A FARM HAND’S AWFUL CRIME.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
THEODORE MEYERS AND THE TRAGEDY OF 1871-3—EMPLOYED ON A RANCH NEAR DENVER, HE KILLS HIS EMPLOYER, GEORGE BONACINA, AND MAKES AN EFFORT TO MURDER HIS SISTER, MRS. NEWTON—HE PLANTS SEVEN BUCKSHOT IN HER BREAST, BUT SHE IS NOT KILLED OUTRIGHT, AND AFTER A HORRIBLE NIGHT ALONE SHE GETS TO DENVER, WHERE SHE TELLS HER STORY TO GEN. COOK, WHO TAKES THE ROAD AND RUNS THE MURDERER DOWN.
There has been but one execution of a criminal in Denver to the present time since the 24th day of January, 1873. On that day Theodore Meyers gave up his life on the gallows in expiation of the crime he had committed on the night of the 8th of August, 1871, in the murder of George Bonacina, a ranchman living on the Platte, twelve miles above Denver, and four miles beyond Littleton.
Meyers was arrested not alone for the murder of Bonacina, but also for an attempt to murder his sister, a Mrs. Belle Newton, who lived with her brother on the ranch. Mrs. Newton was a woman at that time about thirty years of age, and was of prepossessing personal appearance. She was possessed of fascinating manners, and had the reputation in the neighborhood in which she resided of being quite too “exclusive” to please the other residents. She had resided in Omaha previous to 1869, when she came to Cheyenne, whence she removed to Denver in 1870. Soon after coming to Denver, Mrs. Newton established herself in the millinery business, and while so engaged she became engaged to and married a Mr. Benjamin Friedenthal, removing with him soon after their marriage to the ranch already described on the Platte, where they lived for a few months. But their married life was not a happy one, and they separated. Mrs. Newton’s brother had joined her on the farm, and they continued to reside there after Friedenthal had taken his departure.
To properly understand the interest which was taken in the tragedy at the ranch it should be known that rumor had wagged a busy tongue in the neighborhood in which Mrs. Newton resided. It was alleged that Bonacina was not the brother of the woman, but a clandestine lover, and some asserted that his intimacy with Mrs. Friedenthal, or Mrs. Newton, had been the cause of the separation between her and her husband. One supposition, when the story of the murder was first told, was that Friedenthal had been in some way responsible for the crime. Another theory was that the murderer had sought to establish intimate relations with the woman himself, and that Bonacina had stepped in the way of his desires. These were some of the surmises which filled the air, and which rapidly grew into reports which professed to be accurate.
Mrs. Newton brought the first account of the tragedy into Denver herself. She arrived in the city about 11 o’clock on Friday, the 11th of August, 1871, and was conveyed to the Tremont house, standing then as now on Twelfth street, at the intersection of Blake.
A physician was at first sent for. He dressed the ugly wounds which the poor woman bore. As many as seven buckshot were ascertained to have been planted squarely in her breast, near the heart, four of them passing entirely through the body and the others lodging under the skin in the back. None of the balls had touched the heart, but it hardly seemed possible that so many pieces of lead should have plowed their way through a human body without producing a fatal result. Her physician told her that she did not have one chance in a hundred. But Mrs. Newton was a woman of nerve, and she replied that whether she lived or not she wanted the murderer of her brother brought to justice.
Sending for Gen. Cook, who was then sheriff of Arapahoe county, she told him the story of the shooting so far as she was able. She lay on a bed in her room as she related the circumstances. Her face was as white as death from loss of blood, and her voice sank to a mere whisper as she attempted to make the patient officer understand sufficiently well to pursue the murderer with some certainty of capturing him. Her talk was a series of moans and groans, interspersed with words painfully drawn out.
She had no doubt, she said, that the man whose name is given as Meyers had done the shooting, but she did not know his name, describing him as “a Dutchman, whose first name was Theodore.” Relating the circumstances of the affair, and those leading up to it, she said that this man had come to her and her brother some few weeks before the killing to obtain work, and had been employed as a hand on the farm. He had previously been engaged by a man named Lewis, who resided in the neighborhood, but had been discharged. Bonacina had stacked his grain some distance from the house. Meyers represented to him that while working for Lewis he had heard threats made to burn it, and so wrought upon the feelings of his employers that they procured guns and ammunition, and Bonacina and Meyers began sleeping at night at the grain stacks, some fifty yards from the house, for the purpose of protecting the grain from the attacks of incendiaries. They had been thus engaged for about two weeks, when the murder and attempted murder occurred.