David L. Stain, one of several suspects accused of murdering John Wilson Barron. Stain's son, enraged over his father's refusal to spring him from a jail in Norridgewock for crimes of his own, swore that the ghost of Barron had appeared to him and implicated his father along with Oliver Cromwell in the notorious robbery and murder. The lust for revenge apparently began shortly after the elder Stain not only refused to send bail money to his son, but apparently wrote a letter to his son saying, "I am not suprised, nor do I waste tears that you are in jail where you belong. Rather than send you money to obtain your freedom, I would send you a rope so you could hand yourself." The elder Stain was arrested in Massachusetts (where he lived at the time), and along with his implicated friend Cromwell were brought to Maine for trial in 1887.

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