 | The idea of visiting dead people wouldn’t stop gnawing at the back of my mind. I had been immersed for months in studying several of Indiana’s most shocking and historically sensational crimes, many dating back a hundred years or more. As a consequence, victims of those crimes began to feel like old friends, and their killers like lost souls begging to be understood. Visiting their graves was the closest I could get to them physically. Three days after Christmas 2016, I did something about it. It started with a jaunt from my home in Tipton, north up Indiana State Road 19 toward Greentown’s Greenlawn Cemetery. My destination was the grave of Jesse Worley Osborn, who shot his estranged, 24-year-old girlfriend, Fairy McClain-Miller, in the face. Point blank. Twice. Drunk, he murdered her the night of April 7, 1908, in Kokomo as she lay in her bed. Osborn had gone to her house to talk, but when she refused to kiss him, he got mad. Osborn was the product of a well-respected Greentown family. His father, Oliver, was a highly regarded Civil War veteran and former Howard County commissioner. His mother, Sarah, was active in church and her ladies’ club. |
But Osborn, their eldest son, was a spoiled slacker, who couldn’t pull his life together no matter how many second chances his parents gave him.
Fairy and Osborn had dated off and on for several months, but once she accepted that his drinking and the physical abuse that followed were endangering her life, she left him. Fairy’s rejection stung Osborn’s fragile ego and was more than he could bear.
Fairy McClain-Miller Jesse Worley Osborn
After he killed Fairy, Osborn jumped a freight train bound for a mill town in the wilds of northeastern Michigan. But lacking even the basic hunting skills required for sustenance, Osborn conceded that he would starve to death if he stayed there.
He was en route to his Greentown home, when he was spotted the night of April 17 at the Logansport rail yards. The Howard County sheriff nabbed Osborn the next morning and brought him back to Kokomo, where he made a full confession, emphasizing his regret for killing the woman he loved. That cooperation convinced the judge to reduce Osborn’s first-degree murder charge to second degree, which took the death penalty off the table but mandated a life sentence.
On April 28, the day before he boarded the train for the state prison in Michigan City, Osborn spoke with a Kokomo newspaper reporter. He proclaimed a profound remorse for succumbing to the evils of booze, which was what, he claimed, had led him down a murderer’s path. He further implored Kokomo’s young men and boys to conduct their lives with moral integrity and to avoid the errors he had made. Osborn spent his next twelve years and three months behind bars. He died July 26, 1920, of acute appendicitis at the age of 46.
During his final interview before leaving Kokomo, Osborn had bared his soul. “I cannot tell you how deeply I regret [killing Fairy],” he had tearfully told the reporter. “I cannot excuse myself for it. I cannot blame anyone but myself.”
Although Osborn and I were separated by more than 100 years, I couldn’t dismiss his self-condemnation. I felt his sincerity. And his pain. I believed him. That’s probably why, when I walked up to his headstone at that Greentown cemetery, I was greeted by an overwhelming sense of sorrow. Osborn didn’t have to die in prison. According to a 1919 Kokomo Daily Tribune article, he had been a model prisoner who displayed repentance for his crime. He had been up for parole several times, but each time, the one obstacle to his clemency was Fairy’s family. In my opinion, an infected appendix may have been the official cause of Osborn’s death, but it was payback that took his life.
I wondered what might have happened to Osborn had Fairy’s family forgiven him and allowed the door to his freedom to swing open. Would he have squandered a second chance at life and fallen back into his old ways? Or would he have chosen a path of enlightenment and made amends for his deeds? Based on what I came to know of Jesse Worley Osborne, I like to think he would have chosen the latter.
I supposed that is why, when I stood at his grave that cold December afternoon in 2016, the words “I forgive you” slipped past my lips. I know it sounds silly, but it felt right.
He was en route to his Greentown home, when he was spotted the night of April 17 at the Logansport rail yards. The Howard County sheriff nabbed Osborn the next morning and brought him back to Kokomo, where he made a full confession, emphasizing his regret for killing the woman he loved. That cooperation convinced the judge to reduce Osborn’s first-degree murder charge to second degree, which took the death penalty off the table but mandated a life sentence.
On April 28, the day before he boarded the train for the state prison in Michigan City, Osborn spoke with a Kokomo newspaper reporter. He proclaimed a profound remorse for succumbing to the evils of booze, which was what, he claimed, had led him down a murderer’s path. He further implored Kokomo’s young men and boys to conduct their lives with moral integrity and to avoid the errors he had made. Osborn spent his next twelve years and three months behind bars. He died July 26, 1920, of acute appendicitis at the age of 46.
During his final interview before leaving Kokomo, Osborn had bared his soul. “I cannot tell you how deeply I regret [killing Fairy],” he had tearfully told the reporter. “I cannot excuse myself for it. I cannot blame anyone but myself.”
Although Osborn and I were separated by more than 100 years, I couldn’t dismiss his self-condemnation. I felt his sincerity. And his pain. I believed him. That’s probably why, when I walked up to his headstone at that Greentown cemetery, I was greeted by an overwhelming sense of sorrow. Osborn didn’t have to die in prison. According to a 1919 Kokomo Daily Tribune article, he had been a model prisoner who displayed repentance for his crime. He had been up for parole several times, but each time, the one obstacle to his clemency was Fairy’s family. In my opinion, an infected appendix may have been the official cause of Osborn’s death, but it was payback that took his life.
I wondered what might have happened to Osborn had Fairy’s family forgiven him and allowed the door to his freedom to swing open. Would he have squandered a second chance at life and fallen back into his old ways? Or would he have chosen a path of enlightenment and made amends for his deeds? Based on what I came to know of Jesse Worley Osborne, I like to think he would have chosen the latter.
I supposed that is why, when I stood at his grave that cold December afternoon in 2016, the words “I forgive you” slipped past my lips. I know it sounds silly, but it felt right.
* * * *
I also visited Fairy’s grave, but not on this particular day. Hers came along several weeks later. Not all my graveside visits were as dramatic as the stop in Greentown, but each allowed me to be as close as possible to someone I had never met in the flesh but knew well in spirit, many decades after they had either perpetrated or endured the worst act of their lives. I invite you to join me over the next few days on my odd little road trip. •
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