Hardin County Independent July 1, 1926
Items From Anywhere
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We are exceeding glad to learn that there is a good chance for Henry Lanham to get well, and a possible and maybe probable chance for his wife. Both were asleep when the death blow was struck, and for a good while after they were taken to the hospital and their wounds dressed were unconscious, and do not yet know what happened [to] them or why they are in the hospital. Up to last Saturday no one had attempted to reveal to them what had happened to them or why or how they came to be in the hospital.
It is difficult to conceive of a disposition or feeling that would prompt any man of mature age and ordinary intelligence to commit the character of crime that was perpetrated by Pinkney Hines on Henry Lanham and wife and daughter here the first of last week, and which greatly shocked not only E'town, where it was committed, at the dead hour of midnight, but the entire county and surrounding country as well. It is claimed by the States Attorney, and some others that the perpetrator of that fiendish crime is a moron, and probably he is; but, admitting that he is, no clemency or mercy should be given him in extenuation or palliation of his foul deed, by reason of any possible claim that his mental capacity is not above that of a 10 or 12 year old child. We do not mean to intimate that the States Attorney will accept anything of the kind as even a mitigating circumstances in his favor, much less as grounds for acquittal, or even lessening his punishment, for we are sure he will not do it. And neither should a jury be influenced by any such pleas in passing upon his guilt. Such people are a great menace to any community, and if no greater punishment is inflicted upon them, they should at least be confined for life where there could be no possible chance for them to perpetrate a similar deed.
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Source: Newspapers.com. Hardin County Independent. Elizabethtown, Illinois. July 1, 1926. Page 4.
