The Logansport Journal
Logansport, Indiana
29 March, 1899

MISSING BOY RECOVERED
____________

Bribed to Leave Home for a 
Trivial Consideration
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The Conspirators Now Assert an
April Fool Joke Was Intended
to be Played
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    Dillsboro, Ind., March 28. -- James Gilliland, the Cross Plains farmer who was under suspicion of having murdered his 15-year-old adopted son, has proven his innocence by producing the boy. The case is somewhat extraordinary. Eight years ago Mr. Gilliland took the boy from the Ripley county Infirmary, and adopted him as his son. On the 1st of April, 1898, the boy disappeared as completely as though the earth had swallowed him. Gilliland advertised in the county papers and made general inquiries, without avail. Three or four weeks ago a neighbor of Gilliland’s who had been employed by him, startled the community by saying that he had found a skeleton in a sink hole on the Gilliland farm. The missing lad had a dent in his skull, caused by the kick of a mule, and the man asserted that the depression in the skull uncovered by him corresponded with that injury. He showed the bones of a leg, arm and wrist, but refused to exhibit the skull. The excitement became intense. About this time, however, August Schwackmire, a neighbor, called on Gilliland, who had been bed-ridden for eight months, and told him that Owen Williams, a saloon-keeper of Olean, was willing for a money consideration, to produce the boy, alive and well.
    The Williams brothers, Owen and Emmett, came from Kentucky two years ago, and Newton Gilliland, of this place, a brother of James Gilliland started for Kentucky to locate some member of the Williams family. He was joined in Ghent, Ky., by John Trandon, marshal of that place, who accompanied him to the home of old man Williams. At first the senior Williams refused to talk, but after a time he admitted that the boy was at the home of a brother-in-law, named O’Neal. The men then repaired to the home of O’Neal where the boy was found. On the return to Indiana with the lad they met Owen Williams, who told Gilliland that if he had been asked concerning the boy’s whereabouts he would have told him. The fact remains, however, that Williams knew of the suspicion hovering over James Gilliland.
    The boy reported that the same man who later claimed to have found a skeleton, together with his neighbor, hired him to run away, as he says, “for an April Fool joke on his daddy,” and he went away, not knowing anything of the suspicion resting on James Gilliland. An examination of the bones found in the sink hole showed that they were the legs and metacarpal bones of a young calf. The dented skull has not been located. The men who bribed the boy to go away now assert that it was an April Fool joke. James Gilliland is very wealthy, and there is a belief that probably the hope of a big reward prompted the act. The grand jury will be asked to investigate.

-- transcription by Kate Maynard, 2011