Page:History of Richland County, Ohio.djvu/387

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��HISTORY OF RICHLAND COUNTY.

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��he was a local politician of some note and had been a leader in the workingmen's movement, which resulted in the election of Samuel F. Gary to Congress. During the Grant campaign, he was prominent in Mansfield and commanded a company of Grant Guards in the city. He had a good deal of influence among a large class of workmen here. It appears from letters that he became acquainted with Mrs. Lunsford in Cincinnati, and, after he secured his position here with Blymyer, Day & Co., induced her to come and reside in Mansfield. Robinson was tried and acquitted, after which he left Mans- field and has not since been heard of in this vicinity.

Several other parties were arrested and ac- quitted, and to this da}- the motive of the mur- der and the whereabouts of the murderer remains a mystery. There are opinions con- cerning this matter among the Mansfield people, which have assumed the importance of well- grounded belief This belief has been strength- ened since the trial and execution of Webb for the murder of Mr. Finney. It is known that Webb was a frequent visitor to the. negro family living in the same house with Mrs. Lunsford ; that he knew of the murdered woman ; and, considering the brutality of the murder and the well-known brutality of Webb, it is believed that he was the murderer, though he refused to confess the same before he was hanged for the Finney murder.

In this connection and in the light of to- day, it is intei'esting to read the following, printed in the Cincinnati CommerciaJ in April, 1870 — the month following the murder. It is from the pen of Don Piatt, then Washington correspondent of that paper : " I read the ac- count of this mysterious crime to one of the most remarkable lawyers in the United States, and he said :

" ' In all cases of circumstantial evidence, the conclusion jumped at by the ordinary mind is apt to be erroneous, from the fact that the

��stronger links are generally the more delicate, and so escape consideration. Thus when Dr. Burdell was murdered, the fact of Mrs. Burdell being in the house over-rid the other facts, that Burdell, a strong man, had made a vigorous fight for his life — so vigorous that an ordinary woman could not possibly have conquered him — and the bloody track of a stranger feeling his way out of the house. When a woman premeditates killing, poison is her ordinary weapon ; if not premeditated, it was simply impossible.

" ' In this case, the struggle indicates some- thing more than murder. Had Robinson or any other man set about the killing for that purpose and none other, we would not have the struggle that broke down the bed, nor the bites in the arm so much relied on. These indicate some- thing more, and more probably that some one, perhaps a negro, knowing the woman to be a loose character, entered the window b}' which he escaped. Infuriated at the resistance, he first bit and fought, then, probably fearing de- tection, committed the murder.

"When a man premeditates a killing, the caution attending it grows with the intelligence of the criminal, and, in nine cases out of ten, the crime is tracked by the very means used to conceal it. A vicious, stupid brute may strike down and cut to pieces his victim in a moment of blind frenzy, regardless of consequences and not unfrequently with a successful escape. This seems to be the case here."

The above reasoning is so clear that it seems like a prophecy ; and there is good reason to believe that it is a simple statement of the facts of this murder, though uttered years be- fore Webb was known.

In the following September of the same year (1870), young Edward McCulloch was killed by Charles Hall, son of H. Hall, who owns a farm, on which he resides, a short distance north of ^lansfield. This was not a cold- blooded or brutal murder, like the one just

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