The Hossack Case

G. K. Burson (Witness)

G. K. Burson was a farmer living three miles directly east of the Hossack farm on the same road that bordered the Hossack property. Burson did not testify at the first Hossack trial, but he was put on the stand as a defense witness at the second trial. On the night of the murder, Burson testified, he was awake in his house, tending to his sick wife, when he was startled by the sound of a horse approaching from the west. Burson ran outside and got a clear look at the horse and rider as they rode past. Burson said the horse was “blowing from the nostrils and the man was whipping him at every jump.” The horse clattered across a forty-foot bridge to the east of Burson's farm and disappeared over a small hill. The rider was wearing a dirty hat pulled down over his eyes. Burson went inside and checked the time. As it turned out, it was just shortly after the time that Margaret Hossack claimed an intruder that attacked her husband. The defense argued that the rider might have been the midnight assassin, but the prosecution claimed that the rider was just a country boy out racing his horse on a moonlit night. The mysterious horseman was never identified.