Virgil A. Stewart happened to be in the right place at the right time. In January 1834, he offered to help a friend in Madison County, Tennessee track down two missing slaves who were believed to have been stolen by a local thief named John A. Murrell. Posing as a man looking for a lost horse, Stewart won Murrell's confidence over the course of several days and the thief shared with him stories of his exploits and revealed various criminal acts he had committed, including robbery, slave stealing, and murder. Murrell also admitted to being the leader of a vast criminal empire with one thousand...

John Andrews Murrell (1806-1844) was a horse thief, a slave stealer, and a counterfeiter who was transformed into a legendary highway robber and murderous outlaw whose criminal exploits took him throughout the South in the 1820s and 1830s. Modern-day treasure hunters are still trying to find his supposed caches of hidden gold in Tennessee, Arkansas, Illinois, Louisiana, and Mississippi. The disappearance of two slaves belonging to a friend in 1834 prompted Virgil A. Stewart to pursue Murrell in the hopes of learning their whereabouts. Stewart befriended him on his journey to Arkansas, and he...