This is a fascinating report about a man who, after killing a friend, faked his own death by hanging. Years later he was discovered alive and living in Colorado.
Slayer is Hanged
Feigns Death
Escapes
A murderer who was supposed to have been hanged in West Virginia forty-eight years ago, but who simulated death and escaped, is said to have been located in Colorado, where he is a prosperous mine owner.
A detective who arrived in Denver from Parkersburg, Va., expects to return in a few days with Baxter Pate, who will be taken back to his old home to expiate a crime for which he was supposed to have paid the death penalty almost. Half a century ago.
In a room in the Central Hotel of Parkersburg in 1858 Baxter Pate, alias McDaniel Rhea, killed John Littrell, one of his young friends, in a quarrel over a game of cards.
After several months the murderer was apprehended in North Carolina at his old home, and was brought back to the scene of the murder, where he was supposed to have been executed. His body, immediately after his hanging, was turned over to his brothers, who were rich men and who expressed a desired to bury the body near their boyhood home in North Carolina.
Recently Elys Lawton, who has been employed in a Colorado mine by Baxter Pate, went east and heard an account of the murder of Littrell by Baxter Pate. The name electrified him for he had always believed the murderer to be McDaniel Rhea.
Instantly he recalled a confidential talk with his employer whom, he says, confessed to killing one of his closest friends over a card game in his youth. He also recalled the clever ruse by which Pate had escaped punishment. A steel frame was clandestinely carried to Pate by his brothers a few days before the time set for the hanging and with this worn under his clothing he was saved from strangulation. He simulated death and his body was given to his brothers without a word or question. Supplied with money by his brothers, he soon found a refuge in the far west, where he has prospered beyond his fondest hopes.
Source: The Butler weekly times. (Butler, Mo.), 11 May 1905.
