Murder most foul on the streets of Murray

Murray is a village of some 700 souls just off U.S. Highway 34 in Clarke County midway between Osceola and Afton. Somewhere in its cemetery, overlooking the highway --- most likely in the area designated Potters Field --- are the remains of one E. P. Ware, aged about 40 and a purveyor of patent medicine. His home was thought to be Baltimore.

Mr. Ware was buried here very soon after his death on June 29, 1883, leaving little behind: $20.70 cents in cash, a banjo, a watch and chain, an extra chain, a valise, two pocketbooks, a coat, two vests, two hats, a pair of shoes, 3 bars of soap, a sponge, a knife, three jars of liniment, a can of gasoline and a torch lamp.

Witnesses did not understand then --- nor do we understand 140 years later --- why young Leroy Townsend, 18-year-old son of the manager of Haskins & Co. lumber yard, sneaked up behind Mr. Ware and shattered his skull with a baseball bat in front of about 100 witnesses on the evening of June 28, leaving him fatally injured in the dust of main street.

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Mr. Ware, The Osceola Sentinel of July 5 reported, usually peddled his stock of patent medicine in rural villages and the countryside, traveling via horse and buggy rented from livery stables after alighting from Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad passenger coaches.

At Murray on the evening of the 28th, he set to work gathering a crowd for his spiel in front of Simonton's grocery about 8 o'clock --- "singing songs, telling stories and practicing the methods usually adopted to draw a crowd around him. There were near a hundred persons standing around," The Sentinel reported.

His stage was a dry goods box and as it began to get dark he planted a pole next to it and attempted to attach the torch lamp that was part of his equipment.

"He had some difficulty in fixing his lamp on the upright pole or stick," The Sentinel reported.

According to The Chariton Leader of July 4, as Mr. Ware attempted to attach his lamp, "One in the crowd yelled 'a little higher,' another, 'a little lower' and in answer to these these smart alecs Ware said: 'Yes, patience and perseverance and a little sweet oil will conquer anything except a cat.' "

At the time Mr. Ware uttered that remark, Roy Townsend, accompanied by his stepmother, Alice, and an aunt, were in a buggy nearby, perhaps awaiting the show. For some reason, perhaps because the words were misunderstood, Townsend was overwhelmed and blinded by anger --- or at least that's what he claimed later on.

No one else detected vulgarity, however. Although "construed as vulgar," the Sentinel continued, "it may truthfully be said that the words uttered were not obscene."

Had Mr. Ware and young Mr. Townsend encountered each other before? Was there bad blood between them? If these possibilities were investigated, they were not reported upon.

Whatever the case, "Young Townsend was indignant that such language should be used in the presence of his aunt and stepmother," the Leader reported, "and after driving them home, a distance of about a quarter of a mile, he returned with a hickory baseball bat, slipped up behind Ware, who was about to sing a song, and dealt him a terrible blow on the left side of the head, and from which death occurred the next day."

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The Murray town marshal was in the crowd and arrested Leroy on the spot.

Mr. Ware "was carried to the Murray hotel where he lingered insensible until 12 o'clock noon on Friday, when he died."

By that time, Roy was in jail in Osceola, but he was taken back to Murray on Saturday where preliminary information charging him with murder was filed. He waived preliminary examination on the advice of his attorneys and was returned to jail in Osceola to await the next session of the Clarke County Grand Jury.

"This sad affair has cast a sorrow over our neighborhood, which years will not efface. Roy is a boy of fine business qualifications, and socially was very much beloved. He has a quick temper, and failed to curb it," The Sentinel's Murray correspondent wrote. "The young man Townsend is well connected, and his crime has carried sadness to the hearts of his family and friends," The Leader chimed in.

It would appear no one was available to mourn Mr. Ware. Newspaper reports do not offer details of his burial or tell us if relatives were located and contacted. In the days following his death, a court-appointed administrator took charge of his meagre possessions. His pocketbook contained $20.70. On Aug. 11, his belongings were sold at auction at the courthouse in Osceola for $16.75.

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Leroy Townsend, born Feb. 18, 1865, in Colorado, had the distinction of being the grandson of two of Lucas County's earliest pioneers, William S. "Buck" and Edna Townsend, who settled at Chariton Point soon after 1847 and in whose log cabin home the county was organized in 1849.

Buck and Edna and their family had long since moved farther west, but their son, William H. "Dooley" Townsend,  and his second wife, Alice, ended up back in Chariton when his brother-in-law, Cornelius Tenbrock Haskins, launched an extensive lumber business here during the late 1870s. 

Alice (Siminton) Townsend and Susannah (Siminton) Haskins were sisters. The Haskins lumber operation included branches at Murray and Lucas, both of which were managed at various times by Mr. Townsend. Leroy was Dooley's son by a first marriage. There also were twin daughters by Alice, Leah and Lena, born during 1879.

The Townsends were living in Murray, where he was resident lumber yard manager, when Leroy killed Mr. Ware. They moved to Lucas soon after the killing and Dooley took over management of the Haskins & Co. branch there.

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The Clarke County Grand Jury convened in Osceola during early December and, as expected, indicted young Mr. Townsend on a charge of first degree murder.

However, Judge John W. Harvey, of Leon, made the extremely controversial decision to release Leroy on $10,000 bond citing, among other reasons, the defendant's fragile mental health.

The Townsend family hired two of Chariton's top attorneys, Joseph C. Mitchell and J.A. Penick, to defend him.

Leroy's attorneys were successful in winning a change of venue and so the case came to trail before a Decatur County jury in Leon during early June, 1884. Defense admitted the killing, but pleaded "emotional insanity caused by epilepsy."

The jury was having none of it, however, and convicted LeRoy after six hours of deliberation of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison and taken away to the penitentiary in Fort Madison.

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Attorney Mitchell appealed the conviction and a year later --- during October of 1885 --- it was overturned and LeRoy was set free on bond again, awaiting retrial.

"It is doubtful who is the happier of the two --- the boy who is thus given another opportunity for life and liberty, or his attorney who has secured this reversal," The Chariton Democrat of Oct. 2, 1885, opined.

LeRoy's second trial was scheduled for May 1886, but this time he was offered the opportunity to plead guilty to manslaughter --- and took it. He was returned to Fort Madison for a six-year term.

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By now, the victim had been largely forgotten and young Mr. Townsend's reputation greatly enhanced. So the drive began almost immediately in Clarke and Lucas counties to secure a pardon for young Roy and this was granted by Gov. William Larrabee during February of 1888.

There had been a petition bearing the signatures of some 1,000 residents of Lucas, Clarke and Decatur counties; recommendations from various lawmakers, attorneys, judges and public officials.

In justifying his pardon, Gov. Larrabee cited what he understood to have been the extreme vulgarity of Mr. Ware's remarks, overheard by young Mr. Townsend on main street in Murray back in 1883, the young man's emotional fragility and the bright future ahead of him.

And then there was the clincher, pulled out of a hat by LeRoy's attorneys --- a contention that attending physicians were responsible for Mr. Ware's death rather than a shattered skull. This line of defense was entirely new and involved speculation that the physicians who treated Mr. Ware had administered too large a dose of morphine, something those physicians denied.

Whatever the case, Leroy Townsend was a free (and pardoned) man.

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Much had been made during the years of Leroy's legal woes of his allegedly fragile health, but upon his return home to Lucas he stepped immediately into the shoes vacated when his father died during 1887 and assumed management of the Haskins & Co. Lumber Yard there.

A few years later, Leroy, Alice and his two half-sisters moved to Lathrop, Missouri, and established another successful lumber business there. By 1910, the family had moved to Clifton, Texas, still in the lumber business.

Leroy died as the result of a stroke at the age of 73 on Jan. 13, 1939, in Clifton, never having married. He is buried with his stepmother, Alice, in the Clifton Cemetery.

The grave of his victim in the Murray Cemetery has been lost.