“Murder Alley” may be reached by taking the left where Line Street divides, going south to the river, leaving the Barbee home on the right. The name “Murder Alley” was derived from the fact that one and often two dead bodies would be found each morning in this alley. Col. Lowery is said to have edited a paper in the Barbee home during these much trying days. It may be of interest to many Jeffersonians to know that the original courthouse was, according to the Allen Urquhart plan, located just in front of the P. C. Henderson home. THE STORY OF DIAMOND BESSIE This sketch of a famous murder case in Jefferson is mostly from the pen of W. H. Ward who lived at that time and later moved to Texarkana where he was editor of “The Twentieth Century” and this sketch is taken from the December issue, along with a few other legends from other sources. The recent mysterious murder of a woman in Jefferson, Texas, recalls the death of Bessie Moore or “Diamond Bessie,” who was believed to have been slain by her husband and erstwhile paramour, Abe Rothchild, within rifle shot of where the murder was committed more than twenty years ago. The murder of Bessie Moore, properly Bessie Rothchild, a young and beautiful woman who had won the sobriquet of Diamond Bessie by the number and splendor of her jewels, was one of the most startling and sensational crimes in the criminal history of Texas. The scene of the crime was visited by thousands of curious spectators and the entire press of the Southwest teemed with gruesome incidents of the awful crime. Crowds came from afar to view the spot where the young mother had been hurled into eternity without warning, carrying with her the half formed life of an unborn infant. On the shiny slope of a Southern hillside, almost within call of the then thriving populous city of Jefferson, Texas, in the calm of a Sabbath afternoon, the cruel and cowardly crime was committed, for which the husband was twice sentenced to hang but escaped justice by a technicality of the law. The murder of Bessie Rothchild, by the man who was first her betrayer and then her husband, was a crime so weird and terrible that the hand of a master might make it immortal, without for one instant diverging from the strict line of truth into the realm of romance.