Читать книгу History of Fresno County, Vol. 2 - Paul E. Vandor - Страница 6

A picturesquely interesting narrative was revealed on the ten days' trial in Madera County in November, 1908, of T. H. Muhly for the murder of James W. Bethel, an old resident of Fresno County and a pioneer of California of 1848, who participated in some of the Indian wars and took part also in the wild and rugged life of early days. A lack of motive for the killing was one of the unexplained features in the remarkable case. This was taken advantage of in behalf of the prisoner to give basis for the theory that the murder may possibly have been committed by Indians in revenge because of ancient feud between the Bethel family and the remnant of the Mono tribe. Recital was made of a story of bloodshed fitting a yellow-backed dime novel. Details of this tale were furnished in large part by the late Judge George Washington Smiley, then eighty-five years of age, and an old timer who had crossed the plains with Bethel upon the discovery of gold. Much of this testimony was ruled out because hearsay.

Various features made the case one of the most remarkable. The first trial resulted in the finding of Muhly guilty of manslaughter with recommendation to mercy in the sentence. The sentence was imprisonment for ten years. The prisoner had to combat on the trial not alone the public sentiment in a community that is noted for its clannishness but also the evidence attempting to connect him with the homicide. The jury used the courtroom for its deliberations and after its discharge there was found a tabulation of its seven votes up to the time of a halt when the court was asked for a ruling on certain disputed points in the case. The tabulation is interesting for the remarkable fluctuation of sentiment among the jurors on the first seven successive ballots. The showing was this:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Guilty 5 4 6 7 8 9 10

Not Guilty 7 8 6 5 4 3 1

Appeal was taken and new trial was granted which resulted in another disagreement, the jury standing nine for not guilty. On the third trial in 1909, Muhly was found guilty of manslaughter and the ten-year sentence was again pronounced. While serving the sentence, Muhly was paroled.

The accusation was that he had shot and killed Bethel on the 28th of February, 1908, on premises on the Crane Valley road three miles from Power House No. 3 and four miles from North Fork. Bethel was wounded first with fine shot from a gun in the left side of the face and then had skull crushed either with the barrel or the stock of the gun. Muhly was a rancher who in 1904 had bought a half interest in the premises from Bethel. The latter as a pioneer of the earliest days had as many others in those times married a woman of the Mono tribe and raised a family of half breed children. Muhly had also entered into relations with the tribe through his marriage with Polly Walker, a half breed of the Walker family of Fine Gold and niece of the Walker, who was one of the pioneer sheriffs of Fresno. Muhly was a man about fifty years of age, and Bethel although seventy-six years of age had taken up with a married white woman of Tulare County, and it was understood intended to marry her as soon as he could divorce the Indian wife. He was one of the best known of the living early pioneers and came in 1870 to the place where he was living and where he was killed. For a time he conducted a roadhouse tavern and store, though for several years preceding his killing he had only the store. He was once a well to do man.

Muhly possessed a No. 12 shot gun which it was abundantly proved was used in common for quail hunting. Bethel slept in the tavern premises at Bethel's Station and Muhly and wife made their abode in a house sixty yards from the tavern. Bethel taking his meals with them. Muhly admitted that on the day of the murder he had the gun hunting quail but left the fowling piece with Bethel to try his luck. Bethel was late for supper that night but after the meal returned to the store, Muhly remaining at home to clear up the table and dishes. Shortly thereafter two shots were heard and between the shots someone exclaimed excitedly, "Boys, don't do that!" At the trial the gun had disappeared and it never was found, though effort was made to locate with divining rod its place of concealment on the ranch. Mrs. Muhly testified that her husband was in the kitchen shortly before the report of the shots. He ran out in time to note the flash of the second shot in the gathering twilight. After a time he went to the store and found Bethel dead on the ground by the side of the porch.

Investigation next morning disclosed that one of the shots struck the wall of the building about one foot above the porch and at close range. The shot in Bethel's face and in the wall was No. 8 fitting the gun. The cartridges were the only kind about the house. The gun contained two empty cartridges and the porch showed a blood patch. On the trial was introduced as an exhibit a handkerchief found in the barn forty or more days after the homicide — a silken, dirty rag with blood spots. Muhly said the handkerchief was not his and he had never seen it before. Then there was evidence that teamsters were accustomed to use the barn on their journeys, and well it might have been that some one of them had cast the rag aside. This was plausible enough.

Thirty days or so after the homicide the Bethel-Muhly premises were gone over carefully and on a flat rock near the chicken house was found a mass of overall strips cut from the hip down. Some of these were blood marked. These and a pair of blood spotted shoes were submitted to a San Francisco chemist for analysis. He deposed that they were blood spotted but whether blood of human or animal he was not prepared to state, nor did he so state. To offset this testimony there was evidence that teamsters and workmen on the power house dam had been in the habit in traveling along the road to use the granary frequently as a night resting place and overalls in plenty had been discarded there by them. An Indian squaw, Mrs. Gait, the mother of Mrs. Muhly, gave in evidence that she had cleaned out the barn and had found sixteen pairs of overalls, had carried them to the flat rock and there stripped them to make rugs and quilts. One of the attorneys in the case had counted fourteen pairs of remnant overalls.

Then there was that pair of blood stained shoes discovered a few days before the trial and overlooked on a previous search of the premises when the overalls were found. The shoes were found in a rocky crevice about 100 yards from the Muhly house. Attempt was made to connect Muhly with the crime by reason of the blood spots. These shoes were much worn, heelless and the left shoe was broken at the arch and patched. It was a No. 7 shoe. Muhly demonstrated at the trial that he wore a No. 9 shoe. Again Mrs. Gait, the squaw, came to the rescue to exonerate Muhly. She declared that the pair of shoes was an old one discarded about a year before by Justice Thomas Jefferson Rhodes, then of O'Neal's and before of Fine Gold. She stated that she had salvaged the shoes, chopped oil" the heels and patched the arch of the left shoe and had worn them on the very day of the killing of Bethel and even on the day after. In fact she had worn them until the June before the trial when her boys bought her a new pair and one day while bathing in the creek discarded the old shoes and cast them aside in the crevice where they had been found. With the shoes were the rags that she had wrapped about her feet for lack of stockings.

Justice Rhodes testified that he had always worn a No. 7 shoe. He was not prepared to identify the discarded blood-stained pair, though he said it looked familiar to him because of the pegging. The spectacle was then witnessed in the courtroom of Rhodes and the accused in turn fitting the shoes, Rhodes finding them to fit and Muhly that they were too small and did not fit. Then it was also shown that Rhodes' left leg is longer than his right and in consequence he had contracted the habit in walking to place his weight on the ball of the left foot, likewise bending that foot when sitting, accounting for the break in the shoe sole at the hollow of the left foot.

There was testimony by a Mrs. L. A. Banta that on the evening of the homicide she saw a light about seven o'clock in the direction of the Bethel premises, about three-quarters of a mile distant. A lantern was in fact found near the body but to whom it belonged was another of the undetermined facts at the trial.

But what was the motive for the murder? That was another undetermined fact in the case. Effort was made to saddle a motive on Muhly but it was a failure. Bethel could neither read nor write. It was claimed that Muhly bore him a grudge and only awaited the time and opportunity to revenge himself for Bethel's encumbering the property in some manner in the half interest sale. The contention was in accounting for a motive that Bethel was the sole owner and occupant of the premises on which he had built; that the half interest never was conveyed to Muhly; that the property was sold for delinquent taxes and bought in by Muhly on the tax deed to gain title and oust Bethel. This was disproved by the showing that the built on land was deeded with the half interest and moreover that there never was charge or lien against the property from the time of Bethel's deed until after the murder, when mortgage was clapped on to raise money for Muhly's defense on the murder accusation.

On the other hand the plausible theory was advanced for the prisoner that the murder could have been the deed of Indians for revenge on account of a feud between the Bethel family and the Monos. Followed the recital of Judge Smilie who was a walking encyclopedia of the neighborhood and familiar with the history of every one who had ever lived in the region. And in this connection it is interesting to record as a historical fact that the division of the county to form the later Madera left the larger number of earliest pioneers located north of the San Joaquin River as the common boundary; also necessarily the greater number of these survivors are to this day in the younger county. Reason there was for this. The greatest mining activities, with exception in a narrow belt along the San Joaquin about Millerton, had been in that portion of Fresno County north of the San Joaquin; the northern portion of the county lying between the San Joaquin and the Chowchilla and on the Madera and the Fresno between the two first named contributed more to the making of early history than did the southern portion between the San Joaquin and the Kings with population nuclei in the Millerton foothills, on the Upper Kings at what is today Centerville, on the Lower at what is today the Kingsburg and Reedley country and in the Coast Range on the west in a nook at what is today the New Idria quicksilver mining country in San Benito County, all between these points being a waste, desert plain awaiting the bringing on of water and the coming of the husbandman to cultivate the parched and baked virgin soil.

Putting in sequence the tale narrated by Pioneer Smilie, it appeared that when Bethel settled in the Crane Valley country more than a quarter of a century ago and took as a companion an Indian woman he had a quarrel over her with one of her tribesmen and shooting him thrice, killed him. This was so long ago that even Smilie would not hazard giving the year of the occurrence. Bethel had declared that he expected he would forfeit his life someday to an Indian assassin. However, early in the 80's Bob Bethel, a half breed son, shot an Indian in the leg but a white man's jury cleared him. About 1885 this Bob married according to the tribal custom the daughter of Mono chief named Pemona, who hankered for a rancheria for his subtribe on' the Bethel ranch. With the marriage, Pemona secured that rancheria. A day came and Bob deserted the chief's daughter, took up with another marriageable squaw of the tribe and the proximity of the rancheria having become objectionable (a circumstance not to be wondered at). Bethel tried to have it removed and of course trouble arose.

Pemona came to pow-wow with Bethel, who supposed at first that the chief had come to kill his half breed son for the desertion of the chief's daughter. Bethel aided the son's escape with the help of a horse, but Pemona tarried all day and drinking too much there was a quarrel. Pemona advanced in menacing manner with a rock in hand and Bethel blew the top of his head off and killed him. Months thereafter, mayhap a year, the tribe had a gathering to grieve over the leaving from the rancheria and partly in memoriam of the dead chief. Bob Bethel was at the gathering standing at the camp fire. A shot rang out in the still of the night. A bullet struck him in the back and there was a dead half-breed. The shot was from a nearby house and the supposition has always been that the murder was by an Indian who had taken up the quarrel of Bob's wife.

Bethel feared to go among the Indians to rescue the body of this son because he would be foully dealt by for the hostility between the Bethels and Mono tribe was at this period at fever heat. Bethel induced Smilie to accompany him in the recovery of the body for burial. Smilie acquiesced but for his pains was shot at mistakenly for Bethel. The body of Bob was recovered. About two years before the murder of Bethel, Barge, a younger -brother of Bob, was found dead one day at home with bullet wound in the head. At the time it was declared to have been a suicide and the coroner's verdict so declared and found. Since that finding the impression gained ground that it was a murder because it was impossible for Barge to have shot himself in the location of the rifle wound, the fact that there were no powder marks on him as there would have been had the firearm been discharged at so close range as it necessarily must have been if it was a suicide, and lastly because it has never been known for a half-breed to take his life. There was also evidence at the trial that Bethel had ordered an Indian off the premises some weeks or months before, that on the morning following the murder an Indian had been seen prowling about the Bethel store at North Fork, that he had been drunk and excited suspicion. The above fragmentary and disconnected recital was furnished as a basis for the jury to believe or conclude in the absence of any proven or indicated motive for the killing of Bethel on Muhly's part that the murder must have been committed by an Indian, who had taken the law into his own hands as avenger of a series of outrages suffered by his tribe through acts of the Bethels.

"Last scene of all, "That ends this strange, eventful history." On the hillside near the Bethel roadhouse is a collection of graves, most of them unnamed, forgotten, dilapidated, weed or grass overgrown and dank. Four mark the earthly resting-places of known dead. One is the sepulcher of Ben Harding called before his Maker unprepared for the journey into eternity many years ago. In the other three graves lie the remains of the three Bethels, father and two sons. And all died with their boots on!