Passion played a key role in the double murder in Little Egypt in 1924

On July 30, 1924, Reverend Lawrence Hight delivered a moving eulogy for Wilford Sweeten. “Brother Wilford was an unbeliever in Jesus Christ and God, and I was sent to save him,” said Hight. “I am not worthy to preach the sermon over the body of this good man.”

The irony of Hight's words would soon come back to haunt him. On September 24, he was charged with giving Elsie Sweeten the poison that killed her husband in a portion of homemade tomato soup, and with poisoning his own wife, Anna Hight. The Tribune called it “the strangest tragedy that Southern Illinois has ever known.”

Wilford Sweeten and his widow were members of the Methodist Church where Hight was pastor in Ina, a hamlet in Little Egypt, an inverted triangle at the southern tip of Illinois. Rumors were circulating that something was going on between the pastor and Mrs. Sweeten. Her great-aunt had warned her: “They're talking about you and Pastor Hight.”

Elsie accompanied him on a tour of the small-town churches where he served. According to testimony at the pastor's trial in December 1924, Hight “was caught sneaking out of Mrs. Sweetin's cabin late one night” at a church camp, wrote a Tribune correspondent sent to Little Egypt to cover the trial. Tribune articles often spelled the name “Sweetin,” but other sources, including family gravestones, spell it as Sweeten.

“Hight seemed to be too attentive to Sweetin, so rumors began to circulate that eventually led to the exhumation of the bodies and the discovery of arsenic.”

In an editorial published shortly after Hight was indicted, the Tribune attempted to address the motives behind love crimes.

“Passion is madness,” it said. “It is a formula as old as humanity and as old as the changeability, blindness and wildness of love.”

When Hight and Sweeten were convicted and sent to prison, love was replaced by hate. “I would have gladly taken my 35 years,” she told the sheriff who handcuffed her after the verdict. “I would have gladly taken them too if they would have just hanged the preacher.”

When the murder charge was first brought, the citizens of the small town of Ina were outraged.

“The poisonings … have struck horror into the hearts of these common people and awakened in them a desire for revenge,” wrote a Tribune correspondent sent to investigate the community in the south of the state.

“This is a community of old pioneers who with Daniel Boone survived almost insurmountable hardships in Kentucky and Tennessee,” the Tribune reported. “The villagers of Ina are a strangely silent and emotionless people. Their eyes are cold.”

The mood in Mount Vernon, where the trial was taking place, was somber. “The deputy sheriff explained that the prosecutor told him to 'get all the deputies he could get hold of.'”

While awaiting trial, Sweeten and Hight were separated for their own safety. But first, authorities put them in a cell together in the hope that they could eavesdrop on what they were saying to help bolster their case.

The preacher could be heard urging Sweeten to confess to the murder and ask for forgiveness. She refused, offering instead to watch Hight's children while he was behind bars. Kisses could be heard. “I love that woman and I believe she loves me back,” Hight said, his voice shaking with excitement as he was taken back to his cell.

Neighbors in the small town were always confused about Hight. “No one seems to know where he came from,” wrote the Tribune correspondent. “He said he got the call 13 years ago.”

Before he married Anna, he participated in horse races at state fairs. Their marriage was unhappy.

“I didn't love my wife,” he said. “My wife nagged me. She was never satisfied with what I bought her and learned from Elsie that Wilford was indifferent to her.”

Elsie Sweeten's childhood was cut short. At 11, she was sent to various odd jobs. At 17, she married Wilford Sweeten. They lived on a farm, then he got a job in a mine. She was optimistic. He was sullen and reserved. He criticized her in front of her three sons.

And so two people came together who harbored resentment toward their partners and longed for affection.

He was blown away when she first walked down the aisle of his church. Hight winked at Sweeten. Elsie put her hand over her heart. He nodded back.

“I felt myself slipping,” Hight said, “and I went the way of all flesh.”

The two began meeting in a small grove of trees behind the Sweetens' house. “Night after night we would go there, and for hours she would lie in my arms and we would forget everything except each other,” he told a reporter.

“It was suggested that they run away together, but he didn't want to give up preaching and neither did she. Finally she asked him what would get the job done and he said he knew a way.”

The evidence in this case was damning, including the testimony of a pharmacist who sold arsenic to Hight and who claimed to have a problem with rats.

Sweeten maintained her innocence and said Hight falsely accused her of murdering her husband.

“I expected him to say that,” she said. “If he can't have me, he doesn't want anyone else to have me.”

At the trial in December 1924, her lawyer bluntly expressed the jury's decision: “Send her to the gallows or send her home to her children.”

As the Tribune reported, Hight's lawyer had initially intended to prove that his client was suffering from a “disease that makes decent middle-aged citizens feel like Romeos.”

Whatever evidence the jury heard, they did not believe it. Hight and Sweeten were both found guilty and sentenced to prison.

Sweeten asked to do laundry duty in the prison. In 1925, she appealed, arguing that her case should have been separated from the pastor's. The appeal was granted and Sweeten was given a new trial. Hight was taken from his cell to the courtroom where Sweeten was being retried, where he would be on hand if his testimony was needed.

The trial was another sensation in Ina, where many of the town's 400 residents flocked to the courthouse. Although the testimony was largely the same as in the first trial, the jury quickly came to a different conclusion and found Sweeten not guilty.

As a free woman, she moved to Chicago and married twice more.

Hight was sent to prison again. He was paroled in 1952 and returned to Mount Vernon, where he died seven years later.

He said he confessed to the crimes and said he had a clear conscience.

“After all, I am only human, but since my confession I have been sanctified and live in harmony with God again,” he said. “I am happy.”

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