W. S. Douglas, An Ex Editor and Marshall of Texas

Douglas, who is a life prisoner, was sent up from Grant county for the murder of a young boy, a mail carrier. The details of the crime show it to have been revolting in its cold blooded, deliberate accomplishment. It seems the day of the murder several registered letters were put in the pouch carried by the boy and this knowledge came to the ears of Douglas, who waylaid and shot the boy, inflicting a serious but not fatal wound. The boy in endeavoring to escape the assassin ran his horse into St. Johns run and swam across, only to meet his murderer, who ran across a bridge and headed him off and deliberately murdered him as he came out of the water. Douglas had his trials, and was found guilty in both. Gen Flick was at one time retained by him, if I mistake not, but his crime was so great and the evidence to clear that nothing could be done to save him, and he was finally sentenced to the penitentiary for the period of his natural life. It may interest the newspaper fraternity to know that Douglas is the only one of their number who ever was sent to the West Virginia penitentiary for so base a crime. He told your reporter the story of his life, and the following brief outline covers the principal events of his history. He was born and raised in West Virginia, until, at the age of 15, when he went into a newspaper office as a "devil," (and he has been the incarnation of a veritable Pluto ever since). He learned to set type, became a compositor, afterward a "jour," and finally finding the field of journalism in West Virginia too narrow for his special talents emigrated to Texas. Being a man of pleasant address, and apparently a gentleman, there he formed the acquaintance and married an estimable young lady, by whom he had one child, which lived but three or four years and was shortly followed by its mother. He left that portion of Texas, went to Lampasas, and started a newspaper called the Lampasas Advertiser. Here he again married. Douglas was appointed a Deputy Sheriff, and performed the duty so well, especially that portion of it connect with capturing wild outlaws of the frontier, that when his time as Deputy Sheriff expired he was elected Marshal.

As a Marshal there is no doubt that Douglas made his mark on more than one occasion, principally inscribed, no doubt, with 40 caliber bullets. He always brought in his man, but as often feet-foremost as with perpendicular, but one day he went out to arrest some one on a warrant, he followed probably his last trail (but one) of death. He returned to the little town of Lampasas, with his prisoner strapped to the back of a horse. But the prisoner was as dead as cold lead could make him. One story goes that the dead man had many friends who believed that he had been deliberately murdered and swore to avenge him. Another, but somewhat less plausible one was that the score keepers of the coroner's jury disagreed as to the number of bullet holes in the dead man, and the coolness that arose on that occasion gradually centered upon Douglas. Be that as it may, Douglas directly after the above occurrence left Texas for the mountains of West Virginia. He, like ninety-nine men out of the hundred in prison, declares his entire innocence of the crime attributed to him.