GRAVES OF MURDERED MEN BLOWN UP WITH DYNAMITE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 9010, 15 October 1892, Page 2 (Supplement)

GRAVES OF MURDERED MEN BLOWN UP WITH DYNAMITE.

One of the most terrible vendettas which have caused bloodshed in some of the best known families in Tennessee has just come to an end. Mr. Ida Mullins, the head of a well-to-do family living about three miles from the city, together with his two grown sons, was found dead at their farm by the neighbours a few* weeks ago, having been repeatedly shot by some parties unknown. Though the Mullins family and the Clayton family have been at feud for twenty years, and though many members of both families have been killed, there seems to be no evidence that any member of the Clayton family was in the vicinity at the time of the murder, and it was consequently attributed to negroes who had been resisted in an attempt to rob. The murder caused a great sensation in tho neighbourhood, and the funeral of the three victims was attended by nearly all the people of the country round about. The strangest incident in connection with it, however, has now developed. The bodies were buried in the Bristol cemetery, which lies about half a mile from the town, in an unfrequented locality. A few nights ago, as a man named Matthews was walking along the cemetery road about ten o'clock at night, he heard a noise in tho cemetery, which induced him to investigate it, and carefully advancing under cover of the gravestones, he discovered what he at first supposed to be a party of grave-robbeis. There were several men dimly discernible in the darkness moving about a grave. What they were doing he could net make out, but after working about five minutes they went away, and he could hear several voices joking and laughing as they went. He then rose and went forward toward the scene of their work, bub had taken only a few steps when a'"tremendous explosion occurred, throwing him to the ground and stunning him. When he recovered he found that a burial plot had been blown up, apparently with dynamite, which had scooped out a large hole in the soft earth and torn three coffins to fragments, mutilating and dismembering the bodies. Next morning it was learned that the bodies were those of the three Mullins victims.