Fiendish Murder by Negroes

The Dispatch is outraged by a "fiendish" murder that has occurred in Mississippi in which it is purported that a group of black men gruesomely murdered a white man.

We venture to assert that the murder and outrage recounted in the subjoined article from the Natchez (Mississippi) Courier, 3d instant, will never evoke a word of censure from Forney; for the reason that the victim was a white man. The Courier says: "Elias J. Rogillio, familiarly known by his friends as "Boss" Rogillo, who lives with his mother, on his father's estate, seven and a half miles from Natchez, and half mile from the Brick Church, on the Pine Ridge Road, was called from his bed, where he has been but a short time, by a negro outside the house calling, in a familiar tone "Mars Boss." He arose in his night-clothes and went out ; he was immediately laid hold of by several negroes and kept outside while others went into the house and stripped it of everything portable and valuable. "They then brought out Mrs. Rogillio's clothing, and told him to put them on ; after which nothing more was heard of Mr.Rogillio until the next Sunday, when his body was found hid in the bushes some ten rods from the road. The fiends who have to answer for his death most horribly mutilated him. The nose was broken; teeth knocked out ; the first finger of the right hand cut off ; two shots- one a bullet, and the other a pistol ball- through the breast, and the right eye gouged, as if by a bayonet or some other sharp instrument."

“Fiendish Murder by Negroes,” Reconstructing Virginia, accessed June 1, 2023, https://reconstructingvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/112.