USA > California > Contra Costa County > History of Contra Costa County, California, including its geography, geology, topography, climatography and description; together with a record of the Mexican grants also, incidents of pioneer life; and biographical sketches of early and prominent settlers and representative men > Part 41
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" Since that time the temper of the hostile parties has not improved, and threatening demonstrations and preparations have been made on both sides, with no very serious results, however, until last Saturday (July Ist) when Silverio Monjas, one of the Moraga party, was shot by William Steele, as he affirms, in self-defense. On the previous day there had been a collision between the parties and a good deal of shooting. In the melee, one of the Moraga girls was struck with a gun and severely hurt by Mr. Yoakum, and the horse he was riding was fatally shot. Reports of these occurrences spread rapidly about the county, and created a degree of excitement and manifestations of indignation seldom produced in our usually quiet and moderate community ; and the excitement and indignation reached a higher pitch on Saturday, after the shooting of Monjas, threatening to culminate in a vengeful outbreak against the Yoakum party. In the heat of the excite- ment many intemperate and improper charges and threats were made, which a cooler judgment and a fuller knowledge of facts would not justify.
" Sheriff Brown was on the ground shortly after the shooting of Monjas, on Saturday, and on the information of Yoakum, found and arrested Steele. Yoakum voluntarily offered to surrender himself to the Sheriff for examina- tion before any competent magistrate, upon any charge that might be pre- ferred against him, and accompanied the Sheriff to Walnut Creek, where, on finding Justice Slitz was absent, they proceeded to Pacheco, and on reach- ing that place, found that Justice Ashbrook was also from home. Yoakum here declined to accompany the officer farther, though he offered to give his word or bond for appearance, whenever, and for whatever purpose, required. As the Sheriff had no warrant or authority whatever for detaining him, he was allowed to go; and the Sheriff has been highly censured therefor, but, so far as we can see, without the slightest good reason."
Monjas, who was shot by Steele, died about three o'clock on Saturday morning, and a Jury of Inquest, summoned and sworn on Sunday by
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Justice Allen, continued their inquires until Monday evening, when the inquest was adjourned to ten o'clock, Saturday morning at Walnut Creek.
Steele was brought before Justice Ashbrook for examination on Thurs- day ; the People in the conduct of the case were represented by District At- torney Mills, and the defendant by Judge Blake, of Oakland. The examin- ation was concluded on Friday afternoon, and Steele was held to answer for murder without admission to bail.
The Jury of Inquest found : Isaac Yoakum to be accessory to the kill- ing of the said Silverio Monjas.
He was brought before Justice Ashbrook of Pacheco on July 10th to answer to the charge of assault with a deadly weapon, with intent to com- mit bodily injury upon the person of Gunecinda Moraga in Moraga valley on June 30, 1871. On motion of Judge Warmcastle, acting for District Attorney Mills, the charge was modified to one of assault and battery. The defendant, contrary to the expressed desire of the Court and the prosecu- tion, objected to trial of the charge by jury, and in deference to his objec- tion the case was tried without a jury. The trial occupied the greater part of the 10th and 11th. The defendant conducted the case in his own behalf, assisted by a young lady, his daughter, who wrote out the testimony as given in by the witnesses. The evidence produced clearly sustained the charge, and established that the defendant had proved an aggravated as- sault upon the Moraga girl, striking her twice with his gun and inflicting severe hurts upon her person, while, at the request of his herder, she and her sister were assisting him to drive the defendant's sheep away from the inclosure held by the Moraga family. Yoakum was found guilty and fined five hundred dollars, but gave notice of appeal.
On the charge of being accessory with William Steele in the killing of Silverio Monjas, Isaac Yoakum was brought before Justice Wood of Dan- ville on July 24th, being continued till the 27th, and at the conclusion of the examination was held upon bail of three thousand dollars to answer to the charge.
The case of George Steele was tried in Alameda county, before the Third District Court, whose term commenced February 19, 1872. The case was transferred for trial on the motion and affidavits of the prisoner's counsel to the effect that existing prejudice would prevent an impartial trial in Contra Costa county. The case was set for March 4, 1872, and on that date he was acquitted. He was then held on the charge of an assault to murder, with bail bonds fixed at two thousand dollars.
KILLING OF PATRICK SULLIVAN .- On the afternoon of Saturday, October 28, 1871, Justice Ashbrook, of Pacheco, was notified of the death of Patrick Sullivan, at the residence of James Sullivan, his brother, near Bay Point, from a gun discharged at his head by Mrs. Catherine Sullivan, the wife of
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James. Of the untoward affair we find from the testimony adduced that James Sullivan was absent from home for several days, and had returned only on the 24th of October, but heard nothing from his wife that anything unpleasant had transpired ; but observed that she did not speak to his brother, nor he to her ; and on the 27th his brother told him that he must look out for another man as he was going to leave. On Saturday, the 28th, they had been sowing wheat in the forenoon, and all were at the dinner- table as usual, but his wife did not eat ; a circumstance that Sullivan attri- buted to her being unwell. After eating he (the husband) moved back his chair and was reading a newspaper, when he was startled by the discharge of a gun in the room, and on looking up, saw Mrs. Sullivan standing in the pantry door with the gun, and saw his brother fall forward upon the table. Shocked and alarmed, he sprang up and rushed out of the door, his wife following with the gun in her hands, and the children clinging to her skirts. In his excitement and agony of mind, he exclaimed, " My God ! what have you done ! was it an accident ?" to which his wife replied : "No ! I shot him. He deserved it. He was a villain. He attempted a vile outrage on me !" She then told him that the deceased on the previous Monday night (the 23d) had forced open the window, entered her bedroom, and attempted to outrage her, but she had fought him off; and on her declaring that she would take the children and go to Cunningham's (one of the neighbor's) for protection, he threatened if she did so, or if she reported a word of the matter to her husband, he would kill her. On the following morning, after she had passed a sleepless night, while she was preparing kindling-wood to light a fire, he came in, threw his arms around her and attempted to force her into his room, but she fought him off with the butcher-knife she was using to split the kindling, and her little boy, who had been waked by the noise, coming into the kitchen, he retired; but during the morning, and before the return of her husband, the deceased found an opportunity to renew his threat to kill her if she reported a word of what had occurred. All the testimony and collateral circumstances seem to sustain Mrs. Sullivan's statement of the matter to her husband, and the statement she made upon the inquest and the examination is the same. She was apprehended and held on five thousand dollars bail to answer to the charge before the Grand Jury. Mrs. Sullivan was duly arraigned and the case set for Friday, November 24, 1871, when she was very properly acquitted.
KILLING OF PETER PETERS .- A Welchman named Peter Peters was shot and mortally wounded by a fellow-countryman named Job Heycock on Thursday, March 14, 1872. From the testimony given before the Coroner's jury it appears that Heycock was aroused from his sleep on Thursday morning between the hours of four and five o'clock by a great noise in the room adjoining his bedroom. He got up, went into the next room, taking
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with him a loaded, double-barreled shot-gun. It was quite dark there ; but he thought he noticed somebody going upstairs ; he called out to him to stop, but receiving no answer, he fired. The deceased fell down to the bottom of the stairs. Heycock approached him, found him to be Peter Peters, a very particular friend of his. It also appeared from the testimony that William Rees, a person living with Heycock, was about lighting a fire in the kitchen when the deceased approached the window from the outside, broke a pane of glass, raised the window and came in. Rees did not know who the person was, his light having gone out, and was frightened so that he ran upstairs, causing thereby a great noise which woke everybody in the house. The Jury of Inquest returned a verdict of justifiable homicide.
In regard to the principal in this affair, the following " strange story " appeared above the caption " W.," in the Alameda Advocate of May 11, 1872: "In 1837, on the 26th of November, the cosmopolitan community of Crumlin, a small village in Monmouthshire, in the western part of England, were aroused and somewhat bewildered by the commission of a foul crime, the perpetrators of which did not only escape, but so skilfully covered their tracks that discovery seemed impossible. A recent disclosure made under very singular circumstances, as will be seen from this brief narrative, has brought to light this once thought impenetrable mystery. The circum- stances may not be unfamiliar to many of the old residents of Monmouth- shire. The victim was a young man by the name of Mason, who was found dead on the old Crumlin bridge with his body mangled in a fearful manner. A few weeks after this foul crime had been committed, three men disap- peared from the village very mysteriously to parts unknown. There has been strong suspicion that these were the guilty parties. One of the three was named Peter Peters, better known in this country as " Welsh Pete." For fifteen years he had been rambling through the different mining districts of California ; the last few years he had been laboring in the Mount Diablo coal mines. His voyage through life had been anything but pleasant. Given very much to dissipation, under the effects of which he was laboring on the morning of the 12th of February last, when he, at about five o'clock, leaped from his bed imagining that he was surrounded by a host of enemies, with various kinds of weapons in their hands, with the intention of taking his life. He ran to an adjoining house for protection and jumped through the window of the back kitchen. Mr. Heycock, the proprietor, heard the noise and went to the kitchen door with his gun in his hand, and, as he says, called three times ; hearing no reply he discharged the contents of his gun into Welsh Pete's body, when he fell to the floor. In a few moments he seemed quite conscious, the proprietor promptly dispatched a messenger for medical assistance, acknowledging that he had made a mistake. The utmost attention was paid to the wounded man, yet he gradually became more feeble, but his strength and voice were spared to make a clear confession of
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being accessory to the murder of T. Mason, on the old Crumlin bridge, thirty-five years before. At ten o'clock the same day his symptoms became worse and in a few moments after he breathed his last."
MURDER OF VALENTINE EISCHLER .- On November 16, 1872, one Valen- tine Eischler, a German, was killed on Marsh creek, about eight miles southeast of Antioch, near what is called the " Chemisal." He was living with his wife upon a small farm, and had in his employ one Marshall Mar- tin. During the stay of Martin, Mrs. Eischler formed a determination to get rid of her husband, and several plans were formed by her and Martin for carrying into effect her deadly purpose. In pursuance of the plan, Mar- tin went to Antioch one day and purchased a quantity of arsenic, and when he came home she mixed some of it with stewed pumpkin and put it upon the table for supper, but it so happened that Eischler did not partake of any of it. The next morning it was thrown down the privy. vault. A few days afterwards she repeated the dish; but Martin claimed that he per- suaded her to throw it away. She then wanted Martin to tell Eischler that there were some pigs for sale at Point of Timber, and to go along with him in the wagon, get him to drinking, and then buy a bottle of whisky and put arsenic into it. Martin went along with Eischler, but for some reason the plan did not succeed. Another plan was then formed by which Martin was to knock Eischler off the wagon on the way home from Antioch, and run the wagon over his head. A neighbor riding home with them pre- vented the execution of this plan. Then she suggested that Martin should shoot him. Martin had a revolver which he had purchased from a man who got it in Vallejo, and it would be necessary to go there to get cartridges to fit it. She gave him the money to go there, and he got the cartridges and returned. The day upon which the murder was committed, Eischler went to Antioch for a load of flour. Martin accompanied him, according to instructions. Before starting she placed an old blanket in the wagon so that Martin, after killing Eischler, could wrap the body up in it, and when he returned she would go with him to an old well near by and they were to throw the body down the well, pour coal oil upon it and burn it up. Martin's heart failed him, and he did not shoot Eischler. When they re- turned she was very angry with Martin for not carrying out her plan, and told him that he did not love her one bit or he would do as she wished him to. After unloading the flour and putting the horses in the stable, (it being about 4 P. M.) as Martin testified, he went about doing the chores and Eischler commenced making a double-tree. He had a piece of coup- ling, an ax, saw, hatchet and jack-knife, and was using the wagon-tongue as a work bench. Martin says that while he was watering a cow, which had to be led to water by a rope, Mrs. Eischler came out and commenced talking to her husband. They had some very high words ; he heard Eisch-
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ler say to his wife: "Woman, take your clothes and go back to the w- house you came from." Then Mrs. Eischler stepped back and picking up the ax, said : " I'll give you w- house," and struck her husband on the back of the head, knocking him over the wagon-tongue so that his body doubled over it; she then straddled the tongue and struck him two more blows on the front part of the head. Then she called Martin to come and help her drag the body into the stable. After placing it in the stable Mar- tin went to saddle his horse for the purpose of going to the Good Templars' Lodge, at Eden Plains' School-house, about two miles away. While fixing his horse, he says that she went into the stable with the ax and struck the victim two more blows with the ax, and that when she came out she said that she had found him sitting up, but that she had fixed him now. When Martin returned from the Lodge she told him to go and arouse the neigh- bors and tell them that Eischler was dead in the stable, and that the horses had kicked him to death. He obeyed her instructions. When the neighbors came some of them suspected that he had been murdered. The next day when they went to examine the body they found a great many hoar-hound burrs upon the woolen shirt of the deceased, and by this means they found where the body had been dragged to the stable. Afterwards they noticed the flies gathering upon Martin's shoes and pants, and this fact, together with the burrs upon the woolen shirt, led them to make search for the place where the murder had been committed. During this search Martin was very active in leading them off in different directions, but finally they came to the wagon and examined the sandy soil around it. They soon found a damp place, and upon putting some of the sand in a basin of water it ex- hibited a bloody color, and a greasy scum rose to the surface. Martin and the woman were then arrested and taken to Antioch, where they both made confessions, each charging the other, however, with having directly done the murder ; and Martin's testimony, under cross-examination on the trial, substantially agreed with this summary of the facts of the case.
Marshall Martin was duly executed January 23, 1874, having previously made a full confession of his share in the dread crime. On the scaffold he said : " Gentlemen, I am here on this platform to die an innocent man. That woman deserves ten times as much to die." It is not meet that we should here note the shocking details of his execution ; these will remain in the minds of many of our readers.
The wife of the victim of the barbarous drama has been ever since an inmate of the lunatic asylum at Stockton.
KILLING OF - JAMIENS .- What is known as "Sydney Flat," about half a mile below Somersville, was the scene of a most wanton murder, committed about one o'clock on the morning of Monday, January 27, 1873. Two wretched and disorderly brothels, to the annoyance and mortification
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of the respectable residents of Somersville, had been for some time shame- lessly maintained on " Sydney Flat." At the hour named on Monday morn- ing, as is gathered from the evidence, a drunken inmate of one of the estab- lishments, named Hattie Davis, in company with an American, were on the way from one of these houses to the other, which are separated by a distance of two or three hundred yards, followed by a Mexican named Jamiens, and a Mexican boy about seventeen years of age. Jamiens was playing upon a toy musical instrument, and the boy was carrying a bottle of whisky. The woman's drunken brawling attracted the attention of some of the visitors at the brothel she was approaching, and several of the men, among whom was James Carroll, started from the house towards them. On meeting, one of the number, named Green, said the woman asked him to take her home ; but, on his attempting to do so, the man who was with her tried to detain her, and he knocked him down. At this moment the two Mexicans joined the group, Jamiens playing upon his harmonica, the toy instrument before mentioned. Carroll asked the Mexican boy what he had in his hand, and on being answered that it was whisky, he snatched the bottle from the boy and knocked him down, either with the bottle or his pistol, and, turning on Jamiens, fired. Jamiens fell, exclaiming, "I am shot through the head," which were his last words, though he did not cease to breathe for some three or four hours afterwards. The deceased had been employed for some time at the Somersville mines, where he bore a good character, and was gen- erally known by the name of " Frank." On April 18th Carroll was con- victed of murder in the second degree, and was sentenced to twenty years imprisonment in the State Prison.
KILLING OF MICHAEL DUFFY .- Thomas Redfern was arrested on the afternoon of Saturday, June 21, 1873, at his residence about a mile south of Martinez, for having shot and dangerously wounded Michael Duffy. The wounded man was removed from Redfern's place, where the shooting oc- curred, to the County Hospital, and his right arm, from the elbow to the shoulder, was found shockingly shattered and mangled by the shot, which had entered the side of the neck, shattering the bones about the head of the spinal column and the base of the skull. He died July 4th. Redfern, it seems, had taken Duffy out to his house some days before, and had been spending most of the time there in convivial indulgences with him, until a quarrel arose between them which culminated in the shooting. May 14, 1874, Redfern was declared by a jury, not guilty.
MURDER OF MARTIN GERSBACH .- The locality known as the Hertsel Place, on the San Pablo creek, some three miles below what is called the Telegraph Road Crossing, was the scene of a murder on Friday evening, August 1, 1873, almost precisely parallel in cause and circumstances with the Eischler murder mentioned above. If there be any difference at all, it
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is that in the last deed both the implicated parties were apparently persons of competent mental capacity and responsibility, while in the other, neither of them, perhaps, were up to the common measure of mental competency and sense of responsibility. In both cases the wife and the paramour plotted the death of the husband ; attempted it repeatedly by means of poison, and finally compassed it by direct assault with murderous weapons ; in the former case with an ax, and the latter with pistol shot, hammer and ax.
Martin Gersbach was a German by birth, some thirty years of age, who by industry and frugality had accumulated a little money, some three or four thousand dollars, it is said, and had been a lessee of the place where he lived with his family, and where he was murdered, for something more than a year. His wife was a woman of about the same age, of German parentage and American birth. The paramour-murderer, Nash, alias William Osterhaus, was a man about the same age, also of German parent- age and American birth.
By the woman's statement, Nash was engaged by her husband about Christmas, 1872, to work on the place, and he soon began to pay her some improper attentions, which she slightly resented at first, but soon began to accept and encourage. When the character of the subsisting intimacy became apparent to her husband he became enraged, and threatened to procure a divorce ; but as he did not move in the matter further, they plotted to kill him, first dosing him with croton oil, given one day when he complained of being sick, then trying to have him take arsenic in medicine to counteract the effects of the oil, then by putting laudanum in his coffee, which he would not drink after the first taste, and spat on the floor ; they then tried to dispose of him by saturating his pillow with chloroform; and then Nash determined to pick a quarrel for the opportunity it might offer of killing him, but was unable to make a quarrel that he would resent. Finally, on Friday night, the 1st August, as she stated, after she and her husband had retired to bed about nine o'clock, Nash, who occupied a room above stairs, called for Gersbach to come up there. Gersbach, instead of complying, rose from the bed on which he was lying with his clothes on, and hurried out of the house, and as he did so Nash came down stairs with a pistol in each hand. He ran out after Gersbach, and she heard six shots fired in quick succession. She then heard a low groan, and, on going to the door, met Nash, who said Martin was shot. Just then he groaned. Nash at once took a hammer from the kitchen, went out to where Gersbach lay, and she heard several blows of the hammer on his head. Nash then re- turned and said he had finished him. He told her he would go over and tell Rowland, a neighbor, he had killed Martin in self-defense, but just as he was about to go Martin groaned again. Nash went to where he lay, and she heard heavy, dull blows given ; Nash then returned to her and said he had finished him with the ax. Nash then went off to carry his report of
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the death of Gersbach, and when he returned, before morning, said he would have to leave. He changed his bloody clothes, took about thirty or forty dollars that belonged to his victim, and went away. Such was the woman's statement. The officers found the blood-stained, cast-off clothing of the murderer, his pistol with six empty chambers and the blood and hair-clotted hammer in the room he had occupied, and spots of blood about the floor. Near the spot where the body of his victim fell they found the other pistol, fully charged.
After the murder Nash went to the house of Mr. Muir, a few hundred yards distant from that of the murdered man, and called him up. The dogs barked and made such threatening demonstrations that he remained some little distance off. The barking of the dogs was so furious that Muir could not distinctly hear what he said, further than that Gersbach had been killed ; and he therefore dressed and went over, either with Nash or follow- ing him, and found the wounded man still alive. Muir requested Nash to help him carry the man into the house, but he refused to do so; and while Muir was gone for other help, as we understand, Nash changed his clothes and left the place. The murdered man lingered until Monday, August 4th, and was sufficiently conscious during a portion of the time to give intelli- gent directions for the care of his boy and his property affairs by a friend, and to clearly designate Nash as his murderer.
After more than a week's hunt by night and by day among the hills, following up the scent of every reported straggler, and in almost every in- stance finding they had been on scent of the wrong man, and while Sheriff Ivory and his staff of officers were still scouring the hills and valleys for Nash, a telegram was received, August 11th, from Governor Booth, with the in- formation that he had been captured at Battle Mountain, Nevada. Under- Sheriff Hunsaker immediately dispatched a courier to find Sheriff Ivory, and telegraphed to the Battle Mountain Justice that he would start for the prisoner immediately, inquiring at the same time if he had a description of Nash, and was sure he had him. A reply was received from the Justice later in the evening, that he had the description, and the prisoner acknowl- edged himself the man. The courier sent for Mr. Ivory found him above Danville, shaping his course towards Tassajara. He at once turned home- ward and with all speed made his way to Battle Mountain. Nash was duly tried, found guilty May 1, 1874, and sentenced to imprisonment for life. In the case of Mary Gersbach, the jury, after three days' and nights' confinement for deliberation failed to agree. She was again tried, with a like result in December, 1874. The case dragged its slow length along up till November 9, 1875, when District Attorney Mills applied to the Su- preme Court for peremptory writ of mandate and review in the case of Mary Gersbach, which was denied; on Wednesday, November 17th, she was dis- charged from custody on her own bond of five thousand dollars.
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