Hurled Into Eternity

"HURLED INTO ETERNITY. MRS. M.J. PERSON SHOOTS HER BRAINS OUT THIS MORNING." The sensational newspaper headline is followed by one of the most sensational murder trials in Memphis criminal history.The true story: early on a Tuesday morning in September 1890, forty-five-year-old Mary Jane Person is found lying face up and stone-cold dead behind her home near the south gate of Elmwood Cemetery in Memphis, Tennessee. She has horrendous wounds to both sides of her head. There is a bloody pistol at her feet. She threatened self-harm many times before; looks like she finally succeeded. Her death is ruled a suicide by the coroner's inquest.
Not so fast. Her funeral is interrupted by Memphis police, her casket taken to the family kitchen where an autopsy is performed. Her funeral resumes but her burial is denied, and later that evening, her fifty-nine-year-old husband William is hauled off to jail for her murder. The two had quarreled recently over a letter found in his coat pocket, a heartsick effusion written to a nineteen-year-old neighbor he was infatuated with. The charge is first degree murder, punishable by hanging. Uxoricide. One hundred and thirty years later, the question still lingers. Did he or didn't he? Who killed Mary Jane Person?