The Incest Victim: Writes Back

  Lou Ellen Redmon (1874-1891)

the first murder recorded in Lincoln County

Henry fooled me and he fooled my ma worse--

He was evil, born under the diddlehood of the devil.

I was seventeen, and Ma should have protected me

But I fear he was diddling her before he diddled me.

We were alone in the tent the night he abridged my life,

shot through the heart in the third week of our marriage.

I was seventeen, he was thirty four, and his own daughter

Lizzie the one he was diddling was all of fourteen.

I threatened to expose his incest--he was drunk

on rotgut whiskey as he’d been every night.

We argued and he shot me dead,

no witnesses in the tent, he claimed it was suicide.

They sent Henry to Lansing Prison in 1894

and they pardoned him in year three.

After that he returned to his first wife Faith

he’d abandoned with their kids to marry me. 

I don’t know his fate after that.

I see him buried by the roadside somewhere--

his life violently abridged, 

his grave unmarked, his death unmourned.