Phenix Gazette

State of Kentucky, Bourbon Jail.

I, Reuben Rankin, being now in imprisonment, and under sentence of death for the murder of John Blake, do avow, that I shed said Blake's blood; but that I was actuated to the deed, by injuries, which, if malicious, were enormous indeed. But, were they otherwise, they were so agonizing to my soul as to be more than my nature could endure, and such as to render life insupportable. To avenge myself for injuries to me and my family, which I deemed wanton and diabolical, I slew him.—There are now but a few fugitive hours until I make my transit to an eternal world—where I know I shall have to appear before the bar of an omniscient Judge, and be adjudged according to the deeds done in the body: And now, as his all-searching eye, searches the inmost recesses of my heart, and as I hope to be saved, and to enjoy eternal life through the atoning blood of Jesus Christ—I do solemnly declare, that I returned to Blake his pocket-book and money therein, as the same was counted in the presence of Lyon and Sterett, at the time the former referred to in his testimony; that I have never seen one cent of said money since, and that I neither directly or indirectly, advised, abetted or co-operated in the stealing of said money; nor did I know that it had been stolen until informed of it by said Blake on the morning of Monday ensuing. Conscious of my innocence of said theft, for which said Blake had commenced a prosecution against myself and the other men then present; believing, although said Blake supported the charge by his positive oath, from the tenor and incongruity of his testimony, that he could not possibly know who had stolen, or what was the fate of his money; and that he undertook said prosecution against me, after having inquired and ascertained that I alone, of all those charged, was solvent, for the corrupt purpose of reimbursing himself from an innocent man, when there was no hope from the guilty; a sense of an injury so atrocious and so destroying, was my sole motive for putting Blake to death. I again declare that this statement is strictly true, and that I will abide the scrutiny of the Eternal, on whose mercy I throw myself in this most solemn and awful moment.

REUBEN RANKIN.

Dec. 7, 1826.

Attest, John R. Raine.