Yesterday a warrant was issued, but the culprits had disappeared.
This efficient city officer, Jack Williams, had the common reputation of
being a burglar, a highwayman and a desperado. It was said that he had
several times drawn his revolver and levied money contributions on
citizens at dead of night in the public streets of Virginia.
Five months after the above item appeared, Williams was assassinated
while sitting at a card table one night; a gun was thrust through the
crack of the door and Williams dropped from his chair riddled with balls.
It was said, at the time, that Williams had been for some time aware that
a party of his own sort (desperadoes) had sworn away his life; and it was
generally believed among the people that Williams's friends and enemies
would make the assassination memorable--and useful, too--by a wholesale
destruction of each other.
It did not so happen, but still, times were not dull during the next
twenty-four hours, for within that time a woman was killed by a pistol
shot, a man was brained with a slung shot, and a man named Reeder was
also disposed of permanently. Some matters in the Enterprise account of
the killing of Reeder are worth nothing--especially the accommodating
complaisance of a Virginia justice of the peace. The italics in the
following narrative are mine:
MORE CUTTING AND SHOOTING.
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