Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Innocent As The Angels: The Spencer Family Murder, #2
    Innocent As The Angels: The Spencer Family Murder, #1
    Ebook series2 titles

    The Spencer Family Murder Series

    By Duane Taylor

    ()

    About this series

    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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBreckenridge Crossing
    Release dateApr 5, 2023
    Innocent As The Angels: The Spencer Family Murder, #2
    Innocent As The Angels: The Spencer Family Murder, #1

    Titles in the series (2)

    • 1

      Innocent As The Angels: The Spencer Family Murder, #1
      Innocent As The Angels: The Spencer Family Murder, #1

      Innocent As The Angels: The Spencer Family Murder, #1

      Duane Taylor
      0 ratings
      0 ratings

      Innocent as the Angels is the only comprehensive retelling of the unsolved ax murders of the entire Spencer family, including children, in rural Missouri in 1877. Completely researched and extensively documented, Innocent as the Angels recounts the true story of these heinous murders and the interlocking narratives that played out over three years, two murder trials, and featured an almost unbelievable cast of characters. This book highlights the following: --The Spencer murders represent the most neglected unsolved mass murder in American domestic history. --The book includes the only detailed, in-depth portrait of a bounty hunter/ con man in post-Civil-War America. --Among its characters is a promiscuous country girl willing to do anything to snag a rich husband and who takes desperate vengeance when thwarted. --It features a boastful, arrogant, and widely hated farmer who worked to make money as fast as possible and who was lynched by a mob only three days following his acquittal for the original murders. --It includes a wide-ranging conspiracy of locals willing to commit perjury and manufacture evidence to frame an innocent man for the Spencer murders. --It features a lynch-mob of desperadoes and bad men recruited from three states. --It recounts four separate judicial proceedings which feature a county prosecutor who would later sit as a circuit judge, Howard Hughes, Jr's grandfather, a future and former state attorney general and a future state governor on the defense team, and Missouri's supreme court. --It features the seduction and faked marriage of a 17-year-old girl by an unscrupulous con man in search of clues to the real murderer. --It includes the bounty hunter's flight to the West, his capture, his return in chains, and his temporary jailing before being released by the Missouri supreme court on a technicality. --It plausibly suggests who the real murderer was. Few true crime books open such a huge illuminating window into 19th-century rural America and its amazing cast of n'er-do-wells while recounting a truly epic saga.

      Innocent as the Angels is the only comprehensive retelling of the unsolved ax murders of the entire Spencer family, including children, in rural Missouri in 1877. Completely researched and extensively documented, Innocent as the Angels recounts the true story of these heinous murders and the interlocking narratives that played out over three years, two murder trials, and featured an almost unbelievable cast of characters. This book highlights the following: --The Spencer murders represent the most neglected unsolved mass murder in American domestic history. --The book includes the only detailed, in-depth portrait of a bounty hunter/ con man in post-Civil-War America. --Among its characters is a promiscuous country girl willing to do anything to snag a rich husband and who takes desperate vengeance when thwarted. --It features a boastful, arrogant, and widely hated farmer who worked to make money as fast as possible and who was lynched by a mob only three days following his acquittal for the original murders. --It includes a wide-ranging conspiracy of locals willing to commit perjury and manufacture evidence to frame an innocent man for the Spencer murders. --It features a lynch-mob of desperadoes and bad men recruited from three states. --It recounts four separate judicial proceedings which feature a county prosecutor who would later sit as a circuit judge, Howard Hughes, Jr's grandfather, a future and former state attorney general and a future state governor on the defense team, and Missouri's supreme court. --It features the seduction and faked marriage of a 17-year-old girl by an unscrupulous con man in search of clues to the real murderer. --It includes the bounty hunter's flight to the West, his capture, his return in chains, and his temporary jailing before being released by the Missouri supreme court on a technicality. --It plausibly suggests who the real murderer was. Few true crime books open such a huge illuminating window into 19th-century rural America and its amazing cast of n'er-do-wells while recounting a truly epic saga.

    • 2

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

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

      Duane Taylor
      0 ratings
      0 ratings

      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.

      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.

    Related to The Spencer Family Murder

    Related ebooks

    Murder For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Spencer Family Murder

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words