Murder will out

“ All people who have read anything, have read of the irresistible fascination that the scene of the murder has for the murderer, of the way in which the victim "haunts" the slayer, and of how the truth that "murder will out" is really based on the fact that the murderer is his own most dangerous accuser by reason of his life of terror, remorse, and terrible hallucination.
My case is in no wise parallel.
I am absolutely without fear, regret, remorse, repentance, dread or terror in the matter of my killing Sergeant Burker. ”

“ That night, gentlemen, a murder was committed of a deeper and darker dye than guilt ordinarily wears: a murder which in centuries hence will stand amongst the blackest chapters in the gloomy annals of crime. ”

“ The people haste out of their houses and overturn the cart; and in the midst of the dung they found the dead man, murdered all newly. O blessed God! just and true, lo! how alway thou layest murder bare. Murder will out; that see we daily. Murder is so loathsome and abominable to God, the wise and just, that he will not suffer it to be concealed. Though it may abide for a year, or two or three, yet murder will out. ”

“ Murder, no matter whether judicial, legalized or church sanctioned, will still remain murder, and will continue to cry to heaven for vengeance. "To-day thou art," great and mighty men; "to-morrow thou art not"—yes, a cold lump of clay with the skeletons of murdered men, the tears of widows and the crying orphans you caused, standing before you. You may be sure a just God will not be fooled by the arguments of cunning counselors, judges, ministers, priests, bishops or pious frauds, who may be hired or engaged to bring their country's youth to the slaughter house. ”

“ We have not been permitted to lift the veil, and show you the perpetrators of this horrible murder—a murder most atrocious in its inception, brutal and cowardly in its execution a crime which in many respects stands without a parallel. But the blood of a pure and honourable man, shed in the streets of your city, calls aloud to Heaven for vengeance, and I trust the cry will be heard and answered ”

“ This is the abode of murder—it is a charnel-house of iniquity; fly from hence, as you value your life—for an hour after midnight my husband, the terrible Dead Man, will return, and although you frustrated me, you cannot escape his vengeance, should he find you here. ”

“ The indefatigable pains taken in this country to find out a murder, and the certainty of its punishment, has powerfully contributed to generate that sentiment which is frequent in the mouths of the common people, that a murder will sooner or later come to light; and the habitual horror in which murder is in consequence held will make a man, in the agony of passion, throw down his knife for fear he should be tempted to use it in the gratification of his revenge. ”

“ A murder has been committed and somebody must be hung, and your death will satisfy the law just as well as the death of the murderer." What would you then think of the doctrine of "vicarious sacrifice"? ”

“ The clerk read the note aloud, after the morgue had been phoned, and the body covered.
"To Paul Judson:
"This act is my punishment, for living on the earth your presence scars; a just God will punish you in another world.
"This act will bring home to your conscience your responsibility for murder:
"Murder of twenty-three miners in the mine explosion;
"Murder of John Dawson, and fifty innocent strikers, by the guns of your gunmen;
"Murder of your guards by your own acts;
"Murder of the bodies, hearts and souls of starving strikers. Murder of good in all people. Murder of justice in your courts. ”

“ If you murder someone in a brutal, messy way, or poison someone who had previously enjoyed rollicking health, or choose the very day after a will’s been made in your favour to extinguish the testator, or go on killing everyone you meet till people begin to think you’re first cousin to a upas tree, naturally you’re found out in the end. ”

“ Murder in the murderer is no such ruinous thought as poets and romancers will have it; it does not unsettle him or fright him from his ordinary notice of trifles; it is an act quite easy to be contemplated; ”

“ Wherever he goes, whatever he does, he will always see that word: murder—immortally inscribed upon the pediment of that vast slaughter−house—humanity. ”

“ Murder may pass unpunish'd for a time,
But tardy justice will o'ertake the crime. ”

“ The law must first know what was his fate. It looks to me as though we were as far off from knowing that as ever. We know neither how he died, nor at whose hands, nor the motive of the assassin at present.”
“Doesn’t everything point to his death being more or less an accident?” I ventured to plead.
“On the contrary, I should say that everything points to its being a deliberate and deeply-planned murder.”
I gave a horrified gasp. Before I could collect myself sufficiently to take in this formidable judgment I was saved from exposing myself by the familiar sound of the telephone bell. ”

“ I wish you could have heard him say, ‘She’s dead, boys, she’s dead; and by God! they killed her.’ The sound of its agony would have found the heart that was intended to do more than keep you alive with its beating. Do you know what murder is? Do you know the difference between the gross, stupid, brutal murder that in satisfying its coarse lust for blood runs its thick neck into the halter, and the finer, daintier, infinitely more cruel murder that kills with torturing cruelty, and thus outwits the gallows? The blood-murderer is a poor fool, dwarfed in mind and crippled in soul. ”

“ Shame at their spiritual nakedness crushed her and infected him. But in spite of all the murderer’s horror before the body of his victim, he must hack it to pieces, hide the body, must use what he has gained by his murder. ”

“ Every day brings us nearer the end to which we are tending, and then we shudder when we feel what a crime we have undertaken. And yet inexorable time flows on; and at every hour which strikes, we see our victim take another step, until at length the interval between us disappears, and we stand face to face. Believe me, monseigneur, the bravest tremble—for murder is always murder. ”

“ Put yourself into my hands, and it will go hard but you will be a free man in an hour’s time. Refuse my aid, and in less than three weeks from now you will be lying, a strangled corpse, in a murderer’s grave. ”

“ In fact, it was reserved for this incredible monster and his associate fiends to reduce murder to a system, and to establish a regular traffic in the bodies of their victims. Ordinary homicides slay from passion or revenge; the murders they commit are the product of an ungovernable and overmastering impulse, which hurls reason from her seat, and, in the wild conflict of guilty passion, precipitates them into the commission of acts which are no sooner done than they would perhaps give the universe were they undone. ”

“ His arm dragged the murderers to the gallows, His finger thrust the heartless, cruel miscreants across the grave that was yawning for their doomed bodies! Tremble, ye cruel, God hates ye! Men speak of a murder—and sometimes, by way of distinction, they say 'a cruel murder.' See, now, what a crime cruelty must be, since it can aggravate murder, the crime before which all other sins dwindle into nothing. ”

“ There is that in the tidings of a murder that thrills the human heart to its depths. When the word passes from lip to lip and from mouth to mouth that a human life has been taken by an assassin, the stoutest hearts stop beating, lips pale and cheeks blanch, strong men grow pale with the terror of the unknown and mysterious, and if that be so with what I may, perhaps, by comparison call an ordinary assassination, what were the feelings that overpowered the community when the news of this tragedy was spread by the lightning to the ends of the world? ”

“ The ghosts and their followers always took delight in torture, in cruel and unusual punishments. For the infraction of most of their laws, death was the penalty—death produced by stoning and by fire. Sometimes, when man committed only murder, he was allowed to flee to some city of refuge. Murder was a crime against man. ”

“ Have you no heart, no consciences? Murder! murder! murder!” and the wretched man sank upon the ground, and tried with his hands to grasp the stone floor, as if to cling to it from some imaginary violence. ”

“ Death brooded palpably over the brown and grey Court, and held the tense faces of all in his thrall, and weighted every syllable of the speeches. Never was the irrelevancy of murder as a political weapon made more clear, and the fearful appropriateness of capital punishment seemed clear too, mystery requited with mystery. ”

“ One to commit such a murder must have been without heart, without soul, a fiend incarnate, the very vilest of degraded and depraved humanity, or he must have been a maniac. The circumstances, execution and all the surroundings cover it with mystery profound. Explanations and evidence as to both perpetrator and motive are shrouded in a mystery that is almost inexplicable. That such a crime could have been committed during the busy hours of the day, right in the heart of a populous city, is passing comprehension. As we ponder, we exclaim in our perplexity, why was the deed done? ”

“ Knots of men went hurrying by, and he caught snatches of their talk. There had been a murder—a man was murdered in his bed—it was a woman—a man had murdered his wife—there were two murders—three—the tale went every way, but it was always Murder, Murder, Murder. ”

“ Swiftness and stealth, the ambush, the averted face and the sudden stab, are the standing elements of murder: pare off all the rest, you come down to that. Your staring looks, your blood, your "chirking," are accidentals. They may be there (for each of us carries a carcase) , but the horror of sudden death is above them: a man may strangle with his thoughts cleaner than with his pair of hands. ”

“ It is provided, as I humbly and devoutly believe, by the divine justice itself, that no matter how craftily murder is planned, there is always some point where the skill and cunning of the assassin fails him. ”

“ Well, what more?”
“The chief wanted me to tell you, sir, that, while everything there gives the appearance of suicide, there is still a large chance that it may be a case of murder.”
“Murder? Murder? No, no, not that. Not murder.” ”

“ But even killing, with intention to kill, is not always murder; there may be justifiable and excusable homicide, and killing in sudden heat and passion is so modified to manslaughter. Yet there may be murder when there is no ill-feeling,—nay, perfect indifference to the slain,—as in the case of the robber who slays to conceal his crime. Malice aforethought is that depraved feeling of the heart, which makes one regardless of social duty, and fatally bent on mischief. ”

“ It is evident, however, that most, if not all, of these assertions are founded on palpable fallacies. “Murder” is a technical term, and means the wilful, deliberate killing, without just cause, and without certain specified excuses, of a man who belongs to a settled state of society, in which security is afforded to life and property. ”

“ Should he privately accept the offer, he is most careful to conceal his connivance at the deed of blood, lest he should draw down on his head the wrath of his murdered kinsman's ghost. So, when the deed is done and the murder is out, he works himself up into a state of virtuous sorrow and indignation, covers his head with the leaves of a certain plant, and chanting a dirge in tones of heart-rending grief, marches straight to the village of the murderers. ”

“ The exceptional treatment of hanging and then burning the body of the criminal was owing to the crime being, over and above that of murder, the particularly heinous one, in the eye of the old laws, of petit treason, the murdered person being the master of, and person in authority over, the assassin. ”

“ Mortals are easily tempted to pinch the life out of their neighbour's buzzing glory, and think that such killing is no murder. ”

“ She’s not sufficiently imaginative to have planned this accumulative massacre. But as regards the others, I could picture any one of ’em as being at the bottom of this diabolical slaughter. It’s a mistaken idea, don’t y’ know, to imagine that a murderer looks like a murderer. ”

“ What guidance the jury got from the explanation of what constitutes murder is not quite clear to the lay mind, however satisfactory it may have appeared to the judge.
"Gentlemen," he stated, with admirable lucidity, "murder is where a man is murderously killed. The killer in such a case is a murderer. Now, murder by poison is just as much murder as murder with a gun, pistol, or knife. It is the simple act of murdering that constitutes murder in the eye of the law. Don't let the idea of murder and manslaughter confound you. Murder is one thing; manslaughter is quite another. ”

“ We are next treated to an artistic study of murder in low life, the murderer being in hot pursuit of a young female in a nightgown, whose hair sets out straight as porcupine's quills from her head, and within an inch of the itching fingers of her pursuer, while behind him are laid out in an ascending scale the dead bodies of an old man, an old woman, and a child, the same being the victims he has just finished off. ”

“ When murder is for the time licensed and the blood of the defender of his door-stone and his hearth dabbles his gray hair on one or the other of those sacred places, and there is no thought of punishment for the red hand, except as God may silently mete it in the years to come. ”

“ On the contrary, murders are almost invariably committed under the influence of the strongest excitement, even when the incentive is gain, and the murder has been deeply premeditated. That is a remarkable truth in the psychology of murder. ”

“ It has been proposed, by a medical gentleman, whose philanthropy has assumed the appearance of a violent eruption, breaking out in every direction, that, if this abominable punishment, this destruction of life, which God Almighty has prescribed, in the case of murder, must continue to be inflicted, the “misguided young ladies” and “unfortunate men,” who commit that crime, shall be executed under the influence of ether. This may be considered the happiest suggestion of the age. ”

“ When a witness, for example, swears, directly and unhesitatingly, that he saw the prisoner inflict a wound, with a deadly weapon, upon another person—that he saw that other person instantly fall, and die shortly after, this is positive evidence of something. Yet the act may be murder, or it may be manslaughter, or it may be justifiable homicide. Murder consists of three parts, the malice prepense, the blow inflicted or means employed, and the death ensuing, within a time prescribed by law. There can be no murder, if either of these parts be absent. ”