Will County IL Archives News.....A Horrid Murder?? May 10, 1858
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Deb Haines ddhaines@gmail.com August 23, 2007, 7:42 pm

Various -- See Text May 10, 1858
May 10, 1858, Utica [NY] Daily Observer

A horrid murder was recently committed at Joliet, Illinois. A hitherto 
respectable man, by the name of Richards, had seduced a young English girl. 
Three weeks since the girl was missing, and Richards told her mother that she 
had gone to have an abortion performed. She was last seen with Richards. On 
Thursday of this week, the men who were at work in one of the quarries at 
Joliet were much annoyed by a smell which became more and more offensive. In 
searching for it, they found buried beneath some refuse stones the body of a 
female, entirely naked; not a particle of clothing could be found anywhere in 
the vicinity.--She had been shot through the head. Both feet and both hands 
had been cut off and taken away. The body was otherwise mutilated, in order to 
prevent identification; but the mother has identified it by a description 
which has proved correct in every particular. Now for the identification of 
the murderer. Providence, in its own way, always provides that murder will 
out. In addition to the fact that the victim was last seen with the man 
Richards, a lock of hair differing from her own was found near the girl's 
body.--This hair not only corresponds with the hair of the prisoner, but a 
bald place has been discovered upon his head, showing conclusively that the 
hair was torn from it. The examination of Richards was to have taken place 
last Friday. On Thursday, the feeling against him was so strong, that he would 
have been lynched had he been brought before a Justice.

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May 1_[date unreadable], 1858, Auburn [NY] Daily American

The Joliet Murder Case

The body found under the pile of stones at Joliet has been identified. It is 
stated, as the remains of a poor woman who recently died in Joliet and whose 
body, it is supposed, was disinterred by some medical students for purpose of 
dissection, but the students becoming frightened, buried the body under the 
stones. The citizens of Joliet now require of Richardson to produce the 
missing English girl, which he says he can and will do. His version of the 
affair is, that he aided the girl from motives of charity, the family being 
very poor, and has had no criminal connection with her. Richardson is a 
married man, and his family reside at the east. - Chicago Journal

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