Following closing arguments that consumed ten and a half hours, the jury began deliberations at half-past midnight. Less than 15 minutes later, Robinson was acquitted. No one else was ever brought to trial.
Within a year, under the name Richard Parmalee, Robinson opened a saloon and billiard room in Nacogdoches, Texas. Using the business acuity learned in Hoxie's store, he built a trade in clothing and personal items. He bought a farm, married in 1845, and died of an unidentifiable fever in 1855 during an Ohio River steamboat trip.
—Bernard Ryan, Jr.
Suggestions for Further Reading
Cohen, Patricia Cline. The Murder of Helen Jewett: The Life and Death of a Prostitute in Nineteenth-Centnry, Vew York. New York: Knopf, 1998.
Halttunen, Karen. Murder Most Foul. The Killer and the American Gothic Imagination. Cambridge, Mass.:Harvard University Press, 1998.
Isenberg, Nancy. Sex and Citizenship in Antebellum America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.
Paul, Raymond. The Thomas Street Horror: An Historical Novel of Murder. New York: Viking, 1992.
Srebnick, Amy Gilman. The Mysterious Death of Maty Rogers: Sex and Culture in Nineteenth-Centuy NewYork. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
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