Hurled Into Eternity

"HURLED INTO ETERNITY. MRS. M.J. PERSON SHOOTS HER BRAINS OUT THIS MORNING."

That sensational newspaper headline announces the death of Mary Jane Person on an early Tuesday morning in September 1890.

The forty-five-year-old woman is found lying face up and stone-cold dead behind her home near the south gate of Elmwood Cemetery in Memphis. There are horrendous wounds to both sides of her head and a bloody pistol lays at her feet. She had threatened self-harm many times before; it appears she has succeeded. Her death is ruled a suicide.

But as her funeral is taking place, it is interrupted by Memphis police. Her casket is taken to the family's kitchen where an autopsy is performed. Afterwards, her funeral resumes but her burial at Elmwood later is denied. That same evening, police return to the family home and arrest her fifty-nine-year-old husband William.

The motive? A quarrel between the two over a love letter he had written to a neighbor's nineteen-year-old daughter.

He is charged with first degree murder, punishable by hanging. This is the story of his trial.

One hundred and thirty-five years later, the question still lingers: who killed Mary Jane Person?