Greensboro, Aug. 25—Monroe Osment, white man, today was arrested on a charge of killing Mrs. Eunice Stevenson, aged Guilford county woman, two months ago, at her hermit-like home in the lower part of the county.
Ozment, who is an inmate of the Guilford county home for the aged and infirm, broke down under questioning of the Guilford sheriff, D.B. Stafford, and told how he knocked the old woman in the head and then hanged her to a rafter in her humble little home. He did that to make it appear a case of suicide.
That is mentality is low was evident by that trick, as the wounds on the head of Mrs. Stevenson plainly showed that she had been killed before she was strung up. In addition, the rope of sacks around her neck was not long enough to keep her feet off the floor.
Mrs. Stevenson, a widow for many years, had refused to leave her home and live with relatives, preferring the independence of her cabin and her pitiful possessions. These consisted of a Bible, a spool of thread, a few chickens and a few eggs. So poverty stricken was the old woman that seven eggs were found secreted in an old bureau, one of the few articles of furniture in the house.
Since the body was discovered by a little boy, son of a neighbor, when he went to the home to carry some milk to Mrs. Stevenson, the identity of the killer has remained a mystery until today, when Ozment, in the county home, talked too much. He said that a negro did the murder but that he was there. It was found that the negro he named was on the chain gang at the time. Pressed, Ozment broke down and confessed.
Robbery was evidently the motive, the killer thinking it would appear that a penniless old woman had money in her home.
From page 5 of the Concord Daily Tribune, Wednesday, Aug. 26, 1925
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92073201/1925-08-26/ed-1/seq-5/
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