Christmas Slay Ride: Most Mysterious and Horrific Christmas Day Murders
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Authors: Jack Smith
Tags: #Biographies & Memoirs, #Specific Groups, #Crime & Criminals, #True Crime, #Murder & Mayhem, #Criminals
Christmas
Slay Ride
Most Mysterious and Horrific Christmas Day Murders
Jack Smith
Editor :
Marjorie Kramer
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There’s never a good time to die violently, but Christmas tragedies are especially heinous. Christmas is a time for Peace on Earth and Good Will Toward Men. Holiday bloodshed feels like a sacrilege, but it does happen. Whether by accident or deliberate malice, scores of people have been killed on December 25 or the days surrounding it.
This volume contains seven accounts of unnatural deaths that occurred on or around Christmas Day:
- The Ashland Tragedy: On December 24, 1881, three burned corpses were pulled from a house in Ashland, Kentucky. They belonged to teenagers Robert Gibbons, Fannie Gibbons, and Emma Carrico, who had all been bludgeoned to death. The girls had also been sexually assaulted. A formerly quiet Kentucky town was plunged into a nightmare fueled by grief and lust for revenge.
- Christmas Eve Combustion: On Christmas Day, 1885, Patrick Rooney and his wife were found dead in their home in Seneca, Illinois. Rooney died from smoke inhalation, caused by his wife’s body suddenly bursting into flames. It is an early and sensational case of spontaneous human combustion.
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- Delia’s Gone: Early on Christmas morning in 1900, fourteen-year-old Moses “Cooney” Houston murdered his lover, Delia Green, who was the same age. Because Georgia had no youth justice system, Cooney Houston was charged as an adult. The senseless crime shocked the citizens of Savannah, Georgia, and inspired songs later recorded by Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan.
- The Holyhead Horror: On Christmas Day, 1909, a horrific murder took place in North Wales. Gwen-Ellen Jones was killed by her ex-soldier lover, William Murphy, in a manner so depraved that even in an era when domestic violence was commonplace, people were shocked. The murder and subsequent execution of William Murphy are still talked about in Holyhead today.
- Changing of the Guard: Early on the morning of December 26, 1920, New York underworld legend Edward “Monk” Eastman, was shot down by a crooked Prohibition agent, ending a thirty-plus year career marked by murder and mayhem. Eastman, who had once ruled the roost in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, died in a freezer gutter.
- The Adonis Club Massacre: December 25, 1925 was the last Christmas on earth for Irish gangster Richard “Pegleg” Lonergan. He and his White Hand gang had taunted, abused, and killed their Italian rivals for years. Finally, when Lonergan and his boys went to the Italian-owned Adonis Social Club, their resentful enemies got even.
- Lawson Family Massacre: On December 25, 1929, North Carolina tobacco farmer Charlie Lawson murdered his wife and six of their seven children. The reason for this brutal act is a subject of debate even today, but may be attributable to a terrible family secret that remained hidden until 1990.
All of these events took place in the distant past. People who knew the victims, remembered the circumstances of their demise, or were directly involved in the investigations are dead. That’s why these cases were chosen for this book. The passage of time has transmuted them into tragic mysteries, ensuring that they arouse astonishment, sympathy, and indignation instead of the grief and personal loss that is at odds with the holiday season.
Ashland, Kentucky in 1881 was a quiet and orderly town poised on the Ohio River. Like any community, it had its share of crimes. There were robberies, assaults, acts of vandalism, and the rare murder. Most homicides resulted from drunken confrontations, and caused little excitement.
December 24 of that year changed everything.
******
The Gibbons family was small and hardworking. John Gibbons spent weeks at a time away from his family, doing odd jobs so that he could send money home to his wife, Martha, and their three children. The oldest child, Robert, was seventeen and crippled after losing his leg in a freight car accident years earlier. Fanny, aged fourteen, was an attractive teenager said to be physically developed beyond her years, something that was not lost on a lot of men. Sterling, the youngest, was eleven.
Early on the morning of December 24, a fire broke out at the Gibbons home, a small frame house at the corner of 28th Street and Carter Avenue in Ashland’s East End. Alarmed neighbors rushed into the building and dragged out three bodies that were later identified as Robert and Fannie Gibbons and Fannie’s friend, fifteen-year-old Emma Carrico. Three doctors who arrived on the scene examined the corpses before making a shocking announcement. All three had their skulls caved in, and the girls had been sexually assaulted.
The townspeople were aghast. How could such a terrible thing happen in Ashland? When dawn broke, the police searched the smoldering house for evidence and found bloody pillows and sheets as well as a crowbar and axe, both of which were caked with blood and hair.
Mrs. Gibbons and Sterling had not been home that night. They were in Ironton, Ohio, visiting family. Emma’s mother tearfully exclaimed that she had let her daughter sleep over at the Gibbon house to keep Robert and Fannie company. She was the one who had noticed the unnatural light flickering in the windows of the Gibbons place at 6:00 a.m. and screamed for assistance.
Two days later, on December 26, services were held for the three murdered teenagers at the Methodist Episcopal Church. Afterwards, they were interred in Ashland Cemetery. Hundreds attended both events, eyes red-rimmed and faces tight with anger. The community’s sense of security had been shattered, and someone had to pay.
Later that afternoon, acting mayor John Means called a meeting to raise money to hire detectives as well as offer a reward. One private detective from Ohio thought John Gibbons was the murderer, but Deputy U.S. Marshal Heflin had serious doubts. He thought that more than one assailant must have been involved, and besides, Gibbons had no motive to do something so terrible. On December 31, he located Gibbons in West Virginia and gently broke the news. The grieving father was able to prove that he had been out of state when the crime occurred.
A few days later, a bricklayer named George Ellis walked into the Ashland General Store. Powell, the proprietor, sold him a cigar and tried to make conversation by saying, “Well, now that old man Gibbons is in the clear, I wonder who it is going to fall on now?”
Ellis looked frightened and lowered his gaze. Hands trembling, he said he knew who the killers might be and muttered something turning about state’s evidence. Then he hurried out and walked the streets for hours. Finally he went to Marshal Heflin’s hotel room and said he “might” know something about the murders. After asking Heflin about the logistics of turning state’s evidence, Ellis confessed that he and two other bricklayers, George Craft and William Neal, had committed the crime.
This is his first version of events, as it appears on the record:
“A few evenings prior to the 24
th
, I met (George) Craft who stated that he was going to see Fanny Gibbons and take her some black candy, and that he was going to have intercourse with her, and he wanted me to come along. About midnight, the fatal night, we all started; Craft, (William) Neal, and myself. When we got to the house, Craft raised the window with an old axe and stepped in first. Neal followed, and I stayed behind on the porch, and afterwards I went in. Robbie was the first aroused and started to get up when Craft said, “You had better lie still.” Craft then went to the bed where the two girls were sleeping and began to take improper liberties with them. Robbie said, “You had better stay away from there,” when Craft hit him with the axe. He fell back on the lounge, then plunged forward and fell fully six feet from the bed under the stairs where he was found. The girls screamed when Craft jumped on the bed, and they both said, “George Craft, what are you here for?” Emma also started to jump from the bed when Neal choked her and pulled her onto the floor. She fought him, and I held her while he outraged her. Neal then struck her on the head with the big end of the crowbar, and she instantly died after throwing up her hands. Craft also had some trouble with Fanny Gibbons and called on me to come and help him. He then outraged her and killed her. Neal proposed killing the girls, and after they were dead, I took some coal oil, poured it over the bodies, and set fire to them with a match. We then left the house.”
George Ellis would make more confessions, each one tailored to fit the current circumstances, but this initial one was damning enough for Heflin to arrest George Craft and William Neal. The two men, along with Ellis, were incarcerated in the county jail in Catlettsburg. The following morning, Ellis tried to recant his confession, saying it had been forced out of him at gunpoint, but it was too late.
When rumors of upcoming vigilante justice started to make the rounds, officials ordered the removal of the prisoners to the jail in Lexington. When they were placed on the Catlettsburg ferry and sent down river, an angry mob actually pursued them in another steamboat, but their police escorts managed to deliver them safely to the jail.
William Neal was put on trial first for Emma Carrico’s murder. George Ellis testified for the prosecution, telling a story more damning than the one he’d given Heflin in the latter’s hotel room. It took the jury only 17 minutes to find Neal guilty, and the judge sentenced him to hang on February 14, 1882. A few days later George Craft was also convicted and sentenced to the gallows on the same date. Their lawyers successfully appealed the convictions and won new trials for both of them.
Both were awaiting retrial when George Ellis was returned to Catlettsburg to stand trial in May 1882. When the proceedings concluded on June 2, he was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment, but that wasn’t good enough for those who remembered the anguish suffered by the victims and their families. At around 3:00 a.m. the following morning, twenty men wearing black hoods stormed the Catlettsburg jail, seized Ellis by force, and took him back to Ashland, where he was hanged from a tree near the murder site.
Witnesses to the lynching later said that Ellis calmly accepted his fate. Allowed to make a final statement, he told the onlookers that he, Craft, and Neal were guilty. His last request was that his body not be mutilated.
The lynching was on Governor G.W. Blackburn’s mind when George Craft and William Neal were sent to Catlettsburg for retrial in the fall of 1882. He assigned five divisions of state militia to guard the prisoners, and let it be known that the troops had orders to use deadly force if necessary. Local feeling against the prisoners was at fever pitch, so the judge granted the defense motion for a change of venue and set the trial date for February, 1883, in nearby Carter County.
People in the Ashland community, however, were through with delays. That night Major Allen, commander of the militia guarding Craft and Neal, learned that a mob was forming to repeat the George Ellis incident. He abandoned the original plan to transport the prisoners back to jail by train, as the route would take them through Ashland, and opted for river boat instead.
As the prisoners and their guards were boarding the
Granite State
, a train bearing two hundred armed men arrived from Ashland and demanded that Neal and Craft be handed over to them. Major Allen refused, so the mob got back on the train, which ran alongside the river, and shot at the boat all the way to Ashland, where further attack came from around 20 men who had taken possession of a ferry. When this small force drew pistols and fired on the
Granite State
, the troops formed along the steamboat’s deck and shot back, killing several of the raiders and wounding others. There would be an inquest into the affair in Ashland, but the conduct of the soldiers was ruled justifiable.
George Craft was tried once again in February, 1883, with ten divisions of state militia to guard him. The case went to the jury on February 23, and the following morning they returned with a verdict of guilty. The judge then set May 4, 1883, as the execution date. It was later rescheduled for October 12.
Craft was admirably calm on the day of his hanging. He steadfastly maintained his innocence in a final speech to the crowd, but seemed resigned to his fate. After he sang a hymn and prayed for God to save his soul, he stepped on the trap and thus was sent on his way.
Repeated appeals postponed William Neal’s date with the hangman until March 27, 1885. A crowd of 3000 came to witness the execution. After ascending the scaffold under heavy guard, he told the onlookers, “My friends, I say to one and all, you all know this is no place to tell a lie. I stand here today to suffer for a heinous crime I did not commit. One day my innocence will be established beyond a doubt. I bid you one and all goodbye. Oh Lord, thou knowest I am innocent. Into thy hands I commit my soul. I am innocent.”
Seconds later the drop fell. He was pronounced dead ten minutes later, bringing the entire nightmare, which is still remembered today as the “Ashland tragedy”, to an end.