Thanks to his sweetheart, the sheriff’s niece, he strolled out of jail.
In September 1881, after 21-year-old fugitive William Franklin Martin was captured in Tennessee and returned to Missouri to face a murder charge, the startling story of his escape with the help of the Laclede County sheriff’s 16-year-old niece, and the love-struck pair’s hasty marriage while on the run together, made headlines across the country. One St. Louis newspaper called the sensational romance “stranger than fiction.” More than 130 years later Harlequin might still find it hard to top.
Martin’s misadventures began in the summer of 1878 when he was 18. He was working on a farm northwest of Lebanon, Mo., when he renewed an old argument with brothers Jesse and Charles Prewitt. One of the Prewitts grabbed a pitchfork, and Martin pulled a pistol. In the row that followed, Billy killed Charles and wounded Jesse. The authorities arrested Martin and charged him with murder, but a court acquitted him in February 1879.
Martin had scarcely gotten clear of the Prewitt scrape before he got into a quarrel with his uncle, George Mizer. George and his wife, Anna (also called Ann), both in their mid-20s, had, according to her later testimony, experienced “several little difficulties.” In truth, George had threatened to divorce Anna and take their kids because he suspected her of being intimate with several young men. Billy himself had reportedly boasted he could do anything he wanted with Anna.
Confronting his nephew on June 4 at the Mizer farm north of Lebanon, George warned Billy he knew enough to hang him, and if Billy didn’t stop spreading rumors about Anna, he would tell authorities what he knew. (This was presumably a reference to the Prewitt case.) Billy denied talking about Anna, and the argument grew so heated the two men had to be restrained.
A few days later Martin reportedly told a neighbor that if Mizer didn’t leave him alone and stop mistreating Anna, he would hurt George “the worst he was ever hurt.” Martin added he had lain in jail before and could do it again. The feud caused a rift between George and his sister, Sarah Jane Martin, who naturally took her son’s side in the argument.
On June 9 George Mizer was plowing a field near his house with brother Tom when a shot rang out from a nearby patch of woods. George fell mortally wounded and died as soon as Tom reached him. After weeks of inquiry into the case a coroner’s jury finally charged Billy Martin with murder, based largely on the threats he had made. He was arrested in July and formally indicted during the August term of the circuit court. The authorities also arrested his mother for supposedly encouraging him in the crime, but she was released on bond and later found not guilty.
Martin’s trial began on February 7, 1880, in the Laclede County Circuit Court, and a long line of witnesses paraded to the stand during the proceedings. The defense sought to establish an alibi for Martin to undercut the prosecution’s circumstantial case. For instance, Billy’s younger siblings swore he was home all afternoon on the day of the murder. But Martin’s supporters failed to sway the jurors, who returned a guilty verdict on February 13. The defense soon filed a motion for a new trial, and the judge gave the defense and prosecution time to gather additional evidence before hearing the motion.
Meanwhile, Martin bided his time at the Laclede County Jail in Lebanon, where Margaret “Maggie” Wilson, a teenaged niece of Sheriff Jacob Wilson, was occasionally detailed to feed the prisoners. Billy had begun wooing Maggie even before his trial by sliding notes to her when she made her rounds. Discovering the budding romance shortly after the trial had concluded, the sheriff sent his niece to stay with neighbors in Lebanon, but the correspondence between the young lovers continued clandestinely through the aid of Maggie’s friends.
On August 7 the judge overruled the motion for a new trial and sentenced Martin to hang on September 24. As the prisoner was being led back to his cell after sentencing, an old man who had been on the jury that had indicted Martin started heckling him, and Billy, despite being handcuffed and shackled, charged the man and knocked him down. A mob swarmed the prisoner and was ready to lynch him before others intervened.
Martin’s lawyers appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court on August 9. The main basis for the appeal was that the state had wrongly introduced Billy’s previous involvement in the Prewitt case. The high court stayed the execution on September 10 and promised a ruling on the appeal by January 1, 1881.
When Maggie was allowed back to her uncle’s residence in September 1880, the romance between her and Billy blossomed stronger than ever, but Sheriff Wilson did not seek reelection in November. Knowing their time together would end when the new sheriff took office, and unwilling to take their chances with the state Supreme Court, Billy and Maggie made plans to run away together. Unlocking Billy’s cell on the morning of November 16, Maggie handed him a Winchester rifle, and the two walked out the door and made their way to Billy’s home near present-day Eldridge.
The couple spent about 10 days at the Martin home. In late November, Billy secured two horses, and with Maggie dressed as a boy and her hair cut short, they rode away together. The lovebirds traveled south and then east, finally landing at Martins Station, Va., where they were married in early December and Billy, using the surname Cross, found work in a blacksmith’s shop.
In January 1881 two North Carolina detectives came to the shop and, mistaking Martin for another fugitive, began to interrogate the blacksmith. Assuming they wanted him for the Missouri case, Martin struck one of the men with a hammer, hit the other with a hot iron and made his escape.
He and Maggie immediately left for Piney Flats, Tenn., where Billy assumed the alias Frank Ratcliffe and found work on a farm. In late August 1881 Richard Goodall, the new Laclede County sheriff, learned of Martin’s whereabouts through letters, as Billy had written to a relative. The sheriff traveled to Tennessee and arrested the fugitive on August 30.
On September 2 Goodall arrived in St. Louis with the prisoner, accompanied by his pregnant young bride, and during the stopover both Billy and Maggie gave interviews to St. Louis newspapers. Maggie declared her love for Billy, and he in turn said, “She stood by me, and I’ll stand by her.” Billy added if Goodall hadn’t surprised him in Tennessee and gotten the drop on him, “they would have wanted a new sheriff up in Lebanon.” He also denied having killed George Mizer and said he thought Anna’s younger brother had probably done the deed.
The journey to Lebanon resumed aboard a Frisco train, and in the wee hours of September 3, while Goodall dozed off, Billy jumped from the train as it slowed to climb a hill near Dixon. A hunter soon freed him of his shackles, and he made his way to his father’s house.
Maggie, meanwhile, was brought to Lebanon and held in the county jail for aiding her husband’s escape and stealing her uncle’s rifle and money. In October the state Supreme Court, agreeing with Billy’s lawyers that the state should not have brought up the Prewitt case, granted Martin a new trial. Billy then surrendered to Sheriff Goodall on November 11, and Maggie, recently released from jail, gave birth to twin girls on November 17.
In January 1882 Billy was granted a change of venue to Dallas County, and at his April trial in Buffalo he was found not guilty. He and Maggie returned to Laclede County, but in August 1885 Billy was convicted of stealing two horses and sent to the penitentiary in Jefferson City for four years. Discharged in August 1888, he went back to Eldridge, settled into a peaceful life and eventually became a preacher. He died in 1935 in Washington state, while Maggie lived until 1960. A history of Laclede County published a year after Billy’s release from prison perhaps summed up the thoughts of many when, after briefly chronicling Billy’s notorious adventures, it concluded, “For a man so young the career of William Martin has been a remarkable one.”
Originally published in the August 2014 issue of Wild West. To subscribe, click here.
