Sometimes the similarities of circumstance and reaction bring our ancestors very close to us — sometimes it’s as if they were alien beings. Here’s a report that shows — for good or bad — that we are nowadays less naive but maybe quicker to think the worst than this kindly reporter in San Francisco was. However, for the late Mr Lacey’s sake I hope that somewhere in the justice system there was a cigar chewing grizzled old lawman who promptly arrested those upon whom “suspicion rests…”
Extraordinary Murder.—On Wednesday night, of last week, man named Lacey, who keeps small inn on the road from San Francisco to San Jose, known as the Oak Shade House, was murdered under peculiar circumstances. It seems a school teacher was living in the house with him. On the night of the murder, Mr. Lacey retired to bed, his cot in room usually allotted to strangers, Mrs. Lacey and the children to her own room, and the school-master in the kitchen.About one o’clock Mrs. Lacey was awakened by the report of pistol, when she reported to the school-master that her husband had been shot. The window, it seems, had been raised, and the muzzle of the pistol placed very near the man’s head, as his face was powder-burnt. The ball entered the temple and came out at his eye. The family, including the wife, children and school-master, after seeing what had been done, and putting down the window, again retired to bed, without giving any alarm, although they had neighbors only two or three hundred yards, off. Suspicion rests upon the wife and school-master for complicity in the matter.