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Woman Murdered
Brutal Crime Committed by
Vigilantes on a Nebraska
Ranch
Omaha, March 18. A special to the Bee from Butte, Nebraska,
says:
Sometime Friday, Mrs. W. T.
Holton, a respectable woman residing alone on a ranch in an isolated part of Keya Paha
County, was outraged and
lynched.
The crime is credited to the
vigilantes of the district, who believed her in league with the cattle
rustlers.
Some think the rustlers committed
the crime for revenge on account of evidence furnished by the woman against
them.
Persons passing the ranch
Saturday found the body and reported the matter today.
The coroner found $60 on the
womans person, which is regarded as certain evidence that the crime was not
committed by tramps.
No warrants have yet been made,
but a meeting of the citizens of the neighborhood was held yesterday and it was
decided prompt measures should be taken.
It is expected that another and
possibly several hangings will take place.
Several persons are under suspicion.
Idaho Statesman March 19, 1895
Fiends Incarnate
A wave from the depths of Hades,
bearing upon its fiery bosom remorseless fiends, must have swept over Keya Paha
County, and tarried long enough in flight to let its burden of soulless imps
slip away to the lonely home of Mrs. Holton.
It is impossible to conceive of
human beings reaching such a degree of depravity as to commit a crime so full
of diabolical planning and horrible in execution. But they are not human. They may have the lineaments of men, but
nature pushed them upward from their homes in the jungle, but omitted to give
them even so much as the instinct or heart of the tiger.
It were an insult to the lower
order of the animal kingdom to call them brutes. They are nameless things that breaths and
move, but have no part in the world of man, animal or snake.
They stand off by themselves in
the world of creation so utterly inhuman that the people of Darkest Africa
would appear as angels of light and of love if put beside them. And they no more belong in Nebraska
in Keya Paha County,
than they belong anywhere else.
Pestillence is a plague that is
the respecter of no person or place, so with those fiends only they are far
less merciful than was the oriental black death, and a black hole, like of Calcutta, should be their
dwelling place until worms claim their loathsome bodies.
Omaha World Herald March 19, 1895
The Climax of Crime
(Fremont Tribune)
The most wicked crime ever
committed in Nebraska was the lynching a few
days ago of Mrs. Holton of Keya
Paha County.
This woman was one who bore a
good reputation and who lived alone, battling sternly with life on a claim,
while her husband was confined in an insane asylum.
The supposed motive for the
brutal outrage perpetrated upon her, followed by a violent but merciful death,
was a fear on the part of cattle thieves that she knew too much of their wicked
work and would divulge the secret of their crime.
It is almost inconceivable that
any human being could descend to such a depth of depravity as to organize a mob
of other fiends to prey upon a defenseless woman.
The world may well stand aghast
at this horror, which is of far greater enormity than the Scott tragedy,
because the motive was much less.
But black as is this crime, it
ought not to reflect upon the character of Nebraska as a state.
It cannot be denied there are
some ruffians left among the hills of the Niobrara. That section was settled by outlaws who were
driven out of civilization and their fiendish outbreaks are but the natural
result of lawless impulses.
Attorney General Churchill has
proceeded with commendable promptness to the scene of the lynching and it is to
be hoped he will succeed in bringing to justice the scoundrels who have placed
a foul blot upon the fair name of the state.
Omaha World Herald March 31, 1895
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