The people in the town of Denton seemed to used to like to take matters in their own hands when it came to justice. Their infamous cases of murder and misconduct with Jim Wilson and Wish Shepard are two of the most known cases the Denton prison has been involved in. The third, and most talked about, was the murder of Sallie Dean.
Not far from Denton, Maryland is a small town called Harmony. In 1895 this small quiet town was shook by a horrific murder. On March 26, 14 year old Sallie Dean left for school, taking her usual route walking to school. She was usually accompanied by her friend, James Corkran, but he did not go to school with her that day. When her mother met to pick her up from school, she learned that Sallie never made it there. Her family immediately searched for her on her path to school. They found her in the woods near her route with her throat slashed.
Whoever murdered Sallie did not finish what they intended. Sallie had a bruise on her head from being hit, and was in a position of being pinned down. It looked like the murderer had attempted to rape her but panicked and made a quick decision to kill her instead. Detectives from Denton were called in and the search for her killer began. Locals insisted on helping with the investigation. Marshall Price, a local 23 year old blacksmith, was the most willing to help. Detectives appreciated the assistance at first but Price seemed to know a lot of details to the point he became a suspect. Price started claiming to have dreams of the murder and even found the murder weapon based off of his dream. Price was finally arrested on April 5th when his alibi put him in the woods at the time of the murder.
Price denied everything in the beginning. Eventually his story changed and he claimed that he witnessed U.G. Corkran, older brother to Sallie