Cold-Blooded Murder
Pomeroy Weekly Telegraph, Pomeroy, OH 9 Mar 1852
On Thursday night, the 24th inst., a most atrocious murder was committed about five miles from this place, on the person of Justus Brewer and his wife. Mr. Brewer, I believe, was originally from New York or Vermont, but for several years a resident of Ohio, in Scioto and Lawrence counties. For some time past, there had been a quarrel between John Collins and his friends and Brewer. Some lawsuits between them were not settled, which is no doubt the cause of the murder.
The murderers are all in jail – John Collins, who instigated the act; his son-in-law, Reuben Clarke; his brother-in-law, John Clarke, and his brother-in-law Wm. Hood; and Turner Clarke, who lived with Collins, though not related to the others.
They have all confessed, except John Collins; and he owns that he was present when they blacked themselves at the sugar camp – that he took their hats to a safe place until their return – and that they returned to the house the same night, and told him that they had killed Brewer and his wife – that he (Collins) got water for them to wash, and that he was afraid to give the alarm, as he might be suspected – he thought they were going to steal Brewer’s chickens when they were blacking themselves.
The boys say they were persuaded by Collins – he offered one a horse, another a yoke of oxen; to his son-in-law, he said that Brewer’s lawsuits would break him up if he was not killed. Wm. Hood and John Clarke are eighteen years old. Turner Clarke is nineteen; Collins is over middle-aged, probably about fifty; his son-in-law, Reuben Clarke, is twenty-seven.
Brewer and Collins belonged to the same church, and both to the same Division of the Sons of Temperance; and some of the others belonged to the same church. There was no whisky used in the transaction, and none of them appeared to be crazy.
Hood made a disturbance among the chickens to bring their victims out. They came out together to the chicken house. Turner first struck Mrs. Brewer to the ground, and then struck Mr. Brewer and hit him several times. He never seemed to have moved at all and was cold in the morning.
Poor Mrs. Brewer was found the next morning still alive. She had lain all night until 8 o’clock in the morning, with nothing on but her nightclothes. They had been in bed, and run out without dressing, except for his boots and her shoes. Her skull is badly fractured, and the physicians say she cannot live, though they have operated on her skull. – they have five children, the oldest, ten years, the youngest still at the breast, nearly two years old.
February 27. – Mrs. Brewer died last night. She has relatives somewhere in Gallipolis or the adjoining counties; it might reach them by giving a notice of murder in your paper.
The facts above are substantially correct. I will mention that they used clubs cut at the sugar camp of Collins, and small scratches on the end of the club left near the murdered man, correspond with marks about the camp. We then got Collins’ ax and by cutting a stick the two lines correspond exactly. How small an oversight will lead to detection?
ONE OF THE JURIES OF INQUEST.
The Execution
Gallipolis Journal, Gallipolis, OH, 8 Jul 1852
Collins and Clark were sentenced to be hung at Greenupsburgh, on the 25th for the murder of Brewer and his wife. Collins hung himself in jail two days before the appointed day of execution. Clark was officially hung by the Sheriff on the day appointed. An immense concourse of people, of both sexes, embracing passengers borne on nine different steamboats, and numbering many thousands, attended the execution of Clark. He went to the scaffold utterly broken in spirits and crying piteously. The religious services on the occasion were conducted by a fervent colored clergyman.
The other three persons indicted for participating in the same murders, are still in jail and will be tried at a special term next month. Maysville Eagle, 30th.
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