Grave Mystery of 1879 Nearing Solution?
Rocky Mountain News
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Lawrence, Kansas (US):
University of Colorado professors Mimi Wesson and Dennis Van Gerven are planning soon to dig up whatever may be left of John Wesley Hillmon the Kansas cattle dealer and sometimes ranch hand, who was reportedly accidentally shot by his partner on the trail back in 1879.The unmarked grave is at Lawrence, Kan.
Their goal is to answer definitively: Who dwells in Hillmon's grave? Although he died in relative obscurity, Hillmon's demise soon became a frontier cause celebre and today his name is familiar to most law students and legal practitioners.
The epic case of Mutual Life Insurance Co. vs. Hillmon - which generated no fewer than six trials and two U.S. Supreme Court rulings over 20 years - gave birth to an enduring piece of federal evidence law.
The problem is, that law might have sprung from fraud by insurance companies to counter what they suspected was an attempt to defraud them regarding the identity of the man who was killed near Medicine Lodge, Kan., and now rests in the Lawrence graveyard. "It's a great historical mystery, a window not only onto the law, but onto life in the frontier in the late 19th century," said Wesson, a longtime CU law professor.
Jan 27, 2006
Rocky Mountain News
________________
Lawrence, Kansas (US):
University of Colorado professors Mimi Wesson and Dennis Van Gerven are planning soon to dig up whatever may be left of John Wesley Hillmon the Kansas cattle dealer and sometimes ranch hand, who was reportedly accidentally shot by his partner on the trail back in 1879.The unmarked grave is at Lawrence, Kan.
Their goal is to answer definitively: Who dwells in Hillmon's grave? Although he died in relative obscurity, Hillmon's demise soon became a frontier cause celebre and today his name is familiar to most law students and legal practitioners.
The epic case of Mutual Life Insurance Co. vs. Hillmon - which generated no fewer than six trials and two U.S. Supreme Court rulings over 20 years - gave birth to an enduring piece of federal evidence law.
The problem is, that law might have sprung from fraud by insurance companies to counter what they suspected was an attempt to defraud them regarding the identity of the man who was killed near Medicine Lodge, Kan., and now rests in the Lawrence graveyard. "It's a great historical mystery, a window not only onto the law, but onto life in the frontier in the late 19th century," said Wesson, a longtime CU law professor.
Jan 27, 2006
