History of Fresno County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present, Volume I, Part 58

Author: Vandor, Paul E., 1858-
Publication date: 1919
Publisher: Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company
Number of Pages: 1362

USA > California > Fresno County > History of Fresno County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present, Volume I > Part 58

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Sentenced in the Jail

Deserving of mention was the case of Edward Delhantie, a giant, burly negro accused of an unmentionable crime. One of the criminal puzzles of 1909 was "Is Delhantie crazy?" He assumed the ferocity of a tiger and his every appearance from jail meant physical overpowering of him. He made on one court appearance an assault on the unoffending courtroom clerk. There was apparently no physical control of him save when he was manacled and shackled. He entered a plea of guilty and was sentenced to imprison- ment at Folsom for fourteen years. The sentencing was in the county jail, the burly giant behind bars and the attending court officials in the corridor. An imaginative writer referred to the episode as one that "will long remain as one of the most Dantesque events of 1909 silhouetted on the brain until time shall efface the memory of all things."

An Unpunished Homicide

Because denied a second time permission to see his wife stopping at a lodging house at 625 K Street, J. E. Kerfoot, a packing house laborer, shot and killed Hamlet R. Brown, proprietor of the house. on the night of November 16, 1909. The police was notified but was given the number 645 J Street. There is no such number. People in the vicinity thought they had heard three shots fired coming from a lumberyard two or three blocks away. This also proved a delusive errand. A second police call, nearly one hour and a half after the fatality, gave the right address. Brown was found dead in the house hallway near the back door with a bullet wound in the left breast. Kerfoot had escaped and he never was arrested. The Kerfoots had come to Fresno from Bakersfield about two months before, lived together at the Brown house about a month when a separation took place and Ker- foot left, owing one month's rent. Kerfoot had come drunk to see the wife and was denied admission, Brown telling him to come in the morning when sober and making a taunting remark about the rent due. Kerfoot returned later, was again ordered away, there was a scuffle, a slap in the face and the shooting followed. The woman was in the house when the affair took place but remained in seclusion.

Madman Runs Amuck

Three dead, one supposed to be fatally injured and two others slightly wounded was the bloody record achieved by George C. Cheuvront, a local rancher, who in a fit of insanity attempted on the morning of December 23, 1901, to exterminate a family of five with hatchet at his home at 167 Nielsen Avenue while preparations were being made for the breakfast. After the ghastly deed, Cheuvront apparently regained his mind and escaped from the house. He hurried in the direction of his peach orchard, west of town, but crossing the Southern Pacific tracks he became either remorse stricken or attempted to board a train and fell-at any rate the passenger train passed over him, mangled him to death and the remains were later in the day found

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in a culvert into which they had been tossed by the swift moving train. Next day the remains were at the morgue with those of the murdered wife and of twelve-year-old son, Claude, while at a sanitarium lay little nine-year-old Blanche Gladys, not expected to live but proving a physical marvel, fighting a long fight against death and after months of suffering recovering to baffle every surgical diagnosis. The act of Cheuvront was that of an insane man as abundantly established by proof. The instrument in his hands was an axe in the hands of a man who weighed 200 pounds and who for his age had remarkable physical strength. The wife and son did not expire until the day after the murderous attack. She was struck three blows from behind in the back of the head near the left ear. She died in the operating room at a sanitarium. The boy died without regaining consciousness. He had wound in the back of the head similar to the one of his mother and the brains oozed at the gaping wound. With the loss of several ounces of the brain, the lad lived nine hours. Little Gladys received a hard blow on the top of the skull and face was cut about eyes and nose-the skull bone pressed against the brain. The assault on the wife was committed in the kitchen. No words were exchanged in the house. The first intimation of a tragedy was her piercing screams as she attempted to retreat at the kitchen door. The children leaped from their beds when they heard the screams. Cheuv- ront rushed into adjoining bed room brandishing the blood covered axe and heeded not the terrified pleas of Gladys. Cowan M. McClung, nineteen-year- old step son, and George Cheuvront, the older son grappled with the de- mented man but their strength was not equal to the occasion and the little girl was struck a glancing blow. Claude, the other son, received his fatal injury a few seconds later, falling back on bed with blood streaming from wound. Gladys also sank on her bed unconscious and bed clothes were crimsoned with blood. Then Cheuvront turned his attention to McClung and the son George, striking the latter several glancing blows on head, face and body but they proved only abrasions. McClung attempted to wrest the axe and Cheuvront pausing and placing hand to forehead surrendered possession of the weapon to the step son and fled from the house. The struggles carried the trio from the bedroom out to the front porch, where Cheuvront staggered and fell on his head. He was fifty-one years of age and a Frenchman by nativity. The wife was of the same age, her maiden name was Blanche Sanders; Cheuvront was her second husband. By a pre- vious marriage with McClung, she had two sons. Cheuvront had been a resident of the valley for twenty years coming from near Visalia to Fresno fifteen years before and residing for a time at Easton. His specialty was hog raising. He was a man of some property and for a year or more before the tragic event of December, 1909, had on divers occasions manifested evi- dences of insanity. He had been arrested once, was kept in detention await- ing examination as to his sanity but had apparently recovered it before the examination as the medical men pronounced him sane.

Saved by a Miracle

Coming upon a suspicious character named V. L. Johnson on the night of January 30, 1912, in the alley in rear of the Union National Bank and the order to halt being unheeded, an exchange of pistol shots followed. The shot of Policeman James L. Cronkhite killed his man dead in his tracks. Cronkhite's life was miraculously saved, the bullet striking bis metallic star and being deflected. For his heroic act the bank presented him a gold watch and chain as a testimonial. Cronkhite died September 8, 1912, after a surgi- cal operation, having long suffered from cancer of the stomach. He wore Star No. 2, was six years a fireman and seven a policeman, promoted from roundsman to be detective.

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Traced by a Rag

Clarence French and George H. Ashton, professional safe crackers, with a record of prior convictions which they acknowledged, were sentenced November 22, 1913, each to fifteen years imprisonment at San Quentin. They were arrested in San Francisco for the dynamiting in Fresno of the safe in October before of Holland & Holland's grocery store. They were placed on trial and so strong was the case presented against them that their attorney abandoned further effort and the prisoners pleaded guilty. A third defendant, John O'Keefe, was discharged. The principals were expert safe crackers and a perfect case of circumstantial evidence was presented by the detectives of the two cities. The clue against them was a piece of rag torn out of a shirt cloth in which the burglarious tools were wrapped. The piece was dropped at the safe door and was of a particular pattern. Raided in their apartments in San Francisco, tools and wrapping shirt cloth were found in their posses- sion. Piece fitted the tear and the pattern. The couple was suspected of other safe cracking jobs in the county committed at the time but they were such expert operatives that only the Holland job could be definitely saddled upon them by legal proof.

Murder by Man and Wife

Women have not figured conspicuously in Fresno in the annals of crime. A notable exception came to light in the murder March 31, 1917, of Faustin Lassere, a well to do farmer of National Colony. The murderers, according to their pleas of guilty in the expectation that this would save them from the gallows, were C. L. Hammond and wife, Anna. Avarice was the motive for the crime. The woman was young and by some might be regarded as pre- possessing in appearance. The couple was not given the best of records by the authorities in that pretending that she was single and marriageable sev- eral attempts had been made to obtain money and property from aged bachelors or widowers on her promises of marriage. This was the plan adopted to worm herself into the confidence and good graces of Lassere. Hammond and wife both made confessions when they realized that there was no further hope. He declared that the murder was her inspiration and suggestion, and she that he planned the crime and forced her to be his accom- plice. At any rate, she became the housekeeper for Lassere and on the day in question before the meal Lassere was bludgeoned into unconsciousness and slashed with knife until there was no doubt of his death. Then both dragged the body out and having opened a grave to receive the remains they were buried under a manure pile and the grave frequently watered to accelerate decomposition. The Hammonds were never allowed after arrest to communicate with each other. They were not even brought into court together. They were arraigned on separate occasions and they were to have been tried separately. On the day set for her trial June 7, she pleaded guilty and after a long statement of the crime was sentenced to life imprisonment at San Quentin. Thereupon she had an attack of hysteria and had to be re- moved from the courtroom. He was brought in later in the afternoon after a change of mind and heart and also pleaded guilty, made his statement of the crime, declaring that he was moved to act as accomplice because of his love for her. He was also sentenced to life imprisonment but at Folsom penitentiary. In their statements both unbared their past and revealed cir- cumstances which were not to the moral credit of either. Both, it was under- stood, would have pleaded guilty in the first place if any promise had been held out to either that their lives would have been spared for their diabolical crime. Whether the crime was her inspiration or not, certain it was that Hammond was the cringing yellow cur in the court after his plea when he attempted to fasten all the blame for the crime and the program of its details on the woman. The Hammonds were comparatively young people. Their

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life imprisonment left parentless two young children, who became county charges, who if they ever learn their antecedents will in shame abjure their names. So with the murder of Lassere three children were left orphaned. He left an estate of about $8,600 after payment of expenses. A relative was appointed guardian of them to receive the estate on distribution, and there- after the children removed to make their home with the guardian at Law- ton, Ia. The confessed details of the butchery of Lassere were as revolting as in the case of Vernet.

A Costly Jamboree

Constable A. B. Chamness of Fowler was run down and killed on an evening in September, 1917, on the state highway near Calwa by an auto- mobile driven by W. A. Johns, while intoxicated, a prominent vineyardist of Parlier. He was arrested and held to answer for manslaughter and for neglecting to render aid to those he had injured in his wild ride. Chamness fell in front of Johns' car while trying to arrest him. Before this accident, Johns had demolished a wagon in which rode a woman and two girls. They also were injured. The constable alighting from the Fresno-Selma stage in pursuit of Johns fell and his skull was crushed. Johns pleaded guilty before the Superior court and was released on probation, one condition being that he abjure the use of intoxicants for the remainder of his life, his state at the time of the accident disproving malicious intent. The representation was also that he had made "restitution" to the widow in the sum of $2,500, also recompensing the other injured. Chamness was sixty years of age, had been constable of Fowler for seven years and at one time was town marshal. Johns was sentenced on the lesser accusation of failing to render aid to the injured victims of his reckless exploit.

A Woman Forger

A dynamite explosion early in the morning on the last day of October, 1917, wrecked the home of W. R. Holmes on the William Newman ranch about twelve miles northeast of Fresno. Holmes sleeping on the porch was covered with debris but uninjured. Later in the day Mary I. Black, a for- tune teller and divorced wife of Holmes, was arrested for the forgery of his name to a note for $6,000 in her favor. A year before, she had sued him on that note, claiming that it had been given her in a property settlement agreed upon at the time of separation and she was given judgment. For this forgery she was later found guilty, denied release on probation and suspended judgment and sentenced to the penitentiary. There was no proof as to the dynamiting but it was strongly suspected that the woman placed the sticks. Roof of the house, a two-room building, was blown off, parts of the floor torn into splinters and the walls fell out intact. A rocking chair was blown through the window near Holmes' bed and landing on him shielded him from the smaller debris that covered him in bed.

Murder of the "Old Broom Man"

May 16, 1919, Edwin S. Taylor, a well known character of Fresno City, known as "The Old Broom Man," was treacherously and foully murdered in the tractor shack on the L. W. Gibson ranch, three miles northwest of the town of Clovis. Friday, June 6, the murderer, Ernest Nakis, was in cus- tody as the murderer, and two countrymen were in jail as accessories after the fact in having harbored and concealed him after the crime. The search for the principal had been a long one, involving a journey to towns in Lower California. Taylor was an inoffensive old fellow who was a street and house- to-house peddler of brooms. He affected great poverty, and, to give sem- blance to his pretensions, went for days unshaven, wearing cast-off and patched clothing, looking the part of a very beggar. He had money, though, and this led to his undoing. After his death the public administrator un-

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earthed thousands of dollars on deposit in banks. He was supposed to carry considerable money on his person-no one knows how much. It was to gain possession of this that he was lured to the Clovis ranch on some pretense of a sale of the place to him. Whatever the plan, the old fellow fell into the trap, and his life was the forfeit. The murderer was seen to arrive at the ranch in an auto, with the murdered man, to inspect the ranch; the report of shots within the tractor shed was heard, Nakis was seen to come out and walk around to the front of the ranch, until he drove away ; and later curiosity drew attention to the shed and Taylor was found there shot to death. Nakis was arrested at the Fleener ranch, two and one-half miles from the scene of the murder, sleeping on a mattress under the bed. The identification of the prisoner was complete. Placed between five prisoners, the brothers Edward and Frederick Smith, ranchers, who had seen Nakis drive up to the Gibson ranch with Taylor, identified him positively, and Edward created a dramatic scene. The latter had also made note of the numbers of the auto. Besides there was the identification of Nakis by a policeman as the man he had seen on May 16th, in an auto on Callisch street with Taylor, and the cir- cumstance was not one to be forgotten, because it was probably the one occasion in Taylor's long residence here that he had ever been seen riding in an auto. There was also a fourth identification by a woman caller at the jail, who had known the old man well and who recognized Nakis as the auto companion of the broom peddler on the morning of that ride to his death. The arrest of Nakis occurred in an unoccupied house on the Fleener ranch, which is said to have once been leased and occupied by the accused. It was stated that the blood-stained coat of Taylor, besides a .38 caliber revolver, and $137 in currency, were found in the prisoner's possession when arrested. The accessories were the lessees of the ranch who harbored Nakis on the premises, Nakis probably having been animated by the same lure that has led to the undoing of many another criminal, in a return to the scene of his crime.

CHAPTER LXIII

PICTURESQUE NARRATIVE REVEALED IN A MADERA TRIAL FOR MUR- DER. THRICE THE CASE WAS SUBMITTED TO JURIES. VICTIM WAS A PIONEER OF THE DAYS OF THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD, AND ONE OF THE SQUAW-MEN OF EARLY FRESNO. NO PROOF ON THE TRIALS OF A MOTIVE FOR THE KILLING. REMARKABLE REBUTTAL OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE. TALE OF A FEUD WITH THE MONO TRIBE OF INDIANS. MUTE EVIDENCES OF IT IN A HILLSIDE COLLECTION OF GRAVES OF VICTIMS WHO DIED WITH THEIR BOOTS ON.

A picturesquely interesting narrative was revealed on the ten days' trial in Madera County in November, 1908, of T. H. Muhly for the murder of James W. Bethel, an old resident of Fresno County and a pioneer of Cali- fornia of 1848, who participated in some of the Indian wars and took part also in the wild and rugged life of early days. A lack of motive for the killing was one of the unexplained features in the remarkable case. This was taken advantage of in behalf of the prisoner to give basis for the theory that the murder may possibly have been committed by Indians in revenge because of ancient feud between the Bethel family and the remnant of the Mono tribe. Recital was made of a story of bloodshed fitting a yellow-backed dime novel. Details of this tale were furnished in large part by the late Judge George Washington Smiley, then eighty-five years of age, and an old timer who had crossed the plains with Bethel upon the discovery of gold. Much of this testimony was ruled out because hearsay.

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Various features made the case one of the most remarkable. The first trial resulted in the finding of Muhly guilty of manslaughter with recom- mendation to mercy in the sentence. The sentence was imprisonment for ten years. The prisoner had to combat on the trial not alone the public sentiment in a community that is noted for its clannishness but also the evidence at- tempting to connect him with the homicide. The jury used the courtroom for its deliberations and after its discharge there was found a tabulation of its seven votes up to the time of a halt when the court was asked for a ruling on certain disputed points in the case. The tabulation is interesting for the remarkable fluctuation of sentiment among the jurors on the first seven successive ballots. The showing was this:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Guilty Not Guilty 7 8 65 4 3

5 4 6789

10 1

Appeal was taken and new trial was granted which resulted in another disagreement, the jury standing nine for not guilty. On the third trial in 1909, Muhly was found guilty of manslaughter and the ten-year sentence was again pronounced. While serving the sentence, Muhly was paroled.

The accusation was that he had shot and killed Bethel on the 28th of February, 1908, on premises on the Crane Valley road three miles from Power House No. 3 and four miles from North Fork. Bethel was wounded first with fine shot from a gun in the left side of the face and then had skull crushed either with the barrel or the stock of the gun. Muhly was a rancher who in 1904 had bought a half interest in the premises from Bethel. The latter as a pioneer of the earliest days had as many others in those times married a woman of the Mono tribe and raised a family of half breed children. Muhly had also entered into relations with the tribe through his marriage with Polly Walker, a half breed of the Walker family of Fine Gold and niece of the Walker, who was one of the pioneer sheriffs of Fresno. Muhly was a man about fifty years of age, and Bethel although seventy-six years of age had taken up with a married white woman of Tulare County, and it was un- derstood intended to marry her as soon as he could divorce the Indian wife. He was one of the best known of the living early pioneers and came in 1870 to the place where he was living and where he was killed. For a time he conducted a roadhouse tavern and store, though for several years preceding his killing he had only the store. He was once a well to do man.

Muhly possessed a No. 12 shot gun which it was abundantly proved was used in common for quail hunting. Bethel slept in the tavern premises at Bethel's Station and Muhly and wife made their abode in a house sixty yards from the tavern, Bethel taking his meals with them. Muhly admitted that on the day of the murder he had the gun hunting quail but left the fowling piece with Bethel to try his luck. Bethel was late for supper that night but after the meal returned to the store, Muhly remaining at home to clear up the table and dishes. Shortly thereafter two shots were heard and between the shots some one exclaimed excitedly, "Boys, don't do that!" At the trial the gun had disappeared and it never was found, though effort was made to locate with divining rod its place of concealment on the ranch. Mrs. Muhly testified that her husband was in the kitchen shortly before the report of the shots. He ran out in time to note the flash of the second shot in the gathering twilight. After a time he went to the store and found Bethel dead on the ground by the side of the porch.

Investigation next morning disclosed that one of the shots struck the wall of the building about one foot above the porch and at close range. The shot in Bethel's face and in the wall was No. 8 fitting the gun. The car- tridges were the only kind about the house. The gun contained two empty cartridges and the porch showed a blood patch. On the trial was introduced

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as an exhibit a handkerchief found in the barn forty or more days after the homicide-a silken, dirty rag with blood spots. Muhly said the handker- chief was not his and he had never seen it before. Then there was evidence that teamsters were accustomed to use the barn on their journeys, and well it might have been that some one of them had cast the rag aside. This was plausible enough.

Thirty days or so after the homicide the Bethel-Muhly premises were gone over carefully and on a flat rock near the chicken house was found a mass of overall strips cut from the hip down. Some of these were blood marked. These and a pair of blood spotted shoes were submitted to a San Francisco chemist for analysis. He deposed that they were blood spotted but whether blood of human or animal he was not prepared to state, nor did he so state. To offset this testimony there was evidence that teamsters and workmen on the power house dam had been in the habit in traveling along the road to use the granary frequently as a night resting place and overalls in plenty had been discarded there by them. An Indian squaw, Mrs. Galt, the mother of Mrs. Muhly, gave in evidence that she had cleaned out the barn and had found sixteen pairs of overalls, had carried them to the flat rock and there stripped them to make rugs and quilts. One of the attorneys in the case had counted fourteen pairs of remnant overalls.

Then there was that pair of blood stained shoes discovered a few days before the trial and overlooked on a previous search of the premises when the overalls were found. The shoes were found in a rocky crevice about 100 yards from the Muhly house. Attempt was made to connect Muhly with the crime by reason of the blood spots. These shoes were much worn, heel- less and the left shoe was broken at the arch and patched. It was a No. 7 shoe. Muhly demonstrated at the trial that he wore a No. 9 shoe. Again Mrs. Galt, the squaw, came to the rescue to exonerate Muhly. She declared that the pair of shoes was an old one discarded about a year before by Justice Thomas Jefferson Rhodes, then of O'Neal's and before of Fine Gold. She stated that she had salvaged the shoes, chopped off the heels and patched the arch of the left shoe and had worn them on the very day of the killing of Bethel and even on the day after. In fact she had worn them until the June before the trial when her boys bought her a new pair and one day while bathing in the creek discarded the old shoes and cast them aside in the crevice where they had been found. With the shoes were the rags that she had wrapped about her feet for lack of stockings.

Justice Rhodes testified that he had always worn a No. 7 shoe. He was not prepared to identify the discarded blood-stained pair, though he said it looked familiar to him because of the pegging. The spectacle was then witnessed in the courtroom of Rhodes and the accused in turn fitting the shoes, Rhodes finding them to fit and Muhly that they were too small and did not fit. Then it was also shown that Rhodes' left leg is longer than his right and in consequence he had contracted the habit in walking to place his weight on the ball of the left foot, likewise bending that foot when sitting, accounting for the break in the shoe sole at the hollow of the left foot.

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History of Fresno County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present, Volume I, Part 58

Author: Vandor, Paul E., 1858- Publication date: 1919 Publisher: Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company Number of Pages: 1362

Author: Vandor, Paul E., 1858-
Publication date: 1919
Publisher: Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company
Number of Pages: 1362