Synopsis of Innocent as the Angels

Known popularly as the Spencer murders and the lynching of Bill Young, this mostly forgotten story begins with one of the most neglected mass murders in American history, moves through a lynching, a dastardly seduction, a multi-state chase, and a nullifying decision by the Missouri Supreme Court.  The story also prominently features the shadowy world of bounty hunters posing as private detectives in post-Civil War America.  
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The entire Spencer family of five was murdered with the blunt end of an ax as they slept in their modest rural home in Clark County, Missouri, in early August 1877.  These ghastly murders generated two sensational murder trials, both of which received a measure of national coverage at the time.  The first man accused was the one who discovered the bodies.  His trial ended in a spectacular acquittal because a professor at a local medical college refused at the last moment to testify.
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More than a year later, a second trial involved a wealthy, unscrupulous farmer who was framed by a bounty hunter masquerading as a detective, using the farmer’s former housekeeper and mistress as both accuser and chief witness.  Following a lengthy and scandalous preliminary hearing, the accused farmer, Bill Young, was bound over for trial.
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After a three week trial, Young, who almost certainly did not commit the crime, was also acquitted.  Nevertheless, three days later he was hanged from his own pasture gate by a mounted lynch mob organized and led by the same bounty-hunting “detective” who had designed and executed Young’s frame-up.
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Incredibly, everything is here—mass murder, scandal, revenge, gun-play, courtroom drama, perjury, a posse or two, sexual scandal, a lurid lynching, and more.  The cast runs from washerwomen turning the occasional trick to storekeepers, jailbird drunkards, loafers, hardworking farmers, and ambitious lawyers and politicians.
No in-depth treatment of this years-long epic of interlocking narratives has ever been published, but now a finished book-length manuscript has been completed by Duane Taylor (with research assistance by Renee Riffle, James P. Burns, and Meleese Young), titled Innocent as the Angels.