The Monroe Journal

While Alone a Young Married Woman Near Clarkton is Murdered and Ruined-Negroes Arrested.

Wilmington Special, Sunday, to Charlotte Observer.

Mrs. George Packer, a respectable young white woman, was assaulted and murdered at her home near Clarkton, Bladen county, about 10 o'clock this morning, and the deed has fired the blood of all the people within a radius of ten miles of the place. There is no absolute clue to the fiend who committed the terrible crime, but it is the general belief that it was a negro. Several posses were formed during the afternoon and the whole country is being scoured, but up to 9 o'clock tonight no one had been arrested, except a negro who was working near the Packer home, but there is no evidence against him. Bloodhounds arrived at 10:30 o'clock tonight from Maxton and were at once put on the trail. It is expected that the dogs will run down the criminal. The woman was dragged to a point 200 yards from the house. Her face was beat into a jelly, her arms badly torn and her throat cut from ear to ear. The body was covered with bruises. She made a desperate fight but a blow over the head with a piece of wood crushed her skull. The body was found about two hours after the crime was committed, by a small brother of the victim. He left her and went to Clarkton about 9 o'clock: she was alone, her husband being engaged at a lumber mill six miles away. When the boy returned home he found his sister gone. He saw signs of a struggle and followed the tracks to the point where the body was found. He immediately gave the alarm, and very soon hundreds of people arrived at the scene of the double crime. The boy says when he went to town he saw three strange negroes not far from the Packer home; also another negro was at work in a field not over 150 yards from where the outrage was committed. He was arrested, but declares he knows nothing of the crime and there is no evidence against him. The three strange negroes who were seen early in the morning have disappeared. There was no white men in the vicinity at the time the crime was perpetrated. Feeling is running high and the whole country is alive with men who are making every effort to capture the culprit. If the guilty party is caught, and there is absolute proof of it, he will in all probability be lynched. The victim of the horrible crime was about 21 years of age. She was respectable and well thought of in the community. The place where the crime was committed is near an old lumber mill camp, and out of the way. It was therefore no hard matter for the perpetrator to escape.

ELIZABETHTOWN, N. C., Sept. 5. Two negroes, Neil Sellers and Dave Brown, supposed to be the guilty parties who outraged and murdered Mrs. Geo. Packer, have been captured near Clarkton. The evidence is very strong against them. A lynching was narrowly averted when the men were placed in jail at Elizabethtown yesterday. Sheriff Lyon has just left on the steamer for Wilmington, where he will take the prisoners for safe keeping. Brown was the first man arrested. Then bloodhounds were put on the trail and the capture of Sellers soon followed.