Bunker Hill, IN Obituary Lesson: Bebee, Fitzgerald & the "Tramp" [1898]

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.
Q: For what is your life?
A: It is even a vapor,
that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.
Hebrews 3:15/James 4:14

Q: Did young Mr. Bebee know how his day (and life) would end as he woke up that morning?
"QUINCY BEBEE

The Bunker Hill Murder Case
LOGANSPORT, Ind., Jan 9.—The trial of William Fitzgerald, charged with the murder of Quincy Bebee, a fourteen-year-old boy of Bunker Hill, Ind. was begun this morning in the Cass Circuit Court before Judge Chase, the case coming to the county on a change of venue from Miami county.

Last October a trainboy on the Panhandle Railroad, while awaiting connections at Bunker Hill, discovered the body of the murdered boy lying in a shed near the railway station. 

---His neck had been broken 

---and the prints of boot heels on his abdomen indicated that he had been brutally killed. 

The death was surrounded by mystery for some days. It then developed that the deceased had last been seen with William Fitzgerald, a dissolute character of that neighborhood, who had but recently been released from the Columbus penitentiary. 

The two had been drinking together, and were in a state of Intoxication. Detective Silas; Morgan, of this city, took up the case, and with the assistance of the father of the murdered boy captured Fitzgerald hiding in the woods about six miles from Bunker Hill. two weeks after the murder. 

With Fitzgerald was a tramp, who gave the name of Edwards. 

This man related that Fitzgerald had told him he had kicked a man to death. The two were taken to the jail of Peru, the tramp being held as a witness.
Date: 1898-12-28; Paper: Indiana State Journal."