“I warn everybody to keep out of such scrapes.”- The Murderer of Edson Benjamin

➡ Benjamin Family, McMurray Family

A previous series of articles told the story of the murder of Edson Benjamin at Underwood’s Landing in Skamania County, Washington on 24 March 1901. At the time, we were unable to determine the fate of the murderer, James G. Green. The story was left with Green begging to be hanged right away as he could not bear the sight of Benjamin’s widow, Martha “Jennie” Munger Benjamin, in the courtroom. The jury found him guilty of first degree murder, and thus, with hanging imminent, he changed his tune and asked for the verdict to be fought. For some reason, no online searches showed the final fate of the murderer when that series was written.

Today, however, further research hit the jackpot with a link to a free Skamania County Washington history site. They posted transcripts of pertinent newspaper articles, and from there we could search out the newspapers and learn the final disposition of Green, who was hanged for his crime.

 

Green did fare better than the criminal whose story was reported on the same page:

Awful Scene at Execution. 07 Dec 1901, Anaconda Standard, Anaconda Montana, v13, n87, p2, c4. Ancestry.com.

 

Notes, Sources, and References: 

1) See the four-part series: Edson Benjamin: “A Cowardly Murder”

http://heritageramblings.net/2014/11/04/tombstone-tuesday-edson-benjamin-a-cowardly-murder-part-1/

http://heritageramblings.net/2014/11/05/edson-benjamin-a-cowardly-murder-part-2/

http://heritageramblings.net/2014/11/06/edson-benjamin-a-cowardly-murder-part-3/

http://heritageramblings.net/2014/11/07/edson-benjamin-a-cowardly-murder-part-4/

2) See also http://heritageramblings.net/2014/05/13/tombstone-tuesday-edson-benjamin-and-martha-jennie-slade/

 

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