Horse-eating cat did not kill Ed Kinchen

In January 1868, the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper reported:

“Edward Kinchen, a useful and respectable citizen of Livingston Parish, was murdered by parties unknown on December 19 near his house alongside Bayou Barbary. He had been out hunting hogs when his horse returned home without him. Family members tracked the horse and discovered the body.”

The Baton Rouge Tri-Weekly Gazette added:

“Woodsman Milt Powers believes Ed Kinchen was killed by a seven-foot panther, one of the largest and most ferocious known in Louisiana. The beast has been depredating in the north part of Livingston Parish for seven months or more. Powers brought his dogs from Baton Rouge to take the beast’s scalp. Sadly, Powers believes his dogs may have forced the beast down to southern parts of the parish, causing Kinchen’s death. Before a citizen’s committee hired Powers, the panther destroyed six one-year-old colts, seizing them from their owners’ yards. Locals refer to the beast as Horse-eater.”

However, within days, the New Orleans Weekly Republican vindicated Horse-eater in Kinchen’s death:

“Contrary to earlier reports, a panther did not kill Ed Kinchen. Searchers found his body in the Killian wilderness miles from Kinchen’s Springfield residence. He was shot through the body and head. The Picayune got it wrong again. The same correspondent also reported that someone shot Stephen Durden, a worthy and reliable negro, for giving a Democratic speech in Hammond, Mississippi. He went on to describe a rape at Tickfaw Station in Mississippi. Neither Hammond nor Tickfaw Station are in Mississippi. Both places remain in Livingston Parish, where they belong. If a correspondent cannot accurately record his writing location, how can we trust what he is writing about? Trust this report. Someone murdered Ed Kinchen.”

The Baton Rouge Daily Advocate added:

“A musket ball passed through Ed Kinchen’s chest, and buckshot shattered his skull. Near the dead man lay the carcass of a hog, and it is supposed that the slayers shot the unfortunate man after he detected predators rustling his stock.”

On May 18, 1868, a Livingston Parish grand jury indicted Brandon Watkins and Peter Nelson for the murder of Ed Kinchen. Family members testified that the two men, both from New Orleans, came to the Kinchen homestead looking for the owner hours before his death.

The grand jury agreed. Kinchen had been killed with a musket ball through his chest and buckshot to the face. Two different types of ammunition equated to two guns and likely two shooters.

The following October, a granted change of venue moved the trial to St. Helena Parish. In St. Helena, Peter Nelson told District Attorney Bolivar Edwards that Brandon Watkins alone killed Kinchen and agreed to testify against Watkins in exchange for his freedom.

On November 12, Edwards entered a nolle prosequi for Peter Nelson, setting him free. Judge John Howell found Brandon Watkins guilty as charged.

On appeal, Defense Attorney C. J. Bradley presented evidence that the jurors who indicted Watkins were not residents of the judicial district and filed a motion to quash the indictment. Judge Howell denied a Defense request for a continuation and overruled the motion to suppress.

Peter Nelson returned to New Orleans as a free man.

Brandon Watkins died in prison.

Over a century later, descendants of Edward Kinchen have never learned why two men from New Orleans rode horseback to Livingston Parish and killed a local rancher and hunter. Today, I do not have the answers. However, I have found clues researching another question: Who was Peter Nelson?

On December 4, 1854, a deckhand deserted a ship called the Colonel Cutts in New Orleans. Three months later, the deserter, claiming to be a former Swiss police constable, Peter Nelson, accepted a Night Watchmen position with the New Orleans Police Department.

For eight months, he walked a beat on Girod Street in one of the city’s most dangerous areas. He took home a weekly salary of $12. At 8:30 on July 6, 1855, a ruffian named William Corbitt attacked Officer Nelson near the Fulton and Levee Street dock. Corbitt sliced Nelson’s left cheek with a razor wrapped in burlap to form a crude knife handle.

Bedridden for a month, on August 1, Nelson petitioned the city to reimburse him for the paychecks he missed. However, before the Board of Alderman rendered a decision, the Colonel Cutts captain saw Nelson’s name in the newspaper and filed charges against him for desertion.

Four months later, a maritime court released Nelson from jail, and the New Orleans Police Department reinstated him.

On July 21, 1856, over a year after being injured on the job, the Board of Alderman reimbursed Peter Nelson $45 for the month he lay in bed. That day, he resigned, saying he had an offer of employment on the docks.

Peter Nelson appeared twice more in Louisiana newspapers. The first followed his arrest for the murder of Ed Kinchen. The second was his obituary, appearing in the New Orleans Item on December 2, 1881. The “Mortuary Notice” did not describe the cause of death, but among his pallbearers was a wealthy  Sicilian businessman named Joseph Macheca.

In “Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association,” historian Michael Kurtz describes Macheca as the founder of the Innocents, a “protection club of private watchmen established to protect Sicilian commercial interests.”

Professor Kurtz recently retired from Southeastern Louisiana University. At odds with other historians, he insists no evidence proves Macheca’s organization was a “black hand” operation. Likewise, his article, “Organized Crime in Louisiana History: Myth and Reality,” refutes reports that the Innocents preceded what later became known as the New Orleans mafia.

As for Horse-eater, F. T. Cochran, a one-legged Civil War veteran from Colyell, trailed the panther six hours before his dogs treed the beast. By then, the predator had killed seven colts and innumerable calves, sheep, and hogs, over a 12 month period. Unable to carry the 8-foot cat back to civilization, the hunter returned with a paw as proof of his kill. According to the Baton Rouge Daily Advocate, the foot measured six-by-four inches and weighed more than one pound.