On October 15, 1928 eighteen year old Robert Hostler shot and nearly killed his neighbor, John Ketcham (55 years old) in Chenoa. This was not a case of young men fooling around with guns and accidentally shooting one another. Robert Hostler hid himself in Ketcham's barn early one evening, with a loaded pistol, and when Ketcham saw him in the barn, he shot him in the abdomen.
Robert was apprehended almost immediately because acquaintances were aware that he possessed a pistol. Hostler quickly confessed and explained that he was testing Ketcham, because Ketcham had been heard to brag about how brave he was. Hostler was tried for attempted murder and after less than two days of arguments and evidence, a McLean County jury found the young man guilty of the charges. Although a notice of appeal was immediately filed, no further stories of his legal fight appeared in the Pantagraph.
In his statement, Hostler said that he acquired the gun by stealing it from a family acquaintance when they were visiting from California. So apparently his moral compass was a little out of whack even before October 1928.
Hostler was given an indeterminate sentence of 1 to 14 years. Indeterminate sentences gave the prison system the leeway to shorten the sentence of a convict if they exhibited good behavior in prison. Hostler was sent to Pontiac, but was out of prison by at least 1942, when he was working as a merchant seaman on the Tucson Victory out of a California port. In 1951 he returned to Illinois from South Africa via the Robin Hood. He had completed only two years of high school before his incarceration and a life at sea may have been a good option for an ex-convict.
Robert's life ended at sea, aboard the ship Orion Star, a merchant marine vessel, when it was near the Philippine Islands. The report of his death said that he had been taken on board in California in September 1954 and while on board he had been drinking to excess. He died of a methyl salicylate overdose on March 2, 1955, and it was assumed that he had mistakenly drunk a bottle of muscle liniment, mistaking it for alcohol. A sad ending to a sad life.