Hickory Crime of Seventy Years Ago The peaceful and law-abiding school and residence town of Hickory was once the abode of a man and woman who, 70 years ago, committed a double murder in many particulars closely resembling the GRAY-SNYDER case, and even more gruesome, according to William G. LYTLE, in the Pittsburgh Press of Sunday, May 28. It was in Hickory that Henry FIFE met Charlotte JONES and fell in love with her, with the result that Charlotte's uncle and aunt were heartlessly murdered for money by the scheming pair. A verse that Henry was overheard singing in his cell is well known by many of the older people of the Hickory section: "In Montreal where I was born, I brought my friends to shame and scorn; At Hickory town I took a wife; I loved her as I loved my life; And to support her fine and gay, I took to murdering on the highway; I murdered WILSON, I do declare, And Elizabeth MCMASTERS with her silver hair." George WILSON, an aged man, with his sister, Elizabeth MCMASTERS, were living in a log cabin two miles from McKeesport, across the Youghiogheny. FIFE and Charlotte came there in the dead of night, knocked on the door, and to the question, "Who's there?" the girl answered, "It's me, Charlotte." When the door was opened FIFE rushed the old man and drove a dirk into his heart. Elizabeth MCMASTERS was in bed at one side of the cabin. She jumped out of bed, threw her arms around Charlotte and begged for mercy, but FIFE threw her to the floor, and after ineffectual efforts to choke and kick her to death finally dispatched her with a poker. The whiskey-drinking pair were immediately suspected and soon caught and both hanged, on February 12, 1858, in the yard of the Allegheny county jail. Charlotte was the first woman hanged in Allegheny county. Henry FIFE, who is remembered by W. H. MCPEAK of Hickory, as a genteel and pleasant man of neat appearance and small stature, was employed for a time as a shoemaker for Joseph LEECH, on the present site of the HUEY & MATHEWS store. Charlotte MILLS lived in an old house on the present site of the B. F. DINSMORE home. Mr. MCPEAK thinks it likely the pair of illicit lovers were in Hickory between the murder and their conviction, and he well remembers the efforts of youths about town to tear down Charlotte's former abode as a gesture of disgust and in an effort to rid the town of disreputable persons. The murderers tried to blame the crime on Monroe STEWART, another character well known in Hickory, and he was jailed. In a final confession, however, the lovers cleared him. STEWART had taken poison in a futile effort at suicide, but finally contracted smallpox. He was removed to a pest house, from which he escaped, and died in a clump of bushes up along the Monongahela river. Had he lived and behaved he would have been cleared. *I Googled both the FIFE/MILLS and the GRAY/SNYDER murders. Didn't find anything on FIFE/MILLS, but found that the GRAY/SNYDER murder was the basis for the movie "Double Indemnity."