Edward S. Shue was convicted in Greenbrier County Circuit Court at Lewisburg, West Virginia, in June 1897, for the slaying of his young wife. The evidence was entirely circumstantial and was dreamed by Mrs. Shue’s elderly mother, who was sleeping in her home fourteen miles away from the scene of the killing, on the other side of Sewell Mountain.

In four separate dreams Mrs. Heaster’s daughter rose from the grave and described how her husband had murdered her. The aged woman set about trying to get enough people to believe her story so that her daughter’s husband could be brought to justice. But people laughed at her at first because Mrs. Shue had been examined by a reputable doctor who pronounced her dead of natural causes. However, Mrs. Heaster was so insistent about her daughter’s visits that she soon had a number of believers in her cause.

Neighbors of the late Mrs. Shue heard the strange story and began to recall some very unusual incidents that had occurred just after the young woman had been found dead. Although they had seemed of no importance at the time, these incidents raised suspicions against Shue, the village blacksmith. He had never left the head of his wife’s coffin while friends and relatives were paying their last respects. When the doctor rushed to her house, he had found Shue holding his wife’s body tenderly in his arms. During the doctor’s examination Shue did not once let go of her head as he cried and prayed for her to come back to life. But she was beyond help.

Shue had married pretty Miss Zona Heaster in November 1896 at the Methodist Church at Livesay’s Mill. After their marriage they lived in a small two-story frame building that had been their residence of the late William G. Livesay, who had given the settlement its name. Shue, a towering man of unknown strength, had come to Greenbrier County of a short time before to work for James Crookshanks at his blacksmith shop. Miss Heaster had married him despite the fact that he had two previous wives, both of whom had died suddenly.

The young bride became quite ill in January 1897 and for several weeks was under the care of Dr. J.M. Knapp. Shue seemed to be very concerned. On the morning of January 22, he appeared at the cabin of "Aunt" Martha Jones, mother of Anderson Jones, a Negro lad of eleven years who later became, and possibly still is, a respected resident of Lewisburg. Shue asked if the boy could go to his house and do some chores for Mrs. Shue. His mother said he still had work to do for Dr. Knapp. Shue finally made him promise to do the chores later in the day and came back four times to see if the boy could go.

About one o’clock Jones set out for the house. Nobody answered his knock, so he entered the kitchen. When he didn’t see Mrs. Shue, he opened the dining room door and stumbled over her body. He raced to the blacksmith shop to tell Shue, who ran to the house while the boy went on the get Dr. Knapp. When the doctor reached the house, Shue had placed his wife on her bed and was holding her head in his arms, crying for her to come back. But strangest of all, although no one thought of it at the time, was the fact that he had placed an old-fashioned high, stiff collar around her neck and was holding it in place with some kind of scarf. Dr. Knapp immediately started investigating to see if she were still alive. All the time he was trying to revive the woman, Shue refused to let him examine her head.

The next morning Mrs. Shue’s body was taken over the mountain to Mrs. Heaster’s home and was buried in the family graveyard on Monday. Shue never once left his dead wife’s side when others were around. He placed a folded sheet on one side of his wife’s head, and some garment on the other side to keep it in an upright position.

Several days after the funeral Mrs. Heaster was awakened by a noise in her cabin home. She had been praying constantly since her daughter’s death to find the real cause. As she looked around in the darkened room she saw her daughter standing there in the very dress she had died in. As her mother reached out to touch her, she disappeared. The next night the girl reappeared and talked freely to her mother.

It took four visits for the murdered woman to relate the entire story to her mother. Mrs. Heaster then enlisted the help of Prosecuting Attorney John A. Preston, who firmly believed the woman after talking with her. He began his investigation by questioning Dr. Knapp, who admitted that his verdict of heart failure could be wrong. They agreed that an autopsy would prove whether Mrs. Heaster’s theory was right or wrong.

the next day Dr. Knapp and Preston went to Livesay’s Mill and ordered Shue to accompany them to the grave. Preston ordered several neighbors to open the grave and had to threaten arrest before they would do it, because such a thing had never been heard of in Greenbrier County. Dr. Knapp worked for three days and nights before he found what Mrs. Heaster had predicted.

Mrs. Shue’s body was returned to the grave and Shue was arrested for first-degree murder by Sheriff Bill Nickell and was placed in jail without bond to wait for the June term of court under Judge J.M. McWhorter.

Preston and his assistant, Henry Gilmer, spent the intervening months collecting further evidence. Shue had asked Dr. William Rucker and James P.D. Gardner to defend him. Gardner was the first black attorney to practice in the Greenbrier Court. The case finally came before the court on June 30, 1897.

At the trial Dr. Knapp said Mrs. Shue’s death was neither accidental nor suicide. Anderson Jones told of finding the body, and others said Shue had been the only person seen at his house that morning. Still others told how he had dressed her with the stiff collar, a large veil, several times folded, and a large bow under the chin. It was also said that he hadn’t acted like a normal husband who had just lost his bride of only a few months. Mrs. Heaster’s evidence proved so interesting that Thomas H. Dennis, the editor of the Greenbrier Independent at Lewisburg, printed the entire testimony, something practically unheard of in the daily newspapers of that day.

Mrs. Heaster related to the jury the reason her daughter had given for Shue’s action. He had become so angry because his wife had no meat cooked for supper that he had squeezed her neck off at the first joint.

The elderly woman was convinced that her daughter had come back to her in flesh and blood and not as a ghost. She was in the dress she had been killed in, and as she was leaving from one of her visits, she turned her head completely around to prove that her neck was disjointed. Mrs. Heaster said that these four visits were not dreams, that she was not superstitious, and that she believed in the Scriptures. She also said that she had touched the girl to see if people came back from their coffins. The girl was flesh and blood, although cold to the touch.

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