Judge John Knowles attempts to murder wife, Gentry County, Missouri

>From "History of Gentry and Worth Counties", Crimes & Incidents, 
St. Joseph, Mo.: National Historical Company, 1882.

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On the 6th day of November, 187-, John Knowles, who had first tried to
poison his wife with quicksilver, induced her to go to the barn with
him, on a false pretext, and taking the babe from her arms, knocked her
on her head several times with a hatchet, and then climbed into the 
barn loft and threw down the end of a large oak rail on her, to comp-
lete his hellish designs, and left her struggling, as he thought, in 
the agonies of death, and went off to sell hedge plants, thinking when
she was found the impression would be that the end of the rail had 
fallen and killed her, but "The best laid plans of mice and men gang
aft aglee," for his infidelity to his wife had been suspected for two
years.  Pursuit was at once given, and he was overtaken when he was
returning home.  during most of the time of the examination of witness-
es, which occupied the afternoons of the 11th and 12th of November, 
187-, he maintained a stolid indifference.  When the evidence was 
through, the learned judge, in a very forcible and feeling address,
reviewed the overwhelming testimony, and the harmony with the defen-
dant's own admission of guilt, showing that for coolness, premediation
and brutality, he had never met with a parallel case, and assessing his
punishment at ten years in the penitentiary, the limit of the law.

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