4A COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL NOVEMBER 22, 2017
O PINION
Offbeat Oregon History: Was Lewis O’Neil a murderer, or
did he just take the rap for one?
Of all the varia-
tions
on the theme
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of “love gone bad”
known to gossips,
storytellers and prosecuting attorneys since the
dawn of time, the “love triangle turned deadly”
pattern has got to be given fi rst place.
And it would be hard to fi nd an example of this
kind of story that would top the one that reached
its climax with a shotgun blast on a dark Ashland
street, a few days before Thanksgiving of 1884.
It started when a 46-year-old carpenter named
Lewis O’Neil rolled into town, three months be-
fore. O’Neil had abandoned a wife and six chil-
dren down in California a couple years earlier and
drifted north with the railroad. When he’d arrived
in Ashland, he seems to have decided to stay a
while and put down some roots — after meeting
Mandy McDaniel.
Sarah Amanda “Mandy” McDaniel, 35, was the
wife of a prosperous local grocery-store owner,
48-year-old Lewis McDaniel. The McDaniels
had married three years before, when she was a
pretty youngish widow with a seven-year-old son
and he a lonely frontier bachelor. The marriage
had soured fairly quickly; when O’Neil rolled
into town, the McDaniels were living separately,
and Amanda was apparently looking for a new ro-
mance. She and O’Neil began a secret affair soon
after he arrived in town.
Two weeks after he arrived, O’Neil took a short
vacation from work to go and visit his much-old-
er brother, 72-year-old George, at his mining
claim several dozen miles from town. When he
returned, he was carrying a shotgun which George
had given him to try to sell.
Back in Ashland, Lewis moved into a room
at the Pioneer Hotel and briefl y resumed his af-
fair with Amanda McDaniel. Then Amanda ap-
proached her husband, reconciled with him, and
moved back into their home.
And a few days after that, at 7:30 p.m. on the
By Finn JD John
cold, rainy night of Nov. 20, 1884, someone
stepped up behind Lewis McDaniel and shot-
gunned him in the back of the head. He fell for-
ward, dead, his hands still in his pockets.
The town marshal’s night watchman, Charles
Miller, was soon on the scene, and, recognizing
the corpse, went directly to the McDaniels house
to let Amanda know that someone had murdered
her husband. With another citizen, he stood on
the doorstep and knocked for several minutes as
the rain poured down on them; then the two of
them retreated to a neighbor’s house to fi gure out
what to do next. A few minutes later they decided
to wait inside for Amanda to return, and crossed
over to the McDaniels house again and — after a
little more fruitless pounding on the front door —
went inside and lit a candle and settled in to wait.
Then Amanda herself opened the back bedroom
door, stepped out, and seemed surprised to see her
living room full of people.
Rumors of extracurricular romantic activities,
in a small town, spread very rapidly in a small
town and are pretty much impossible to keep bot-
tled up. By the time of the murder, everyone —
including Lewis McDaniel — knew of O’Neil’s
affair with Amanda. So when someone murdered
her husband, O’Neil was instantly the prime sus-
pect. Almost immediately, the 1880s equivalent
of an A.P.B. was out. Town marshal S.D. Taylor
found O’Neil around 10 p.m., drinking in a sa-
loon, and arrested him on suspicion.
There wasn’t any hard evidence against O’Neil;
but there was a lot of the circumstantial kind. For
one thing, the shotgun he’d brought back from
his brother’s mining camp — a distinctive weap-
on with an alligator carved into the stock — was
nowhere to be found. He fi rst claimed he had no
shotgun; and then, apparently realizing too many
people had seen him bringing it back, he claimed
he’d sold it to some guy on the road home. It was
later found, chopped up into bits, scattered over a
vacant lot. The lot had been searched the day after
the murder, so someone besides O’Neil had obvi-
ously done this. The obvious suspicion was that
Amanda had done it for him, to help him cover
his tracks.
It was enough. O’Neil was convicted on March
12, 1885, and sentenced to swing.
A few weeks later, another inmate claimed
O’Neil had confessed to him that he’d done the
deed under the precise direction of Amanda —
who wanted her husband out of the way so that
she could formalize her affair with O’Neil and so
that she could inherit his grocery store.
On the strength of this conversation, Amanda
McDaniel was arrested. But jailhouse confessions
aren’t very solid evidence, and the jury just wasn’t
convinced. She was acquitted.
As the hanging day loomed ever closer, a se-
ries of remarkable letters started going out from
the Jackson County Jail, where O’Neil was being
held.
The fi rst and most egregious one went to Aman-
da McDaniel. It was a proposal, essentially, that
she take the rap for him. He prefaced it by assur-
ing her that if her court case had gone badly, he
would have “come to your relief and clear(ed)
you by taking the whole responsibility on myself,
though I am innocent, but ... if you were found
guilty you should never hang or go to the peni-
tentiary for I would save you. Now you have been
tried and come clear, and it is in your power to
save my life.”
Since she had been cleared of all charges in her
trial, he continued, she could now confess to the
murder with total impunity — clearing him. He
would then sue the state for heavy damages and
split the proceeds with her.
“I hope you will not delay,” he wrote, “as I
know you can save my life and the disgrace will
be no worse on you than it is now.”
Amanda did not reply.
Other letters went out as well, to other friends
and relatives, with various other schemes for
someone else to take the rap for him. The last one
went to his brother George, the one who gave him
the shotgun; and it was an open request for his
brother to “confess” to the killing and take his
place on the gallows.
“The most trying feature,” the condemned man
wrote, “is leaving my six children to the mercy
of a world without protection and the disgrace
of their father being hanged. ... As for you, you
have lived to be a very old man, and in the natural
course of events you can expect to live but a very
few years more and are liable to drop off at any
time. If you had one hour to live it would be a hard
request to ask you to come and state that you had
done the killing and that I had not had any hand,
act or part in it or any knowledge of it. That would
clear me, and spare me to my children, and only
on their account could I ever think of making such
a request of you.”
Of course, O’Neil hadn’t thought so much of
the children when he’d abandoned them and their
mother four years earlier; but a looming death
sentence does tend to remind one of family and
friends. Ironically, the letter never reached the
“very old man”; George had, shortly before, died
of typhoid fever.
And so, on March 12, 1886, still maintaining
his innocence, Lewis O’Neil was hanged.
As for Amanda, after liquidating her late hus-
band’s estate and paying off his taxes and debts,
she cleared $2,000 (worth $55,000 in 2017 dol-
lars). She took this and left Ashland the night
before the hanging, settling in Talent, where she
opened a café.
And so the story ends. Except, there is just one
question still hanging out there in the air, a ques-
tion that never was fully answered:
Where exactly was Amanda McDaniel, a few
minutes after her husband had been murdered,
when the town watchmen were pounding on her
door?
Dr. Fuhrman: True hunger versus toxic hunger
What are the physical sen-
sations
you associate with
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hunger? For most people
these sensations include stom-
ach grumbling, headaches,
light-headedness, shakiness, irritability, fatigue, and inability to
focus. Since eating removes the symptoms, they are mistakenly be-
lieved to be signs of hunger. The resulting overeating behavior, to
reduce these physical sensations, undermines any attempt to lose
weight. Understanding true hunger could be a key factor in revers-
ing this trend.
Are these sensations truly signs of hunger? Conventional wis-
dom, and even medical textbooks, would suggest that they are. I
disagree.
In my experience treating thousands of patients and guiding
them through transitioning to a nutrient-dense, plant-rich (Nutritar-
By Joel Furhman MD
C ottage G rove
S entinel
(541) 942-3325
ian) diet, I have observed that my patients’ perceptions of hunger
change after their diets improve — feelings of hunger become less
frequent, less uncomfortable, and are mainly felt in the mouth and
throat (“true hunger”) rather than the head and stomach.
These results were documented and published in 2010 in Nutri-
tion Journal, a peer-reviewed publication which encourages scien-
tists and physicians to publish results that challenge current models,
tenets or dogmas. My data does just that — these results argue for a
complete re-evaluation of our defi nition of human hunger.
Key results from this study: “hunger pains” were experienced less
often on a high nutrient-density diet; discomfort between meals or
upon a skipped meal was experienced less often on a nutrient-dense,
plant-rich diet; 80 percent of respondents reported that their experi-
ence of hunger had changed upon following a high nutrient-density
diet; Irritability and decline in mood were experienced less often on
a high nutrient-density diet; a nutrient-dense, plant-rich diet was
associated with more feelings of hunger in the mouth and throat and
less in the head and stomach.
We concluded that enhancing the micronutrient quality of the diet
leads to changes in the experience of hunger and a reduction in
uncomfortable symptoms associated with hunger despite a lower
caloric intake.
If stomach grumbling, headaches, and light-headedness a few
hours after a meal are not really hunger, what are they? The typical
Western diet is characterized by high-calorie processed foods, oils,
sweeteners, and animal products and is low in phytochemicals and
other micronutrients. There is evidence that such a diet, low in mi-
cronutrients and phytochemicals, results in infl ammation, oxidative
stress, and accumulation of toxic metabolites.
When digestion is complete, the body begins to mobilize and
eliminate waste products, causing uncomfortable symptoms. If we
allow waste metabolites to build up by eating unhealthful foods,
we will feel discomfort when the body attempts to mobilize and
remove these wastes. I propose that these sensations are actually
symptoms of detoxifi cation and withdrawal from an unhealthy diet,
lacking in crucial micronutrients. I call this toxic hunger. Scientists
now know that nutrient-poor, calorie-dense junk food has effects on
the brain similar to those of addictive drugs. Healthful food does
not produce withdrawal symptoms — when the body is given veg-
etables, fruits, beans, nuts and seeds, there is nothing to detoxify.
This is why so many weight loss diets fail. Simply restricting
portions of the same disease-causing foods does not resolve the
symptoms of toxic hunger. In addition to being effective for weight
loss, a nutrient-dense, plant-rich (Nutritarian) diet changes the per-
ception of hunger, getting people in touch with true hunger (felt in
the throat). The function of true hunger is to prevent the breakdown
of muscle tissue for energy; true hunger is a signal that directs the
body to the precise amount of calories needed to maintain a healthy
weight. A Nutritarian diet, if widely adopted, could bring millions
of people in touch with true hunger and stop the proliferation of
obesity and preventable chronic disease.
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