Wednesday Morning, March 26, 1924, just before 7 am, R.P. Wuichet, an employee of Adolph Epsteine, reported to work at Epsteine’s store in Swartz. Going to the back of the building, he was startled to find the back door open. Mr. Epsteine had a habit of locking the door between 7:30 and 9 p.m. at night. The door should have still been locked.
Young Wuichet didn’t notice anything amiss inside. Thinking he might be in the back of the building, Wuichet called out to Epsteine several times, but received no reply. After looking around, he noticed Epsteine’s hat on the floor and one of the show-cases had been smashed by a Coke bottle. Wuichet called for others to help and they found Epsteine’s body lying in a bloody heap behind the counter. Two 25 pound sacks had been thrown over his body. He had apparently been killed in the middle of counting the day’s till, because there was a pile of untouched checks on the counter and an estimated $532 in cash was missing. A bloody nail puller and hatchet were found nearby. A butcher knife was missing and it was suspected that was also one of the murder weapons.
For weeks Sherriff Bailey Grant and his deputy, future Sherriff Milton Coverdale, investigated the case. Fingerprints had been found on the murder weapons, but a suspect was needed to compare them to! Friends and relatives hired a private detective to help with the case. Suspects were watched closely. Gambling dens rumored to be circulating bloody money were investigated. Nothing panned out. The trail went ice cold. It would take the murder of another man months later to break the case open.
On August 15th of that same year, now Sherriff Coverdale was called to the scene of the shooting of Pentecostal missionary D.A. Schumaker. The Sherriff and his deputies were told by Schumaker’s widow that she believed it was done by some hooligans whom her husband had told to leave where he was holding services the night before. They had thrown rocks at the meeting tent where services were being held.
Those hooligans who had been run off by Schumaker were found and carefully questioned. Fingers began pointing at 28 year old Howard Roberson as the suspect. It came out that Roberson was drunk that night and angry he had been called out. Not a good combination. Roberson ended up shooting Schumaker in anger. The others involved, stated he had also been one of the ones who had murdered Epsteine. He, Luther Hays, his brother-in-law who had been in jail at the time of the Schumaker murder, and another man who had been the getaway driver were involved. Roberson had asked to buy an inner tube for a tire on a Sunday and Epsteine refused. It was against the law to conduct business on Sunday. Roberson took this as a personal affront and came back with the two men, murdered and robbed him.
Both Roberson and Hays were put on trial, found guilty of first degree murder and sentenced to death. Appeals were granted and the trial was moved to Bastrop. After many appeals and retrials, Roberson’s death sentence was affirmed but Hays’ crime was reduced to manslaughter.
On January 29, 1926, Howard Roberson was lead to the gallows inside the brand new Ouachita Parish Courthouse and hung, protesting his innocence all the way. He was buried in Loch Arbor Cemetery in Swartz. As for Luther Hays, he was sent to Angola to serve his term and was paroled in 1932. He moved to Los Angeles where he died in 1976.
Adolph Epsteine is buried in St. Louis, MO.
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/36789136/adolph-epstein
D.A. Shoemaker lies buried in an unmarked grave in the Old City Cemetery.
Ouachita Parish History Tidbits 
My finace has been trying to find this story for years, Howard Roberson was his great grandfather!
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