Phillips v. State

• Decision Date: 10 November 1886
• Parties: PHILLIPS <I>v.</I> STATE.<SMALL><SUP>1</SUP></SMALL>
• Court: Texas Court of Appeals

2 S.W. 601

PHILLIPSv.

STATE.¹

Court of Appeals of Texas.

November 10, 1886.

Appeal from district court, Travis county.

For the murder of his wife, Eula Phillips, in the city of Austin, Texas, on the night of December 24, 1885, the appellant was convicted of murder of the second degree, and his punishment was assessed at a term of seven years in the penitentiary.

In this case the state was forced to rely solely upon circumstantial evidence. The statement of facts covers some 60 pages of a printed record, and

is, of course, too lengthy to be set out in detail. A cursory synopsis, however, will serve to illustrate the rulings of this court.

No less than 13 murders, the circumstances of which are still shrouded in mystery, marked the history of the city of Austin, Texas, during the year 1885. Women were the victims in each of the 13 cases, and in each an axe or hatchet was the instrument of death. Christmas morning was ushered in by the startling discovery that two married women, occupying, in the one case, the house, and in the other the very bed, in which their husbands were sleeping, at opposite and distant parts in the city, and at almost the same hour in the night, had been murdered with axes, and their bodies dragged to some distance, and left. One of these unfortunate women was Eula Phillips, the wife of the defendant. Her husband was savagely stricken over the head at or about the same time that her death blow was dealt. Pending his recovery, he was charged with the murder of his wife, and, when his recovery was complete, was taken into custody.

It was shown for the state that the defendant and the deceased had been married for three years, less a few days, at the time of the homicide. For nearly a year previous to the fatal night they had occupied a room at the house of "old man" Phillips, the father of the defendant, which room formed one wing of a gallery separating it from the sleeping room of old man Phillips and his wife. The defendant's mother testified that the defendant and the deceased were in her room from sundown on the fatal evening until about 11 o'clock, when they retired to their room. Neither the deceased nor the defendant were out of her room between the hours mentioned, except for 15 minutes early in the evening, when the defendant went a few blocks down the street, and returned. Between 11 and 12 o'clock the witness went into their room, and saw them in bed together, the deceased's head lying on the defendant's outstretched arm, and the two playing with their infant. Between half past 12 and 1 o'clock the witness heard a voice calling feebly for "mother" and "Eula, darling." Going into the room, she found the defendant lying on his bed, in a pool of blood, his head terribly cut, his wife missing, and his child sitting up in bed crying. She found the family axe in bed with the defendant, and saw two blood impressions on the floor of the room, which at the time she took to be bloody barefoot tracks, one pointing towards the bed, and one towards the door. Bloody tracks were clearly defined on the gallery leading from the room to the yard. She summoned her husband and neighbors, and soon retired to her room, overcome by fright and excitement, and had but faint recollection of the subsequent transactions of the night. She saw Eula's body for the first time on the next morning. Her forehead had been broken in. She had no idea how long the defendant had been calling when she awoke and heard him. When she went in to see the defendant, on Christmas morning, he asked her, in one of his rational moments, "Where is Eula?" Witness replied, "She is dead;" and defendant said, "Then I will go to hell!" Witness interposed some soothing remarks, and defendant added, "For I can't live without her."

It was testified for the state that, at least during their residence in a neighboring county, in 1884, the defendant was much addicted to drink, and was inordinately jealous of his wife; and that, on one occasion, while at supper, he threw a teacup filled with milk at her, and in a rage threatened to kill her. It was also testified for the state that the deceased left her husband in November, 1885, and that soon after her departure the defendant sought her, at one place at least, flourished a knife, and said that his wife had left him, and that he would kill the person who sheltered her. He afterwards found and brought her home. Criminal relations between the deceased and other men than her husband was established by three witnesses, one of whom was the sister of the defendant, who admitted that, on two or more occasions, she accompanied the deceased to two houses of assignation, and spent one or more days and nights with her in those houses, and saw the deceased in bed with a man. None of the witnesses imputed to the defendant a knowledge of his wife's infidelities.

It was further testified for the state that, while living in Williamson county, the defendant, being a participator in a general conversation about the virtue of women, said that, if he should discover his wife to be unfaithful to him, he would kill her, and himself too. On another occasion, after his removal from Williamson county to Austin, the defendant asked a witness if he thought the deceased was too fast. The witness replied in the negative, but admitted that he thought she talked too much, but was virtuous. The defendant replied that his mother thought deceased was too fast, and that if he thought she was unfaithful to him, he would kill her, and then himself.

A female witness for the state testified that she accompanied old Mrs. Phillips into the defendant's room, when the defendant asked where his wife was. When told by Mrs. Phillips that his wife was dead, the defendant replied, "Then I will go to hell." This witness declared that he, at no time during that visit of Mrs. Phillips, qualified that remark by adding, "For I can't live without her." The defendant's mother testified that the defendant slept in his red socks on the night of the murder, and denied that she washed his feet until two or three days afterwards. She denied, also, that she was a party to a conference a night or two after the murder, held at her house, for the purpose of securing the removal of her daughter, in order to prevent her appearance as a witness against the defendant. That daughter, the same who testified that she visited the houses of assignation with the deceased, admitted that she left Austin after the murder, and that she was furnished money to leave on, and understood that it was furnished by prominent married men of Austin, who opposed her appearance upon the witness stand as likely to involve them in scandalous disclosures. She denied, however, that either the defendant or her mother were parties to the negotiations pending her departure. This witness also testified that one McCutcheon, with whom Eula admitted to her she had been intimate, threatened, after the death of Eula, to kill her (witness) if she divulged what she knew of his relations with Eula. McCutcheon denied this statement of the witness, and met the attempt of the state to attach suspicion to him as the murderer by successfully establishing an alibi. Contra to old Mrs. Phillips' statement that the deceased was not away from the house on the night of the killing, the proprietress of a house of assignation testified that she came to her house, several hundred yards distant from Mrs. Phillips' house, on that night, at about 11 o'clock, and asked for a room and bed, but got none, as the rooms were all occupied; that witness saw no man with the deceased at that time, but as she did not go out, nor did deceased enter her house, she could not say that deceased was alone.

The body of Eula Phillips was found in old man Phillips' yard, about 60 feet distant from the room occupied by her and defendant. It was nearly nude, and showed a fracture of the skull in front, made by a blow from an axe. Indications showed recent sexual exercise, but the physicians could not decide that the murder was succeeded by outrage. One or two physicians testified that, in their...