A GHOST'S FALSE STORY.

Mataura Ensign, Volume 7, Issue 369, 27 June 1884, Page 5

A GHOST'S FALSE STORY.

( Finis Alien, who is registered as 1 convict No.' 2993, has' been serving a ; i life sentence in Fort Madison Peni- . i tentidry, lowa, "since" November, 1876, : for the murder of John Long, an old farmer of Tremont County, He was convicted on the testimony of Long's wife, who confessed to having been an accomplice in the crime, and now after, having bwen imprisoned over four years, the Senate Inveatigating Committee has concluded thit Alien was perfectly innocent of the crime, and 1 have unanimously reported in favor of his immediate pardon. The testimony \ upon which this report is based un-? folds one of the most curious stories of circumstantial evidence that ever was 1 told, and has in it a supernatural element which adds greatly to the strange- \ ness of the tale. It is thus told by a' Des Moiaes correspondent of the ' New York Times ' : — Finis Allen is the son; of a farmer, but he was delicate from his boyhood, and instead of working, like his. brothers, on the farm he devoted himself to housework, and became a . vary good cook. Early in 18^8, when, about eighteen years old,! young Aljwn went to live with John: Long, at Manti, Freemont County, byi whom he was hired to help Mrs Lon^ in the house. John Long was seventy and his wife 'sixty- seven years old at' this time, and Finis proved a valuable: addition to the household of the oldcouple. Matters went quietly along until. January 16, 1879, when John Long was found early in the morning dead in his barn, lying in a stall almost: under the heels of a vicious colt. ■ There were several cuts and bruises on i -hia body, and everything indicatedthat he had been kicked to death by the colt. There was blood on the! planks and wall of the stable near the body, and the wounds wore apparently su6h as would reeult from the kick of a Bharp-shod horse. In both hands the dead man had grasped the litter of the stable so firmly that the hands had to be soaked in hot water before they could be opened. The premises were < thoroughly searched for evidences of < foul play, but nothing was found. A < light snow had fallen early in the '. night, but there were no blood stains i or unusual tracks outside the stable. 1 Mrs Long told the coroner's jary that < she and her husband had beeu awak- 1 ened about three o'clock in the morn- < ing by the noise of the horses kicking and plunging in the stables. Mr Long i went out to the stable, and, after < waiting for him to return for, some 1 time, she followed him. Upon finding g him dead she ran to the house of D. i Torrance, a farmer, and aroused him. i Tor ranee woke Allen, who had been i sleeping upstairs, and the two men re- s moved the body from the heels of the f colt. The jury, after hearing this i statement and examining the premises, i returned a verdict " That Long had c been kicked to death by the horse,"and c the body was buried. A meeting of the heirs was then held, and Mrs Long produced a will made just before his death by her husband, in which all the property was left to her. She declared that she intended to keep the entire t estate for herself and Finis Allen, who >] had been a better boy to her than any j of her own sons. A quarrel followed ] over the property, and suspicion began [ to be [arouse 1. About this time the g newspapers were full of the Mack murder case in Wisconsin, in which it was { proved that a wife had conspired with a hired man to murder her husband, <: and to avert suspicion the body was i thrown under . the heels of a horse. There was much shaking of heads and ! comment over the similarity of the two cases, and finally Long's body was dug g up and a second inquest was held. The doctors disagreed about the character of * the wounds, and the verdict was that • the old man came to his death "from t injuries inflicted. by the kicking of the ,; horse, or in gome other manner to the • jury unknown/ A reward was offered \ and detectires were put to work on the case. Mrs Long was a member of the ± non-polygamous branch of the Mormon . Church, and she had implicit faith in a Mormon elder of the neighborhood named Matthews, who was reported j to hold converse with the spirits of the \ dead. This elder, after the second in*, quest, was confronted, as he claimed, • by the ghost of John Long, ■which told ( him that Finis Allen killed him and | threw him in the stable '' behind the j horse. The elder reported this ghostly j interview first to a lawyer who laughed £ at it, and afterwards to some of his < followers, who heard it with unques- ( tionable credulity. Meanwhile the j detectives had been working on Mrs c Long, and finally one of them induced ( her to make a confession, and on this ( a preliminary information was filed,and j both Mrs Long and Finis Allen were c arrested and thrown into gaol to await j the action of the Grand Jury. When the Grand Jury met she was next told , that if she would turn State's evidence , she would be released at once. The . Mormon elder sat directly in front of * her' and made her " look him squarely j in the eye," and by this and other mes- j meric performances the old woman was , induced to confirm the revelation made s to her spiritual adviser by the ghost, \ and to confess that " Finis made away \ with the old man." An indictment , was found against Allen, and his trial ( began in November, 1879. Mrs Long swore that Finis came , downstairs in ■ the night and attacked the old man in bed, striking him on the head with a hammer. Jjong sprung from the bed, and in the struggle which followed the handle of the hammer was broken, and Finis then killed Long with the fite shovel. She and Finis burned a, blanket that was stained with blood, and washed the stains out of the carpet, and Fsais then took the body to the stable, and passing behind the heels of five horses, threw it where it was found, back of the vici« in colt in tfce sijtth stall. The \ old woman described the hamqjer, which had been on the farm for years; and was of a size- and shape that would at once attract, attention.. A hamnrer answering the description was put in evidence and Finis Allen was convicted of nrar-

der in the first degree, and sentenced to the penitentiary fqr.lffe. ,, Tlie,hani v mer *vas the connecting link in the chain of evidence,- and this has now apparently been broken by ihe testi-. mony just secured by the Sedate, Committee. The inconsistency of the story that Long was killed in the house is shown by an affidavit of Daniel Torrance, who was the first man at the stable ©v the night of the murder. He swearß that there was no blood on the snow, as there would have, been Jiad the body been carried to the stable, and that opposite the head on the stable wall was a spots of blood which had every appearance of having spurted on it and then run down. A farmer named L. P. Allen makes an affidavit; that he assisted Long in building a^ corn-crib in November, 1878, and that while building it the old man lost the identical hammer with which it was proved on the trial that; Allen killed him. The hammer was lost in the crib, and though a long search, was made for it, it was not found. This was two,' months before Farmer Long was found' dead in the stable. Stephen D. Newton, another farmer, swore that he was present on the Ist of June or, July, 1879, when a crib of corn was shellwd on the farm of Mrs Long. It was the same crib' that farmer Allen had helped Long to build.' Newton saw a ' man named A. D. Colvinpicka hammer out of the crib from which they were shelling. It, was an old rivetting hammer, the same, which was lost in the proceeding, JNorember, and which was produced^ at the trial as the instrument with which Finis Allen had attacked Long .in bed. It was given to Henry Long, a son of the dead man. Newton's testimony is confirmed by Charles Banks, who also saw the hammer found 1 and swears that it was given to Henry Long. The .effect •'• of the evidence is to show that the ham me* which was produced at tho trial of Finnis Allen as the weapon which h6 had used to kill Long in bed was used in the corn crib two months before, and was not found until fiv6 or six months after the old man's death. The Committee secured other evidence showing conclusively that Mrs Long had been under the influence of the Mormon elder, Matthews, when she made her so-called confession; that her son Henry and her daughter, Mrs Wilcox, had inf duced her to 9wear falseiy against Finis Allen by telling her that it was her only chance of getting out of prison ; and that' she had con- t tradicted her assertion that Allen was t guilty since he has been in prison, , saying to J. S. Morris, one of the c witnesses, that the " charges were { false ; that she had been scared into- c swearing against young Allen, and ( that her testimony was false, and . was so given through the threats and ] intimidations of others." There is no t doubt; that young Allen will be. par- | donedat once, T