177 Mass. 582 | Mass. | 1901
The defendant was found guilty of murder in the first degree, and the only question before us is whether there was any evidence to warrant the verdict.
He and Casimer Jedrusik were working together as farm laborers for one Keith in Granby. On Sunday, December 31, 1899, Jedrusik disappeared, and was never afterwards seen alive. On April 10,1900, his headless, mutilated body was found enclosed in a bran sack in an unused well between four hundred and five hundred feet from Keith’s horse barn. His clothing was found enclosed in another sack in the same well. His skull was afterwards found buried in the cellar of the horse barn. The sacks were similar to those which Keith had in the horse barn. The stone, which was enclosed in the sack of clothing, exactly fitted a vacant place in a stone wall about in line between the old well and the north door of the horse barn. On the day of the disappearance there was no snow on the ground, and the surface of the ground was entirely frozen. In the cellar of the horse barn pigs were kept, and there was soft mud
On November 18 the defendant went to Chicopee to the house of a Polish priest, to have the ceremony of marriage performed between him and a young woman who had been living as a maid at Keith’s house, and he found that the priest had received a letter in a name which proved to be fictitious, charging him with having a wife and children in the old country, and with receiving letters from his wife asking for money for the support of herself and her children. The priest refused to marry him, and sent a trusted person with him to investigate. It turned out that Jedyusik wrote the letter, and that its contents did not appear to be true. The defendant was then married by the priest, and the evidence tended'to show that he was very angry with Jedrusik, and that he made strong threats of vengeance against him. There was evidence from several witnesses that at different times between the defendant’s marriage and Jedrusik’s disappearance, the defendant manifested deeply hostile feelings towards him, and made 'threats against him. On the morning of December 31 there was a new manifestation of this feeling in charges made to Mr. Keith that Jedrusik had stolen a plane and had stolen butter. There was evidence that, between the time of the disappearance and the discovery of the body, the defendant was seen to take up one of the planks cov
Without going more at length into the evidence, which was voluminous, we are of opinion that it would have been error to take the case from the jury. So far as we can judge from the bill of exceptions the evidence well warranted the verdict.
Exceptions overruled.