A BRUTAL MURDER

The DeFuniak Breeze publishes the following regarding the foul and brutal murder near Ponce de Leon last Sunday night:

	"One of the most horribly cold blooded murders ever committed in Walton county, was that of Sunday night in front of Luther Russ's house near Ponce de Leon, where according to his own confession Mose Daniels shot and killed Rev Jesse J Jones a Methodist minister, and for which crime Mose Silas, Union, Isaac and Manuel Daniels and Luther Russ were lodged in jail.

	"Monday the matter was reported to Sheriff Campbell who immediately went there to investigate the matter, and arrested Mose and Silas, Daniels and Luther Russ and lodged them in jail.  Tuesday a coroner's jury consisting of J H Laird, W F Hall, H M Wadsworth, D A Gillis, W A McCallum and D J Adkinson went down from there, and from information received by them, Isaac, Union and Manuel Daniels were arrested.  They then adjourned until yesterday morning when the investigation was further continued at the courthouse.

"Mose Daniels was the first witness brought before them and he without hesitation or seeming reluctance made a full confession of the crime, insisting that he, and he alone, committed the murder and that none of the others had anything what ever to do with it.

	"His story was substantially as follows:  "Jones had been harassing me in every way he could since last January.  He had repeatedly cursed and abused me, and told false tales on my wife and I had become desperate and resolved to kill him or be killed.  I had told others that I would do it.  That night I had an idea that he was down the road and about 11 o'clock I took my gun and went down the road and met him near Luther Ross'.  When we meet, he started towards me and I threw up the gun but it snapped the first time, and he started to run and I shot him.  He fell on his knees and halloed and when I went to him, he tried to grab me, and I hit him over the head with the gun, and then dragged him out of the road.  I went to Union Daniels' house and got my wagon with my oxen, went back to the body, put it in the wagon and took it to the old well where it was found, drove back home, unhitched my oxen and took my hoe and covered up the blood in the road and where the body lay while I was gone.  There was no one with me did any one else know anything of it."

	"During the whole recital Mose was as cool as if he were telling of killing hogs, and was the most unaffected one in the room.  Luther Russ and Silas Daniels were examined but both denied any knowledge of the matter, and their stories as to other matters did not materially differ from that told my Mose.

	"Mose also denied telling any one anything about it further than to say that he knew that he knew that Luther and Silas who were accused of it had nothing to do with the crime.

	"Manuel and Union Daniels had told on Monday however that Mose had told them that Silas and Luther were with him but when he fired the gun they got scared and run off, and had told them where he had hid the body, and in this way it was found circumstances which indicated that either he did tell a part of this or that there were other parties concerned in the crime.  

"All the parties are colored, and the Negroes in the community where the crime was committed were much wrought up and had it not been for the counsel of white men there would doubtless have been a lynching and the county saved the expensed of the hanging which seems sure to follow."

Published in the Holmes County Advertiser, Bonifay FL, Saturday, Sept 19, 1908