Days of Darkness

by John Ed Ed Pearce

  Tom was arrested, given a hearing, and taken to Pineville for trial. Pineville at the time was a fairly rough mountain town, but the appearance of the famous Bad Tom created a minor sensation, and crowds lined the street to the courthouse to see him brought to the jail. But it was the same old story in a different setting. Tom was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to life in prison. But he was granted an appeal and left. He was not retried. The authorities just seemed to forget it.

  For all intents and purposes, the French-Eversole War was over. If there had been a winner, it was probably Fult French, but it was an empty victory. He was tried and acquitted and left Perry County. He didn’t go very far. When the notorious Curtis Jett of Breathitt County was tried in Jackson for the murder of attorney J.B. Marcum, who should be among the defense attorneys but B. Fulton French, to whom some in the court referred as Judge French. Later French went to live in Clark County. He was tried in 1896 in Breathitt Circuit Court for murder, and acquitted, but his crimes caught up with him.

  The Eversole ranks had been riddled. But Hazard was the real loser. General Sam Hill, sent by Governor Buckner to make an assessment of conditions in Hazard, reported that the place, “a dirty, shabby little excuse for a town,” had been shot to pieces. But eventually a lot of people who had left to avoid the violence began returning, repairing their homes, taking up their farms or businesses.

  The bitterness, however, lingered, and many people were killed after the feud proper had died down and the feud leaders were dead or departed. The following, for example, is reprinted from the Carrollton (Kentucky) Democrat of November 2, 1889, under the heading “A Mountain Murder. Sad News for a convicted moonshiner. Home destroyed and Father shot in cold blood”:

  Among the moonshiners confined a few days ago in the Covington jail was Wm. Loomis. At the last term of the … court he was fined $100 and sentenced to sixty days in jail. Recently he was pardoned by the President and was awaiting money to defray expenses to his home in Perry County. His father was arrested at the same time, but receiving a lighter sentence he went directly home after he had served his thirty days. After he left the nearest railway station he was compelled to walk eighty miles … through a mountain region infested with lawless cut-throats. His son received a letter the other day stating that his father had been shot and was at the point of death. When his father reached home in Perry County he found a sad state of affairs. His home, which contained his wife and son, had been riddled with bullets, and his barns and outhouses destroyed by fire. He immediately sold his farm and started to leave the county…. as he was departing he was shot from ambush by unknown parties. He was picked up and carried home where he was guarded to keep from being shot again. The gang threatened to exterminate his whole family. He had a quarrel with two men, one named Bill Smith, the other Jack Morris. They belong to the Eversole party, which has battled with the French faction. [This may have been a mistake; Bill Smith was the brother of Bad Tom Smith.] The jailer of Perry County had warned Loomis not to come back … as his life would be in danger. Loomis [this apparently refers to the son] is willing to take chances with the crowd. He wants to get up there and rescue his mother and sisters.

  In 1894, to general surprise, Judge Josiah Combs returned to Hazard. He was not happy elsewhere, he said. His roots, his people, his memories—good and bad—were in and around Hazard, and he was determined to spend his declining years there. He did not have many left to spend. As he stood talking to a friend in front of the courthouse on the morning of September 20, 1894, a shot came from a cornfield across the way, and Judge Combs, without a word, staggered to his home and fell in the doorway, dead.

  The cornfield gunman stood for a few mements, saw Combs fall, and then walked slowly to the rear of the field, where he joined two others, all with their faces blackened. Recovering from their shock, several men pursued them and identified Jess Fields, Joe Adkins, and Boone Frazier. Fields and Adkins were finally caught, indicted, and tried in Knox Circuit Court.

  The trial attracted wide attention, partly because the noted Colonel W.C.P. Breckinridge and B. Fulton French were among the defense attorneys. Nevertheless, both Fields and Adkins were sentenced to life in prison. Adkins served only eight years, however, before he was pardoned. He was later reported to have left the country. Frazier was never caught.

  Strangely, a year later, in the fall of 1895, Fulton French himself was indicted in Perry County for complicity in the murder of Judge Combs. He was tried in Breathitt County and acquitted, though Bad Tom Smith, confessing just before he was hanged, charged French with planning the Combs murder. Tom said he would have taken part in the killing himself but had been shot in the arm and was not feeling well.

  Bad Tom’s hanging was precipitated by his own troubles, this time with his wife, whom he described as “an Eversole woman.” He was tired of Hazard anyhow, and after leaving his wife he went to live in Breathitt County. For a while it seemed that he might be turning over a new leaf, but old habits die hard. He took up with a woman named Katherine McQuinn, who ran a house on Smith’s Branch of Quicksand Creek of which there were scurrilous reports. Actually, Mrs. McQuinn was the victim of a minor indiscretion but had paid dearly for it.

  Katherine McQuinn was a handsome woman and high-spirited. But her good looks attracted the attentions of a young clerk in the Day Brothers store in Jackson; she welcomed the attention, and they began a furtive affair. Not furtive enough. Mr. McQuinn came home one day and caught them in bed. Instead of shooting one or both of them, he fled from the house and ran up and down the streets of Jackson, screaming and moaning, until it became obvious that the shock had completely unsettled him. He was sent to the Eastern Kentucky Lunatic Asylum, where he died. The young clerk, distraught at the fate of Mr. McQuinn and racked with guilt, committed suicide. (It is possible that a garbled account of this event became the basis for the legend of the woman who started the French-Eversole War.) Katherine was left to face alone public disapproval and hard times. She supported herself by running a boardinghouse of sorts where few questions were asked. And it was to her establishment that Bad Tom Smith, in the fall of 1893, brought his cargo of trouble.

  Tom could not keep out of trouble. Perhaps he didn’t try. He seemed comfortably ensconced with Mrs. McQuinn, safe from the law and surviving enemies, but he took to drinking heavily and finally overplayed his hand. It was during a particularly energetic drinking bout that he shot and killed a Dr. John Rader. That was a mistake. Jackson was not Hazard, and Bloody Breathitt was not Perry County. Tom was arrested, tried, and sentenced to hang. The Breathitt jury was not fooling. This time there was no appeal. Tom made one futile effort to saw his way out of the Jackson jail, but another jail inmate informed on him, and he was caught. On June 28, 1895, he was taken to the courthouse lawn and hanged.

  His death was almost as untidy and bizarre as his life. There was much controversy over how the scaffold should be built, the kind of rope that should be used, and other social niceties. Sheriff Breckinridge Combs became impatient with the advice he was receiving. Bad Tom had asked to be baptized, but some people objected, saying it was a ruse to let him escape. Sheriff Combs announced that he would allow the baptism by the Reverend John Jay Dickey, the circuit-riding Methodist minister, founder of the Jackson school and editor of the Jackson Hustler, the community’s first newspaper. The Reverend Dickey was helping Tom write his life’s story, the sheriff announced, and would sell copies of it for twenty-five cents on the day of the hanging.

  Reporters nagged Combs about the exact time of the hanging, but he brushed them off. “I don’t know what time I will spring the trap,” he said.

  I was down to see the governor about that this morning, and he was sorter of the opinion that it had best be done right about sunrise, because if it was put off the crowd would be bigger and there’d more likely to be trouble. I kinder insinuated to him that a fellow ought to live just as long as the law allows, and it would be fair to all sides to split the difference and let him
die twixt twelve and one. Anyhow, I can hang him when I please. It’s me that’s got the say now, but I thought as he’s the highest chief I’d let him think about it. There won’t be any trouble hanging him unless some fellow takes a notion to shoot him off the gallows. The only time there’s going to be trouble is when Smith is dead and the roughs from the upper counties get drunk and there’ll surely be some shooting.

  I’m might afraid I’m going to have trouble getting the right kind of rope. I telegraphed to Louisville for a rope, but the jailer didn’t have any, and today when I was in Lexington I didn’t have time to see about it. I can’t get anything but an inch rope here, and I don’t want to hang the poor fellow with that kind of stuff. He ought to at least have a decent rope.

  I don’t know about that roof. I don’t know as I’ll put it on or not. Anyhow, it’s nobody’s business if I do. I’m running this thing, and I am going to do just as I please about it.

  Tom didn’t spend a good last night. For one thing, the jail was full of people singing, praying, and taking down Tom’s every word. To make matters worse, Tom was reported to have had a “terrible fit,” undoubtedly an epileptic seizure. His wife relented and came from Knott County with their three children to see him, causing a great deal of excitement. The unfortunate Katherine McQuinn could not attend, being in jail herself, charged with conspiring to kill Dr. Rader.

  Tom was accompanied to the gallows by his brother Bill and his sister Mary (or Minnie), who then retired to the jail during the gruesome hanging and was comforted by the jailer’s wife. Gallows had been erected on the Breathitt County Courthouse lawn, and from daybreak people had been pouring into Jackson for the grisly festivities. A crowd had come over from Knott County, home of the Smiths. Reporters from Lexington, Louisville, and Cincinnati sat on the courthouse steps, looking self-important. Several times during the morning members of the Smith family had gone up to the jail for a few last words with Bad Tom, their black sheep. All reported that throughout the ordeal Tom remained calm.

  Sheriff Combs brought Tom from the jail at noon and walked with him through the press of people who crowded around the gallows, built only a few yards from where the lynch mob had taken the cursing, struggling Hen Kilburn and hanged him during the bloody Breathitt County feud. Some reporters estimated that three thousand people were crowded into the square, but Tom seemed to take little notice of them as he climbed the steps to the gallows.

  Tom turned and spoke to the sheriff, who nodded in reply, and a total silence fell over the crowd, except, according to one account, for the crying of a baby here and there. A hanging was an unusual affair in those days, a major attraction, and whole families traveled miles to attend.

  Sheriff Combs had an idea Tom would make a last-minute confession and warned reporters to be ready to take down every word. When Tom was ready, Combs announced that Tom was going to talk with the reporters. A reporter for the Cincinnati Enquirer shouted to ask him if he wished to make a confession. Tom turned to Sheriff Combs and in a low voice said he did. He said he would tell everything, or as much as he had time for. Combs told him he had plenty of time. Tom nodded, wiped his forehead, and began.

  “I am guilty of the crime,” he said.

  I killed Dr. Rader. It was nobody paid me to do it, and I’ll tell you how it was. I met Dr. Rader in town that day, and he says to me, “I want to court a girl, and I want you to help me do it.” I told him all right, and we went out to Mrs. McQuinn’s house, and I went and got the girl, Louise South wood. Then we all got drunk. Rader wanted the girl to go to bed with him, but she didn’t want to and ran away from him. He went out and brought her back. I just recollected hearing him persuading her. I was so drunk, Mrs. McQuinn and Bob Fields pulled off my shoes and put me to bed, and I went to sleep. After a while Mrs. McQuinn came to the bed, and told me that Rader had been over to my bed twice and said he was going to kill me. I knew he had a pistol, for he had told me about it being such a good one. Then Mrs. McQuinn told me that if I would kill him she would say she done it and I would come clear and they wouldn’t do anything to her. I was so drunk, and I just got up and shot him. I shot twice, but I never could tell where the other bullet went. Me and Katherine then looked at Rader lying on the bed, and covered him up again and took his money. That’s all there was to it so far as I know. I wasn’t paid for it that’s certain. It was whiskey and bad women that brought me here and I want to tell you boys to let them alone. Oh, God, save my poor soul! I wish I had never been born.

  Previously, in court, Tom had claimed that Mrs. McQuinn had done the actual shooting.

  Detective George Drake, who was on the scaffold for the occasion and was accorded the status of a celebrity, came over to speak to Tom. Drake was an unattractive character, a sometime deputy U.S. marshal, bounty hunter, railroad detective, once a security guard at Lexington’s Phoenix Hotel, and deputy sheriff if anyone wanted one. He was reputed to have once chased and brought to jail eleven killers in a month, had captured Breck Roberts when he escaped from the Breathitt jail, captured John Henry and Hub Jackson for boxcar break-ins, and had chased Wick Tallant all the way to Texas and captured him for some mischief. In friendly fashion, he asked Tom if he wanted to continue, and Tom nodded he did. He said he would like a drink of water.

  After jailer Tom Centers brought him a cup of water, Tom said, “Yes, I want to name them all but I can’t tell the dates and how I killed them. This would take too long.” Sheriff Combs said he could have all the time he needed, for him just to tell it in his own way, and Tom began again.

  Tom said that Joe Hurt was the first man he killed, simply because Hurt supported the Eversoles in a local election. (He had earlier said that Hurt had come to his home drunk and attacked him, forcing him to shoot in self-defense.) Joe Eversole and Nick Combs were the next victims. He admitted killing them both from ambush and added that he took about thirty dollars from Joe Eversole’s pockets as he lay dead. John McKnight, Tom added, was killed in the Battle of the Perry County Courthouse. Then he and Jack Combs ambushed Bob Cornett. And finally he repeated his account of the murder of Dr. Rader. He did not mention the murders of Shade Combs or Ambrose Amburgey.

  After this, Tom talked for a minute to his sister Mary, who, with the help of the sheriff, had climbed the steps to the scaffold and stood quietly while her brother finished his bloody accounting. Then she went to him, took his hand, and patted his face. “Tell nothing but the truth,” she said, and turned away. Then she came back, and put her arm around him. Holding her head high, she said, “Tom, face God like a man.”

  Tom watched her walk back to the edge of the scaffold and went on to tell about working for Fulton French but said that he was never paid except with clothes and a little money when he asked for it. Several reporters pressed in to ask him further questions, but he ignored them. Then he turned to the sheriff and said that he was ready to address the crowd. His previous remarks had been to reporters, for the record.

  “Go on, Tom,” said Combs. Tom turned and raised his hand, quieting the crowd again. Slowly he stepped to the front of the scaffold, looked out over the crowd, and said:

  Friends, one and all, I want to talk to you a little before I die. My last words on earth to you are to take warning from my fate. Bad whiskey and bad women have brought me where I am. I hope you ladies will take no umbrage at this for I have told you the God’s truth. To you little children who were the first to be blessed by Jesus, I will give this warning: don’t drink whiskey and don’t do as I have done. I want everybody in this vast crowd who does not wish to do the things that I have done and to put themselves in the place I now occupy, to hold up their hands.

  Every hand shot up. “That is beautiful,” said Tom. “It looks like what I shall see in heaven [which seems optimistic]. Again I say, live better lives than I lived. I die with no hard feeling toward anybody. There ain’t a soul in the world I hate. I love everybody. Farewell till we meet again.”

  Mary went across the scaffold, hugged Tom, and kis
sed him a last time. Then with the help of Sheriff Combs, she went back down the steps and, as the crowd parted to let her through, walked back to the jail to await her brother’s body. She was joined by other members of the Smith family.

  Bad Tom now launched into a long and loud prayer. On the scaffold several preachers, including the industrious and compassionate John Jay Dickey, prayed with him, as Bad Tom cried out for mercy and forgiveness. He then asked Dickey and a Reverend Hudson to sing a hymn, “Guide Me, Oh Great Jehovah,” and thousands in the crowd joined in. As the song ended, Bad Tom again dropped to his knees and prayed for mercy. As he rose, Sheriff Combs took him by the arm and told him it was time. “Oh, just one more dear hymn,” asked Tom, and Combs consented. Again the ministers climbed to the scaffold and sang “Near the Cross” as the crowd, knowing the end was near, grew quiet. Sheriff Combs, white-faced and shaken, motioned to his deputy to hand him the leather straps with which he fastened Bad Tom’s legs and arms. Tom gritted his teeth and cast a last look at the hills standing bare and grim beyond the town. As the hood was drawn down over his head, he took a deep breath and shouted, “Save me, oh God, save me!”

  At this, Sheriff Combs nodded, a deputy pulled the lever, and Bad Tom Smith fell nearly five feet before the noose caught him. The sound of his neck breaking could be heard above the crowd’s gasp of horror. Many women whimpered and fainted. Suddenly the carnival atmosphere gave way to the grim reality of a man’s death.

  Bad Tom fell through the trap at 1:45. He was allowed to hang for seventeen minutes before he was taken down and placed in the coffin waiting nearby. His brother Bill drove the last nails into the coffin and went to the jail to get Mary, who walked with considerable dignity beside her brother to the wagon on which the coffin rested. Almost five hundred people accompanied the body on its fifty-mile journey to the Smith home on Carr’s Fork in Knott County, where Bad Tom was buried.