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The
old tintype, the only known image of John Pearl, hangs in a small
frame on the wall in the Coleman County Museum.
Considering why the picture is on display, this is altogether fitting.
Pearl never got to know it, but he has the singular distinction of
being the first and last man legally hanged in the county. (The number
of cattle thieves who may have accidentally gotten tangled up in a
rope suspended from a tree has not been reported.)
The jail in Coleman where
Pearl was both incarcerated and executed was built in 1890 of limestone
quarried from the nearby Santa Anna Mountains (not really mountains,
but that's another story). Contracted for on Aug. 20, 1889, the new
lockup set the county back nearly $16,000 - $9,975 for the building
and $5,600 for the all-important ironwork.
The county dads accepted the turnkey job on April 26, 1890.
The lockup saw its share of miscreants and felons, but a decade went
by before it held its first defendant in a capital case. Even then,
the murder in question occurred in Brown
County, not Coleman.
The victim was Ed Tusker, a cotton farmer who had a place south of
Bangs. In December 1900, he disappeared. When his friends and neighbors
began to wonder where he had gone - no one had seen him since Dec.
4 -- his hired hand said Tusker had decided to move to back to his
native Germany.
That hired hand was Pearl, who sold some of Tusker's cotton and cottonseed
in Brownwood.
He said Tusker had left him his wagon and team, along with other equipment
and a bill of sale for some property.
Tusker's friends and acquaintances, however, had heard nothing of
any plans on his part to return to his native country. Within a week
of his disappearance, people began searching for the farmer. Someone
thought to check the tank on Tusker's place. On the second day of
dragging operations, Tusker's body -- weighted down with a large rock
-- was found.
Pearl was tried and convicted in Brown
County. The jury's finding in regard to his punishment was easily
written on a single piece of paper: Death by hanging.
But the defendant's defense attorneys succeeded in getting their client
a new trial, this time in Coleman
County on a change of venue. District Attorney J.H. Baker, with
J.O. Woodward in the second chair, prosecuted the case.
Pearl's attorneys tried to save their client's life by proving he
was insane, but the jury did not buy it. After hearing the prosecution's
evidence, the jury found Pearl guilty and assessed his punishment
as death.
Coleman County Sheriff Bob Goodfellow, a Dallas native who had attended
Baylor University, was not particularly enthusiastic in the duty he
faced. But the law was the law and he supervised the construction
of a gallows inside the jail adjacent to the courthouse. Just as dutifully,
he issued printed invitations to some 50 people to witness the event.
The sentence was carried out on Oct. 22, 1901. Goodfellow reluctantly
sprung the trap. Dr. T.M. Hays of the nearby town of Santa
Anna had been called on by the county to certify the condemned
man's death. When he first put his stethoscope to the man's chest,
the doctor recalled, "My heart was beating so hard that I couldn't
be sure whether it was mine or his."
Even though he had no doubt that Pearl was guilty as charged, his
role in springing the trap bothered Goodfellow, who served as sheriff
until Nov. 6, 1906, for the rest of his life. |
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