Delmar Bandits Sentenced To Life

WILSON, ROBINSON, COOPER, MORRIS, BARKER, DAUGHTERY

Posted By: Ken Wright (email)
Date: 8/19/2012 at 11:32:41

Lost Nation Press, Feb. 5, 1914

DELMAR BANDITS SENTENCED TO LIFE

Slayers of William Wison To Spend Their Days At Fort Madison

In District Court at Clinton last week, the final chapter was written in the case of the colored men involved in the hold-up at Delmar. Some weeks ago one life was summarily snuffed out and an officer of the law was seriously wounded in apprehending the bandits. Bud Robinson and John Cooper, confessed slayers of William Wilson, the Delmar saloonkeeper were sentenced to spend the remainder of their days behind the walls of the state penitentiary at Ft. Madison. Morris, the third member of the murderous trio, is a hopeless maniac in the reformatory at Anamosa, where he will in all likelihood end his earthly existence. When arraigned in court for sentence, Robinson and Cooper displayed little or no concern. Judge Barker informed the men that it was in his power to inflict the death penalty and asked each if he had anything to offer in extenuation of the confessed crime. Robinson preserved a stolid silence, but Cooper is a young fellow and not bad looking, stated the shooting was incidental to the robbery, that the fatal shot was fired by Morris, who is now insane, and was in no sense premeditated. Thereupon Judge Barker sentenced both the prisoners to the penitentiary for the period of their natural lives. Sheriff Daughtery delived them to the prison authorities last Monday.