JUDGE SHOT BY HIS SON.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 13664, 31 March 1908, Page 8

JUDGE SHOT BY HIS SON.

A KENTUCKY VENDETTA.

The shooting of Judge Hargis, of Jackson, Kentucky, by his reprobate son, closed a series of feuds which, says a New fork correspondent, can only be parelleled by the nerce vendet- . tas of bicilian Or- Corsica n romance. Judge Hargis was a rough uneducated man, but he vas Democratic boss of his county, and as such was county judge, and dispenser of political patronage. His influence was such that tor twenty years his misdeeds went unpunished, and he is reported to hare spent £40,000 in successfully defending charges of murder, but when be fhrashea his v grown-up son, he went too far. • The young man -went next day to his father's shop, wounded him, and v'hen .Ms father shrieked for mercy, fired two more shots into his body. Jtlargis was the central figure in the notorious Hargis-Coekrill feuds. • The Hargisos had* long heen dominant in the country, and when they were opposed by "the Gopkrills at the polls, ieeling became so bitter that revolvers were drawn. Each side sought to establish the jusjLice of its claim, by killing as many people as possible, aiid in the first nine months or the fued there were 38 deaths. ADr Cox, guardian of two Coukrill boys, was decoyed one . night and shot art his gate by a Concealed assassin. James Marcum, tho leading lawyer ill Jackson, who was fighting Hargis in local politics, , for' 'months never left home without carrying his infant daughter in his arnisi for he felt certain that bis enemies would spare the child. So soon as he omiited to take this precaution ho was • shot dead on the steps of tire Courthouse. His wife swore that she. would bring the murderers to justice, but although the actual - perpetrators were imprisoned, Hargis escaped conviction by trickery. The poor vfoman spent five, years in trying to brin£ I|be judge to justice. Jackson juries persistently refused to convict in such/ cases, in tho face of irrefutable evidence. Judge. Hargis had more than a presentiment of his end, for he bad liad made to order, a very expensive coffin. Ii is estimated ijiat during th© feuds 23 homes afid many business ( places were burned, and* 60 people were JkiUed. "Neither education, "nor wealth, nor the refinements o£ civilisation are as strong as tho murder lust in the Land of Feuds/* says a magazine writer. As for reform — "regeneration will come only through the introduction of outsido influences/of people' who will" not only intellectually but numerically settle in this broken, mountain region."

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Kauri