The Caddo Herald
April 10, 1914
Arrested Here For Wife Murder
R. L. Morgan, chief of police of Colgate, came to Caddo Sunday with Jack Droke and they went out five miles southeast of Caddo and arrested R. L. Bledsoe on a warrant charging him with the murder of Mrs. Ada Waller on Boggy near Coalgate in September 1910. The prisoner was brought to Caddo and taken to Coalgate Monday.
Dispatches from Coalgate Tuesday in the morning papers state that County Attorney Wood of Coal County states that Bledsoe had confessed his guilt of the murder.
Bledsoe, while here in irons, made no comment on his case. He made no resistance to the officers, and acted almost unconcerned in the matter. For some time past his principle occupation seems to have been hauling wood and selling it in town, using a small worn-out wagon drawn by a pair of goats. He was unobtrusive and attended to his own business. He lived on the Joe Smith place and farmed a little.
Three and a half years ago the headless body of a dead woman was found in a sack in Boggy creek near Coalgate. The head was never found. Although officers for months worked on the case and scoured the country for the missing woman, no hint of the identity of the headless body was found until a daughter of Mrs. Waller two weeks ago declared she believed the woman was her mother. It was with the murder of this woman that Bledsoe is charged. Dispatches also state the excitement over the matter is high in Coalgate.
April 24, 1914
Bledsoe Penalty is Electrocution
At Coalgate last week District Judge Rainey accepted a plea of guilty of Jim Bledsoe, charged with the murder of a woman near Coalgate some three years ago, and sentenced him to be electrocuted July 2nd.
Judge Rainey sated that the confession of Bledsoe showed one of the most atrocious crimes in the state. He knocked the woman in the head with a chair, carried her body to the woods, took an old rough hatchet and hacked her head from her body, placed each in a sack, threw them in the river, and returned home and began to live with the woman’s daughter. Bledsoe killed the woman because she was jealous of her daughter who she thought was becoming intimate with Bledsoe, who declared that he had never been married to either of the women.
The woman and her children are in a deplorable condition and it is thought that the children will be taken in charge by the state and sent to one of the orphan homes.
(can’t read next line) ever was an occasion where the death penalty should be allowed to stand that this was one of them as it was the worst case that ever came under his observation. Under the present system of Governor Cruce the man will receive a life sentence instead of paying the penalty under the terms of the court, and will spend the remainder of his life in the state penitentiary.
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