Thursday, January 26, 1922
ELZA HINKLE KILLED
Sunday night, January 22, a number of people were at Henley Albert’s, who lives between Hillsboro and Lobelia, just off from the big turn in the road on the mountain facing the Levels.
There is some suspicion of liquor in the background, but late in the evening there was no trouble so far as the witnesses testify. About 10 o’clock at night, Elza Hinkle was sitting by the fire talking to Okey McCoy and the subject was logging. Elza said that he could cut twelve thousand feet of logs in a day, and this was a most amazing statement, and McCoy doubted it in a polite way. Then Elza, to support his averment, turned to his brother-in-law, Henley Albert, and asked him if that was not so, and said something like this: “Did not he make good on anything that he said he would do.” Then this kind of a reply was made: That he, Elza, had not made good when he said that he would kill him, Henley, while they were working on the Babcock logging job. Then both seem to have had knives in their hands, which they put up.
Then Albert seemed to fall into a murderous rage and remarked that he would kill the son of a bitch now, or words to that effect. Albert then grabbed a Winchester that was in another room and an effort was made to disarm him and keep him from shooting, but during the scuffle he fired through an open door and missed Hinkle. Then the bystanders got the gun away and thought the trouble was over, and the crowd settled down and were sitting there in a dimly lighted room. Presently Albert entered the room with a pocket knife in an upraised hand. He crept forward, scanning the faces of the people in the dark room until he identified Hinkle, and then he sprang forward with a downward sweep of the knife and with one stroke almost cut the shoulder off, making a wound four inches deep. Hinkle fled from the house and was heard shouting that he wanted a doctor that he had been cut to death, and the people at the house heard his cries grow fainter and then cease. Three of the visitors at the house, Okey McCoy, George McCoy and Nelson Bruffey, followed and found Hinkle lying in the road at the point of death and while they waited there for an instant, they heard and saw Albert coming with a light and swearing vengeance, so that they became afraid and left.
It appears that Albert came to the body and attempted to cut the dead man’s head off, that is he was in all probability a dead man before Albert reached him. It also appears that Albert must have stayed with the body something like an hour, for shortly before midnight he appeared at the house of George Ramsey with the bloody knife in his hand saying that he had cut Hinkle’s heart out.
Mrs. Ramsey, not knowing what had happed except that it was something terrible at the Albert’s house, phoned Deputy Sheriff T. A. Bruffey, who lives in the neighborhood, to tell him of the affair. The sheriff already had a search warrant for the place and had been waiting for a fit time to raid the house. So he gathered a posse and went there not knowing what to expect, but when he came in sight of the lights of the house he stumbled over the dead body lying in the road.
Monday morning, Prosecuting Attorney A. P. Edgar went to the Levels and the case developed rapidly. Albert was arrested and was preliminarily held and a number of eyewitnesses testified. The whole district turned out. They said that there were more people in Hillsboro at the inquest than there has been since the time that they brought in Armstrong and Cumberland in 1895.
Hinkle is a native of this county and was married to Albert’s sister, who was present at the time he was killed. The Hinkle family and Alberts lived together. Albert’s mother was present also.
Albert is a native of Lincoln County. He has been married but his wife was not there. He had one child living with him. He waived examination and was committed to jail without bond.
IN A STATE OF REBELLION
At least one man in Richmond has recently gone on record as being in a state of rebellion against further attempts to extract money from him for any cause whatever – good, bad or indifferent.
His declaration of war was made in a recent reply to a request for a contribution. The text of the communication is as follows:
“For the following reasons I am unable to send your check asked for. I have been held up, held down, sand-bagged, walked on, flattened out, and squeezed, first by the United States Government for federal war tax, excess profit tax, Liberty Loan, thrift stamps, war savings stamps, for city, state and county taxes, the capital stock tax, the auto tax, the dog tax the merchant’s taxes, the brokers’ license, the chauffeur’s license, and by every society and organization that the human mind could invent to extract whatever I may or may not possess.
“Next from the Society of John the Baptist, the G. A. R., the Women’s Relief, the Women Suffragists; the Navy League, the Red Cross, the Double Cross, the Revolution, the Jewish Relief, the American Relief, and from every hospital in town.
“The government has so governed my business that I do not know I own it. I am inspected, suspected, examined, and re-examined, informed, required and com- manded, so that I know not who I am, where I am or why I am here.
“All I do know it that I am expected to be an inexhaustible supply of money for every human need, desire and hope for the human race, and because I will not sell all I have and go out and beg, borrow or steal money to give away, I have been cussed, discussed, knocked, boycotted, talked to, talked about, lied to, lied about, held up, robbed and nearly ruined and the only reason I am clinging to life is to see what the h*** is coming next.” ~ Exchange
