Century-old murder confession found, but no victim

| The Associated Press

3/6/2008 -

FOUNTAIN, Colo. — He said his name was John Spicer, that he had killed a man in 1893 and that he hoped his confession would someday clear up "the darkest mystery that ever embraced one in human murder."

More than a century later, that handwritten confession on a piece of wood — hidden in a home for decades — is on public display at a museum, but the mystery remains.

El Paso County district attorney's investigator Larry Martin looked into the confession when it was discovered 22 years ago, but he found no record of the killing. Martin turned the note over to the Fountain Valley Historical Society Museum, where it went on display this week.

"I've had that piece of wood in my evidence room for all these years," he said.

The note was written in pencil on the back of a piece of window trim and nailed to a wall inside home built in 1899 in Fountain, about 10 miles south of Colorado Springs and 70 miles south of Denver.

It remained hidden there until 1986, when the homeowner pried it loose during a remodeling project.

The note, in compact cursive writing, reads:

"To whoever may happen to find the confession, I, John W. Spicer of the City of Fountain, State of Colorado, being about to shuffle off this mortal act to make this my full confession in the hope that when I am gone it may be found and at last clear up the darkest mystery that ever embraced one in human murder."

Spicer wrote that he clubbed John J. Sebastian to death in March 1893, took $5,000 in jewelry and cash and dragged his body into a ravine 500 yards away.

Martin said the homeowner who found the confession gave it to a reporter, who took it to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. CBI agents refused to give it back, saying "it's a murder confession and it's authentic," Martin said.

CBI agents determined the handwriting matched the style typical of the late 1800s, but they never found a sample of Spicer's handwriting to compare it with, Martin said.

Martin said he was assigned to the case but could find no record that John J. Sebastian was murdered, and no body was ever found.

Martin did find records indicating someone by that name worked for a railroad, but the paper trail ends at about the time Spicer says he killed Sebastian.

Martin said he located Spicer's daughter, Marguerite Bulkley of Pueblo, in 1986. Bulkley, then 89, said her father once told her he had killed a transient but that authorities had cleared him.

Martin said he found no evidence to support that version of the story.

Spicer moved to Florida and died there in the 1940s, Martin said, and neither he nor Sebastian had any living relatives in the Fountain area today.