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1830–1883 · CROSS-REFERENCE
The nineteenth century's famous Fort Wayne murder cases were capital cases, and they are told in full in the Crime section of this history, where the execution record lives. They are named here so that this section's arc is complete, and not retold. In 1830 the Miami leader Big Leg — Neewilenkwanka — stood trial in the county's early court, a case the Crime addendum carries. On 3 May 1855 Benjamin Madden and George Keefer were hanged for the murder-robbery of John Dunbar, the county's first fully documented capital punishment, told in Crime. The Regulators' extra-legal hanging of Gregory McDougall in 1858, punishment imposed by citizens outside any court, is told in the addendum. And on 9 October 1883 Sam McDonald was hanged for the axe murder of his friend Louis Laurent — the last public execution in Allen County, and the closing entry of the Crime section's scaffold record. The famous case of the century that the scaffold record does not close is the docket itself, and it is the subject of the next entry.
Sources:
- Crime History and Crime History, this history — the scaffold and vigilante records in full