Richmond Enquirer

New-York, March 29.
The murder of Miss Hamilton.—We have been obligingly favored with the following extract of a letter from the Rev. Dr. BLATCHFORD, of Lansingburg, to his sons in this city, giving a circumstantial disclosure of the facts in relation to this unhappy and awful event. This extract will be read with deep interest, and the community will rejoice that the inhuman monsters are at last detected;—

LANSINGBURG, MARCH 26.

"I presume you have heard that Thomas Lent, of the borough about six miles above Waterford, has been committed to jail as one of the murderers of Miss Hamilton.—He was engaged in this guilty business with another, of the name of Sickler, native of the same town. Lent has confessed all the particulars, to which he has subjoined his signature. They are briefly as follows. Lent and Sickler had enlisted in the army, from which they deserted and returned home; but being pursued, they, to prevent to be taken, determined to go to New York. Sickler resolved to violate the chastity of the first female he should conveniently meet. They met Miss Hamilton in Athens, near her father's house. Sickler seized her with one hand round the waist, and with the other pressed upon her mouth. Lent took her by the legs. They carried her about a quarter of a mile up to the fatal bridge. There Sickler committed the rape: and (as Lent says) on account of her strugglings and agonized resistance, Sickler asked Lent for his club with which Sickler broke in her skull, and having robbed her of her gold ear rings threw the body into the creek. They both ran and reached a barn about two miles below Catskill, where they slept that night. In the morning they got on board a Troy sloop, arrived soon after in New York, tarried there a day or two, and then returned on the west side of the river; stopped near Catskill, hired themselves out for a month, stole two horses, were overtaken, and committed to Catskill jail for the theft; broke jail and returned to the borough. After some time Sickler went to the westward, where he has resided nearly ever since, in the county of Cayuga. Yet the eye of God is upon the wanderings of the murderer, and he often takes from him the common prudence of the human mind.—It was so in this case. Sickler had given frequent hints, (obscurely indeed) that he and Lent had perpetrated the crime in question, but these hints were not regarded as any thing more than the vain boastings of abandoned villany. At last, however, the thing was brought to light. Lent's wife was found by her husband reading: he asked her what; she said the bible; he snatched it from her, swearing bitterly, and threw it into the fire;—she got it out again, and a quarrel ensued, in which he threatened her life, and told her he had killed one woman already, and would kill her. Her sister's husband, Isaac Armstrong, came in at this time, and heard the words. He mentioned them at a Mr. Trip's, at whose house Sickler had been brought up, and where he had boasted of the crime.

This brought to their recollection what they had heard Sickler say in Lent's presence, and mentioned it to Isaac Armstrong. He came down to Waterford, and told it to Mr. Franklin Livingston, the Deputy Sheriff, who went up and took Lent at his own risk; summoned the witnesses; and after several examinations, Lent confessed the whole. Mr. Livingston, empowered by the Recorder of Albany and the Lieutenant Governor, set off in pursuit of Sickler last week; and, I hope, by this time, has got in safe custody the other monster."
[Com. Adv.