August 20, 1915 MOB SHOOTS PRISONER TO DEATH A mob of about 15 men held the jailer at Osceola up at the point of their guns late Thursday afternoon and entering the jail, shot Andy Crum, a white man to death and then took their departure. Crum, it will be remembered, was arrested as one of the ringleaders in the bootlegging business on Island No. 37 in the Mississippi River July 31. Crum had claimed and controlled the greater part of the island for many years and had a negro colony of 15 or 20 on the island with him. In the raid, Sheriff Mualdin was killed by a negro named Bert Spring, who in turn was so badly wounded in the fight that he died in the Marion Jail from blood poisoning Wednesday morning. None of the other prisoners were harmed by the mob. At the very time Crum was being shot to death in his cell by the mob, his attorney, Clyde Goings of Memphis, was applying for a writ of habes corpus before Judge Youmans at Fort Smith, to remove the case of Crum and the other prisoners from the state to the federal courts, but the writ was denied by Judge Youmans. Island No. 37 has been a lawless place for many years and has been a rendezvous for bootleggers and hiding place for criminals for many years. But the fact that the citizens, enraged at the death of Sheriff Mauldin, burned every shack on the island, this criminal pest hole has been thoroughly obliterated. Fran Alverson Warren e-mail: alverson@valuelinx.net 479-369-2703 http://www.crawfordcountyarkansas.net/