Westmoreland County PA Archives News.....Joseph Kerr Killed December 5, 1873
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Donald Buncie http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00034.html#0008389 October 14, 2022, 1:12 am

The Cambria Freeman. (Ebensburg, Pa.) December 5, 1873
Franklin township, Westmoreland county, was the scene, on Sunday night last, of one
of most brutal and cowardly murders that has ever been recorded, the victim being a
well-to-do shoemaker and small farmer named Joseph Kerr, and the fiendish
perpetrator, a young man who had been discharged from Mr. Kerr's employ only two
days previously, Samuel Beighley, Jr., by name. It seems that, for some unexplained
reason, Mr. Kerr was in the habit of sleeping in the second story of his shoemaker
shop, instead of at his residence near by, and aware of this fact, the assassin hid
himself under the bed, and when the unfortunate man entered the room to retire for
the night, Beighley struck him senseless to the floor with a heavy club and then cut
his throat from ear to ear with a shoe-knife, after which he riled his pockets of
$26.45. The murderer was arrested about three o'clock next morning at his boarding
house, not far from the scene of the tragedy, and after narrowly escaping lynching,
was, after a hearing, lodged in the Greensburg jail to await trial. He fully
confesses the horrible crime, but tells contradictory stories about the
circumstances.

File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/pa/westmoreland/newspapers/josephke953gnw.txt

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