Andrew Hudspeth (Execution of)

Andrew J. Hudspeth, a white man (named Charles in some accounts), was hanged on December 30, 1892, in Harrison (Boone County) for a murder in which the body of the victim was never found.

Andrew J. Hudspeth worked for farmer George Watkins and lived with him, his wife Rebecca, and their son near Yellville (Marion County). On December 9, 1886, Hudspeth and Watkins rode a wagon into town, where Watkins sold some bales of cotton. Hudspeth later returned alone in the wagon, claiming Watkins had gotten off the wagon to get a job on the railroad. The local Mountain Echo newspaper noted, “Watkins is said to have been a hard-working, inoffensive man, and there is no occasion for his leaving in the night, when within a few miles of home.”

A local deputy sheriff named Lawson was suspicious of Hudspeth’s story and arrested him on February 1, 1887. Rebecca Watkins, meanwhile, had gone to Fayetteville (Washington County), writing her father in Harrison that her husband had been “killed on the railroad.”

Lawson went to Fayetteville and brought Rebecca Watkins back to Yellville to testify in Hudspeth’s “examining trial,” at which she testified that “she and Hudspeth had been criminally intimate” and had plotted to kill George Watkins so they could be together. She said that she “found a great deal of blood” on the wagon when Hudspeth returned from Yellville and that he left the house that night with an axe that was bloody the next day. She said, “I asked him if he had everything hid so it would never be found. He said he had.” Hudspeth was ordered held on a first-degree murder charge, and Rebecca Watkins was detained at Lawson’s house as a material witness.

Early in the morning of July 10, 1887, a mob of nightriders rode into Yellville and took Rebecca Watkins from Lawson’s house, putting a rope around her neck and threatening to hang her if she did not give more information on her husband’s disappearance. The Mountain Echo reported that “the woman…made piteous appeals to the mob to spare her life.” They departed without harming her.

The Marion County circuit court indicted Hudspeth in August 1887, and he was tried in Harrison after winning a change of venue. After a trial lasting nearly a week at which Rebecca Watkins was a state’s witness, he was convicted in early 1888 and sentenced to hang on April 19, 1888. He appealed his conviction to the Arkansas Supreme Court, where Justice Burrill Battle overturned the verdict on a technicality and sent the case back for a new trial. In late July 1888, however, Hudspeth picked the lock of his cell in the Boone County Jail and escaped.

He was free for several months before being arrested near Clarksville (Johnson County) on March 23, 1892. The Arkansas Gazette reported that “when arrested he showed signs of resistance, being armed with a large axe….He is a hard case and has traveled under many aliases, the last being J. J. Taylor.”

Hudspeth was again tried in Harrison in late July 1892, and after a trial that included thirty-eight witnesses he was again convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to hang on October 13. Acting Governor Christopher Columbus Hamby, serving as the state’s chief executive as Governor James P. Eagle recovered from an illness, granted a fifty-eight-day delay a week before the scheduled hanging so Hudspeth could seek to have the sentence commuted.

Eagle again delayed the hanging, setting a December 30, 1892, date to allow him time to review the commutation request; the Gazette noted that “there is a very peculiar circumstance connected with this case. The body of the victim has never been found nor any traces of it.” After studying the evidence in the case for two days, Eagle declined to overturn the sentence.

Hudspeth met with a local Methodist preacher the day before he was to die and asked to be baptized “but was told that under the circumstances it could not be considered necessary.” He continued to proclaim his innocence to his attorney, but he never spoke to anyone about Watkins’s disappearance.

Sheriff D. A. Eoff waited until 4:15 p.m. on December 30, 1892, in hopes of a last-minute reprieve before taking Hudspeth to the gallows. The condemned man declined to make a statement “and marched to the scaffold as steadily as could have been expected of one in such feeble health.” At 4:30 p.m., “the fatal drop was sprung. His neck was broken by the fall and not the slightest tremor of the body was discernible.” His body was cut down twelve minutes later.

Hudspeth’s was the first legal hanging in Boone County, although three men had previously been lynched there: Mose Kirkendall in 1878, William Arterberry in 1880, and Andrew Mullican in 1886.

For additional information:
“Arrested on Suspicion.” Mountain Echo, February 4, 1887, p. 2.

“Behind the Bars.” Arkansas Gazette, March 24, 1892, p. 1.

“Circuit Court.” Mountain Echo, August 26, 1887, p. 2.

“Convicted of Murder.” Mountain Echo, August 5, 1892, p. 1.

“Guilty!” Mountain Echo, February 3, 1888, p. 2.

“He Must Swing.” Arkansas Gazette, December 28, 1892, p. 4.

“Hudspeth Hanged.” Arkansas Gazette, December 31, 1892, p. 2.

“Hudspeth Hanged.” Mountain Echo, January 6, 1893, p. 2.

“Hudspeth Respited.” Arkansas Gazette, October 5, 1892, p. 6.

“Hudspeth-Watkins Case.” Mountain Echo, February 11, 1887, p. 1.

“Jail Delivery at Harrison.” Mountain Echo, July 27, 1888, p. 1.

“A Masked Mob.” Mountain Echo, July 15, 1887, p. 1.

“Proceedings of the Supreme Court.” Arkansas Gazette, July 8, 1888, p. 6.

“Respited.” Arkansas Gazette, December 1, 1892, p. 4.

“Sentence Passed.” Mountain Echo, February 10, 1888, p. 2.

Untitled. Mountain Echo, March 30, 1888, p. 2, col. 2.

Mark K. Christ
Central Arkansas Library System