The Russian Mosin Nagant Forum

Sheriff Griffin Middleton of Jackson Co. N.C. was my Grandma's 1st cousin. In 1953 he was searching for an outlaw, Demos Woods in a remote wooded area of the Canada section of Jackson Co. Woods was wanted for assaulting a woman and as the Sherrif and a deputy walked along a trail that led to an area where Woods was known to operate a still, the Sheriff was hit by a shotgun blast. This 20 ga. 34" bbl. shotgun put 8 buckshot pellets in his chest at an estimated 90 paces. He died on the seen. Woods was captured and served several years, dying shortly after his parole.

Surprised the barrel is still intact. After the one round took out the sheriff I would have first shot ol' Demos in the ball's as he tried to reload, then while he was bleeding out I would shove that shotgun right up his ass and pull the trigger. The obstructed barrel would have blown .

Ol Demos probably ran like a scared rabbit after shooting the Sheriff. The deputy probably had a 4" .38 and was scared himself. My Grandpa the Highway patrol Sarge, ended up with this from evidence after the trial. I've killed squirrels with it and shot it against modern 12 gauges at a turkey shoot. It did'nt win, but it out did a lot of the 12's.

Why only a few years in jail for murder?

SA1911a1 wrote:Why only a few years in jail for murder?

I don't know for sure, may have been a plea deal.

I'm surprised the gun wasn't destroyed.

Surprised Ole Demos even made it to trial let alone jail.........Should have been left rotting where he should have fell, just my opinion.......

Sonny wrote:I'm surprised the gun wasn't destroyed.

Nobody wasted anything in those days. I know my Mother-in-law washed and kept aluminum foil for reuse. My Father-in-law used the same pencil for at least a decade, I had it framed with his pocket knife for my wife. Their behavior came from lessons learned during the depression and shortages during WWII.

Grandpa saved the crooked nails that came out of the old part of the house from the 1958 remodel job. There was a 3 gal. crock that was found in the mouth of Deep Creek at the Tuckaseegee river from the flood of 1940. It was used to make Kraut a few years until a slight crack was discovered which made it useless for kraut, so it became the nail crock. Once in a while you needed a few nails for small repairs so we would sort thru the "cracked creek kraut crock crusty crooks" to get the ones we needed.

Ol Demos was lucky. Sheriff George Alexander of Dallam County, Texas was murdered by three cattle rustlers in 1930. He was my great great grandfather. What became of the murder weapon, I do not know. I do know what became of the murderers-two of them were shot dead by his deputies and the third was wounded and later sentenced to a long term in the state penitentiary where he subsequently died.

I presume the surviving outlaw was happy to get quickly sentenced and transferred to the penitentiary, seeing as the person appointed to fill the remainder of Sheriff Alexander’s term was his wife, Bennie Marie “Ally” Alexander-the only female sheriff in the history of the State of Texas.