Our Daily Show! 100 Years Ago With Lacy! Escaped Murderer Mind Games
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ALTON - On October 2, 1924, Missouri Gov. Arthur M. Hyde received a letter. The letter’s author, Noble Shepard, had killed a man and woman thirty years before, was sentenced to hang, and then escaped from the Four Courts jail building in St. Louis two days before his death sentence could be carried out. He cut a plate at the back of a cell with a saw, crawled through the hole, and then wiggled through an old sewer and out to freedom.
The letter stated:
“St. Louis, Oct. 1.
I escaped from the St. Louis Jail in 1896 while under sentence of death for murder. I am now old and feeble and will give myself up if you promise not to hang me. I’m willing to go to the penitentiary. Put a notice in the St. Louis Post Dispatch, giving your promise, and I’ll give myself up to anybody you mention in the notice. Yours truly,
NOBLE SHEPARD.”
Shepard murdered Thomas George Gilroy Morton and Thomas’s fiancé Lizzie Pack Leahy on Christmas Eve, 1894, though Lizzie lived another four weeks with one-third of her skull gone. It was a horrific crime.
Thomas had been the proprietor of a small traveling variety show, and in Alton, he met Lizzie. He had been married before, but his first wife had died. Lizzie was the daughter of Mary J. Pack and Col. James Patterson Pack, Civil War Union veteran, Alton policeman, and prize fiddler. Lizzie had also been married before but had been separated from her husband for more than a year and was attempting to obtain a divorce. Thomas and Lizzie lived in a houseboat at the foot of Potomac Street on the Mississippi River in St. Louis. Noble, who had been a very skilled glassblower for a time in Alton, lived in a tent nearby and sometimes socialized with the couple.
After the murder, Noble claimed that he had been in an intimate relationship with Lizzie and had killed Thomas in self-defense when they were discovered together, but from her hospital bed, Lizzie denied any romantic involvement with Noble, and the police working the case were of the opinion that the motive was likely greed. Thomas had been found buried in the sand with his pockets turned out. Noble’s shifting account of the event did not fit the evidence, and it was soon discovered that he had pawned a gold watch belonging to Thomas. From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “Shepard’s story of his illicit relations with Lizzie Morton, Thomas Morton’s wife, or mistress, is now regarded as only one more of the many lies he has told concerning the tragedy.”
Thomas’s body was shipped to his family in Newport, Ky., for burial. Lizzie’s family buried her at the Alton City Cemetery.
Gov. Hyde was unwilling to make a promise that Noble Shepard’s death sentence would not be carried out, but he urged the escaped convict to turn himself in. The second letter from Noble Shepard, printed October 13, 1924, reads:
“I saw your reply to my letter in the Post-Dispatch, and I think it would be dangerous to give myself up. It would be suicide on my part, as I have no friends or money to help me.
I would never have escaped if I got a term in the penitentiary. But just before I escaped I saw a man named Fitzgerald hanged, and I made up my mind that hanging was not right.
This will close my case – no hard feelings on my part.
Yours truly,
NOBLE SHEPARD.”
There is no record of Noble Shepard’s death or burial.
Sources
“Escaped Slayer Ready to Give Up, Letter States.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch (St. Louis, Missouri), October 2, 1924.
Four Courts building. Missouri Historical Society. Identifier: P0764-00443-4g https://mohistory.org/collections/item/P0764-00443-4g
“In the Morgue.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch (St. Louis, Missouri), December 30, 1894.
“Lizzie Pack May Be Avenged by Conscience.” Alton Evening Telegraph (Alton, IL), October 3, 1924.
“Lizzie Morton (Pack) is Dead.” Alton Evening Telegraph (Alton, IL), January 24, 1894.
“The Murdered Man’s Mother.” St. Louis Globe-Democrat (St. Louis, Missouri), January 8, 1895.
“Noble Shepard’s Murder Trial.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch (St. Louis, Missouri), November 18, 1895.
“Shephard Not to Give Self Up, He Declares.” Alton Evening Telegraph (Alton, IL), October 13, 1924.
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