People v. Spencer

264 Ill. 124
CourtIllinois Supreme Court
DecidedJune 16, 1914
StatusPublished
Cited by35 cases

This text of 264 Ill. 124 (People v. Spencer) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Illinois Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
People v. Spencer, 264 Ill. 124 (Ill. 1914).

Opinion

Mr. Justice Carter

delivered the opinion of the court:

At the October term, 1913, of the circuit court of Du-Page county the grand jury returned an indictment against the plaintiff in error, Henry C. Spencer, for the murder of Mildred Allison, alias Mildred Rexroat. On a trial before a jury in that county a verdict of guilty was returned and his punishment fixed at death. After motions for new trial and in arrest of judgment had been overruled he was sentenced to be hanged. The record is before us for review.

At about 8:23 o’clock in the evening of September 26, 1913, a freight train on the Elgin, Joliet and Eastern railroad running in a northerly direction was approaching Wayne, in DuPage county, when the engineer saw a dark object on the track ahead. He tried to stop the train but was unable to do so until after it had passed over the object. The train crew went back to the south to ascertain what they had struck, and a short distance south of the caboose they found the body of a woman cut in two just above the hips. On the upper part of the body was a blue jacket. A. lady’s large, blue hat and a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles were found in the vicinity, and a gold bracelet, marked “from W. H. A. to M. A.,” was on one of the arms. The witnesses testified that the body was neither warm nor cold when found. They at once notified the officials of the railroad company and an "undertaker at West Chicago. The undertaker, under direction of the coroner of DuPage county, took charge of the remains and removed them to his morgue at West Chicago. The next morning the coroner of the county found near the scene of the tragedy, close to the railroad track, a lady’s white hand-bag turned inside out, with spots of blood on it. The Aurora, Elgin and Chicago Electric railway runs from Chicago westerly through various towns, and a little west of Wheaton, the county seat of DuPage county, one branch turns northwesterly towards Wayne. ' About thirty rods south-east of the station at Wayne it crosses on a viaduct over the tracks of the Elgin, Joliet and Eastern railroad. The dead body was just south of this viaduct. The remains were identified the day after they were found as the body of Mildred Allison Rexroat. She had been first married to W. H. Allison, by whom she had three sons. A few months before her death she had been divorced from Allison and shortly after married one Everett Rexroat. Allison’s home was'in Chicago. Rexroat was from Macomb, Illinois, and the deceased had been with him there for a while but does not appear to have been living with him for some time previous to her death. Some time prior to September, 1913, and during that month, Mrs. Rexroat had been engaged as an instructor at a dancing academy owned by one Frank L. Oleson, at 459 East Thirty-first street, in Chicago. The evidence is to the effect that the plaintiff in error, Spencer, met Mrs. Rexroat at 'this dancing academy several days prior to September 26, 1913, he being at this academy taking lessons, and that he danced several evenings with Mrs. Rexroat as well as with some others there. Thursday evening, September 25, he was at the academy and danced almost exclusively with Mrs. Rexroat. Oleson, and at least two other witnesses, testified that on that evening, while Spencer and Mrs. Rexroat were together at the dancing academy, Mrs. Rexroat said, in Spencer’s presence, that he had arranged for her to teach the tango to a class of young men which had been formed at Wayne. To one of these witnesses Mrs. Rexroat, in Spencer’s presence, said that she was to receive $15 a night and her hotel bill, and this lady said that she would be glad to go as Mrs. Rexroat’s assistant, but the latter replied that she did not need any just then; that Spencer was going to take one night in small towns, naming Wayne and several other places. At the close of the evening’s dancing Spencer, Mrs. Rexroat and Carl White left the dance hall together and went to a neighboring cafe and drank four bottles of beer among them, and there again Mrs. Rexroat stated to White, in Spencer’s presence, that the latter had arranged for her to teach a class in dancing out at Wayne. All of these witnesses identified Spencer positively.

Mrs. Rexroat was rooming, at this time, with Mrs. Ada Johnson, on Eggleston avenue, in Chicago. At about 3 :3o o’clock P. M. on the day she met her death Mrs. Rexroat packed a rattan suit-case and left her boarding place. She wore at that time a dark-blue suit, a new, large hat, short, white gloves, a bracelet, diamond ring, Tiffany setting, earrings, another ring with small stones, a small brooch, and spectacles. She carried a white hand-bag and the rattan suit-case. The diamond ring had been given her by Everett Rexroat, her husband, and he testified it cost him $300. The white hand-bag, hat, suit and bracelet found at the scene of the tragedy were identified by Mrs. Johnson as the articles Mrs. Rexroat wore or carried when she left her house the afternoon of .September 26. About six o’clock the same evening a man and woman resembling, according to the witnesses’ testimony, Spencer and Mrs. Rexroat, and carrying a rattan suit-case, appeared at the Fifth avenue station of the Aurora, Elgin and Chicago Railroad Company, in Chicago. The lady wore a large hat and a dark-blue suit. They were told by the man in charge of the six o’clock train that it did not stop at Wayne,—that the 'first train stopping there would leave at 6:3o P. M. This last mentioned train was in charge 'of Hugh Cargo and left at the proper time. Cargo testified that Spencer and a lady answering the description of Mrs. Rexroat were on his train on that. trip' and were seated in the third seat from the rear, in the first car. C. A. Goodwin, a resident of Wheaton, sat in front of them and heard them talking about the tango dance and how it should be taught, also about a diamond and about the will of the man’s father. Cargo and Goodwin both identified this man as Spencer. About 7125 P. M. the man came to Cargo, who was in the second car from the front of the train, and asked the latter to be sure not to carry him past Wayne. The conductor told him that it was then 7:25 and that the}'- would be at Wayne at 7145. The two rear cars of this train were cut off at Wheaton and the first car went on to Elgin with conductor Cargo in charge. The car arrived at Wayne on time and Spencer and the lady left the car there. Two other passengers got off the car,—a man whose identity is not shown by the record, and Mrs. Louisa Pratt, who lived at Wayne. She testified that she could not identify Spencer as.the man who got off with the other lady, as she did not see the man’s face, but the description she gave of the lady fitted Mrs. Rexroat, so far as it went. At the station of the Aurora, Elgin and Chicago Railroad Company at Wayne its tracks are crossed by a public highway running east and west. The electric road runs in a north-westerly direction, the Elgin, Joliet and Eastern railroad running practically north and south. The highway, after crossing the electric railway, crosses the right of way of the Elgin, Joliet and Eastern Railway Company about forty rods east of the interurban station. Mrs. Pratt testified that the man and woriian she saw on the electric car alighted ahead of her at Wayne at 7:45 P. M., walked south to the end of the station platform, then walked east on the east and west highway, ahead of her, to the Elgin, Joliet and Eastern tracks, and then walked south on the railroad tracks towards the viaduct of the electric railway; that the two were laughing and talking.

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264 Ill. 124, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/people-v-spencer-ill-1914.