THE STORY OF DIAMOND BESSIE
This sketch of a famous murder case in Jefferson is mostly from the pen of W. H. Ward who lived at that time and later moved to Texarkana where he was editor of “The Twentieth Century” and this sketch is taken from the December issue, along with a few other legends from other sources.
The recent mysterious murder of a woman in Jefferson, Texas, recalls the death of Bessie Moore or “Diamond Bessie,” who was believed to have been slain by her husband and erstwhile paramour, Abe Rothchild, within rifle shot of where the murder was committed more than twenty years ago.
The murder of Bessie Moore, properly Bessie Rothchild, a young and beautiful woman who had won the sobriquet of Diamond Bessie by the number and splendor of her jewels, was one of the most startling and sensational crimes in the criminal history of Texas. The scene of the crime was visited by thousands of curious spectators and the entire press of the Southwest teemed with gruesome incidents of the awful crime. Crowds came from afar to view the spot where the young mother had been hurled into eternity without warning, carrying with her the half formed life of an unborn infant.
On the shiny slope of a Southern hillside, almost within call of the then thriving populous city of Jefferson, Texas, in the calm of a Sabbath afternoon, the cruel and cowardly crime was committed, for which the husband was twice sentenced to hang but escaped justice by a technicality of the law. The murder of Bessie Rothchild, by the man who was first her betrayer and then her husband, was a crime so weird and terrible that the hand of a master might make it immortal, without for one instant diverging from the strict line of truth into the realm of romance.
Twenty-four years ago, Bessie Moore, the daughter of respectable parents of moderate circumstances, was decoyed from her home in the country by the son of a wealthy Cincinnati family. With the inexperience of youth, and that blind faith which makes a woman follow the man she loves to the utmost ends of the earth, Bessie Moore followed Abe Rothchild to Cincinnati. There for one year the young girl was plunged into that maelstrom of sin which whirls and eddies about a great city. Her companions were those of the half-world, the submerged half. Rothchild was rich and he showered his wealth upon the girl from whom he had taken all that life holds dear, home, family and friends.
The motley population of Jefferson added color to the restless movement of the town. The streets were crowded with men of many kinds of dress, cowboys in chaps and spurs, gentlemen in morning coats with canes, farmers in dingy overalls, ladies in elaborate flowing gowns, old slavery negroes, self confident, northern negroes, carpet-baggers, and into the crowd came Bessie Moore, sparkling with diamonds, accompanied by dark and tall Abe Rothchild and did she create a sensation? She was part of this restless life the three short days that she was among them, diamonds sparkled in her ears as she shook her head and laughed, diamonds so large on her fingers that it seemed they must tire her small hands. This poor return for her sacrifice satisfied the girl only for a time, then the glittering jewels, silken raiment, which gave her the sobriquet of “Diamond Bessie” and which were purchased with a woman’s shame, began to pall upon her. Bessie Moore was to become a mother.
Amid all the dissipation into which her betrayer had thrust her, the woman had remained true and steadfast to the man she loved, for whom she had given up her innocence and home. Through all this time she had relied upon Rothchild’s promise to make her his wife and she prayed that the promise might be fulfilled.
Finding her prayers of no avail she demanded a fulfillment of the pledge. There was a scene, of course, and other scenes followed but Rothchild had now to deal, not with a silly trusting girl, but with a wronged, outraged and desperate woman, who battled not only for her rights but for her child, yet unborn. In a fit of desperation she threatened to lay the shameful story of her betrayal before Rothchild’s father, a wealthy and influential citizen of Cincinnati. Then Rothchild is alleged to have conceived and proceeded to carry out a crime so dark, so despicable and so diabolical that Satan himself must have blushed at its conception. He promised the young girl to make her his wife, told her that it would not do for them to be married in Cincinnati; where both themselves and their intimacy were so well known, but that he would take her on his western trips. Rothchild was a traveling salesman representing a jewelry house in which his father was financially interested and he himself being slated for partnership, and that they would be married in some out of the way place out west and that by changing one figure in the marriage certificate, it would make it appear that they had been married immediately upon the young girl leaving home, which would have given legitimate birth to the child, to which Bessie Moore was about to become a mother.
The girl believed him and blessed him and they left Cincinnati, together, traveling westward and passing through Texarkana. From the moment Rothchild promised to make Bessie Moore his wife he had been planning the woman’s murder. They left the Texas and Pacific railway at Kildare, Rothchild telling the woman that they would go through Linden, the County seat of Cass County, to be married, choosing that spot, he said, because it was so obscure that news of the marriage would not be heard outside the little town in which the ceremony was to be performed. His real intention was to murder the woman on the road. He was thwarted in this by being compelled to make the trip on a public coach, there being no such thing as private conveyances in Kildare.
Once at Linden, Rothchild was compelled to make good his promise and Bessie Moore, the wronged and betrayed girl became Bessie Rothchild, the wife of her betrayer. From Linden they came to Jefferson, Texas from which point it was agreed that Mrs. Rothchild should return to Cincinnati and have her marriage certificate recorded changing the date, as agreed upon, after which she was to return to her husband. The poor girl looked forward with eagerness and hunger to the day she would return to her home bearing the honored name of wife and be clasped once more in her mother’s arms. Alas! The poor girl lies in an obscure corner of the Jefferson Cemetery, her body long since dust and food for worms. They reached Jefferson and registered at the Brooks Home—(now the Foster home.)
From some cause she appeared unhappy and one of the maids of the hotel, who entered the room several times during the afternoon, declared she found Bessie weeping bitterly, but the next morning she seemed to have recovered her cheerfulness and gave the maid a handsome present, telling her that she and her husband had not been very happy for some time past but that they were entirely reconciled and were going out in the woods to spend the day. Lunch was prepared for them at the hotel. They were seen by twenty people to cross the public bridge over Cypress Bayou, within a hundred yards of the business portion of the city. The writer himself, returning from a ride, met them within a hundred yards of the bridge and noticed them only sufficiently to note that they were strangers, fashionably dressed and that the woman was very beautiful.
The couple strolled leisurely along for half a mile on the other side of the bridge, then taking a by path plunged into the forest, climbed a hill, almost within stone’s throw of the public thoroughfare, and within rifle shot of the city itself. They had their lunch and doubtless the man who planned one of the most cowardly murders ever perpetrated whispered words of love and loyalty into the ears of the poor woman, only too glad to receive them. Their lunch was spread on a large rock; it was almost an ideal spot, deep in the heart of the woodland, surrounded by the songs of birds and the musical ripple of the running water. In the shade of the giant oak and ironwood they whiled away the midday hours. Seated on the moss grown rock, the woman out the initials of her husband in the soft bark of a curly maple and with a fond woman’s foolish heart treasured the false vows of her brutal lord in whose inhuman breast lurked a purpose so dark, so deadly that the fiends of hell must have shuddered at its import. While the foolish heart of the woman fluttered with hope and thrilled with fond desires, the hand of the master murderer of modern times, pushed the rim of a deadly revolver within an inch of her white temple, where rippling masses of sunny hair fell in clustering curls, and without a tremor sent a bullet crashing through her brain. The sound of a shot rang out on the evening air, reverberated from the hillside and died away in distant woods. The birds stopped midway their gladsome song, a tiny serpent of smoke rose above the tree tops and drifted with the winds, a frightened squirrel darted into its den, the sluggish river flowed smoothly at the base of the hill, and a dead white face stared at the winter sky.
With fiendish deliberation the uxorcide removed the costly jewels from the dead form, with one hand the murderer of Bessie Rothchild hurled a hopeless woman’s soul into eternity and with the other stripped her lifeless body of the poor gaudy ornaments, which were badges of her shame, the price of a woman’s sin.
Rothchild returned to the city by a different route, employing a negro boatman to put him over the river. On his return to the hotel he explained that he left his wife with friends in the country. He left Jefferson the next day and it was not until a week or more that the body was discovered, within a hundred yards of what is known as the Shreveport road, a public highway traveled by hundreds of people daily. The corpse lay for all this time untouched by animals of the forest and unclean birds of the air.
Rothchild was traced to Cincinnati and only a few days intervened before the Sheriff of Jefferson, Mr. John Vines, located him in a saloon and brought him back to Texas. Finding himself surrounded by detectives, fearing every bush an officer, cowering ’neath the lash of an accusing conscience the murderer of Bessie Moore, with the same pistol, which had sent his helpless, hapless victim to her last account, attempted to end his own miserable existence.
Again the pistol was pointed at the temple of human life, but the hand of a suicide was not as steady as that of a murderer, Rothchild lost an eye while Bessie lost her life.
For seven years Abe Rothchild battled for his life with the help of the South’s best legal talent against the State’s attorneys who accused him of killing Bessie Moore.
After one of the most sensational murder trials in the history of Texas, after being twice convicted and sentenced to hang Rothchild escaped justice through a technicality of the law.
The story goes that when the verdict of the jury was given, the foreman of the jury drew a crude picture of a noose on the wall of the courthouse and said: “This is my verdict.” The lawyers who defended Abe Rothchild were Mabry, Pierce, McKay, and Culberson, Culberson and Armistad, Crawford and Crawford, Turner and Lipscomb and it is also said that their fees were princely.
W. T. Armistad of the firm of Culberson and Armistad cleared Rothchild.
People came from miles—resentment was strong and for days the battle raged—strangers recognized Rothchild as the same handsome stranger who had spent two days at the Capitol Hotel in Marshall, under the name of Abe Rothchild.
The courthouse where Abe Rothchild was twice tried for the murder of beautiful Bessie Moore, is now used for the negro school and the jail in which he attempted to take his life has long since been torn away.
Rothchild later served a twenty year sentence in a Southern penitentiary for a gigantic system of theft and forgery directed against the Pacific Express Company, with a sufficient number of charges pending against him, in other states to send him to his grave in stripes, though he lived three times the time alloted to man.
This ends the story and history of “Diamond Bessie” which startled the world a score of years ago, with details of which many people in this community are familiar.
Only a small stone marked the humble looking grave and it is told by the sexton that it was donated by a marble yard that formerly did business here. Her name was written in indelible ink and long since has faded away. After she had been buried many years a stranger came into the cemetery and asked to be shown her grave. His visit was an occasion of heart-breaking sobs and bitter tears. He left as he came in an unbroken silence as to who he was, or from whence he came.
The body of this beautiful girl was placed in a casket that was bought by the big hearted citizenship of Jefferson costing $150.
Just beyond the wagon bridge, on the road leading to Marshall and Shreveport her heart was pierced by a cruel bullet, from a hand she loved. His only defense was an “alibi”; a change of venue was tried, finally in Jefferson and at the verdict “not guilty” the most awful frown of displeasure was seen on the face of the Judge. The name of this girl was Bessie Moore.
THREE “CITIZENS” OF JEFFERSON
“Aunt Viney”
There were three Citizens of Jefferson who were not so prominent but they were well known and will be remembered by the “Children” of forty and fifty years ago.
First we would remind you of “Aunt Viney.” Surely there was never another just like her. She was a real African, large of stature, black, kinky headed and had a style all her own. She modeled her robes of “tow sacks,” often making them many layers thick, according to the weather. Sometimes her robes were long and again they reached the shins. She “earned” her living by begging from house to house and when the weather was extremely cold she often sought shelter for the night, on the back porches that were not securely locked. She was never in a hurry to leave and was often aroused by the owner stumbling over her when he came out. She was never known to steal and rarely displayed her temper. She had little to say to anyone but she wielded her long heavy walking stick in a professional manner when the children tormented her and they were not long in retreating.