USA > Ohio > Champaign County > The history of Champaign and Logan counties : from their first settlement > Part 9
USA > Ohio > Logan County > The history of Champaign and Logan counties : from their first settlement > Part 9
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positively that the feet found in the prisoner's house are the feet of Malinda Horn ; a peculiarity in the thumb of one hand, which had been bent by a felon, also affords positive proof by which the dis- membered arms have been identified as those of Malinda Horn. From this evidence, I say there can be no question of the identity of the body. Yet is there another fact, a startling, a marvelous one ; ! do not know that I shall have occasion to resort to it, but I shall mention it now ; should I, however, find it necessary to in- · troduce it, what I now say you will be at liberty to di-card. Iam not familiar, gentlemen, with the wonder-working powers of na- ture as exhibited in the human form, but in what I am about to assert it would seem that Providence Has indeed followed this ter- rible murder with evidence from the unborn. I have alluded to the state in which the unfortunate woman deceased, and I ought How to add that a post mortem examination was conducted some time thereafter by a distinguished surgeon of this city ; that in the course of the operation the wonth was removed, and preserved by that gentleman, and remarkable as it may seem, I learn that the infant, yet four months wanting of the hour of parturition, is in- deed, in every feature, a fac simile of Adam Horn!
"In addition to what I have stated, and the awful picture pre- sented to your view, we have a striking fact to be considered : the mangled trunk has been found with every limb rudely torn fromi its place ; the limbs have been found. legs and arms, huddled to- gether in horrible confusion, but the head has never to this hour been discovered ; there can be no doubt that it has been concealed or destroyed to prevent its identification, and its very absence is proof that it was the head of Malinda Horn. I shall further show to you, gentlemen, that the body discovered, proved to be that of a person suddenly deceased, in high and perfect health ; and I shall show in connection with this fact, that the deceased, when last seen, was in that state-perfectly well. I shall be able to show to von, that great violence had been committed on this her man- gled body; that a large bruise was found extending its effects deep into the muscles on the breast and shoulder; that there was an- other of four or five inches diameter upon her back, as if inflicted by some large instrument, and by a most violent blow; and fur- ther, that one hand and wrist exhibit- almost a continuous bruise, as if mashed in apparently fruitle- efforts to prevent the dreadful injuries which followed.
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"Still further must I proceed with the disgusting, revolting spectacle ; and show you that in the perpetration of the murder, the after circumstances were only part of the original plan; to sever the limbs, to cut off the head, and to salt down the trunk and limbs, was all necessary to be done, because he could not dis- pose of them by burial ; the snow was on the ground, and to do so would expose him to certain detection ; and I shall show you that on the floor of an up stairs back room, there is a stain occupying & space about the size of a human body with extended legs; this stain is moist, and at certain times presents on the surface a white incrustation, as having been produced by a quantity of salt; the murder is believed to have been committed on the 22d of March, and the body was found on the 17th of April, and when found, though it had been buried in a damp hole in the ground, in mois- ture and mud, vet it was in a state of preservation evidently from the effects of the salt; it was again buried, and when exhumed. three or four weeks after for the post mortem examination, it was still found but slightly decomposed. I must call your attention to the time at which the body could have been disposed of by burial, after the disappearance of the snow, as agreeing with that when the prisoner called on Mrs. Gittinger to provide him a house- keeper until the mangled remains were gone."
EVIDENCE OF WITNESSES.
Wm. Poist. storn .- Knows the prisoner at the bar very well ; known him since May 1842; came to witness's house to board ; boarded with him 'till the middle of August, and then got mar- ried ; witness was his groomsman ; two weeks afterwar,Is they went to house-keeping ; took a house about three hundred yards from witness's house ; it is situated about twenty-two miles from Baltimore, on the Hanover and Reisterstown road; Horn's house is this side of witness's house ; Gittinger's house is about one hundred and fifty yards this side of Horn's; Storech's house is about three hundred yards beyond that of witness; the "gate house " is between witness's house and Storech's; when Horn went to housekeeping, he kept a store and worked at his trade as & tailor ; recollected the time when Malinda Horn disappeared ; on morning of 23d saw Horn go by his house; said to a wagoner in there that he wondered where Horn was going so early ; he said he supposed he was going to church ; witness said no, that was not
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the way he went to church; he was not a Catholic, but pretended to be a Lutheran ; soon after, Frank Gittinger came in and said, "Horn's wife was gone again last night ;" witness said, last night was too bad a night for any one to go out ; it was a very stormy, ugly night; there had been a heavy snow on the ground about ten days.
On good Friday the people had been talking a good deal about the matter, and I went down the road to the fence between Horn's place and mine, and saw a spade standing against a tree ; thought "My God, what has he been doing with this spade ?"' could not see any peach trees that had been planted; walked round the spade, at a few feet distance ; recognized it as one that he had seen at Horn's house ; it had a paper on as the outside one of a bundle; it was about four or five steps from the place where the body was found ; is positive that it was the same spade that he had seen before at Horn's house.
On Easter Monday about 9 o'clock, saw Jacob Myers, Henry Fringer, John Storech, and Isaac Stansbury, go by his house with guns, down the road ; between 10 and 11 o'clock, while witness was up in his field, the men came back again ; asked them what game; they said, "Oh, we found plenty of game down there," and allowed they thought they had found Horn's wife ; agreed to go along, and went around to avoid Horn's house, so that he should not see them ; went down to the place, and pushed a stick down and found that it rose up again when pressed; witness then threw the dirt away with a spade, and found a coffee-bag, which he pro- posed to slit open; there was something in it; some of them thought perhaps it was a hog buried there, and did not want to open the bag for fear they would be langhed at ; witness cut the bag a little, and saw the breast of a woman ; they then concluded to go to Horn's house first ; went up to Horn's house and knocked, but nobody answered ; Nase said the back door was open ; pushed it with a stick ; waited till more people came; none would go in until witness went ; went into the entry and then the store, and found all right ; went into a sleeping room back and found a bed which looked as if it had been tumbled ; finally one of the party went to the back room up stairs, and there saw the arms and legs sticking out of a bag ; he called to witness, who was on the stairs, to see them ; all went up and looked at them ; then went down to the place where the body was, and lifted it out ; witness then cut
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it open, and there was the trunk of the body, without head, arms, or legs; examined it and found marks of violence on the breast and the shoulder ; turned the body over and found another wound on the back ; then went and brought down the legs and arms, and found they corresponded with the body; then sent for some wo- men, and Mrs. Gittinger came ; asked her if she knew Mrs. Horn was enciente; she said she was ; thought that body was in the same condition ; the mud of the gully was a kind of slimy mud, not exactly yellow, not black ; that upon the limbs was. of the same kind; the hole from which they supposed the limbs were taken seemed to have been quite fresh opened ; as if opened the night before ; the same kind of mud was upon the clothes; the field was a clover-field and orchard ; the soil upon the surface in the field and surrounding country is of a different kind and color from the gully mud. In the house found Horn's clothing and shoes-same kind of mud on them ; the shoes were moist and muddy ; found part in back room, part in front; shoes under the counter; a bucket of water, discolored with the same sort of mud, was found in the en- try ; a basin of the same muddy water, as if hands had been washed in it, was found in the store; [the bags and clothes spoken of pro- duced ; that in which the limbs were found is marked " A. Horn," with certain private marks; the waistcoat exhibited, marked with mud ; ] witness saw Horn wearing it on the Sunday night before he left ; [a piece of striped linsey produced, found between the bed and sacking, worn by Mrs. Horn as an apron, considerably stained with blood;] witness found the piece of linsey himself ; saw nothing of Horn on the Monday; through his house and ground ; he was not there; knew Malinda Horn ; the body found was about the size of that of deceased, as near as witness could judge; searched for the heal all about; tore up a fence, thinking it might be in the post holes; dug all about the garden and other places ; the hand was marked with a heavy bruise, as if it had de- fended a blow off; knows of no other woman having disappeared from the neighborhood about that time; found dried apples and peaches up stairs in back room of the front building ; several bush- els ; there was a pile of plaster in the back room up stairs. where the limbs were found ; they were close to the pile; there was a mark on the floor, as if the body had been laid down there ; sup- posed it had been cut up there; this room was at the head of the back stairs ; this stain was about the size of a human being, and a
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body cut up and salted there would likely have made such a stain ; it was a greasy sort of a mark, such as a pickle or brine always makes.
The condition of the goodsin the store was in the usual form after Horn had fled; about $400 or $500 worth of goods were there; the en- try door and the door that leads into the store were open; there was no one left in charge of the house and store; the house is imme- diately on the turnpike ; the body was in a good state of preserva- tion ; looked ás if it had been salted ; there was no blood visible ; one of the thighs appeared as if a peice of steak had be 'u cut off of it; witness had a coffin made, sent for her sister and a preacher, and had the body buried in the burial ground on the next day, the 18th of April ; the body was again taken up about ten or twelve days after, for a post mortem examination ; when it was dug up it smelt a little but very little, and was in a good state of preservation ; the orchard in which the spade was found was not used for any agri- cultural purpose ; Horn had been at work building fense along the turnpike, about two-hundred yards distance; witness thinks for the purpose of preventing easy ingress to the spot where the body was buried ; the nature of the soil where he was digging for the fence would not have made the same stain on the clothing found, as that which was on it. When he saw him at thejail in Philadel- phia, he reached his hand towards him, and said to hin, "My God, Mr. Horn, must I meet you here! we have found the legs and arms of Mrs. Horn at the head of the stairs, and the body you, I suppose, know where ; and you ought to pray to God to forgive you of your sins ;"that the prisoner looked at him but did not say a word, nor did he shed a tear, but seemed to be endeavouring to smother his feelings.
Cross-examined by Mr. Mayer .- Horn passed my door before sunrise in the morning ; did not say he had gone up to Storech's; soon after that Mr. Gittinger came and told witness that Horn's wife had left him on the previous evening ; and he replied it was a bad night for any one to leave home; it was on the 23d day of March that he told witness his wife was missing, and it was about the 17th day of April that the body was found: saw the spade at the tree on Good Friday ; Horn went away on Easter Sunday, and there had been considerable talk in the neighborhood as to his wife being missing ; when I saw the spade I wondered if he had heen planting trees; I looked whether he had, and I found that he
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had not; Horn was attending to his business quietly and composedly all this time ; Horn came on Good"Friday 'evening to his house, and offered to pay him $10 out of the $50 he owed him ; he replied that that would do him no good, as he wanted it all to pay his rent ; did not examine his house very closely for stains of blood, but waslooking about for the remainder of the body ; I saw a large stain upon the floor up stairs some time after ; some of the neigh- hours called my attention to it ; I came to the conclusion that it was salt, and that the body had laid there and salt thrown on it on account of the weather being too bad to dispose of it at the time it was killed : the stain on the floor was in the form of a body ; the stain is still there ; smelt it, and it smelt like brine; it was dry, I could smell it; there was no fancy about it, as I do not snuff; I took for granted that the body had not been buried ; when I saw him in Philadelphia I asked him if he could pay me what he owed me ; I asked him in the presence of the jailor ; I was ordered to Philadelphia by Squire Bushey to identify the prisoner ; the mark on the spade by which I knew it, was a label pasted on the handle; all spades have not that mark ; it was a mark such as is put on by the maker, a label.
Cross-examined by Mr. Buchanan .- I first became acquainted with the prisoner in the month of May, 1842. when he came to my house to board ; he had been living in the neighborhood before, but I did not know him; he lived with me until the 16th or 17th of August, when he got married to Malinda, and he and his wife stayed with me until the end of August, when they went to live at the house where his store was; Mrs. Horn was missed on the night of the 22d of March, and on the morning of the 23d, the prisoner passed my house before sunrise ; I did not see where he went; on the same day about half an hour afterwards I learned that his wife was missing ; did not go to his house or see him that day ; but saw him the next morning, the 24th ; saw him on the porch at the house ; I did not speak to him after his wife was mis- sing until the 3d of April.
[A question was here put to the witness by Mr. Buchanan, as to the conversation of the prisoner, which was objected to by Mr. Steele; but as the objection was afterwards waived by the prose- cution, it is unnecessary to detail it. The cross-examination was accordingly resumed.]
We met together as stated, for the first time after she was miss-
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ing, on the 3d of April, in his store; after I had taken my seat 1 asked him for the fifty dollars he owed me ; he told me that his wife had run off and taken fifty dollars with her, and consequently he could not pay me; I then asked him about his wife leaving him, and he told me that she got up in the night whilst he was asleep, alongside of her, and when she went out of the door he woke up and went to look after her, but not seeing her, he went to bed again. I then told him that there was some rumor or suspicion afloat among the neighbors, to the effect that he had killed or made away with his wife. The prisoner, clapping his hands on his knees, replied, "My God, you don't say so! How could the people think so ?" I then told him if he could prove there was no foundation in the rumor, that he might still consider me his friend ; if not, I was done with him. I then proposed that he should sub- mit the house to be searched, in order to satisfy me as well as the neighbors, to which he expressed himself willing. He then said to me, "Ah, Mr. Poist, you know much ;" to which I replied, "Why, you do not suppose I have had anything to do with, or know anything about your wife?" He replied, "No ; but another man is the cause of all this." I then advised him to stop the stage driver, and question him as to whether he had seen her, shortly after which I went home. I had not been home long when the stage came past, and I saw him stop the stage and speak to the driver. I then returned to his house and asked him whether the driver had seen her, and he said that he had not. I did not search the house, however, until the body was found. Storech, who has since killed himself, was one of the four who were out gunning, and first discovered the body. He went with them to the spot where they thought the body was, and one of them pointed out the print of a shoe to him in the clay, but is certain it was not Storech ; it was Storech, however, who said that the print of the shoe was that of Horn's, as he knew the shoe and had made it; I then took the spade and threw up some of the dirt, when I discov- ered a bag, and thinking that some one had buried a sheep there, and that we would be laughed at, I took my knife and cut it open, and the breast of a female was visible. (Witness then proceeded again to detail his examination of the premises around Horn's house, and his gathering the people together.) On going into the house I found a stain on the stairway, which I thought was stained by apples, but the others thought it was blood ; did not say that
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the large stain on the floor in the form of a body was not blood ; I said nothing about it at the time; I did not come to the conclu- sion that the large stain was blood; the apron was found in the house about ten days after she had been found ; does not know that that part of the house where the apron was found had been searched before ; found the apron in the front building between the bed and the sacking-bottom ; nobody went into the house with me; did not see any mark that he was certain was blood until the apron was found ; had never seen the body naked until they had joined the limbs to it on a plank ; would not know your body or my own if I saw it out or mangled in that way ; could not recog- nize the body ; has no certain personal knowledge what became of Malinda Horn ; she had left her husband once and went up in the neighborhood of Littlestown ; she was gone some six weeks ; she had left some of her clothes up there and had wanted to go again after them; that Horn was at my house and saw the stage at his door, and he ran out and stopped it and took his wife out, and made her go home; she never went away again until she went finally.
In Chief .- 1 proposed to the prisoner that he should allow the house to be searched, and he consented ; the snow was then off the ground ; he did not propose to have a search, but said they might search if they came ; the spots on the stairs he thought were not blood ; that after the floor had been scrubbed the blood was visible on the large stairs ; when the deceased left the house of Horn the first time thinks he said nothing to him about it, though he might.
Henry Bushey, Esq., was called upon to come to Horn's house on the 17th of April, by Mr. Poist's son, who told him that they had found the body ; that he went up with two or three neigh- bors, and went immediately to the lot and saw the trunk of the body ; that the boy came to him from the house and told him to come up, that they had found the rest of the body ; that he went, and Mr. Poist showed him the bag, and he directed him to cut it open, and the legs and arms were found in it; that he then sum- moned a jury, and brought the body to the house, and after plac- ing it on a board, joined the arms and legs to it, and they seemed to correspond ; thinks that it was the body of Malinda. Horn from the size of it; thought the lady was pregnant; saw blood in the house on the next day, on the steps, or at least
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he thought it was blood ; saw the clothes and the mud upon them, and the mud on the body and bag correspond in color, as it also did with the mud in the gully; the dirt about the hole seemed to have been recently turned up ; the hole would have contained the bag with the arms; a search was then made for the head ; even the ashes in the fire-place were searched for bones, but none were found ; on one of the bags the name of A. Horn was written very legibly ; the body was found, he thinks about three hundred yards from the house; the goods were in the store, but no one in charge of them; a waistcoat, a shirt, a roundabout and shoes were found · with the mud upon them; they were in different sections of the house ; a bucket and a pan with water in them were found in the store, discolored the same as the earth where the body was found would have discolored it, as if something had been rinsed in them ; (the witness here identified the two bags in which the parts of the body had been found, as well as the clothes;) the hands were bruised as well as the shoulders and back ; he did not discover any other marks on it.
Benj. Caughy, sworn .- [Bag produced in which the limbs were found.] Has seen that bag before; saw it last on the last day of May, 1842; sold it to Horn ; the marks on the bag I put on ; "A. Horn," "155," for so many pounds, and "11" for so many cents per pound ; they are to the best of my opinion my marks; they correspond with the book and my hand-writing.
Mrs. Gittinger, sworn .- Knew Malinda Horn from August, 1842, till the 23d of March, 1843, the time of her disappearance ; had seen her barefooted every day, from the time she came into the neighborhood until it was cold weather ; my house is about a hun- dred yards from Horn's ; Mrs. Horn was, at the time of her death, "in the family way;" she expected to be confined about the last of August; saw the body that was found; it was in a pregnant state; the feet of Malinda were very peculiar ; they tapered off very much in consequence of the great length of the big toe; there was a little knot or lump by the joint of the little toe; from these peculiarities I know the feet were those of Malinda Horn; she one time went away and left her husband six weeks ; at that time she came to my house and said she was going away ; I said, "My, la ! Malinda, what are you going away for ?- you've got everything comfortable around you, and a good home ; what is the reason you can't stay ?" "Oh," she said, "you don't know how it is; if I
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don't go he'll kill me!" Witness said, "How would he look, kill- ing you ?" Malinda said. "If he don't kill me, he'll break my heart." "Well, then," I said, "you may as well go." Before she left home that time, some four days, she had been to see a sick old man ; on going home she stayed a minute or two, and then came to my house and told her sister that Horn had turned her out ; could see from my house her clothes thrown out of the window ; Horn afterwards said to witness that his wife was good for nothing, and that was the reason she went.
Cross-examined by Mr. Mayer .- The time when Mrs. Horn first went away was a few days before Christmas, 1842; she came back after being away six weeks; came to my house, and I went with her to Horn's, and said, "Here Horn, I've brought your old wo- man back ;" he never looked up, and as they didn't seem to say anything, I was going away ; she asked me not to go ; she went up to the counter and bought kisses and pins ; Storech was there, and said it was a shame she should pay for the things ; she was then going away with me, when Horn said, "Where are you going to ?" Malinda said, "I am going where I have been ;" Horn told her to come back ; she said, "I shan't;" I persuaded her to go back to the old man, and she went. It was then about dusk, and she stayed until 9 o'clock, and then came to my house and slept with me that night; next day they made it up between them somehow ; heard no more of any difficulties between them ; but she always said she was afraid Horn would knock her down ; she never said he had done it, or struck her at all ; never knew what the differ- enee was; after she came back she didn't tell of any particular quarrel ; she was afraid to tell, she said, for fear it should come out ; when she went away she was trembling ; he treated her hut- fishly at the best of times ; never heard him curse her, or threaten her.
Catherine Hinkle, sworn .- I am the sister of Malinda Horn. On Sunday, the 16th of April, went to see Mr. Hoin on account of my sister ; he was sitting on the back porch; I called to him and he came to the front door ; asked him where Malinda was; he did not answer at first, but appeared much confused; then said he did not know where she was; he said she had left home about bedtime ; asked him whether she went away before she went to bed ; he re- plied that he had gone to bed, but she had not; that she went out of the front door as he came through the room, having heard her
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