Lynching of Jay Lynch

Jay Lynch, 28, was lynched in Lamar, Missouri, on May 28, 1919, months after he pleaded guilty to murdering a sheriff and the sheriff's son. According to Wikipedia's account of the case, 1919 saw 83 lynchings across the United States, and this was one of only four in which the victim was a white man.

Lynch had a lengthy criminal record involving burglary and robbery, including an alleged car theft in Oklahoma City and the alleged theft of women's silks worth $300 in Kansas City. He was repeatedly jailed and had escaped from prison several times over roughly a decade. In 1918 he was hired as a private detective for the Wabash Railroad in St. Louis, but was arrested for robbing a train while working in that role. After skipping bail on that charge, he was later arrested near his sister's home close to Lamar.

On March 3, 1919, while held in the Lamar jail in connection with the Wabash Railroad boxcar robbery, Lynch asked to use the jailhouse telephone. When Sheriff John Marion Harlow Jr. of Barton County opened his cell, Lynch fatally shot him with a gun he had smuggled into the jail. The sheriff's son, Dick Harlow, ran to help his father and was also mortally wounded, dying a few days later. Lynch fled the state, was refused entry into Mexico, and was arrested in La Junta, Colorado, on May 13, 1919, before being returned to Missouri. He pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to life in prison.

Fearing violence from a packed courthouse crowd after the sentencing, presiding judge B. G. Thurman had Lynch taken to his private office so the prisoner could say goodbye to his family, who were present along with several armed deputies. While Lynch held his baby, a group of 24 people forced their way into the office, overpowered the guards, put a noose around Lynch's neck, and dragged him from the courthouse. The rope broke on an initial tree branch under his weight; a sturdier branch was then used, and Lynch was hanged before a cheering crowd.

The coroner's report attributed Lynch's death to "parties unknown." Prosecuting attorney H. W. Timmonds and Sheriff W. A. Sewell of Barton County opened an investigation, but no charges were filed because no witnesses would identify the participants.

Missouri had abolished capital punishment in 1917. Largely in response to the Lynch lynching, along with an impassioned legislative speech by Barton County representative H. C. Chancellor, the state legislature restored the death penalty for seven offenses — treason, perjury, subornation of perjury, first-degree murder, rape, kidnapping, and train robbery. Governor Frederick D. Gardner signed the measure into law.