bray, still going by the name Lizzie Davis and posing as Young's cousin—came to the jail to be with him. Perhaps they figured that a mob of men would be less likely to liberate him if he were surrounded by his family, or maybe they simply wanted to offer moral support. Young, however, had a more practical legal purpose for their presence:  He wanted them with him as witnesses because some of the men he had talked to through the window went back to the crowd outside the hotel and lied about what he had said. Bill's oldest boy, John, probably smuggled a pistol into the jail for additional protection.[16]

Jesse Howell, the reporter for the Gate City, had the wit to go to the jail to interview Young, where he found him agitated, indignant, and attended by his family.[17] Young claimed that the attack on Lane was simply another put up job. In fact, he didn't believe that there was an attack at all, rather that [i]t was another one of his schemes to prejudice people against me. When challenged to cite other put up jobs by Lane, Young mentioned the arrest of the Chambersburg burglar in July, a young man who was clearly a jailhouse plant. [H]e stole letters to me from Laura Sprouse, he said, in which she acknowledged that the whole case was set up and wanted me to forgive her and take her back.[18]

All he wanted was a fair trial, but no one seems to want to give it to me, Young whined. They fix up jobs and the people believe them; the press is against me, and what can I do?

Someone, perhaps a man listening in at the grated jail window or perhaps Howell himself, asked Young if the attack on Lane wasn't committed to obtain the bloody overalls. Young exploded in a fit of temper, demanding to know who sent the man to ask that question and insult him in that way. Why don't the newspapers compare Sprouse's statements about the location of the overalls? he asked. Why don't they highlight her contradictory statements about who was supposedly in the pasture on that trip to Spencer's they never made?[19] Howell took down Young's words, making no reply, and soon beat a retreat from Young's cell.

When court was called at one, all the attorneys and probably a number of reporters were present. Young was brought up from the basement jail looking nervous and subdued, an enormous change from his careless, even jaunty demeanor of the previous days. Turner immediately petitioned Anderson for a recess until the following morning, Friday, because he wanted to introduce a new prosecution witness, and that witness couldn't appear until then. Everyone knew he was referring to Lane (except the jurymen, some of whom may have surmised it), now recuperating at the hotel. Although technically the prosecution had already rested its case, Young's defense had not yet called any substantive witness to the stand. Anderson ordered the recess. Baker approached the bench and explained that his client's life was in danger in the jail from excitable elements of the mob. He strongly urged the court's protection. Anderson concurred, writing a note to Dave Martin requesting that he and two other reliable men—AHTA president George Sansom and a man named William Johnson—come to see him as soon as possible.[20]

Almost nothing is known about how Young's defense team occupied their time on Thursday with the exception of attending court at one. Baker, Drake, Coffman, and Wood must have been alarmed by the intensity of the feeling against their client following Lane's assault and may have done their best to stay out of sight of the mob. The Democrat reported that at least one of Young's attorneys expressed regret about consenting to hold Young's trial in Kahoka rather than insisting on a change in venue, likely enough given the rise of a violent mob mentality. Later in the day, a vague report circulated that a number of defense witnesses on site and ready to take to the stand searched out Young's attorneys and tried to withdraw as witnesses for Young. Cole wrote that the lawyers used every means in their power to restore order in the ranks. . . .[21] He may have been exaggerating, but the fear of at least some of Young's scheduled witnesses was probably real.

Coffman was singled out to receive an anonymous letter threatening to run him out of town or worse if he didn't immediately give up the case, or something similar. Yet he didn't appear particularly frightened in court, and his behavior didn't seem to change because of the threat.[22]

Baker and Drake, at least, were extremely skeptical that Young's friends had attacked Lane at all. Drake had predicted that the coming of the overalls would be preceded by some sensation. Thursday's events, though minus the overalls, had confirmed him as a prophet of the first order. One or more of the attorneys probably went to the jail at least once before court to talk to Young, allay his fears, and restore his confidence, but no hint of such a conversation was recorded.

The single most skeptical court official may well have been Judge Anderson. He had had plenty of experience listening to expert opinions about someone's medical condition, only to discover later that there was nothing whatsoever amiss with the patient. The circumstances of this incident with Lane seemed especially suspicious, given that no one except Lane and Sprouse had ever seen the overalls he was supposed to be bringing to court. For the time being, however, the judge kept his opinion to himself lest he inadvertently provide grounds for a mistrial.

When J. B. Cole went over to the courthouse around four o'clock to see how Young was dealing with the excitement, he found a crowd of men at the jail window taunting and threatening Young while Young himself was singing his song/poem Bill Young and his Laura Ann—his versified version of events—at the top of his lungs to drown out the jeering voices. Only later was a guard of six men finally placed around Young, three at the grated basement window to deter persistent harassment and three more at the stairway leading down to the jail.[23] By nightfall, Young was finally safe from the mob.

The Defense

Francis M. Drake        John  M. Wood

Andrew J. Baker

––––––––

THREE SUSPICIOUS CHARACTERS

The failure to find clues to the identity of Lane's attackers early on Thursday morning did not deter others from continuing the search later in the day, largely by making inquiries about strangers in town who may have been acting suspiciously. By Thursday afternoon, the Antis' interest had fallen squarely on three men to the exclusion of all others. They were all relatives of Young's through his first wife, Mary Ann:  Isaac (called Ike) Hull was the late Mary Ann Hull Young's brother, and hence Young's brother-in-law; William Hull was Ike's son; and Bert Harle was Ike's son-in-law.[24] All hailed from Scotland County, Missouri, the first county west of Clark, and all had recently arrived in Kahoka. The word was that the three were hard characters who had been drunk all day on Wednesday. Someone said that they had acted strangely on Thursday morning when they heard that Lane had been found in the road. Others whispered that all three had been darting back and forth in the darkness mysteriously on Wednesday night. Another rumor was that all three had been seen in a buggy belonging to either Bill Young or his brother Nick late on Wednesday, a buggy pulled by a horse and a mule with a broken hoof, whose hoof print had been found near where Lane was found the following morning.[25]

Armed with these rumors, some Anti's arrested the trio on Thursday afternoon and took them to Martin's hotel for questioning. Ike Hull claimed to have stayed Wednesday night at Nick Young's place near Chambersburg. William Hull and Bert Harle said that John Young had invited them to stay at the Young farm near Luray, and that they had done so. All of them denied having anything at all to do with the assault on Lane.

Mob feeling against these suspects rose quickly, and after questioning they were hustled over to the courtroom until their stories could be verified. Guarded in the courtroom, they spent an uncomfortable night on Thursday. They were officially examined on Friday, perhaps by J. W. Greenlee, the local justice, and were subsequently released for lack of evidence. Although at least one newspaper professed astonishment at the release of the three suspects in the face of all the evidence that had been reported, the many rumors must have proved to be nothing more than wishful thinking. The locations of the three on Wednesday night must have been confirmed by witnesses who were deemed reliable, though some were probably Bill Young's relations.[26] It was bruited about that all three were served with subpoenas from Young's defense immediately upon their release, but chances are that at least one of them, probably Ike Hull, had been subpoenaed previously as a defense witness of some kind.

As evening descended on Thursday, the ugly crowd in front of Martin's hotel had dispersed and the public excitement dissolved. Young was protected from extralegal violence in his cell, but he still feared the hotheads from Luray and Peaksville. That night he banked the fire in his stove early, put out his light, and sat silently in the dark, watchful for midnight assassins.[27] Frank Lane, on the other hand, rested comfortably, the Anti's having placed their own guards around the hotel to protect him should another dastardly attempt be made on his life. Although his temperature had fluctuated throughout the day, Lane's symptoms were favorable for a complete recovery, according to the many doctors surrounding him. None of them, not even J. G. Martin, was now saying that Lane might not live. Ike and William Hull and Bert Harle remained under heavy guard in the courthouse. Like Bill Young nodding off fitfully in his cell, Kahoka must have slumbered uneasily.

FRANK LANE TAKES THE STAND

Friday morning, October 17th, was cool with a sharp west wind. Teams and wagons and men on horseback began arriving in Kahoka before sunrise, and spectators drawn to the court proceedings because of the sensation of the previous day scrambled for seats in the courtroom almost as soon as the doors opened.[28] Members of the Anti Horse Thief Association swarmed the streets; their red badges—usually hidden under their coats—were now openly pinned to their lapels. Strangely, members of Lane's detective force were conspicuously absent. By 8:30 or so, all were in their places in the courtroom except Ben Turner. A slight agitation rippled through the audience. Had Lane's condition worsened overnight? Anderson waited until about 9 o'clock before telling the bailiff to call for the county prosecutor. In a few moments, Turner walked into the room and, addressing the court, said that if Anderson would be willing to wait a little longer, the state would be ready to proceed. Annoyed by yet another delay, Anderson waited.

When Turner reappeared around ten, he seemed troubled and spoke a few words to the judge, who immediately recessed his court to one o'clock. Disappointed and murmuring, the courtroom crowd streamed out into the brisk wind, many heading for Martin's where Lane was still sequestered. As the minutes ticked by, a number of men in front of the hotel began moving toward Smith's Saloon next door to warm and refresh themselves. The sensation of the previous day had attracted a good deal of what J. B. Cole called rough material to town, and dram sales on Friday were as brisk as the wind. So was the trade in renewed speculation and rumor.

The feeling against Bill Young was more intense among those from the northern townships of Clark County, where the Spencers had been known and where Young conducted most of his business, than it was among Kahoka residents and others who lived more distant. Like the majority of those attending court, they believed that Young's friends, with or without Young's knowledge, committed the assault on Lane and took the overalls by force, hoping to weaken the state's case against Young. Only late on Wednesday, they pointed out, had Young's attorney forced the prosecution to reveal that Lane had the overalls and would be coming to town with them that evening, giving Young's friends advance notice of his probable movements and time to plan and coordinate their attack. Additionally, they believed that Lane was too seriously injured for the attack to have been a set-up.[29]

Those few who regarded the entire case against Young as a vicious attempt at judicial murder saw the attack on Lane as a staged drama, pure amateur theatrics. They argued that Lane never had the bloody overalls in his possession because they simply never existed and added that neither Young nor his friends would be so stupid as to assault Lane at this point in the trial. Further, they pointed out that Lane was not badly injured and that, besides, men on foot couldn't strike a man on horseback and produce the injuries that Lane had sustained. Finally, they noted, the whole affair allowed Lane to account for the overalls in a manner most advantageous to himself.

Two other theories circulated among the crowd waiting for court to convene, but both were paper thin and neither had many adherents. The first was that the assault had been committed by Lane's friends because they were disgusted with his delays and suspicious of his actions. They undertook the attack in revenge for being used and duped. The second was that Lane, working hard on this and other cases and spending day and night in the saddle, had partaken too freely of stimulants to keep him awake. He had accidentally overdosed himself, lost consciousness, and fell from his horse in the road where he was found. While both theories are lame and incomplete, they may embody some noteworthy realities. Some of Lane's adherents may well have lost faith in the detective by this point, perceiving him to be dithering, nursing his pride, and not attending to the business at hand. And perhaps he indulged in stimulant drugs so freely that his abuse was common knowledge.[30]

Suddenly, elements of the midday crowd saw Lane emerge from Martin's hotel, enter a buggy, and begin the short ride to the courthouse. Apparently, the physicians thought Lane's condition very unfavorable on Friday morning, but he had improved enough by the afternoon that the physicians allowed him to appear in court. A general stampede ensued as men rushed to the courthouse door to claim a good seat for the show that was sure to come. The crowd that gathered in the courtroom was larger than that during Laura Sprouse's time on the stand and may have been the largest in the old courthouse's 138-year history. All window sills and aisles were jammed full. Men couldn't be held back from the railing and swarmed into the area reserved for attorneys and reporters. Judge Anderson did what he could to maintain order, but he probably doubted that he could clear the courtroom without a battalion of bailiffs. All was a seething mass. Young entered the courtroom with difficulty because of the crowd.

When Turner called Lane to the stand, everyone quieted down. Supported on either arm by the deputy sheriff and Henry Callison, Lane made his way into the packed courtroom wearing a black suit, slouch hat, and heavy overcoat. He appeared flushed and weak. Someone found a rocking chair to replace the usual stationary chair in the witness box; someone else provided a pillow to support his head and a comforter to keep him warm. Spectators thought he looked the worse for wear and many expressed their sympathy for him. Judge Anderson's thoughts about the matter have not been preserved.

Wise to the ways of lawyerly interrogation, Lane quite deliberately answered only the precise questions asked. He was far too clever to volunteer additional information. Turner obligingly fed him questions in a lengthy back and forth that resembled a combination of the child's game Twenty Questions and the early TV quiz show What's My Line.  It was a tedious procedure that would have soon become tiresome except that Lane's answers were all new information for everyone in the room but the prosecutors. Besides, everyone knew that Lane had worked up virtually the entire case against Young and had been viciously attacked only the day before. Everybody strained to hear each word Lane said.[31]

Turner began by establishing Lane's credibility on the stand:  Lane stated that his name was Daniel C. Slater, that he was in the detective business, and that he'd been in Clark County for eleven months. It had been an open secret almost from the beginning that Frank Lane was the alias he used as a detective. Now under oath, he stated his birth name. After having Lane admit that he knew Laura Sprouse, Turner moved immediately to the issue of Young's overalls, the prosecution's whole purpose in calling him as a witness.

Lane testified that he had seen those overalls first at Centerville, Iowa, where Lane had arranged to keep Laura out of sight after Young's Luray hearing; and second, after the April 1879 court term when Young was indicted at the home of the Browns where Laura was staying at the time. He admitted taking the overalls from Sprouse's trunk at Browns' and secreting them under the foundation of a vacant house belonging to J. W. Montgomery, a well-to-do landowner who resided about a half mile east of Kahoka. He corroborated Laura's testimony by saying they were homemade of common brown ducking, that they were partially burned, and that they had splotches of a pale, dirty red substance upon them, presumably the blood of the ax-murdered Spencers. He described the splotching in exquisite detail, noting that the largest splotching was on the left leg.[32] He had the overalls in a small bundle wrapped in paper and then cloth when he was struck in the early hours of Thursday morning. He didn't know who had struck him, with what, or exactly when.[33] He had been in Iowa, he said, and came to Kahoka by the regular road until he got to Anson, a tiny village in extreme northern Clark County, where he hitched a ride with a Mr. McKee and his hired man and went to McKee's home for supper and a nap before continuing on to Kahoka after dark. Finally, Turner asked him where he had been struck. By the vacant house of Montgomery's, he said, where he had gone to retrieve the bundle containing the overalls. That was all, and Turner handed off his witness to Baker for cross-examination.

A. J. Baker believed that the man on the stand was a clever, cunning, resourceful liar and didn't much care that he rested his head on a pillow and was wrapped in a comforter. His client was on trial for his life in a murder case designed by this man whose only known past included forgery and prison time. While he intended to make the most of his cross-examination, Baker probably held scant hope that he could catch Lane in a direct contradiction, though he was confident in his ability to cast serious doubt on his credibility and certainly his honesty. At the same time, the lawyer was careful not to appear contemptuous and overly brusque with a man who had just told the jury that he had been physically attacked and robbed of the only piece of material evidence in the case. Lane's cross-examination required uncommon delicacy, and Baker's skills and sensitivity were up to the task.

Baker began by focusing on where Lane first saw the overalls. At Centerville, said Lane, upstairs at the Continental Hotel in room number five, where Laura Sprouse was staying. Though these specific details contributed mightily to Lane's credibility among spectators and jury, Baker was probably unimpressed. Adding realistic and factual details to a lie is a standard tool in a liar's kit. When did you see them next? asked Baker. At Browns', he answered, where I went specifically to look for them. No one knew my purpose, he said; I told some of the people there that I was going upstairs. (Laura must have been staying in an upstairs room.) When Baker professed surprise that he had such freedom of the house, Lane said that he had gone there often and was familiar there. He found the overalls in Laura's trunk, which was unlocked, and took them.[34] Even Laura didn't know that he had taken them, said Lane. He admitted that he didn't show them to Turner or to Hughes or to anyone else. No, he continued, they were not introduced as evidence at Young's hearing in Luray, nor were they exhibited before the grand jury in April—even though, by his own admission, he had seen them in Centerville before the grand jury met.

Baker appeared thoughtful and asked him again if he had taken them through Kahoka and placed them under the foundation of Montgomery's vacant house. When Lane answered Yes, Baker pounced:  Do you not know this is the county seat? I think so, he said, half chuckling, because here he was at Kahoka's courthouse. And don't you know that the circuit clerk is the proper custodian of criminal evidence? Baker persisted. I suppose I do, answered Lane airily. So why didn't you take them to him? asked Baker. Lane's pride had been slightly pricked, so his answer was testy:  I do as I please with evidence obtained in my private business, he asserted.

Ben Turner was on his feet objecting to Baker's asking such questions. Anderson sustained the objection. The questions were indeed out of order, as Baker clearly knew, but he wanted to suggest that, at the very least, Lane had not followed the proper procedure with regard to material evidence.[35] Having made his point, he immediately dropped it and moved on to Lane's having taken the overalls from Sprouse's trunk. By what right, asked Baker, did you take them from her? Lane's reply was cleverly disarming:  I had no right from the owner, he admitted. At least the jurymen now clearly knew that Lane had stolen them from Sprouse.

Baker then took up his account of the attack. Lane again recounted that he had seen three men, one of whom had caught him by the head, another of whom had stood over him with something in his hand as he was struck on the back of his head. Can you turn around and let the jury see your injuries, or should they walk around you to see them? asked Baker. Lane said he was weak but did not object to the jurymen coming up and seeing the wounds to his head, which they did.[36]

When Baker's continued questions about how and where he was struck elicited no new information and no discrepancies from Lane's direct testimony, Baker tried a new tack,