A Terrible Crime and a Terrible Retribution
A Double Murder Followed by a Lynching
The Other Murderer in the Stearns County Jail

     Mr. S. J. Davis, Deputy Sheriff of Todd county, arrived in this city on Monday afternoon with a prisoner charged with having been engaged in one of the most deliberate and brutal murders on record. The particulars, as he gave them to us, are as follows:
     Last spring, a newly married man named Henry Colway came to Todd county and settled in the town of Ward, near Hart's mill. About half a mile off lived two brothers, bachelors, also new-comers, named John and Michael Muede. These men succeeded in persuading Colway's wife to leave her husband and come and live with them. She remained with them all summer and fall, Colway apparently caring little about it, at least making no active objection to the arrangement, although the Muedes threatened his life if he did not leave the country.
     Colway abandoned his own house and went to live with a young single man named Steinhuber. The settlers, indignant at their shameless conduct, warned the Muedes that if they did not send the woman away, their house would be burned.
     A few weeks ago, the two brothers took her and went off hunting, and during their absence their house was burned with all its contents. When the Muede's came back, they charged the burning up to Colway and Steinhuber - neither of whom is believed to have had anything to do with it - and vowed that they would "put two men in a hole," understood to mean them.
    In a few days afterwards, the two men whose lives had been threatened, disappeared; Steinhuber's shanty was closed and deserted, and remained so until Sunday, November 2nd, when a neighbor saw what aroused his suspicions that all was not right, and getting several other persons, entered the house.
     They found blood on the floor; the walls spattered with brains; a charge of buckshot had gone through a coat hanging on the wall, and sticking to the garment was the knuckle-bone of a human finger. The best clothing, the watches and other articles belonging to the missing men were found in their usual places. A hog was in the building, apparently put and fastened in there to consume the evidences of the dreadful crime which had been committed.
     Men were summoned from the adjoining towns to the number of a hundred or more, and on Wednesday, a general search was begun, but without success. Warrants were, however, gotten out for the arrest of the Muedes. John, the oldest brother, was found and arrested that night by Deputy Sheriff Davis; Michael had gone off with a relative on a begging excursion through this county to secure aid on account of their house having been burned.
     The prisoner was taken before Justice Bassett, in the town of Hartford, where a preliminary examination was begun, and different witnesses testified as to the threats that had been made. In order to secure a safe building in which to keep the prisoner, and also that the large number of persons in attendance might have accommodations, the place of hearing was on Friday changed to Long Prairie, the county seat.
     That evening, Muede told Deputy Sheriff Davis that he believed the people would hang him that night, and he had something he wanted very much to tell, and urged the officer to come to the jail. Mr. Davis did so, when the prisoner voluntarily made a full confession. He said that on the evening of Monday, October 27th, himself and brother had gone to Steinhuber's and awaited the return of the two men from their work; that, in a few minutes afterwards his brother entered the house, armed with a double-barreled shot gun, loaded with buck-shot, while he (John) stood at the door with an ax in his hand (he at first denied having taken any part in the killing, but afterwards confessed as related), and Michael shot Steinhuber in the head. Colway started to run, but was met at the door by John, who felled him with the ax, and cut and hacked him until death was made certain. The bodies were then wrapped in a sheet and taken to a shallow, circular hole in the ground, about twenty rods from the house, which these fiends had deliberately dug before going to commit the murder, crowded into it, the spade laid in also, and the earth scraped over them, after which leaves were scattered about and brush piled carelessly over all.
     A party of men started that night from Long Prairie to get the bodies, but so well had these human devils done their work of concealment that, even with the minute description of the spot furnished by the prisoner, it was only after a protracted search that the grave was found - some of the party having repeatedly walked by and over it. The bodies were disinterred, and brought to Long Prairie Saturday morning, and were found to have been most horribly mangled.

     John Muede was left Saturday night in the jail, in the charge of Deputy Sheriff Barton and one or two assistants. After midnight, the jail was broken into  by a party of armed men, disguised, who, covering the guard with their weapons, took the prisoner out and hanged him to a tree, where his dead body was found on Sunday morning, and afterwards cut down and buried.
     On Saturday morning, Deputy Sheriff Davis started with Constable Harmon, of the town of Ward, for Michael, whom they found, the next morning, in a settler's house, on his begging trip, between Lake George and Lake Henry in this county. His gun and two revolvers were in his wagon, and the arrest was made without any difficulty. They reached Long Prairie Sunday afternoon with their prisoner, and had a hard time to get him into jail before the mob got hold of him. As soon as it was dark, the officers slipped him out and off to the town of Hartford, where he had a preliminary examination before Justice Bassett, and was then taken to Motley, and brought here on Monday by railroad. Had he been left in the Long Prairie jail, Monday morning would have seen his dead body swinging from a tree, as his brother's had done the morning before. He will be kept in the jail here until the next term of the District Court in Todd county, which will be in February.
     The prisoner is a large, heavy-set, dark-face, low-browed, stolid looking creature, of forbidding aspect in every way, and one of whom it is not difficult to believe that he could be guilty of almost any crime. Although only 27 years of age, he looks to be 40. He is very indifferent, and at his preliminary examination would have no counsel, and asked only either to be released or to be hung. He is German, neither speaking nor understanding English.
     Yesterday, through the courtesy of Jailor Lemm, who acted as interpreter, we interviewed the prisoner, who denied having had anything to do with the murder, or any knowledge of it until told by the Deputy Sheriff when arrested. He says he left home at two o'clock on Monday morning, November 3rd - the day following, it will be remembered, the discovery of the evidences of the murder by the neighbors - with an ox team and accompanied by his brother-in-law, August Rhemer, on a begging expedition, reaching Long Prairie about daylight, and Sauk Centre on Tuesday morning. He says he had not seen either Colway or Steinhuber since the burning of his house; had seen both last during potato digging time. After the fire, himself and brother had lived with their sister until they fixed their granary, in which they afterwards lived, and he says that when he started away on the 3rd, he left his brother and Colway's wife in the granary. He says that they were both married, having families in Germany; John had left his wife and three children some ten years ago, and the prisoner his wife and child last February.
     In subsequent interview, this forenoon, he stated that on Monday, October 27th (which evening the murder was committed) he was engaged in picking up nails at the place where their building was burned, his brother having gone to the mill to get lumber to be used in putting a second, or upper floor, in the granary; and that himself and brother and Colway's wife staid in the granary that night. He said that for two or three nights after the fire, they staid at his sister's, but that after that the three slept at the granary, getting their meals at this sister's; and that they occupied this granary until the morning of November 3rd, as previously stated, when he left on the begging trip. This was about a mile from Steinhuber's, where the murder was committed.
     A letter received yesterday from Todd county says that the other brother, "Black John," confessed before being mobbed, to having murdered his father, and then fleeing to this country to escape punishment.

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*NOTE: One of the obituaries found in the genealogy search stated that Joseph Meide (brother to the two condemned) came to the US in the company of his sister, his father coming later, and settled in Todd County. This would suggest, from the last paragraph above, that rumors were flying.*

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