Newton-Butts County GaArchives News.....Murder of John Holifield November 18 1887
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Phyllis Thompson http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00011.html#0002524 June 10, 2004, 7:46 pm

The Georgia Enterprise
  It has just come to light, by the accidental discovery of a skeleton, that
JOHN HOLIFIELD, who moved to Florida from Butts county, some three years ago, 
was murdered by a party of roughs in Hernando county, and his body left in a 
swamp. At the time of the murder he had five or six hundred dollars on his 
person and was negotiating for land upon which to plant an orange grove. Many
of our people will remember Mr. Holifield, as he once made Covington his home,
being employed in a government distillery near town. Speaking of the parties 
charged with the crime at next March term of Hernando circuit court. The parties
arrested came to Florida from other states, viz: D. F. McGuire, from Citronell,
Ala.: Oscar Higgins, from Mississippi; Jno I. Sharp is a Floridian, raised in
Hernando county, and is of a good family; J. S. Thompson and W. J. Bledsoe are
from Butts county, Ga., and well connected by family ties, and their connection 
with this crime is much regretted by their friends."
A Florida paper tells us that the defense will probably attempt to prove that 
the skeleton that has been discovered is not that of Holifield; possibly that 
it is, and that he died of alcoholism, and therefore the principal link of the 
chain of the circumstantial evidence is missing. A week has passed since the
arrests, and the excitement that first prevailed has given way to the belief
that there is nothing to the case and that the prisoners will be released. It
is expected that some of the prisoners will testify that the remains are really
those of Holifield, but that he died from excessive drinking and exposure.

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