Gastonia, Will E. Farnsworth, 55, general storekeeper and farmer of the Bessemer City-Cherryville road, and his son, Furman Farnsworth, 17, are out on $1,000 and $3,000 bonds, respectively, today, following their arrest by officers on warrants charging that the two sold Jesse Vandyke, murderer of Chief A.L. Painter of Cherryville, a quart of corn liquor, which the slayer drank when he was on his crazy, drunken spree.
Jesse Vandyke swore at a hearing that he bought the liquor from the Farnsworths the day before he killed Painter, January 13. He went to their store three miles outside of Cherryville. “Mr. Farnsworth went into the old store building handed me a quart. I gave him $1.50 in cash and my check for $1.50 for it,” Vandyke said.
“This is not an ordinary case of bootlegging,” Solicitor Carpenter argued. “it’s an extraordinary case. If that is the liquor which caused the homicide, if they furnished the liquor that caused the killing of Painter, they are a party to the crime. It’s a question almost of murder and not of selling liquor. If that is so, the matter of a five or ten thousand dollar bond is a very small thing.”
“Murder is not bailable. If Farnsworth sold this liquor to Jesse Vandyke: if that is the impelling or immediate cause, then the man that sold this liquor is just as guilty of murder as Jesse Vandyke is.”
From the front page of The Cleveland Star, Monday, March 15, 1926
Other articles have spelled the last name “Van Dyke.”
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn97064509/1926-03-15/ed-1/seq-1/
