By JOHN HOWER
On Valentine's Day 1903, Lebanon's residents were shocked and
saddened by the news of the brutal double murder of a young bride who
was gunned down for revenge and a police officer shot while trying to
apprehend the slayer.
Ida Becker, who had been wed only three weeks before, was
gunned down by David Shaud at Sixth and Locust streets as she was
walking from the Park Hotel with her husband and several other people.
Shaud had first threatened young Becker's life after she gave
testimony at a trial two months before that ended with Shaud's
conviction for burglarizing the home of her stepfather, John
Brownsweiger. Shaud was free on bail at the time of the murder awaiting
disposition of a motion for a new trial.
On the evening of the murder, Shaud, armed with two pistols,
fist tried to get Becker to meet him outside the hotel by sending a
message in with her aunt. Becker's husband, Ira, refused to allow his
wife to speak with Shaud, fearing the threats he had made to her after
the trial.
Failing to get her to come out, he waited along the path he
knew they would take when returning to their home. When the couple
spotted Shaud, Ira Becker told him to stop following them and pulled of
his coat, thinking that Shaud wanted to fight him, according to reports
in the Lebanon Daily News and the Lebanon Semi-Weekly News.
Shaud, though, was not looking for a fight. Instead, he pulled
a revolver from his coat, pointed it at Ira and pulled the trigger
twice. Both times the gun misfired by Shaud then turned the gun on Ida
and fired the fatal shot.
Before police could arrive on the scene, Shaud had fled down
Liberty Alley. After police arrived, they quickly converged on Shaud's
home at 138 Liberty Alley, thinking that may have been his destination.
At the house, described as an old frame dwelling, two officers
blocked the possible means of escape while Chief of Police Cyrus
Schaeffer hurried to the phone to inform county detectives of the
murder.
When one of the detectives arrived on
the scene, Schaeffer, along with another officer and the detective
entered the house and asked Shaud's wife if he was there. Refusing to
answer, she told the officers that if they were going to search the
dwelling, she wanted to leave before they started.
Schaeffer and another officer began the search on the second
floor of he house, while the others stood guard at all possible exits.
Finding no trace of Shaud in either bedroom, Schaeffer told the others
that
he would search the attic, according to accounts of the officers
involved
in the search. Taking a lamp in his left hand and his revolver in
his right, Schaeffer began to ascend the low stairway.
What he did not know was the Shaud was waiting near the top of
the stairway. As Schaeffer neared the top step, two shots rang
out. Schaeffer tumbled down the steps, landing out of reach of the
officers at the base of the stairway. Schaeffer, still alive, could not
be aided without the risk of another officer being shot.
At the urging of his wife, Shaud agreed to surrender but
refused to throw his guns from the attic window. In the course of
conversation, Shaud recognized the voice of John Sohn, a former
constable from the first ward, and offered to surrender his weapons if
Sohn would enter the attic unarmed. Sohn agreed, and in little more
than half an hour the murderer was
in custody.
Shaud, after his capture, told the officers that he would
rather hang than serve a prison term.
His wish was granted. The case came to trial on March 3, and,
without the assistance of a jury, the judge accepted Shaud's pleas and
found him guilty of murder in the first degree for both killings.
Reporters present in the courtroom on the following day noted that the
judge's voice trembled as he told the prisoner that he was to hang for
his crimes, but Shaud was calm and displayed no emotion.
Little more than four months after the brutal slayings, David
Shaud was led from his cell to mount the steps to the gallows erected
in the jail yard. As was usual at the time, a large crowd gathered in
the jail yard, on the streets, roof tops and trees in hopes of catching
a glimpse of the killer's final earthly moments.
Hower
has been a newspaper copy editor and Internet Systems Administrator. He
has served on various historical commission boards has written
several hundred local history columns, edited two history books and
collaborated on several other local history projects. Columns posted on
the Web are repeats of those that appeared in print in other
publications.
Copyright © 1997, John Hower jhower@leba.net
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