True Crime Chronicles: An Ozark Murder - The slaying of Allen M. Nixon amid the McLaughlin- Nixon family feud

On a crisp morning, January 5, 1916, tragedy struck Franklin County when State Representative Allen M. Nixon, a 43-year-old legislator and former county treasurer, was ambushed and killed near his home, 12 miles east of Ozark.

Riding his horse to check on his corn crop, Nixon was shot through the heart with a rifle bullet, his body discovered by his wife, Mrs. Sophronia Nixon, and their 11-year-old son.

The attack, shrouded in the dense Ozark brush, left no clear evidence, though deputies with bloodhounds failed to track the assailant.

The murder stemmed from a decades-old feud between the Nixon and McLaughlin families, tracing back to Civil War-era land disputes and rivalries over moonshine production.

The tension escalated in 1914 when Neal McLaughlin, 28, was convicted of assaulting a young girl, a case pushed by the politically influential Nixons.

 Neal received a death sentence, but Governor George W. Hays granted multiple reprieves amid public petitions and the victim’s recantation. Allen Nixon, a staunch opponent of clemency, clashed with Neal’s brother Kie McLaughlin in a knife fight eight days before the shooting, leaving both men wounded but recovering.

Kie, 32, was arrested at his Jethro farmstead the day after Nixon’s death, charged with first-degree murder based on the family grudge. However, neighbors provided an alibi, claiming Kie was bedridden with fever.

The examining trial began Thursday, with guards holding him until a grand jury indicted him over a year later, in March 1917. The delay reflected the thin evidence, relying heavily on circumstantial ties to the feud.

Kie’s trial in February 1916 ended in acquittal, the jury finding insufficient proof to convict. He declared the Nixons had sought to destroy his family, a statement that fueled fears of renewed violence.

 The Nixon patriarch soon relocated, ending the immediate threat. Neal McLaughlin remained in prison, his life sentence unchanged, with no record of pardon by the 1920s.

Allen Nixon left behind his wife, three living children, and a legacy as a dedicated public servant. Born in Madison County in 1840, he served in the Confederate Army, married in 1865, and settled in Ozark, where he championed roads and schools.

His death marked a somber chapter in the Ozarks, where family honor and old scores shaped a rugged history.