The Daily Empire

A Desperate Villain Disposed Of.

Blackburn, who has been tried in Morgan county, convicted and sentenced to the Penitentiary, for ten years, for breaking into the house of a farmer named Porter, at midnight, last fall, and making an assault on him, for the purpose of robbery, in which he signally failed and nearly became a victim himself—so desperate was the resistance of Porter, who bravely fought the desperado and his accomplice with a cavalry sword, which, luckily, hung at the head of the bed—soems, by what he has confessed and what came out on the trial, to be one of the most depraved villains of the western country. He had already spent five years in the Ohio Penitentiary, for a burglary in Muskingum county.

After being repulsed from Porter's farm-house, and after a long search, he was found lying in an improvised hut, in an out-of-the-way spot, among the hills, near his obscure cabin, some twenty miles away, his left arm nearly severed below the elbow, parts of his body terribly carved up, and he in a most helpless condition. In this obscure retreat, prepared for him by his family, eking out the miserable life of an out-law—hidden away like a crippled wild beast in his den, was he found by the officers and their aids, who had been stimulated to vigilance in pursuit by a $500 reward! Throughout the trial he was unable to stand, but maintained a reclining position, so terrible had been the cuts and slashes of that Providential sword.

Blackburn says he was born here in Dayton, that he was raised and learned his trade of brick-layer here; has had some experience in the interior of our jail, and is not a stranger to some of our local authorities. The sands of his wicked career would seem to be about run out.