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1902: Clinton Dotson, bad son

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Headline from the Salt Lake (Utah) Telegram, April 4, 1902

On this date in 1902, Montana hanged Clinton Dotson.

Dotson was already in prison for the murder-robbery of miner Eugene Cullinane* when he conceived what the Anaconda Standard (April 4, 1902) called “one of the most shocking murders that the world has ever known.” Permitting the newsman a pass for this slight exaggeration, it was indeed a real triumph in mustache-twirling villainy: the assassination of Dotson’s own father as part of a Rube Goldberg scheme to get himself out of jail.

Briefly, the scheme was that James Fleming, alias James McArthur, cellmate of Clinton Dotson, upon his release during the first part of January, 1901, should go to the cabin of Captain [Oliver] Dotson and extract from him by threat or otherwise a confession that it was he, Captain Dotson, who slew Cullinane. If Captain Dotson refused to make such a confession, McArthur was to kill the old man and arrange the body and the furniture of the house in such a way as to leave the impression that the old man had died by his own hand. A confession exonerating Dotson [and his confederates] from responsibility of Cullinane’s murder was then to be forged.

With a devil’s cunning, Fleming carried out this diabolical scheme. So cleverly was it done that, but for the prior knowledge possessed by the prison officers, the theory of suicide would probably have been accepted. Close investigation, however, showed that the suicide theory was impossible, that the deed had been done by one hidden in an adjoining room … [and Fleming] took no steps to conceal his tracks.

Fleming had already been executed in September, on the same gallows that claimed his parricidal sponsor.

* Dotson had also served time for homicide in Wyoming.

On this day..