Printer's Devil

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December 1883, a few days before Christmas on a cold, snowy morning Ella Leabo was found dead at the bottom of a well. She had marks about her throat which made it appear she had been murdered. Just the night before her death, she and her husband John had got into a quarrel and neighbors had to come settle the matter. It did not take long before John Leabo was arrested for the murder of his wife. They had a three-month-old child at the time – Perry Benjamin.
The case, which occurred in Bates County, was a sensational one: John maintained his innocence and news of the trial and its circumstance spread. The New York Times even picked it up at one point; as more evidence came to light, John was even moved to the Henry County jail for his own protection. We read in the Clinton news, from July of 1886, that a group of young men even visited John while he was incarcerated and prayed for him.
At the first trial, John was found guilty and sentenced to hang, but the sentiment that he might not have been guilty led to the intervention of then Missouri Governor Marmaduke who gave Leabo a respite to give himself time to investigate the matter. That is why he was moved to the Henry County jail. There were three trials total: the first one (when he was found guilty), the second (which was declared a mistrial), and the third where the Missouri Supreme Court intervened.
The prosecution tried to show that John poisoned his wife and threw her in the well; the defense argued that she had a history of using laudanum, had taken it herself with the intent to kill herself, and also had a history of acting erratically: at one point, Ella had tried to drown herself in Walnut Creek and had one occasion even tried to strangle herself. Public sentiment seemed to favor Mr. Leabo. By the time all was said and done, John Leabo had been incarcerated in Jefferson City for eleven years when, by a stroke of luck the Governor of Missouri (at that time was Stephens) pardoned three people at Christmastime in 1897; Leabo was one of the three men granted this Christmas gift.
Leabo did not hang around Missouri (no pun intended) and headed for California. He lived around the San Diego area until his death in 1929. He did remarry but had no more children. His son, Benjamin, also ended up in California but was killed in December of 1918 when a tractor overturned on him while he was plowing a field in San Pasquale. John never waivered in his innocence pertaining of the murder of his wife, but we will probably never know for sure.