In the fall of 1815 Captain Carson appeared at the home and his estranged wife had no welcome for him.
For the following several months the trio lived a life of continual strife. One evening in January, 1816, the two men met in the parlor of the Carson home on Second and Dock Streets, when Smith shot and killed Carson.
The murderer was taken before Alderman Binns, who committed him to prison on a charge of murder. As already stated, Smith was convicted and Mrs. Carson acquitted.
Mrs. Carson immediately planned to save Smith from the scaffold. She was able to command the services of the most desperate criminals.
Both Smith and Mrs. Carson knew that the Alderman and editor had great influence with Governor Snyder, and their first effort was to bring pressure upon him to obtain a pardon for the condemned man.
Binns refused to interfere, and in addition published a caustic warning against any attempt to stay the course of justice. Never had there been so much feeling manifested in the desire to obtain a pardon for murder as on this occasion.
Ann Carson conceived the scheme to kidnap Binns and hold him as a hostage for Smith. This plan failed. Then the desperate criminals endeavored to coerce Binns into their measures by planning to kidnap his son, who had been christened Snyder, after the then Governor. The boy was not quite six years old, but daily went to his school.
This plot was communicated to Binns and the child was kept in his home, and that plot also failed.
Then the notorious and desperate Ann Carson determined to kidnap the Governor himself, and keep him in custody, under a threat of being put to death, if he did not grant a pardon for Smith.
The very night this scheme was determined on, it was, through a lay-cousin of Lieutenant Smith’s, communicated to John Binns, who immediately dispatched the details of the plot to the Governor, who was then at his home in Selinsgrove.