And he finally murdered her. Just murdered her brutally.

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Above photo: Whitegate Cemetery in Moundsville, WV, where penitentiary prisoners are buried.

“I’ll tell you, Mrs. Hyer was right down here on the corner. As you go down over the hill and go to town. She was right on the corner. That corner building was where she was. And she was a mighty good old lady. She kept all the loggers, you know, the woodsmen came and she took care of them and was good to them. And she set a good table. And then she married this… she’d been married to Magan. And he was a drunkard, you know, she was married to him and he died. And then she married this old Hyer… Frank Hyer. And he finally murdered her. Just murdered her brutally.

“I was working in Elkins when that happened. He just beat her up and stood on her and mashed her insides out and everything else. And he dragged her back into the little back room… it’s not there now, its tore down, and he put her in the bathtub they thought he was trying to revive her. And as he drug her out she lost her teeth and they were found after she was buried.

“And so… he was hanged in Moundsville. And the best of it was his head fell off when they hung him. They put him on the gallows, sprung the thing and his head flew off.

Well now she was this way… she would tell people, they’d get into troubles; “Now listen, don’t disturb us, we fight that’s our business”. Says… “if he kills me that our business”.

Well at the time this happened nobody would help. They just wouldn’t go in. They heard the karukus, but they just didn’t go in. He didn’t shoot her. He drug her around all over the building and through the lobby and then he drug her out the back through the kitchen. And her mother was sitting there. And he looked at her and said “I’ll get you later.” That’s what they said.

“The old grandmaw was there. She hadn’t walked very much for a long time and while he had her out and was finishing her up, why the grandmother went up the walk and went to a neighbor and hid. And I think she died from grief, you know, thinking about what all happened.”

Virginia Slaven
b. 1891
Cass, West Virginia
June 12, 1976 interview

Source: www.marshall.edu/library/speccoll/cass/html/slaven_transcript.asp

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