| The Hade Brown Murder: Love, Betrayal and Obsession |
| In Randolph County, in 1876,
the son of a murdered outlaw eloped with the daughter of a justice of
the peace. In June of 1880 they were buried in one another's arms. This is not a love story. James Hayden Brown, son of the notorious "Wild Bill" Brown, was a handsome blond man with a taste for alcohol and a vicious temper. He was only 19 when he eloped with Susan "Sue" Parrish, daughter of Joseph Parrish, a Union veteran who owned cattle, sold his own patented medicines and served as a Justice of the Peace. At first the Browns lived in Macon County, where Hade had family, but in the spring of 1877 they returned to Randolph County, entered into an uneasy reconciliation with Sue's parents and moved into a house on the Parrishs' property. By this time they had been married for about a year and had an infant son. The marriage was not a happy one. Later Sue's twin sister, Sarah, would tell of witnessing a fight during which Hade broke furniture, struck Sue with a chair leg, then took the baby from her and chased her out of the house at gunpoint. Shortly after this, Sue determined to leave her husband and went to her parents for help. At first they refused -- marriage was taken very seriously in the 1800s -- but finally, while Hade was at a church picnic on Saturday, July 21, 1877, Joseph Parrish went around with a cart, helped Sue load up her belongings and drove her to her half-brother's house in Howard county. On Monday, July 23, as Parrish was returning home with Sarah in the cart, he met Hade Brown on the road in front of the home of a family named Bennet. The Bennets were a large family. Their house was a local gathering point and at that time over a dozen men were there helping to cut hay. Brown ordered Sarah out of the cart, then emptied both barrels of a double-barrelled shotgun filled with birdshot into Parrish and rode away. The Bennets took Parrish in and sent their grandson to get Mrs. Parrish. In the meantime Brown returned with a pistol, determined to finish off his father-in-law. He was standing in the Bennet's front yard, arguing with the men there, when he saw the wagon with Mrs. Parrish approaching. He rode down to meet it, ordered the old woman out of the wagon, then shot her down in cold blood After the murder Brown rode off and made good his escape; however, fifteen months later he was apprehended in Minnesota after being spotted by a casual acquaintance. When Brown was returned to Missouri to stand trial his wife went back to him, much to the disgust of the local populace. The first trial, in the spring of 1879, ended in a hung jury amid accusations of jury tampering. Fearing that the prisoner would be lynched, Sheriff Matlock sent him to the St. Louis prison to await a re-trial in the fall. On the way back to Randolph County to once more stand trial, Susan slipped Brown a packet filled with arsenic. He swallowed it and became very ill but didn't die. A physician told the paper at the time that, had Brown only swallowed a few grains of the poison it would have been fatal, but he took so much that it irritated his stomach and caused him to throw it all back up. The trial was delayed while they waited for Brown to recover. When he had and they attempted to resume they discovered that one juror had been severely injured in a farming accident. A second juror, suffering from pneumonia, collapsed in court and the judge declared a mistrial. The third trial got underway in January and Brown was convicted and sentenced to hang. When the judge read the death penalty Susan fainted. The paper noted that not one woman in the courtroom went to her aid. Brown's appeal to the Missouri Supreme Court was denied and he was scheduled to be hanged on June 24, 1880. He was now in prison in Kansas City, since he had begun having "fits" and the St. Louis jail determined that they would have to charge extra to keep him. Susan followed him to Kansas City and four days before the hanging she slipped him a packet filled with morphine. Then she went back to where she was staying, sent her little boy next door to play and shot herself in the head. Sue's suicide note asked the woman she was staying with to go to the jail and "tell Hade that Sue is dead". Suspicious, jail officials immediately searched Brown and confiscated the morphine, which he was going to use to carry out his half of the suicide pact. With her sudden death, Sue went from being an object of derision in the media to a sort of tragic heroine. The coroner announced that, while plain of face, Sue had the most perfect body he had ever seen. Small wonder that over 1,000 people turned up at the morgue hoping to view her! On June 24, 1880, Hayden Brown was hanged at Huntsville, MO, according to schedule. The citizens of Huntsville and of Moberly took up a collection to buy a double coffin and on June 25th Hayden and Sue were buried in one another's arms. |