Jim Bradshaw pens book on 113-year-old murder mystery

By Ken Grissom, LSN editor
ken.grissom@techetoday.com

Late in the afternoon on Feb. 24, 1902, a Monday, word came to Welsh by telephone that a livery stable in Lake Charles was holding some mules supposedly belonging to Ward Earll, a farmer living outside of town.
Earll’s 23-year-old sister Maude was working in town as a store clerk, living with the family who owned the store. When informed about the mules, she became concerned and hired a buggy and driver to take her out to the farm.
What she found there made front-page news all over the nation.
In a locked house, in a closed bedroom, Maude found the decaying bodies of her mother, her brother Ward, and three younger brothers, ages 19, 17 and 13, “piled like cordwood.”
The body of her 55-year-old father was found in a ditch a considerable distance away. He had been shot to death.
As you can tell by the cover, this isn’t exactly a whodunit. But like cases against other famous murderers in Louisiana’s past – Willie Francis and Dr. Carl Weiss come to mind – there’s a whiff of Did he do it? to this tale. Investigation techniques were not as methodical nor scientific as they are today, of course. The suspect, a charming young drifter named Ed Batson, was thoroughly tried and convicted in the press of the time, which did not shy away from lurid details and unsubstantiated rumors. And Batson’s defense team inexplicably passed on what certainly now looks like exculpatory evidence and testimony.
Judicially, it was a mess.
One of the authors bringing it back to life after all these years you know well. Jim Bradshaw, the dean of Acadiana newsmen, retired from the Daily Advertiser in 2008 and now mines old newspapers, magazines, journals and letters for his popular columns on days gone bye.
His coauthor, Danielle Miller, is a researcher and translator specializing in French genealogy. She works for the Calcasieu Parish Public Library System.
As with any Bradshaw column, you not only get the principal facts, you get the setting, the sense, the feel of the times in which they occurred.