Newspaper Coverage of the Evans & Sontag Story

San Jose Mercury, Wednesday morning, August 10, 1892, p. 8 (back page), c. 1:

  THE ROBBERS ESCAPE..
Supposed to Have Reached a Secure Place to the Mountains.
 
 
Special to the MERCURY.
REEDLEY, August 9. Nothing further has been learned concerning the train-robbers. It is supposed they have made their escape into the mountains. Many officers and deputies have given up the chase and returned home..
 

By this time, the Evans & Sontag story had been replaced on the front page of the San Jose Mercury by a story of one Lizzy Borden, who had just chopped up her parents with an axe and claimed the next batch of lurid headlines to sell the newspaper in the days that followed.

One wonders if the effect of violence in media on children was ever the topic of discussion in those times as it is now.

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This page created on 05/04/01 15:10.