On the night of June 23, 1855, after the rest of his family had gone to bed, Robert Newsom came to Celia's cabin, as he had told her that he would. Celia made an attempt to reject his predatory advances, and when he refused to back down, she clubbed him over the head with the stick that she had brought into her cabin earlier that day. After she had hit him the first time, he reached out his arms as if he was trying to grab her. She clubbed him a second time, which killed him. She then moved his body into her fireplace and spent the rest of the night burning his remains. She crushed some of Newsom's smaller bones with a rock, and hid the bones that were too big to crush "under the hearth, and under the floor between a sleeper and the fire-place." The next morning, Celia enlisted the help of Newsom's grandson, twelve-year-old Coffee Wainscott, in scattering the ashes of Robert Newsom. According to Coffee's testimony, Celia told him "she would give [him] two dozen walnuts if [he] would carry the ashes out."
