Barren Fork Township Constable Joseph “Joday” Wilson, 37, was seated at his table reading with his family in his home at Romance on March 1, 1905, when he was shot in the head and the left of his chest by an unknown assassin, dying almost instantly.

According to other newspaper reports from that time, the county’s deputy sheriff and prosecuting attorney rushed to the scene. They found two sets of footprints leading away from the window where the shooting occurred, but after tracking the bootprints for 2 miles, the searchers lost the trail in a rocky outcropping.

Although Wilson’s murder occurred at his home, it was believed to have been linked to an earlier incident in which Wilson was carrying out his law enforcement duties. It happened when Wilson shot and killed another Ozark County man, Everett Gilliland, 23, on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, 1904, at the Wyatt & Son store at Romance, where a crowd of farmers and and their families had congregated to buy Christmas goods. Several of them had been imbibing too freely of corn whiskey made in the hills of Ozark Count according to the Dec. 29, 1904, edition of the Howell County Gazette.

A store clerk asked Constable Wilson to put Everett Gilliland out of the store, as he had become insulting. It is said that the officer went up to Gilliland and told him to consider himself under arrest. In response, Gilliland shot at Wilson with a revolver, but instead the shot hit and killed an innocent bystander, Robert Lance. Constable Wilson then drew his revolver and exchanged gunfire with Gilliand, who continued to fire. Wilson wasn’t wounded in the shootout, but Gilliland was killed.

Two Ozark County grand juries investigated Wilson’s murder but returned no indictments. Then, in May 1908, more than three years after Wilson was killed, a third grand jury charged Everett Gilliland’s brothers, Palmer and William Gilliland, with Wilson’s murder.

It was agreed that Palmer’s trial would be held first. Moved to Christian County on a change of venue, it was held in Ozark in December 1908, with the prosecuting attorneys from Ozark, Douglas and Christian counties representing the state, and a team of five attorneys representing the defendant.

The West Plains Journal-Gazette reported that the evidence was mostly circumstantial, and witnesses testified that Palmer Gilliland was at home on the night of Wilson’s murder. The jury promptly acquitted the accused, and then the case against Will Gilliland was dismissed by the prosecution.

Constable Wilson was reputedly one of the best known residents of Ozark County and a near relative of the wife of State Senator Curry, who came to Ozark County in response to the tragedy. At the time of Constable Wilson's death, Romance had a population of about 100, and the incident caused great excitement. Constable Wilson was survived by his wife and seven children. Interred: Franklin Grove Cemetery, Noble, Missouri.