State v. Meadows

By indictment duly returned in the Circuit Court of the City of St. Louis, the defendant Andrew B. Meadows, Lewis E. Balson, Ralph Pierson and Robert H. Cotham were jointly charged with murder in the first degree alleged to have been committed on December 5, 1927, in the felonious burning of the Buckingham Hotel Annex wherein one May Frazer was alleged to have been burned to death — a murder committed in the perpetration of arson. At the request of some of the indictees a severance was granted and the State elected to try Meadows first. He was tried alone and on October 17, 1930, the jury…