LOUISIANA, Mo. — Three suspects in the February 1900 shooting death of Louisiana Police Officer Lowell Pew made their first court appearances two weeks after the crime.

   Edward Burns, Richard Logan and Edward Weaver were charged with first-degree murder. Each pleaded not guilty and a judge ordered them held without bond until an April trial.

   “The public feeling against the prisoners, which threatened to develop into a lynching had they been brought (to Louisiana) immediately after their arrest, has subsided, and public sentiment is now in favor of giving them a fair trial,” the Quincy Daily Whig declared.

   If being behind bars had proven an inconvenient restraint for the suspects before Pew’s death, it certainly was no deterrent afterward. Ten days after the indictment, the three tried unsuccessfully to break out of the Pike County Jail in Bowling Green.

   They “used an iron leg of a bed and a stick of wood in their work,” the Quincy Daily Journal told readers. “Two locks had been broken and another was being tampered with when they were detected.”

   Escape attempts apparently were almost akin to breathing for Burns, Logan and Weaver. They tried at least two more times before Prosecuting Attorney George W. Emerson decided to commence first with the case against Weaver.

   Sheriff Hopke told a reporter that just a few days before the trial, the three men were searched. They had supposedly been under constant surveillance, but the Journal reported the sheriff said “a knife, the big blade of which had been converted into a saw, was found on one of them.”

   The incident would not be the last.

 

Verdict reached

   Weaver’s trial began at Bowling Green on April 9, 1900.

   Emerson was joined at the prosecutor’s table by experienced attorney Ras Pearson of Louisiana. The defense team included two judges and Missouri State Sen. Elliott W. Major, who would be elected governor in 1912.

   Prosecutors called about 20 witnesses over two days. Since no one had witnessed the murder, the evidence was circumstantial.

   “In the testimony, however, the prosecution has established that the prisoners on trial were seen in Louisiana previous to the shooting and also that they were seen running away from the station after the officer was killed,” the Journal explained.

   The newspaper said “very strong” testimony was given by farmers who lived along the road between Louisiana and Peno. Several “identified the prisoners as the three parties they saw at various points along the thoroughfare on the morning and during the day following the shooting,” it reported.

   The prosecution finished at about noon on April 11. The defense called only two witnesses and did not put Weaver or the other two suspects on the stand.

   “A hung jury seems probable, but the impression seems to prevail among those who heard the trial of the case that a verdict of guilty will be returned, assessing the lowest penitentiary sentence,” the Journal mused.

   The jury found Weaver guilty, but not of first-degree murder. The panel could only agree that the defendant had participated in the crime. As such, he was given 10 years in prison instead of a death sentence.

   The Whig said that as a result of the conviction, the four officers who were involved in the arrests would split the $1,200 in reward money – more than $35,000 today. The Hannibal Journal reported in January 1901 that the officers were contemplating a lawsuit because the City of Louisiana had not paid up.

 

Two more deaths

   Once Weaver was sent packing, prosecutors turned their eyes to Logan and Burns.

   However, the two already had their sights on another outcome. Trials were postponed until Oct. 3, 1900, which left plenty of chances for the men to practice their favorite form of passing time while locked up.

   In a scene that would be played out similarly 94 years later in the movie “The Shawshank Redemption,” Logan and Burns crawled through a sewer beneath the Pike County Jail around 4 a.m. on Sept. 27 to the cell of a woman prisoner.

   “They choked and beat her into insensibility and with a stick of wood broke the lock,” the Journal told readers. “They were then in the hall, from which they walked onto the porch and jumped to the ground. The other prisoners did not give the alarm until they were safely away.”

   Because the jail had been inspected two days earlier after an escape by seven other prisoners, the Journal speculated that Logan and Burns “received outside help.” The newspaper also offered some criticism.

   “It is somewhat remarkable that so many prisoners escape from the Bowling Green jail,” it said. “The jail must either be very insecure or else the officer having charge of it is very negligent.”

   The facility, built in 1884 just east of the Bowling Green square, housed prisoners until the current facility opened in 1994. Concrete was used to cover the huge cell windows in the 1940s.

   A search for Logan and Burns proved fruitless. Then, on the night of Sunday, Oct. 7, Hannibal Police Officer Raphael Girard was shot three times while searching the Burlington train yards with a friend, William Martin.

   They were looking for two burglars who had robbed a Hannibal jewelry store, and Girard identified them as Logan and Burns.

   Girard and Martin “were walking alongside a train of cars and just as they reached the forward trucks of the engine, two robbers walked around in front of it,” the Whig explained. “The desperadoes had a revolver in each hand, and the officers suddenly found themselves looking down the barrels of four revolvers.”

   The suspects reportedly ordered Girard and Martin to reach for the sky. “Officer Girard probably made a fatal mistake by not obeying the command,” the Journal offered.

   Girard reached for his piece. The suspects fired. Bullets pierced one of Girard’s lungs and one of his hips. A third lodged near his spine. Martin was unharmed, but Girard was paralyzed from the waist down.

   “The doctors say he cannot recover,” the Whig reported.

   Girard died at age 29 on Dec. 16, 1900, leaving a wife and what the Journal described as “two small children, the eldest merely a small babe and the youngest three months old.”

   The Journal did not provide details, but said Martin also “met a violent death” shortly after Girard was shot. They wouldn’t be the last victims.

   On June 27, 1901, Louisiana Depot Agent Frank Beacham died after being sick for several months. The Journal said Beacham “was never quite the same man” after Pew’s death and that the murder “brought about his illness and untimely death.”

   “As a result of nervousness and worry occasioned by the shooting, Beacham began to fail in health,” the newspaper said. “Finally, he went down to the mountains of New Mexico, but no material benefit followed. He returned home this spring, but never regained his health.”

 

One last thing

   Though it seems implausible given their criminal bent, records appear to show that Logan and Burns were never heard from again.

   Weaver made the papers, though. His conviction as an accessory to Pew’s murder had been appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court, which granted a new trial.

   It was set for June 9, 1902. Before testimony could begin, the prosecuting attorney decided to discontinue the charges. “Weaver was set at liberty” less than three years after Pew was shot, the Journal reported.

   According to the Officer Down Memorial Page, Pew is the only Louisiana officer to die in the line of duty. The most recent death to affect the department was Police Chief Rich Hughes, who died at age 43 of a heart attack in his home on July 2, 2014, not long after his shift ended.