The Glidden Ax Murder
by Bill Stein
On March 26, 1912, Lyle Finucane worked in
the Glidden roundhouse until midnight, then went to the
home of Ellen Monroe, with whom he lived, to retire.
Finucane, who was employed by the Galveston, Harrisburg,
and San Antonio Railroad, had been separated from his wife
for about two years. Monroe, the mother of fourteen
children, was likewise separated from her husband. Some-
time during the night, Finucane, Monroe, and her children
Willie, Dewey Lee, Jessie, and Alberta were murdered as
they slept. At seven o'clock the next morning, another of
Ellen Monroe's daughters, Parthenia, who lived with her
grandmother, discovered the bodies and the murder
weapon, an ax, which had been left in the house.
Sheriff Bruce Mayes was shortly summoned to
the grisly scene. Finucane and Ellen Monroe had died in the
same room. Both had been in bed when initially struck. Both
apparently survived the first blow, as Finucane had fallen out
of bed and Monroe had arisen and collapsed in the middle of
the room. Her four children were in the small home's other
bedroom, still in their beds as though asleep. Mayes
discovered that the murderer had used an ax from the
family's own woodpile, that he had entered the home via a
back door, and that he had washed his hands on the back
porch before leaving. He also found some footprints in the
back yard and with a team of bloodhounds, followed the trail
to a nearby house. There he found a black man named Jim
Fields.
Just three weeks before the murder, on March
6, Fields had married Ida Booker. Shortly after the wedding,
he had gone to Buckholts for a job, leaving his bride at her
mother's house in Glidden. Secure in his new position and
with a new home established, he returned to Colorado
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