"Sedalia can not have Schamle. His goose is cooked. Found him hanging over a pig-stye this morning. Saltpetre can't save him. Biggest show of the season."
Such was a telegram received from Georgetown by Gen. Cook, on Saturday, the 15th day of December, 1877. Robert Schamle was a brute of a tramp who murdered an inoffensive man in Georgetown a few weeks previous to his lynching, and who was charged with having committed a rape in Sedalia, Mo., before coming to Colorado. He claimed to be the grandson of Schamyl, the Circassian warrior, who made a big name in his guerrilla warfare upon Russia in the early part of the present century. But the probabilities are that he lied in this matter, and he is believed to have been a native of Switzerland. Whatever his nationality or lineage, he disgraced it.
The murder was committed on the 13th day of October in the year mentioned, the name of the murdered man being Henry Thedie. Thedie was a respectable German butcher employed at G. E. Kettle's slaughter house, about two miles below Georgetown, near which place he resided with his family, consisting of a wife and three small children. The evidence obtained at the coroner's inquest conclusively proved that Schamle was the murderer, and that the crime was one of the most diabolical and cold-blooded outrages that ever stained the annals of a civilized country. The murdered man was known to have had about $80 on his person immediately prior to his death, and the possession of the money appears to have been the only motive for the perpetration of the hellish act.
Schamle was employed as a helper at the slaughter house at the time, borrowed a pistol at Harvat & Aicher's slaughter house on the afternoon of October 12, and although the shooting was heard, and Schamle seen to flourish a pistol at 5 o'clock that evening, and immediately afterwards leave the place, the result of his bloody work was not known until the following morning, thus giving him a start of over half a day. There was no evidence of a struggle having taken place, or of any ill feeling having existed between the parties, and the position of Thedie's body showed plainly that he had been deliberately shot and almost instantly killed.