An Innocent man's Peril.

Te Aroha News, Volume III, Issue 110, 11 July 1885, Page 4

An Innocent man's Peril.

Oh the 17th day of November, 1883, a coloined desperado naned Charles fl. Rugg strangled two women named May bee in a barn at Brookville, L. I ; then entered the house, where a blind and paralytic old man, also named Mt^bee, fat by the fire. Rugg knocked him senseless, and then robbed the house. Early in the follow ing January tho game negro, who had escaped arrest, went to the house of J. C Towns-. nd. at Oyster Bay, three miles from Brookville where he made a murderous assault with a mason's stone hammer upon Townsend and his wife. He did not kill this couple, but Mrs Townsend has since died of iier injuries. He also robbed their house. Soon afterwaids Sealey Sprague, Jiving about four miles distant from Oyster Bay, was assaulted by Rugg, robbed, and left for dead. Rugg afterward werrt into Sprague's house and robbed Mrs Sprague, but did not injure her. He was persued by the country people and captured. He was duly tried, ! confessei his crimes, and was hanged at Woodside last Friday. But two innocent men narrowly escaped being hanged for the crimes which he had committed. The murder of the Maybee woman and the murderous assault on Mr and Mrs Townsend created a reign of terror in that part of Long Island. Rugg was unsuspected and unknown at the time. Detectives were busily at work attempting to solve the bloody mystery, and the public excitement was intense. Under these circumstances suspicion was directed towards a neighbour of the Maybees' named Edmund Tappan, although none of the circumstances tended to implicate him in the crime. But he told some incoherent stories, and the detectives " worked him " with all the art of which they possess the mastery. Among other things it is alleged that they kept him halfdrunk the most of the time, and he appears to have not had a strong mind at the best. At length Tappan made a confession, alleging that his brother, John Tappan, living three miles distant, had killed the Maybee women and had assaulted the Townsends, and that he had assisted in the crime and in the robbery. John Tappan was then arrested, and it was found that he owned tho hammer with which the Townsends had been assaulted, and a pair of bloody overalls found in the vicinity. There were also tracks leading from his house to the scene of the crime. The evidence against the Tappuns, added to the confession of one of them, appeared overwhelming. It was about that time that the Sprague assault and robbery led to Rugg's arrest ; and pawn tickets found on his person showed where he had disposed of the property, including two watches which he had stolen at Maybee's and Townpend's, His subsequent confession, verified by eveiy circumstance connected with the murder— including the fact that he had stolen John Tappan's hammer and overalls from the woodshed where they were kept, and had gone from there directly to Townsend's house, where he committed that assault - settled the case, dissipated the suspicions that had been cast about the Tappans, and showed that Edmund Tappan's confession, wrung by the skill of the detectives, from the harassed and tortured man's unsettled imagination, was a fiction and a vision only. The whole singular case is a warning to prosecuting officers in tho matter of employing detectives, and as to the weight of circumstantial testimony.