Killed in Jail; Exhibited to The Public

image via wikipedia

I recently posted an essay about a lynching that occurred in the county of my birth that resulted in the deaths of five prisoners being held in the Ripley County jail in Versailles, Indiana.  The five, known as the Levi gang, were beaten to death and hanged from a tree near the jail.  Later, an eatery would be named The Hanging Tree Restaurant to help diners commemorate the event.  As dramatic as the vigilante attack was it took place in 1897 and was not the first lynching at that jail.

The first one happened in the late summer of 1878 when a man named Tom Boyd, 42, a resident of adjacent Dearborn County, was accused of trying to rape a coed of Moores Hill College.  The girl was walking the mile and a half from school across the county line on a path through the woods to her home when she was attacked.  According to The Journal-Press the girl fought off the attack suffering minor injuries and having her clothing badly torn.

Her father swore out an affidavid against Boyd on a Friday  in Ripley County where the attack occurred but the Dearborn County Sheriff did not attempt to serve the warrant until Sunday.  Boyd had fled.  Versailles town board posted a $100 reward for his capture and return.

It turned out that Boyd had just bee released from the prison at Jeffersonville, Indiana after serving eight years for trying to rape a 12 year old Ripley County girl and he was almost lynched then.  Vigilantes had a noose around him when he was rescued by the sheriff and a constable.  When he was in the army during the Civil War he was almost court martialed for attempted rape but his unit was under such heavy fire the trial never took place.

He was finally tracked down in St. Louis, Missouri and returned to Versailles where the college coed identified him as her atttacker and for six weeks he remained held under $1,000,00 bond.  At midnight on August 19, 1878, about 80 masked gunmen rode into town, rushed the jail and held the jailer and his sons at gunpoint.  They used chisels and sledge hammers to break into Boyd’s cell where they found him standing in a corner…naked.  He was immediately shot in the chest.  Other prisoners said they heard at least 20 gunshots and the coroner said Boyd was hit with 15 bullets.

Boyd’s nude body was left lying in a pool of his own blood for two days while hundreds of townsfolk were permitted to parade by his cell.  A reporter wrote that even in death he presented a “splendid appearance of physical strength.”  The coroner’s jury said he died “by pistol shots fired by an unlawful mob unknown to the jury.”  No member of the vigilantes was ever identified and no charges were ever fired.