At eight o’clock Monday morning, May 4th, 1903, he proceeded to the court house with affidavits for filing. From the clerk’s office he walked to the front door of the court house, and, facing the street, engaged in conversation with his friend, Capt. B. J. Ewen.
The corridors stretching out at his back were full of men. Marcum was leaning on Ewen’s shoulder. The two men had been conversing for possibly three minutes, when, at 8.30 A. M., a shot rang out in the rear of the corridor. Marcum staggered and as he sank to the floor another shot fired. The first shot entered his back and the ball came out through the breast. The next shot passed through the top of his head and was doubtlessly aimed as he reeled.
Just before the shots were fired, one Tom White passed Marcum at the door and gazed into his face in a manner calculated to draw Marcum’s attention. As White had passed, Marcum turned to Ewen and said: “That’s a bad man and I am afraid of him.”
The body of Marcum lay where it had fallen for at least fifteen minutes before any of his friends dared approach it.
Marcum’s wife, on hearing of the murder of her husband, rushed to the court house, knelt by the side of the body and in the blood and brains that had spattered the floor, drenched her handkerchief. What sort of a vow she made then may be imagined. We shall draw the curtain over the scene of sorrow and grief at the home of the murdered man. He left a wife and five children.
Marcum had been a practising lawyer for seventeen years. He was, at the time of his death, a trustee of the Kentucky State College, a United States Commissioner, and represented the Lexington & Eastern Railway Company as well as other large corporations in a legal capacity.
THE REIGN OF TERROR.
Immediately after the assassination of Marcum, and for a long time afterwards, conditions at Jackson were terrible.
There was consternation among all who had in the least degree incurred the enmity of the tyrants who now controlled both county and town. Judge Hargis appeared in the newspapers with a lengthy accusation against the dead man Marcum, practically declaring that the assassination was a good deed and deserved.
Many relatives of Marcum, the Cockrells and their sympathizers, left town and sought refuge elsewhere.