HANGED BY A MOB.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIII, Issue 7656, 5 June 1886, Page 2 (Supplement)

HANGED BY A MOB.

A WIFE MURDERER EXECUTED BY A BAND OP MASKhD MEN. On April 27, at Springfield, Mo., George E. Graham, the wife murderer, was hanged by a mob. He made no entreaties for mercy, but went to his death stoically, and died apparently without a struggle. The lynchers numbered about 200 armed and masked men. They surrounded the County Gaol at 1.30 a.m., and demanded the surrender of the prisoner. The sheriff refused to comply, when the mob overpowered him, battered down the prison doors, secured their victim, and at two o'clock they moved down Bouli-ville-street with Graham in their midst. The people who saw the weird procession fancied that the lynchers would take Graham to Malloy Farm, and there hang him, and throw his body into the well where his murdered wife's decaying corpse was found, but the leaders of the avengers had other plans. They started in the direction of the Malloy place as a ruse, but changed their course, gave their followers the slip, and, while yet in the city limits, hanged Graham to a tree just one hour after the attack had been made on the gaol. The mob then quietly dispersed in all directions. On Graham's dangling body an obituary notice, written in characteristic Western style, was pinned. It was a plea that justice had been done, and a warning to ex-convicts and murderers. "We also give warning," it said, "that any person or parsons of any rank or section who dare to discover the actors in this tragedy will be surely and speedily despatched to hell, where all things are revealed to the curious. In justice to the memory of Sarah Graham, the loving wife and tender mother, whose life was sacrificed at the altar of Hecate, we subscribe ourselves, citizens of Greene County, Missouri." The coroner held an inquest over the body the same morning, and the jury returned a verdict to the effect that the deceased came to his death by strangulation at the hands of persons unknown. _ Cora Lee, Graham'a alleged accomplice, had been informed that an attempt to lynch him would be made, but she failed to notify the sheriff or to make any attempt to save her lover's life.