To day if ye will hear his voice,
harden not your hearts, as in the provocation.
Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow.
For what is your life? It is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. Hebrews 3:15/James 4:14Since his money was found on him this would lead to one speculating suicide rather than robbery. For the people he owed money to would have likely emptied his pockets of it. Or if a random attack they too would have obviously emptied his pockets.
So did he crawl under that bridge, and stressing over going to prison, kill himself?
Sad..... behind the veil between the seen and unseen in this great controversy raging between God and His opponent over the souls of men, did one from the fallen angelic host press hard on influencing him to crawl under that bridge in despair and end it?
"THE REMAINS OF A MISSING MAN FOUND
MARION, IND, December 31, 1886 - A telephone message from Warren, in
Huntington County, received here today, states that
--last evening
the dead body of James Carpenter was found under a 
bridge,
near that place.
--Carpenter was a prominent resident and business man
of Hanfield, in this county.
--He disappeared on Monday of this week
under circumstances that warranted the belief that he had skipped to
defraud his creditors.
--Two hundred and twenty-five dollars were found
about the clothing of the deceased.
[Bluffton Weekly Chronicle (Bluffton, Warren County, Indiana) - transcribed by J.S.]"
btw, Hanfield is on this 1908 map on the road between Marion (Grant County) and Warren (SE corner of Huntington County)