Here is the complete contemporaneous St. Louis Post-Dispatch coverage of the crime:

Oct. 16, 1899:

"SERIOUSLY WOUNDED.--Frankie Backer [sic] shot Allen Britt in the abdomen Sunday, seriously wounding him. Both are colored. The shooting occurred in Britt's room at 212 Targee street. The woman escaped."

Oct. 19, 1899:

"Allen Britt Died From a Knife Wound Inflicted by a Woman....

"Allen Britt's brief experience of the art of love cost him his life.

"He died at the Hospital Wednesday night from knife wounds inflicted by Frankie Baker, an ebony-hued cakewalker.

Britt was also colored. He was 17 years old. He met Frankie at the 'Orange Blossom's' ball, and was smitten with her. Frankie reciprocated and invited him to call on her. Thereafter they were lovers.

In the rear of 212 Targee street lived Britt. There his sweetheart wended her way a few nights ago, and lectured Allen for his alleged duplicity. Allen's reply was not intended to cheer the dusky damsel, and the glint of steel gleamed in the darkness. An instant later, the boy fell to the floor, mortally wounded. Frankie Baker is locked up at the Four Courts."

In a Post-Dispatch story on Oct. 28, 1939, a former neighbor of Frankie's named Tillie Griffin is quoted as testifying in court that she began hearing the song "about three months after the trouble."