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slCe Dfteetli)g h Murderer.Sheriff Thom, of Calaveras county, put in an appearance at the city prison on Thursday with James W. Smalling. There were handcuffs on Smalling, and he was booked on Captain Stone's reg-n 1 ister as en route to San Quentin for life.r | George Holmes, a rancher living half a mile from Berson station, in Calaveras* 1 . . mcounty, disappeared. His absence from the ranch was not noticed for severalmdays. He was twenty-eight years of age* i and married to a woman of forty, the II ! sister of Smalling., When a week had passed and Holmes did not show up in the vicinity of his I holding inquiries were made, suspicions f aroused, and Sheriff Thorn was asked to ^ | make a search for the missing man. j Now comes the story told by the* | sheri ff.“I went to the Holmes ranch,*' he says, “and looked around the place. There ! was an abandoned claim with a shaft I forty feet deep that first attracted my attention. 1 noticed that the brush about the mouth of the shaft was disturbed.It was noon, and the sun was shining directly overhead. In my pocket was a small mirror I had purchased in San Francisco. 1 held the mirror so that it flashed the light into the well. There was a couple of feet of water at the bottom of the shaft. The beams of light re- j fleeted from the mirror pierced the dark j waters and I saw the face of a man. j “I sent for ropes, and in a few hours Holmes’ body was brought to the snr- ! face. Inere was a bullet hole in the back of the head. I worked the case up j and proved conclusively that Smalling I u had lured his brother-in-law to the mouth o I of the shaft, fired the shot into his head d j and then pushed him over the brink.”— p | San Francisco Examiner. 1 uI --
Newspaper Details
The Daily Californian
Bakersfield, California, US
Thu, Jul 09, 1891
Page 1
Full Page
Clipped by
Hutchinson P.
KS, USA 25 Dec 2020
Other Publications Near Bakersfield, California
The Berkshire County Eagle
Southern Californian and Kern Weekly Courier
The Weekly Californian
Kern County Californian
Daily Californian
