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Reason First: He Murdered for Infamy

What would you do to try top your more prosperous brothers?

By Skyler SaundersPublished 4 years ago 3 min read
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On November 18, 1842, in his cell in New York, he laid in his own blood. The wound came about because of a self-inflicted stab to his heart. His name, John C. Colt. The brother of the famed revolving pistol and rifle creator, Samuel Colt, this man stood as the outcast of the family. Another brother James worked as a lawyer. John C. Colt busied himself with forging documents, stealing, and running around with different, unscrupulous women.

But his worst act occurred on Friday September 17, 1841. As a bookkeeper he tried to keep up a legitimate and moral front. But the demons inside of him rose up on this day. Book printer Samuel Adams visited Colt to receive payment owed to him. In a week’s time, Adams’ body turned up in a packing crate in a ship named the Kalamazoo destined to leave New York.

While he denied any connection to the crate, police would later discover Adams’ pocket watch at Colt’s home.

When Colt received the fetters upon his wrists, he had been in a relationship with a pregnant woman and posed as her husband. During the time of his planned execution, Colt and Henshaw became one in the eyes of the law.

But before that, the trial had featured key witnesses like Asa Wheeler who testified that he had heard what sounded like a firearm discharging or a small explosive detonation and then the clatter of swords.

Colt provided a story that he had upset his pens and ink. In reality, he had struck down Adams with a hatchet. A caretaker’s testimony stated that he had witnessed Colt handling a sizable box akin to a coffin.

The crate with Adams’ body already had begun to reek on the sea vessel. Authorities could identify his body by a ring on his finger and a mark on his leg. The investigators could make out through the salt that Colt had packed with the corpse that had already begun decomposing by just these two indicators. His trial took place on January 31, 1842. With the testimonies of Wheeler and an unnamed garbage man stated that he had received funds to take the box to the ship. Later, workers then exhumed the body from its interment and displayed the cut off skull before the court. This action led professionals to declare that no bullet wound or packing nail had been the cause of the fatality. Judge William Kent found Colt guilty and sentenced him to death.

Months later, to distract everyone that had not been a part of the suicide, a fire engulfed parts of the court rooms. While some report that Colt stabbed someone else and escaped the jail with his wife Caroline, this is pure conjecture and not grounded in fact.

What is true is that Colt lived as a brute and in his final moments on earth, he demonstrated this ideal. By murdering Adams and then attempting to rid himself of the body, he lowered himself to a beast in the street. Unlike his more famous and successful brothers, John C. Colt could not cut it. As a bookkeeper at least he held some semblance of having a purpose. But this only extended so far, of course. To take another man’s life out of rage shows a criminal mind of a man hell-bent on taking two lives. And that’s not just because he killed himself. He extinguished his own soul which perished with his body as well as Adams’.

Colt couldn’t contend with being that misfit in his family so he had to make a name for himself somehow. And this is what is special about cases like his. He longed not for earned fame but infamy. It's a longing to belong. His siblings achieved success that he could never attain. As a forger to get himself out of the United States Marine Corps, he already exhibited awful behavior. Now, this doesn’t mean that anyone who has or will do this crime of fraud will commit murder, it just means that he wanted shine based on a transgression.

His case became a sensation in New York City. Newspaper publications covered the goings on as if it concerned an innovation in railroads. In all, Colt just caused a great stir from irrationalism. His life of crime and misdirection could’ve been clean like his brothers. Instead he chose the vicious route and will forever be remembered for it.

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Skyler Saunders

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