CHAPTER XL.
INVESTIGATING THE TURNER MURDER—A WICKED DEED FOLLOWED BY A GENERAL DEBAUCH—FLIGHT OF THE ASSASSINS WITH THEIR VICTIM’S REMAINS—SALE OF HIS TEAMS AND WAGONS—THE FATHER’S UNSUCCESSFUL SEARCH—DETECTIVE CARR CALLED IN—WELCOME ARRESTED IN CHEYENNE AND CONFRONTED BY TURNER’S FATHER—CONFESSION AND TRIAL OF THE MURDERER.
At Park City there were found witnesses who had seen the murderers on the evening of the tragedy, before and after its occurrence, and their conduct had been shameful in the extreme. Whether a quarrel was picked with Turner was not known, but the circumstances went to show that there had been no quarrel, but that the murderers had found their victim sitting, and had advanced upon him from his rear, striking him in the head with a heavy axe, the blow being of such force as to cleave the skull and produce instant death. Welcome asserted after his capture that the blow had been struck by Emerson, but all the circumstances went to show that Welcome himself had wielded the death-dealing weapon. The skull wound showed that the blow had been struck by a left-handed person, and Welcome was left-handed.
There were also several persons who had seen blood on his garments after the tragedy had occurred, as it had spurted upon him from his victim. His threats, too, were remembered. About 11 o’clock on the night of the killing, and after it had occurred, there were several who had seen Emerson and Welcome at a dance house where they seemed to be especially hilarious, drinking and dancing with the girls and making themselves especially agreeable to those whom they met. One man who was in the dance house at the time noticed blood on Welcome’s shirt front and asked him what it meant. Welcome at first tried to hide the blood; apparently upon second thought, threw his vest open and showed the blood, and also pulled up his coat sleeve and showed blood on that, saying as he did so:
“I hit a s— of a b— to-night, and I hit him hard, too. I not only hit him, but I pinched his windpipe for him.”
Several others saw the blood and to them he made this same speech, but no one supposed that anything more than an ordinary fight had occurred, and none gave the matter a second thought.
The murderers remained about Park City for two days and three nights after committing the crime, mingling freely with the lower classes of people and having as before a gay time. They had laid the body of their dead companion in the wagon with the barley sacks, and, cold-blooded and merciless as they had been, had been afraid to stay at their camp during the night, and had gone to town each night to carouse and to sleep, when they could sleep. They appeared to be nonchalant, but they found, as all murderers do, of however hardened character, that the crime bore down upon them. It was a heavy weight. They tried to drown it in drink and in the gayeties of dance house merriment. But they failed signally.
The murderers concluded that they must get rid of the body and that then they would find peace of conscience. They determined to move on, taking the body as well as the property of the murdered boy with them, and to find some place to hide it from view, thinking that in this case, as in some others, the object being out of sight would be out of mind. They journeyed on, however, selling some of the barley by the way, until they came to a lonely and secluded spot in Echo cañon, where they camped for the night, and where they lifted the body of their former companion from its resting place in the wagon from among the barley sacks, and as the darkness came on in the deep cañon, laid it to rest, leaving the owls and night hawks to sing the funeral dirge, and the moaning pines to offer up prayers for safe passage to the Great Beyond.