The McCue murder :: :: University of Virginia Library

The most notable case of conviction upon circumstantial evidence that
ever occurred in the United States was that of Webster who killed Parkman
in the city of Boston, about the year 1850.

There have occurred four notable cases of like character in Virginia
within the last sixty years. They are, in the order of their occurrence,
the case of Charles Young, of Caroline County, about the year 1840;
the case of Dandridge Eppes, of Nottoway County, about the year
1845; the case of Jeter Phillips, of Caroline County, about the year
1867; and the Cluverius case, in Richmond, in the year 1885.

The Webster-Parkman case aroused a deep and almost thrilling interest
from one end of the land to the other. Webster was a professor
in a medical college in Boston. Parkman had lent him some seven
or eight hundred dollars, and was beginning to be importunate for the
repayment of the money. Webster wrote a note to Parkman asking
him to come to his office in the medical college. Parkman was seen
to go there, and was never seen afterwards. Among the ashes taken
from the stove in Webster's labratory was a set of false teeth which
were identified by a Boston dentist as a set which he had made for
Parkman. This was the principal incriminating circumstance which
led to the conviction and execution of Webster. Before his execution
Webster made a confession, claiming that he did not premeditatedly
kill Parkman, but that being angered in a quarrel with the latter, he
seized a poker and dealt him a blow on his forehead from which he
fell dead; and that fearing the suspicion that might arise against him,
he cut the body up and cremated it.

The first in order of time of the four Virginia cases mentioned above
was that of Charles Young, of Caroline, who somewhere about the year
1840 was convicted and hung for the killing of one Thornton, sheriff,
or deputy-sheriff, of Caroline County, of a highly respectable family.
On the afternoon of a dismal, rainy day, a Saturday in November, the

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body of Thornton was found in the road, from the effects of a wound by
buck-shot. A piece of cotton cloth, about two inches square, was found
near the body which from its signed and blackened appearance had
apparently been used as gun wadding. This piece of cotton cloth fitted
in exactly to a torn, or cut, corner of a cotton sheet in Young's house.
The shot extracted from Thorton's body corresponded with shot found
in Young's house. On these two circumstances namely, Young was
found guilty and hung.

Distinguished counsel took part, on the one side or the other, in this
case. Among them was Mr. Stevenson of Fredericksburg, brother of the
Hon. Andrew Stevenson of Albemarle; and John L. Marye the leading
lawyer at that time in Tidewater Virginia.

Some ten years after the execution of Young a verbal report came
from some Western State that a man who had gone out West from the
neighborhood in Caroline county, where this tragedy occurred, on his
death bed, confessed that he shot Thornton, and that he had possessed
himself of the piece of cotton, torn from a sheet in Young's house, in
order to fasten suspicion on the latter. While some believed this story
it did not receive very general credence. Young denied to the last that
he was the guilty party.

The next in chronological order of the cases of conviction upon circumstantial
evidence comes that of Dandridge Eppes, of Nottoway
County, who about the year 1845 killed Adolphus Muir. The circumstances
of this case might well afford the material for a most romantic
and sensational publication, surpassing in actual and thrilling incidents
the imaginary creations of the modern sensational novel.

Eppes had borrowed a few hundred dollars from Muir, and Muir was
asking for the return of the money. Eppes and Muir lived but a few
miles apart, and were, apparently, fast friends. On a wintry evening
in the early part of December Muir went to Eppes' house to ask for his
money. Eppes received him cordially. Snow was on the ground. Eppes
remarked that deer had been seen in the neighborhood, and proposed
that they should go out and kill one. To this Muir assented, and they
started out, each with a loaded gun. Muir was in advance, and as he
was climbing a fence, Eppes discharged his gun against him, and laid
him prostrate. Eppes left him in a dying condition, and next morning
when Eppes, who may be presumed to have passed a sleepless night,
went to the scene, it was found that Muir had crawled fifty or sixty
yards before he expired.

Suspicion gradually pointed to Eppes, and parties from the neighborhood
visited the farm. But Eppes was so cordial in his reception as to
disarm suspicion. Presently a statement appeared in a Petersburg
paper to the effect that a watch which had been pawned or sold by

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Eppes to a Petersburg firm had been identified, by the numbers preserved
by the original watch-maker who sold it, as the watch which
had been sold to Muir. Immediately upon seeing this statement in the
Petersburg paper Eppes mounted a thoroughbred horse and rode seventy
miles in one day to Lynchburg where he exchanged, or sold, this wearied
horse for a fresh one, and started for the far West. The next note of his
adventures was at New Orleans. There he caused a straw hat, marked
Dandridge Eppes, to be thrown in the Mississippi River, and to be
picked up. Upon this, a notice was sent to the Virginia papers that
one Dandridge Eppes had been drowned in the Mississippi, and that his
hat had been picked up.

A year afterwards, a Virginian who had gone to Texas from Nottoway
County recognized Eppes in a Texas town. A requisition from the
Governor of Virginia was sent out for his apprehension and return to
Virginia, and he was arrested while playing on the fiddle for the participants
in a rapturous dance. He was a fine violinist. He was brought
back to Virginia, tried and hung.

The main testimony against him was the dumb evidence of a negro
man. In an improvident hour, Eppes had given himself into the power
of a negro slave. He employed this trusted slave to assist in carrying
the dead body of Muir to a sequestered spot in the woods, and there
burying it in a shallow grave, and covering the remains with leaves.

The negro, being a slave, could not under the then existing laws,
testify in the case. But there were witnesses who testified that the
negro took the body to the spot where Muir was buried.

Muir, who was a prepossessing young man of good family, was soon
to be married to a charming young lady of Cumberland county, belonging
to one of the influential families whose residences were on Willis'
river. There was a story current at the time that Muir was engaged to
a daughter of Eppes'; but such was not the case.

The next in sequence, and in importance, in the way of convictions
and executions upon circumstantial evidence are the Jeter Phillips and
the Cluverius cases. These being of comparatively recent occurrence,
and surviving in the memory of many readers of this pamphlet, do not
need to be elaborated, as in the Charles Young and the Dandridge
Eppes cases.

The Jeter Phillips case was a startling one in the quiet homes of Virginia.
The corpse of a murdered woman was on the last day of February,
1867, found on the farm of a Mr. Drinker, in Henrico County. James
Jeter Phillips, a Confederate soldier, was arrested on June 13, 1867. The
preliminary examination began June 1st, and the court sent the prisoner
on for trial to the next term of the Circuit Court of Henrico.

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Then began the arduous labor of selecting a jury. Three days were
thus spent.

"On the nineteenth day," says the Phillips pamphlet, "the jury were
discharged, they having found it utterly impossible to agree upon a
verdict."

The second trial of Phillips began June 15, 1868. "It was found impossible
to procure a jury from the county of Henrico, and the sheriff,
by order of the court, summoned twenty-five talesman each from Alexandria
and Charlottesville." From these, on June 3, the jury was
selected. The case went to the jury on the seventeenth day of the
trial, and on July 10, 1868—a Friday—Phillips was sentenced to die.

The point made by some one in the McCue trial, that there was possible
error in allowing the jury to divide up, each division in charge
of a deputy, was made in the Phillips case, but was ignored by the Court
of Appeals.

Judge Alexander Rives, of Albemarle County, delivered the opinion.

On March 14, 1885, about 7 o'clock in the morning, Superintendent
Rose of the Old Reservoir, Richmond, Va., found emersed in the water
a body which proved to be that of Fannie Lilian Madison. She had left
Bath County, where she was employed as a teacher, on March 12, to
visit Richmond, where she registered at the American Hotel about 3
o'clock on the morning of the 13th under the assumed name of "Miss
F. L. Merton." At breakfast she received a letter which she answered
at once by writing "I will be there as soon as possible, so do wait for
me," and the letter she addressed to "T. J. Cluverius." Afterwards she
was seen with Cluverius, and the following morning she was found dead,
as related. About the reservoir were evidences of a scuffle, and a
watch key of peculiar pattern was found. This key was the circumstance
upon which the case hinged. The accused denied that it was his
property, while others swore that on March 13 he wore a key much
like it and that the following day it was missing from his watch chain.
The key and the fact that Cluverius was shown to have a motive for
getting rid of the girl—she was enceinte—encompassed his conviction,
and in due time he suffered on the scaffold.