Following the publication of Edmund Lester Pearson's Studies in Murder (1924), he briefly corresponded with James Walsh Lewis, who had been convicted of the 1894 ax murder of Byron G. Coburn in Gorham, Maine. The case was appealed and Lewis gained his freedom in 1895; the chief witness during the trial was later convicted for a 1901 murder, also in Gorham. Lewis wrote two letters to Pearson in 1925, from Bolivia, attempting to convince the author to take on the Coburn murder case as the subject of his next book. Pearson responded with a letter seeking more information about the trial. The final two items in the collection are 1929 letters from W. R. Rynn, a prisoner at the Mississippi State Penitentiary, requesting a complimentary copy of Studies in Murder and thanking Pearson after he received the book.
Please see the box and folder listing below for detailed information about each letter.
Byron G. Coburn of Gorham, Maine, was killed with an ax on December 13, 1894. On the night in question, Coburn investigated a disturbance outside his home and never returned. The housekeeper sent farmhand James W. Lewis to find him, but he was unable to do so. The housekeeper then investigated and found B. G. Coburn murdered in his barn. At trial, Lewis was found guilty of first-degree murder, but when the case was appealed and went to trial at the Supreme Court, he gained his freedom when the state dropped the prosecution. Lewis ultimately left the United States for Bolivia, where he resided in 1925. The chief witness in the Coburn trial was Edward Graffam, who was later convicted of the murder of Cliff Mosher in Gorham, Maine, in 1901.
Edmund Lester Pearson was born on February 11, 1880, in Newburyport, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard College in 1902 and the New York State Library School in 1904. He married Mary Jane Sellers (1881-1971) on October 15, 1908, in Washington, D.C., and spent his career as a librarian, editor, and author. He is perhaps best known for his treatment of the Lizzie Borden murder case in his 1924 Studies in Murder and 1937 The Trial of Lizzie Borden. His other works include Five Murders (1928), Instigation of the Devil (1930), and Murder at Smutty Nose (posthumously, 1938). Pearson died in Manhattan on August 8, 1937.
