A History of Jefferson, Marion County, Texas, 1836-1936

by Mrs. Arch McKay; Mrs. H. A. Spellings

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.