A late-summer murder story, Part 2
by Jack Neely
Confined to his jail cell on Hill Avenue, Lee Sellers was technically only a suspect in the recent robbery-murder of a stranger named Edgar Maines. But in the minds of some, he was already overdue for his execution.
"Knots of men gathered around the street corners" the following Thursday night, noted a Journal reporter: "their quietness presaged trouble ahead."
It was a pleasant evening, already autumn-cool, with a waning moon, a night all too perfect for a lynching.
Farmers had just finished selling late-summer produce on Market Square when men began to gather, unnamed, unrecognized. At about 10:30, a cadre of them marched onto Gay Street, and down the sidewalk "at a hurried gait." There were shouts of "fall in," and the crowd grew with oyster-saloon loungers until it gathered at the corner of Main and Gay: up on the hill, workmen had been building a "magnificent temple of justice," the new Knox County Courthouse.
The gang's leaders then tied handkerchiefs over their faces like bandits. Others followed. One went ahead and doused the row of gaslights, leaving Main Street in darkness.
Maybe 30 of them proceeded to the corner of Prince Street, not yet known as Market. Though the leaders "tried to nerve up the boys," they shed members along the way, as it dawned on evening revelers that these guys were serious. Only 15 masked men made it down the hill to the sheriff's house, at the corner of Prince and Hill, across the street from the jail. They fired five or six shots, which startled some vigilantes. A few more quit: If that's the way they're going to conduct a lynch mob, they muttered, we've had enough.
The remaining masked men knew each other by numbers. Number One, Number Two, Number Three. A mob of perhaps 300 spectators swarmed Prince Street behind them.
Inside, Sheriff Homer Gilmore, who'd heard about the mob, was waiting with some bodyguards who weren't much help. Five masked men mounted Gilmore's front steps and, confronting the sheriff, put pistols to his face. It didn't take them long to get what they came for. One witness overheard a masked man say, "Number Three has the keys."
Four members of the mob entered the jail, brandishing cocked pistols. The jailer requested of the mob that they be careful not to free anybody.
"Take out Perkey, too," one shouted. Lewis Perkey was a popular bartender who had killed a black man in Perkey's Market Square "nickel bar" last year. It's unclear whether the vigilante wanted to lynch Perkey or free him.
"No, we want one man, Lee Sellers, and him we will have."
The masked men found the communal cell Sellers shared with several other inmates and called for the man to emerge. No one moved. They threatened to shoot into the cell randomly. Sellers announced his presence only after they entered the cell. He did so with a straight razor, using the blade to "wade into" one intruder. The men fired at least five shots toward the prisoner, subduing him. The vigilantes slipped a noose over his head and brought Sellers outside, "cool and collected as if nothing had gone wrong."
"Men, I know you're going to kill me," Sellers said. He asked for a glass of water, "and that they not butcher him up." The mob proved itself amenable. They stopped at a cistern and got some water.
There followed a vigorous public debate about where to hang Sellers. "A big tree," opined one. "A lamp post," insisted another. "Take him out of town," said a third. In some social circles, it was considered dishonorable to lynch a man in one's hometown.
Generally it was agreed that the "county bridge," as the wooden bridge across the river at Gay Street was known, would be the most convenient spot. Five years old, it was built to replace a covered bridge that had blown down in a tornado. Designed with less resistance to high winds, the bridge had a tight network of wooden beams that formed a sort of permeable roof.
At about 11 p.m. the weird parade rounded the corner and mounted the bridge. They walked about a third of the way across, and stopped.
Then came a predicament that must be an awkward moment for many lynch mobs: they had tied Sellers's hands behind his back with the same rope with which they intended to hang him. The masked men made a call for some rope, but none of the hundreds who had followed them out onto the bridge had brought any. One graciously volunteered his handkerchief: presumably one he didn't need as a mask. They figured it would have to do, twisted it into a short rope and tied Sellers' hands.
They looped the free end of the noose over a roof beam. As the vigilantes pulled the rope taut around his neck, they asked Sellers if he had something to say. "No," he said, "I ain't got a damned word to say."
But he did, anyway. "I'll tell you the fact, men. I did not do the killing or get the money. Ike Wright is the man who shot him. I know you are going to kill me, but all I hate about it is that I have to die for something I did not do."
With that, three or four men hoisted him up, suspending him five or six feet above the bridge's floor. They watched him hang until suddenly he moved. It wasn't a dying man's twitch. Sellers' hands were free, and he rapidly climbed the rope to the beam. Shots were fired as Sellers climbed up to the very top of the bridge, and lay there. The frustrated lynch mob, unable to get a clean shot at the prone escapee, fired and fired. They carried on like that for 20 minutes. Their shots echoed up and down the dark Tennessee River.
They were pretty sure they'd hit him at least once. "At times he would maneuver as though he had been struck fatally and was in his death struggle," went the Journal's account, "but pretty soon he would raise up and hobble along." At one point, he got up and ran, shouting, "Come here, my friends! Where's my friends?"
At this point, someone observed, the mob's leaders had vanished. Number One, Number Two, Number Three were nowhere to be found. "There was no organization among those left."
Sellers taunted the crowd, at one point offering to come down and tell everyone where the stolen money was. The crowd kept firing. "Things went on this way for an hour," the Journal reported. No policemen, no sheriff, no deputies, and no lynch-mob leaders. Just a loony fugitive and a mob of ordinary men who'd rarely had an opportunity to shoot at a guy on a bridge. They fired until they ran out of ammunition.
"At one time there was not a loaded gun on the bridge." Somebody fetched more bullets from some late-night hardware store. It's unclear whether Sellers understood that opportunity. When he made his move, it was too late.
"Just after midnight, Sellers ran, and ran swifter than before, first towards town, then the other way." The startled men reloaded, began shooting again. This time, Sellers fell, and began to groan.
Two men climbed up and approached his body. They were pretty sure he was, at long last, dead. But as they touched it, the body lurched, and rolled off the bridge into the darkness below.
On the bridge there was a "grand rush to witness the fearful leap into eternity." But, looking down, the gawkers could see nothing in the darkness. Charles Levy put a match to pieces of paper, and dropped them from the bridge. As the pages burned, the men could discern glimpses of the dark outline of a body on the stony shore.
It was in a spot difficult to reach by land; they retrieved Lee Sellers' body by boat. Sellers was wet with blood and wore "a strangely calm expression." Coroner Albert Hudiburg noted that Sellers' neck was broken right at the skull. But he also counted four bullet wounds in Sellers' body: one laid open the side of his neck, another pierced his left lung, another, through his left hip, had severed an artery. Hudiburg's verdict was that Sellers "came to his death through mob violence."
The Journal assessed the event as "the most horrible affair...ever witnessed in the civilized world."
September 4, 2003 * Vol. 13, No. 36
© 2003 Metro Pulse
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