Strenuous efforts have been made to obtain the names of the guilty parties, with but little success. The following statement is the latest and most reliable:
“A man by the name of Dennis was the pilot, and it is said helped do the shooting. A man named Wells was in the company. We can not give the first names of either of these men now, but have the promise of them.
“A young man named Bill Fudge, the son of North Methodists who were once members of the Southern Methodist Church, and another named Harrison Ratliff, it is said, helped commit the murder.”
To the question, “What evidence have you that Ing, the North Methodist presiding elder, sent the men to commit the murder?” the following reply was furnished:
“All the evidence we have that Ing sent the men is, that he was their commander at the time; and it has been told, by those who said they saw it, that father’s hand was carried to Ing as proof that they had killed him, and that he still had it in his possession a year or two ago.
“Respectfully, Josie M. A. M. Woods.”
When Mr. Woods’ dead body was found, “his left hand was off and gone.” Common rumor in the community, and the statement of several reliable gentlemen—which may hereafter be given—go to confirm this horrible and savage report about the hand.
The following account of the affair was published in the St. Louis Christian Advocate, of June 18, 1866, and signed “R.,” of Crawford county:
“Rev. Green Woods.—Mr. Editor: In the letter of your California correspondent, in last week’s Advocate, the names of several ministers formerly connected with the St. Louis Conference are mentioned with that of the lamented Green Woods, who the writer too truly mentions as having been cruelly murdered in the summer of 1862. And, as the writer of this sketch had known the deceased for many years, and was living in an adjoining county at the time the cruel murder was committed, he may be able to furnish some facts relative thereto that would interest his many friends and acquaintances of by-gone days. He was at the time (1862) living at his home, in Dent county, Mo., on a little farm that he was quietly cultivating with his own hands, and had been guilty of no other offense that that of preaching through the county in which he lived every Sunday, and oftener as he found opportunity. And, at the time he was torn from his weeping wife and little ones, he was at home plowing in his field, when suddenly he was surrounded by men wearing the uniform of soldiers, and hailing from Kansas—regular ‘Jayhawkers.’ How many broken-hearted wives and mothers, and destitute orphan children, throughout Missouri will have cause to remember these cruel ‘Kansas Jayhawkers!’ The cruel assassination of loved husbands and fathers; the burnt and blasted homesteads, where lonely chimneys only are left to tell the tale of once happy and contented households now scattered and torn by the ruthless storm of war in the wake of these Kansas desperadoes. Truly the fate of Missouri has been hard; and of many it may be said they are strangers in their own land.
“When informed by them that he must go with them as a prisoner, and probably knowing from the fate of others what he might expect of them, he told them that he had violated no law, that he was a minister of the Methodist Church, South, and that if they intended to kill him, he was not afraid to die. Then taking, as he well believed, a sad and final farewell of his wife and little children, he started with his captors to the town of Salem, as he thought. But, alas! what must have been the agony of the fond wife when she learned, several days afterward, that he had not been taken to Salem at all! Diligent search but confirmed her worst fears. He had been taken about two miles from home by the road side and shot. There the mortal remains of Green Woods were found—a cold and lifeless corpse—with the fatal bullet shot through the head.