October 1st, 1903, last edition. A riot occurred at Oxford this evening. Four men, including the town marshal, were shot. Two of them will die in the marshal, John Woodruff, has but a small chance to recover, it is thought.

There is every indication that there will be a lynching in Oxford before morning.

Thank you. True Crime Historian presents yesterday's news, a reading from America's historic newspapers in the golden age of yellow journalism.

The classic village of Oxford, Ohio, got so riled up over a shooting in the local saloon that they bust open the jails and dragged the culprits to the local hanging tree.

The tree had been used but once before, and if you go to my archives, you can hear about

that tale in episode two, an outrageous murder in Oxford,

in which the town got so excited over the apparent murder of one of the town matrons that they hung a dead man.

A decade later, they attempt another lynching, but it doesn't really go any better for the angry town,

although it works out somewhat better for the man being lynched.

Before we begin, I want to say a little something about the text.

Nearly every word in this presentation is taken from the pages of the Hamilton, Ohio Sun,

which may include language that we are not accustomed to hearing in contemporary news reports.

I am specifically referring to certain racial epithets.

While I do edit the text and normally try to soften the language whenever possible,

sometimes it's better to just let things stand when the text reveals something about the

era in which the story takes place, and where changing it would be awkward

and a misrepresentation of the truth. This podcast is a presentation of historical source material

and history, as we know, has warrants. So there it is. I'm true crime historian Richard O. Jones,

and I give you, hanged three times and lived,

Luke Brannon thwarts a lynching.

Morning Extra Edition

Nothing could be more dramatic than the attempted lynching of Joe Spivey, which occurred

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