Shepard Busby (Execution of)

Shepard Busby was hanged at Fort Smith (Sebastian County) on April 27, 1892, after being convicted in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas in the slaying of a United States deputy marshal.

Shepard Busby was born in Kentucky in 1833 and served in the Fifty-sixth Illinois Infantry Regiment and Fiftieth Missouri Infantry Regiment (US) during the Civil War. He lived in Stoddard County, Missouri, for about a dozen years before moving to western Arkansas and the Indian Territory.

Busby served as a deputy marshal in Judge Isaac C. Parker’s court from January 1890 to the spring of 1891, and after leaving that position he separated from his wife and moved north of Muldrow in the Cherokee Nation, where he lived with his son William (age twenty-two), Tennessee Burns (the mother of two of his children), and Florence Jones, his fifteen-year-old fiancée. On August 9, 1891, deputy marshal Barney Connelly, who joined Parker’s court after Busby left, rode up to the house to serve a warrant for adultery on the elder Busby.

According to Busby and the other three residents of the house, Connelly greeted Busby by name and asked if he would help him find a lost horse. After entering the yard, they said, Connelly, who never identified himself as a marshal, yelled, “God damn you,” pulled his pistol, and grabbed Busby by the neck. Busby grabbed the pistol, which fired and injured his hand, and then as the deputy approached him, he emptied the pistol into Connelly, killing him.

Busby and his son were both indicted for murder and were tried in December 1891. Evidence presented at trial contradicted their story. The locations of Connelly’s bullet wounds were inconsistent with Busby’s claim of firing as the deputy faced him, and Connelly also had a broken neck, which the defense contended may have happened while his body was being transported. Another deputy testified that chinking was missing from between the logs of the house and there was apparent gunpowder on the logs, indicating that William Busby may have shot Connelly from ambush.

On December 11, 1891, Shepard Busby was convicted of first-degree murder, and his son found guilty of manslaughter, receiving a ten-year prison sentence at the federal prison in Detroit, Michigan. On January 21, 1892, Parker sentenced Busby to hang on April 27, 1892.

After his sentencing, Busby “remained in his cell most of the time and has spent a great deal of time reading the Bible.” He was baptized into the Methodist faith on April 25, 1892.

On April 27, he woke up early and “ate very little and did not come out of his cell.” After the death warrant was read at around 10:00 a.m., he was “handcuffed and led forth to die, walking erect and defiant to the gallows.” After brief religious services, “he talked for half an hour on the scaffold, declaring the killing to have been in self defense” and stating that his son was not involved in Connelly’s shooting. Then, “his arms and legs were pinioned, the noose adjusted, the black cap drawn, the trap sprung, and the soul of Sheppard [sic] Busby took its flight.” He was declared dead fourteen minutes later.

Busby’s hanging was conducted by deputy marshal G. S. White instead of the court’s usual executioner, George Maledon. A Missouri newspaper reported that he declined the duty because the hangman and Busby were old friends, and that “the execution was fair, but not done with the neatness and dispatch characterizing Maledon’s executions.”

For additional information:
Akins, Jerry. Hangin’ Times in Fort Smith: A History of Executions in Judge Parker’s Court. Little Rock: Butler Center Books, 2012.

“He Was His Friend.” Butler [Missouri] Weekly Times, May 4, 1892, p. 6.

“It Was Broken.” Arkansas Gazette, April 28, 1892, p. 3.

Riley, Michael Owen. “Capital Punishment in Oklahoma: 1835–1966.” PhD diss., University of Arkansas, 2012. Online at https://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/518/ (accessed August 18, 2026).

“The Seventy-third Execution.” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, April 28, 1892, p. 3.

Mark K. Christ
Little Rock, Arkansas