So today I am hoping to find some clarity to the situation I'm not gonna
call it everything else right now with my great-grandfather Jesse upper
cue I'm meeting with criminal justice
historian David Walcott who's asked an archivist to pull some documents about
the murder I really want to know if my great-grandfather actually committed
this crime and if so what his motive might have been I found this article I
actually can't tell him what actually happened I mean he tells a story if
someone were treating from the room why did it choose to arrest him it seems
like the police are not believing your great-grandfather's story about a man
being in a room and running out instead it seems like Jesse uppercu had the
means and the opportunity to have killed her and he was the one there so they're
focusing on him and the investigation and chosen to arrest him okay let's take
a look at some newspapers and try to figure out what exactly happened right
ultimart on July 4 December 1872 okay so it's a real newspaper once is the
old-fashioned way so your article is my August 28th let's look for August 29th
or 30th to 31st 29 Friday morning August 30th
Saturday morning August 31st oh okay okay okay I found something the
Lombard Street homicide further particulars in the case the will of the
murdered lady this will which is the second one
executed by the deceased was found at the house where the murder was committed
so that means that this is her second will so she has rewritten her will right
why would you rewrite your will we might be able to learn more from the rest of
the article about that it is learned that both the Wills mentioned were
executed on the one day July 26th 1872 under the following circumstances a
month before this murder yes seems that way on the day named the
young man my great-grandfather summoned mr. Bannon to the old lady's house where
she desired to be left alone with lawyer this this person Bannon he's the lawyer
for the aunt who was killed okay a will was drawn some donations were made to a
Methodist Protestant Church and to different persons in small amounts and
the balance to young upper Q then amounting to about twenty-two thousand
dollars with inflation it's a little over four hundred thousand that's a lot
of money that's a lot of money back then the young upper queue insisted upon a
reading of the will and indicated dissatisfaction with the church donation
he induced the ants to have another drawn and which these donations were
abandoned there was a will drawn up and literally right after that what was
drawn up a second what was made right he's not happy with the first will so
while the lawyer is still there he insists that the lawyer draw up a second
will getting rid of the donations and giving everything to him that's crazy I
was actually wondering you know about a mode of possible motive for this murder
and now you know I'm getting information about money and a lot of money I'm
wondering if in you know and in court documents if it does get to the bottom
of of this let's look at the records from the Baltimore courts okay
September charm 1872 oh my gosh so at the front there's an index I think upper
queue page supposed to page 74 there it is
this is the state of Maryland versus Jesse W upper keel October 4th 1872 what
would this be plea non Culp not culpable in Latin or not guilty and what's all
this so this is all the witnesses that come there's so many people so the left
side here is the prosecution alleges and then the right side is the defense
witness oh wow and it's about an equal amount of people
right it's largely a circumstantial case he's arrested because he has the means
the opportunity and apparently a motive right but his character becomes one of
the deciding factors December 16th so after a two-week trial his jury not
being able to agree in discharge his discharge discharged
which means that they decided they couldn't decide the case right it means
what we have what's called a hung jury that they just couldn't reach a
conclusion Wow down here though this is a reference to a second case number 57
gin term 1873 great I mean not great but okay what does that mean for a
prosecution and that in that sense for the fact that they bothered to have a
second trial suggests that at least in the eyes of the prosecutors they had a
real case and it really could get a guilty verdict okay
the archivists have brought over the court records from the next year up just
one you here we are page nine
okay there's a second trial then March 6 1873 verdict not guilty it's found not
guilty and once he's found not guilty it's done the prosecutors can't bring it
back so they closed the case it was done it's in his past now right Wow
okay do we know if he got the inheritance there's no documentation
that I've been able to find okay I'm kind of still and a place of unease with
how I feel about my great-grandfather right now I do feel like if I was
sitting on that jury I would have a hard time really calling him innocent
mm-hmm well I'm wondering what happened to us after he walks away a free man we
need to find the next place he shows up in the historical records which might be
the next census in 1888 a way to find that is to try to look for it on
ancestry.com great so now I'm searching for Jessie our cue we want the 1880
census here we have age 30 he's married spouses
name L I uh perk you that's not my great-grandmother there's obviously a
family before my great-grandmother so if he was if he walked away a free man at
age of 23 he met and married her right away I have a six-year-old right
daughter and it looks like there's two more kids or two these are people I've
never heard of this was a whole life he had before he met my great-grandma
inhabitants of Evanston and the county of Cook state of Illinois I don't know
what happened with this family I don't know where I think the next destination
is gonna be Evanston Illinois to find out what happened there yeah yeah I
figured going to that article about the days after my great-grandfather's arrest
was terrifying I mean you know you're afraid to read the next paragraph but
you want to get to it so books so quickly and and just absorb as much
information as you can I have mixed emotions about my
great-grandfather right now it's hard when you receive this type of
information to not step back and start judging all of a sudden there's this
other family I didn't know anything about it all seems very very gray and
I'm looking for some clarity in that portion of his life
you