The Ouachita Telegraph - Mystery and Retribution in Winn Parish

Date: Apr. 2000
Submitted by: Lora Peppers <lpeppers@ouachita.lib.la.us>***********************************************
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The Ouachita Telegraph
Saturday, May 28, 1870
Page 2, Column 1

Mystery and Retribution in Winn Parish.
        The recent lynching of a number of desperadoes, murderers and robbers —
nine in all — in the southeastern portion of Winn parish has led to the
disclosure of a number of bloody deeds which hitherto were enveloped in a
mystery that defied the sharpest and closest scrutiny of the law.  These
men, headed by a man named West, have been operating as highwaymen with
unvarying success ever since the close of the war, and perhaps before its
close, and have sent unheralded and unprepared into eternity the soul of
many an innocent victim, stimulated thereto solely by an ungodly greed for
gain.
        Among these victims, it now turns out, was a Lieutenant Butts of the
Federal army, whose unaccountable disappearance in 1866, while en route from
Natchitoches to Vernon where he was detailed as a Bureau agent, excited at
the time the virtuous indignation of the people of Jackson parish, and was
the cause of calumny in Northern prints upon the reputation of that people,
the New York Tribune taking the lead in the work of denunciation.  Mrs. West
and a man named Dean, one of West's accomplices, now clear up the mystery of
the Lieutenant's death.  He was killed by West not far from the Saline Mills
in Winn parish.  Information had been conveyed to West that the Lieutenant
had drawn $2,700 at Natchitoches, and this sum West desired to obtain and
did obtain from the Lieutenant's person after his murder.  West, Dean and
another man overtook Butts on the road, and to allay suspicion told him they
were hunting cattle.  Riding on, they came to a point near where there is a
fine spring.  Butts was induced to turn off to the spring to get some water.
— While drinking from the spring, West deliberately shot the unsuspecting
man through the head.  His bones were some time after discovered, but until
now the manner of his death was a profound mystery.
        Still another victim of these fiends was a Texan named Jones, who had been
to Alabama and was returning home.  Going, he had shared the hospitality of
West, and returning, in compliance with a pressing invitation, he spent
another and his last night on earth with West.  He had told West the object
of his journey east, (which ws to collect some money) and West set the
snares into which his confiding victim, weeks after, so unsuspectingly fell.
  Mrs. Jones subsequently made diligent search for her husband, traveling
over the route he had traveled, but no ingenuity could trace him on his
return beyond West's house.  The reason is now made plain.
        It is also stated the same band murdered the families of two movers, said
to be from Franklin parish, not leaving of the two families, composed of
men, women and little children, a single soul living.  It is thought West
died in the possession of $30,000, the accumulated earnings of fifteen years
of crime, and that the half of his dark deeds will never be told.
        The good people of Winn have displayed a comprehension of the rights of
society and of the majesty of the law which puts to shame the rulers of our
State.

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