Miscellaneous, Nineveh Junction Murder, 1921

Man is Slain and His Father Severely Beaten by

Burglars Surprised by them in Junction Post Office

January 1921

 

Lewis H. Johnson, 42 years old, was shot to death and his father, George A. Johnson, 72 years old, was beaten into unconsciousness by burglars in the general store and postoffice at Nineveh Junction [Broome Co., NY], yesterday morning at 2:30 o'clock, after one burglar had been surprised by them in the store and handcuffed.

 

The men were owners of the store and had been called from their homes, a slight distance away, by the ringing of the burglar alarm with which the store was equipped at about 2 o'clock.  George A. Johnson is postmaster at Nineveh.

 

The murder and assault, it is believed, were committed by a confederate of the yeggman captured and handcuffed by the two proprietors, who had been lurking in the background awaiting an opportunity to free his companion.

 

The burglars escaped without being seen by anyone else, and the authorities of two counties, Broome and Chenango, are following up every meager clue left by the murderers.  

 

Bloodhounds brought to the scene of the murder from Oneonta were used to trace the men, but lost the scent after following the trail through a meadow across the Delaware & Hudson railroad tracks from the postoffice and thence back to the tracks.

 

Clues picked up by the authorities at the scene of the murder led early this morning to a lumber camp about five or six miles from Nineveh junction, where, it is believed, the fugitives were working previous to the attempted robbery of the postoffice.

 

Firearms, a pair of gloves and a pair of mittens, and a suit of overalls found in the store after the shooting, it is believed by the authorities, can be identified at the lumber camp and it is expected to take up the trail of the men from there with hope of their speedy capture.

 

George A. Johnson, the aged survivor of the attack, is confined to his bed, weak and dazed from blows over the head he received from the butt and of the shotgun whose discharge riddled the breast of his son.  This gun of the man who the Johnsons, father and son, had captured and handcuffed.

 

According to the story told by Mr. Johnson, it was shortly after 2 o'clock in the morning when the burglar alarm which connects the store, his house and the house of his son, gave the alarm that an attempt was being made to enter the store. 

 

Ten times before the Johnsons had been warned by that alarm that someone was entering the store and they knew just what to do.  They dressed hastily and armed themselves, the father with a long barreled cold revolver and the son with a shotgun, and made their way quickly to the store.

 

Reaching the front of the store they went to an electric light switchbox on the outside used for just such emergencies and flooded the store with light.

 

As they entered cautiously, a man rose from behind a counter and cried:  "Hands up!" at the same time leveling a revolved at them.  They dodged, however, and at the same time pointing their own guns, commanded the robber to drop his firearm.  The gun clattered to the floor and while the father held the burglar at bay with his revolver, the son put a pair of handcuffs on his wrists and commanded him to sit down in a chair nearby.

 

The son then sat on the edge of the counter guarding the burglar with the shotgun while the father went to the phone at the rear of the store to phone his wife that all was well.

 

Just as the elder Johnson had started to talk to his wife, and had said, "We've got him and every thing's all right," a shot rang out.  As he turned to see what had happened he discovered a man coming toward him with a raised shotgun and barely had time to dodge a blow aimed at him.  He reached for his revolver but before he could use it another blow directed at his head found its mark, staggering him.  He fought back, however, striking the robber several times with his gun.  It proved an uneven conflict, and the elder Johnson was beaten into unconsciousness. 

 

Mr. Johnson regained consciousness before persons in the vicinity who had been aroused by the shooting, arrived on the scene.  He crawled to the front of the store and found the body of his son, dead, stretched out behind one of the counters. The charge from the shotgun had riddled his breast and virtually torn his heart to threads, causing instant death. 

 

Searchers afterward found the imprint of one of the blows aimed at Johnson by his assailant in the window sill near the telephone.  The butt of the gun had smashed the window pane.  The blow had been given with such force, it is believed that had it reached its mark the elder Johnson also would have been killed.

 

Although the story told the authorities by the Elder Johnson following the shooting was hazy and he was unable to say whether the man who attacked him was the same one his son had handcuffed, it is believed by the authorities that it is improbable that the handcuffed man could have overcome Lewis Johnson, who stood guard over him with the shotgun.  They believe that a confederate who was lurking in the background and awaiting an opportune time to free the captured man, was the actual slayer. 

 

Another clue which strengthens the belief that two men were implicated is the fact that the son's body was found in the front of the store behind the counter, whereas while he was guarding the prisoner he was sitting on the outside edge of the counter near the center of the store.

 

George Johnson told the authorities that he believes the man he and his son captured was one of three men who came to the store about a week ago and whose actions aroused his suspicions.

 

 

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Tale of Burglar Who Slew Captor While Handcuffed is

One of Chenango's Most Intriguing Yarns, by Larry Reed

Binghamton Press, January 7, 1951
 

One of Chenango County's most often retold murder stories is written up again this month in a national magazine.  Under the title "No Escape" D.L. Champion has retold the story of the murder of Lewis Johnson in the Nineveh Junction postoffice 30 years ago this month.

Herbert W. Smith, 30, who had worked as a laborer in lumber camps in the Delaware and Chenango county area, was executed in February, 1922, the last man to be executed for a Chenango County murder.

The story of Smith's capture and conviction was written up in detail in the July, 1939, issue of Master Detective, a MacFadden publication, under the title "Clue of the Mule Mittens," by William A. Silverman.

The case is recalled often here because of the fact Smith was twice sentenced to be executed and because of the cold-bloodedness of the murder he had committed. 

Lewis Johnson and his father, George Johnson, postmaster, conducted a general mercantile business and handled the mail in the community.  Their store had been burglarized several times.  On Jan. 30, 1921, they rigged up a burglar alarm in the store, that would ring in both of their homes.  That very night the alarm summoned them back to the store.  Turning on the lights with an outside switch, they entered the store by different doors and captured Smith.  They handcuffed Smith, a man weighing 132 pounds and standing 5 feet, 3-1/2 inches tall.  Then while the father went to the postoffice section at the front of the store to telephone his home, the son made the fatal mistake of setting his shotgun against a counter and turning his back on the burglar. 

Smith grabbed the gun and while still handcuffed shot Lewis Johnson dead.  According to one recounting of the crime, Smith then reached the revolver the father had set down while he was telephoning and clubbed the elder man to unconsciousness.  Mrs. Johnson on the other end of the telephone line had heard the shot. She rushed to the store.  Her husband had partly regained consciousness and stumbled across the street and summoned Warren H. Miles, yardmaster on the D.&H. Railroad.

Meanwhile Smith had slipped away.  In his haste he left a pair of mittens, and a pair of trousers.  The mittens and sawdust found in the cuffs of the trousers were the only clues the authorities had when a full-scale manhunt was started hours later.

First on the scene were Chenango County Sheriff Fred L. Hovey, and District Attorney Ward N. Truesdalle, who now lives at South Otselic.  They were later aided in the investigation by State Police Capt. Stephen W. McGrath of Troop D, Oneida, and by Trooper J.J. Warner, later a lieutenant in Troop C, Sidney.  The weather was cold and the snow deep, and Smith had escaped on foot, with his wrists shackled together.  He had made the mistake of not finding the key to handcuffs.  It would seem he should have been easily captured, but he made his initial getaway good.  The next day some miles from the crime he obtained food from a farmer's wife while his handcuffed wrists were hidden under a coat.  Then all track of the killer was lost until Charles Abel, a railroad detective on the D.&H. who had entered the case, found broken links from the handcuffs in the basement of an abandoned farmhouse.  Smith had sawed off the chain on the sharp edge of an old washing machine wringer.  It was the sawdust and the mittens that led to the identity of the killer.  There is one story that the smell of mule on the mittens led the authorities to believe the killer was a muleskinner. 

Detective Abel and Trooper Warner were making a canvass of sawmills in the area, and on Feb. 17, at a sawmill near Walton, they learned the owner of the mittens was Sam French.  At the French home, Mr. French told Abel and Warner he had loaned the mittens to Herbert W Smith, who formerly boarded in the French home.  He also produced a picture of Smith and letters from Smith's "raft of girl friends."  The police checked with at least six of these women.  One of them, in Chenango Forks, admitted she had gone to Binghamton and secured a new outfit of clothing for Smith only a few days earlier.

Smith was arrested at an Evans Street home in Binghamton by Binghamton police under the command of Captain L.W. DeWitt.  While Smith played cards in the kitchen of the house with several other men, the landlady on the pretext of going to the grocery store, went out and called the police, the story goes.

Smith was tried twice in the Chenango County Courthouse here, and was convicted twice, with  Mr. Truesdell as the prosecutor, on a charge of murder first degree.  David F. Lee, Sr., of Norwich, defense attorney, obtained a second trial for Smith, when it was learned a deputy sheriff had entered the jury room during deliberation at the first trial.  It is reported the deputy took a shotgun and pair of handcuffs into the jury room, and put on the handcuffs to demonstrate that a man could shoot a gun while his wrists were bound together with the handcuffs.

The elder Johnson died a few years after his son was murdered, and it was believed the beating he suffered at the hands of Smith contributed to his death.