Free Christmas Slay Ride: Most Mysterious and Horrific Christmas Day Murders by Jack Smith Page B

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