POUND & GRAY , Publishers DANVILLE , ARKANSAS , Thursday , April 5 , 1906 Vol.8 No.2

J.W. INCE HANGED

Quadruple Murderer pays Death Penalty
for Murder of Wife and Three Children

Talked an Hour and Forty Five Minutes
On Scaffold

J.W. Ince , the quadruple murderer, was changed in the jail yard at this place for the murder of his wife and three children near Briggsville March 5 , 1905, the execution taking place at 1:30 o'clock and was pronounced dead by the attending physicians at 1:50 and his body was placed in the potters field in the City Cemetery.
Ince displayed wonderful nerve and did not at any time show that his nerves were in the least shattered. He was led to the scaffold and given all the time he wanted to make a talk and took one hour and forty five minutes time in his speech.
The editor accompanied the deputies to Little Rock Tuesday after Ince returning Tuesday afternoon. Ince told the officials of the penitentiary good-bye and thanked them for the kind treatment they had given him.
He said he had served a term of three years in the penitentiary in Missouri for burglary and had been arrested once for murder but proved to be an innocent party. He said he was not in his right mind when he committed the rash act but that he was mad at his wife and when he was mad he would hurt his best friend and that he was mad at his wife when he so foully murdered her and the children.
The only time Ince showed any signs of weakening was when told that the citizens in the neighborhood of where the crime was committed had protested against him being buried by the side of his wife and children, when he said they could do as they pleased with his body as that was the only request he had to make and that it had been refused.
Ince said his lawyers should be praised for there efforts to save his life and not criticized as they had been for it was there sworn duty to defend him to the last and that he felt sure that they had all in there power to save his life.
He requested that they allow him to dress himself for the execution and the request was granted.
After making his address he ate a hearty dinner and talked to the priest who accompanied hin here and to the editor and was led back to the scaffold at 1:25 o'clock and stepped on the trap ready for the execution.
He was thirty years old and had been married about eight years and had lived in Arkansas three years and said if he had not come to Arkansas this awful crime would not have been committed. of if he had never had anything to do with her people and he and his wife would have been living together happi;y now.
Ince had quite alot to say on the scaffold about Prosecuting Attorney H.M. Jacoway and Governor Davis, claiming that they had not treated him right though he had forgiven them and everybody else that had mistreated him and was prepared to meet his God.
Father Moran , a Catholic Priest of Little Rock , was with Ince a few minutes Tuesday night and spent some time with him yesterday before the execution.


Below we publish a statement written by Ince before the execution which just about covers everything he said in his talk on the scaffold and which was to have been used in case his nerve failed him and he could not make a talk.

Gentlemen and Ladies -- I will make a feeble effort to make you all a little talk. i can not believe anyone would think I would mislead them in the past.
I realize the awfulness of my crime and know it is both brutal and cowardly. I dont blame some few for being glad to see me go as they think it right, yet they are far from taking the proper view of the matter. I feel better toward mankind than I did a long while back. I had taken a real fair view of the parties concerned and gave all the public the benefit of all doubts, as we should. I realize that all of us are too ready to judge each other in times of trouble and trials and I stand before justice and the living God whom we shall all see sooner or later. I have prayed long and earnestly for my enemies since I come to realize how things are. It is not really necessary that I should try to explain why I realize all things as they are but I will say this much, that some evil thought went though my mind just before the change for the good came. I am glad that it did come before it was forever too late because if it had not come when it did I might not have been fit to stand before the Great Judge.
I was led by evil influences and until a man caused me to see where I was going I was advised by some evil minded ones to sell my life and dearly as possible. I used to think that way myself but I am glad the power and love of God come to me in time to save me. I will right here say I have got all the time I asked for from the one that came to grank our petition and His will be done.
I am sorry that I am not going to be executed publicly so all that were desirous of seeing me forfeit this unprofitable and worthless life could have witnessed it.
I dont blame people at all for saying tha man ought to die as it would not seem right nor just to let me live and go free after I have done what I have done, yet I am being executed according to justice, it is all a mockery, while I am the one that has taken the sweet little womans life and shed the blood of those that were so near and dear to me and so good and innocent befoer God.
I am not the black hearted villain which I have been made out to appear. I am not guilty of malicious murder as doubtless the most of you think, yet I must go though with what is callee suffering by men. I know there are some men under the sound of my voice that this moment are saying "I know Jim Ince did not get a fair trial, he only got a mock trial, I want to state to all you good people that those supposed facts that were laid fair to my wife about siding with her people in that law suit were untruthful. She was farther from being reconciled toward them than I was. Of course she was the cause of me not doing anything rash toward her uncle or her old father whom she dearly loved, all childrens first and last duty and like that.
I am sure though that if I had not got back into that law suit my wife and sweet little ones would be living today but fate was against me and I cant call back the past, If I could it would be a different thing altogether.
I must go the way it seems most pleasing to some few people here in this sinful world, Farwell to all.
James W. Ince

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