Description
LYNCHED. “The Negro Brute Who Assaulted a School Girl Near Leavenworth Summarily Disposed of by a Mob” Leavenworth, Kan., Jan. 31. Loud knocking at the side door of the county jail in South Leavenworth, opposite the court house, yesterday morning, awoke Jailor Fritz Maurice from his sleep in the corridor. In answer to an inquiry us to what was wanted, a voice from the outside replied: “Open the door. Here’s a prisoner for you,” of something of a similar nature. The jailer, suspecting nothing, as the officers of the city were in the habit of bringing criminals to the jail at a late hour, started to dress for the purpose of admitting the supposed officers. He was just about to put on his shoes when a blow which made the door and frame rattle and shake was dealt from the outside. This was followed with others as fast as they could be delivered and the twelfth one caused the heavy door paneling and the sash of the door to give way with a crash and a dozen or more men, masked in all sorts of ways, rushed in. In the meantime Sheriff Churchill, awakened by the noise, went down stairs in his night clothes. Just as he reached the floor, the door was broken open. Seeing that the party was evidently bent on mischief, he cried to Fritz Maurice: “Telephone the police and call for aid at once.” The jailer sprang toward the telephone at the word, but before he could ring up the central office, two burly men seized him and with terrible force hurled him across in the jail corridor. At the same moment a third man armed with a sledgehammer dealt the instrument a swinging blow completely ruining it. Pistols were leveled at Fritz Maurice by the men who had already entered, while several of those on the outside rode on their horses into the jail corridor. All were masked, some with handkerchiefs in which holes had been cut, others with black cloth and still others with regular masks. Each was armed with a revolver and several carried huge sledgehammers. Revolvers were fired a dozen times into the ceiling and floor of the corridor. The jailer, in the hands of two powerful men, was pushed rapidly toward the cell door, when one of the mob, who seemed to be the leader - a medium sized, well built man, dressed in dark clothes, and apparently a farmer - said: “See here, young man, we want that nigger, and the sooner you bring him out the better, for we will break the whole jail to pieces before we go away from here without him.” Fitz Maurice at first declined to give up the keys, but finding that the mob meant what they said, as the clutch of the man to holding him tightened perceptibly as he deliberated with himself, he opened the iron barred door of the cell house. “Where is that nigger? We want him and nobody else,” was the next query, and at the muzzle of a dozen pistols the jailer was forced to open cell 13 on the north side of the jail proper on the lower floor. Wood was called out and as soon as he appeared at the entrance of the cell he was seized by the lynchers. A terrible struggle ensued, and the doomed man and three of the mob rolled on the floor together. A dozen hands instantly seized him, and lifting him up from the floor set him on his feet. Several men cocked their revolvers as if they proposed to make short work of the wretch, but the leader, in a tone which meant just what it said, cried: “No shooting in here. Take him out.” The wretched culprit was then hustled out by the mob and evidently dragged to death, as the body was found by the roadside giving every evidence of such a fate. Wood was the young negro that so outrageously assaulted the daughter of F. M. Starnes while returning from school a few days previous.Date(s) of Creation
2/3/1887
