December 2013 – Historic Horrors

In Paintsville, a small eastern coal-mining town in Kentucky, Carl Newton Mahan became the youngest person ever tried for murder.

On May 18, 1929 Carl, age 6 and his friend Cecil Van Hoose, age 8, found a scrap of iron that they planned to sell to a junk dealer for a little extra money. Cecil took the scrap from Carl and hit him in the face with it. Carl got his revenge by running home and grabbing his father’s 12 gauge shotgun. He ran back to Cecil, pointed the gun at him and yelled “I’m going to shoot you!” And he did, killing the boy.

He was tried for murder, and got up on the stand to tell the court what happened. For the rest of the day long trial he sometimes laid and slept on the defense table. After 30 minutes of deliberation, the jury decided that manslaughter was more fitting in this case. Carl was sentenced to 15 years at a reform school and released to his parents on $500 bail.

A circuit judge issued a “writ of prohibition” that kept the boy from being sent to reform school because it was against procedure to try a person of that age in front of a jury so the jury had no authority to convict. Ultimately Carl was just sent home.

This is all I’ve been able to find on this case, but I’m very curious as what kind of life Carl Mahan lived after the trial.

Herman Webster Mudgett, better known as Dr. Henry Howard Holmes, was born May 16, 1861 in Gilmanton, New Hampshire. He was one of the first recorded American serial killers.

Mudgett had a difficult childhood, growing up with a violent alcoholic father. His mother was a devout Methodist who read the Bible to him. He claimed that, as a child, once his classmates discovered he was afraid of the local doctor they forced him to look at and touch a human skeleton. The bullies just wanted to scare him, but some believe that instead this is where his fascination and obsession with death started.

In June of 1884 Mudgett graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School. While attending school he stole bodies from the laboratory, disfigured them and then claimed the people were killed accidentally so he could collect insurance money from policies he took out on each deceased person.

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