Putnam County & Greene County News!!! MORGAN CO MARTINSVILLE GAZETTE NEWSPAPER 25 April 1857 A SHOCKING OCCURENCE! On Friday morning, the 10th instant, Greenbury O. Mullinix, a resident of Washington township, in Putnam County, murdered his wife in a most brutal manner. We gather the following particulars from a letter published in the Greencastle Banner: --- "MANHATTAN, April 10th, 1857". Mr. Editor: - - One of the most painful and heart rendering tragedies occurred in our midst this morning that any community was ever called upon to witness. A young lady, Mrs. Martha Mullinix, wife of Greenbury O. Mullinix, and daughter of one of our neighbors, David Sublet, who had been raised in our midst was murdered, as is universally believed, by her husband, to whom she had been married but barely three weeks. The neighbors in the vicinity were first alarmed by the screams of the family at his father's where he ran after the fiendish deed was consumated. Several of the neighbors and citizens of our little town immediately repaired to the scene, and all who witnesses the sight declare it the most heart-rending scene ever recorded. There she lay on the floor weltering in her blood, with the whole of her upper forehead and front of her skull smashed in. On examination, two other wounds were found upon her head, either of which would have caused her death. The one in front is believed to have been made after she had fallen to the floor and was weltering in her blood. The jury supposed the weapon was a large iron shovel which he had recently had made, but it looked to me as though he had taken an axe in both hands and struck her with all his force. The skin and skull was so broken in, that you could almost insert your doubled fist. You may think that to see a young and beautiful woman murdered and mangled would be a sight not to be desired, but you can form no just conceptions of it, unless you had witnessed the scene. All who saw it say they expected the scene to be distressing, but was totally unprepared to witness a murder so cruel and barbarous in form. Such a sight I trust I never shall be called upon again to witness. The stroke is a heavy one upon her aged father and mother, and indeed upon all the surviving friends, and calls loudly to our countrymen to awake to the necessity of protecting the youth of our land from the demon of INTEMPERANCE -- the source of this and most of all such occurrences. Submitted by Kathy Bargerhuff