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Just before the turn of the 20th Century, a relative married his sweetheart and setup housekeeping not far from her parents in Tennessee. He needed to earn a living and left her in their new home for a few weeks while he made a business trip up to Michigan. When he returned home, he found his wife had left their new home and gone back to her parents home. He sent word to her that he was at home and she could return home now to her husband. He then received word she refused to do so, but he was suspicious and suspected her father and mother were making her stay in her parents home.

Accompanied by a friend, he traveled to the Kentucky county where his wife and her parents lived to fetch her home. When they arrived at their destination, he sent the friend to hide out behind a horse wagon and some shrubbery while he went on up to the front yard. When he entered the front yard, his wife’s father and brother came out of the house fully armed with rifles and pistols. They threatened him, made him get down on his knees in front of them to beg for his life, made fun of his predicament, and then proceeded to shoot him right between the eyes and in the chest. The father-in-law and brother-in-law didn’t know the murder was witnessed by the friend who had accompanied him.

The father-in-law was a constable, and he claimed they shot his son-in-law in self defense. Unfortunately for their murderous scheme, the unseen witness went to the Sheriff, reported how he witnessed the murder, and the two in-laws were arrested and stood trial for murder. Much to their surprise, they were convicted despite being Democrats in good standing with the locals. Sentenced to long terms in state prison, they were sent off to serve their sentences.

Meanwhile, their murdered son-in-law’s elderly parents went up to Kentucky and picked up their son’s body. Friends were armed and rode along to keep them from being murdered too. When they returned to Tennessee with their son’s body, they did so using a long and roundabout route during the night and stormy weather to avoid being bushwhacked. When they reached home, they were afraid to bury their son in the family cemetery located in the field in front of the farmhouse. The in-laws had threatened to find the grave and dig up their son’s corpse to do with as they pleased. To keep that from happening, they waited until nightfall and buried their son in a solitary grave located in the flower bed just inside the fence enclosing the frontyard of the farmhouse. The grave was hidden by replanting the flowers of the flower bed over the top of his grave.

After a Democrat was elected the governor of the state, he commuted the prison sentences of the father-in-law and brother-in-law after only a few years in prison. Decades later, a cousin went through the areas to try and find the murdered relative’s grave on the now deserted farm of the deceased parents. Meeting one of the local friends who ran the rural general store with the pot bellied stove, the man offered to take him to the important locations. As they jumped aboard the old pickup truck for the trip, the old man put a pistol and a shotgun between them on the seat in the cab. Explaining the firearms, the old man said they just might happen to meet the now elderly father-in-law along the road, and they needed to be well armed just in case.

So, why did the father-in-law and brother-in-law murder their son-in-law in their front yard? Answer: they were upset because the son-in-law took the daughter out of the home when they needed her to stay there and help run their family prostitution business out of their home and not be running off with a husband.