Christmas is a time to be with loved ones, give and receive gifts, and celebrate all that you have. It’s a time when the year is coming to an end and soon everyone will be making New Year’s resolutions. All the songs are joyful and uplifting and all the movies are hopeful and full of love. But we’re true crime junkies so we know that that shit isn’t real life and that real life is often terrible. So, in this time of comfort and joy, we thought our awkward army of 90s loving, true crime addicted listeners might be ok with the cheer-level being taken down a few notches just for a little bit while we talk about some Christmases that were far more horrific than they were merry.
The Wholaver Murders
On December 24, 2002, in Pennsylvania, Joe and Mary Bittman were waiting on their daughter, Jean Wholaver to arrive with her daughters, Victoria (20-years-old) and Elizabeth (15-years-old), and Victoria’s 9-month-old daughter, Madison. Every Christmas Eve, the girls came from their home in Middletown, PA to the Bittman home in Jonestown, PA where they would spend the night so they could all be together Christmas day and open presents the next morning. Mary Bittman was concerned because they were late for dinner. It was a 2 and a half-hour drive from Middletown and it’s December in the north, so there’s snow that can cause traffic issues.
Mary had made many calls to Jean, but they all went to voicemail/answering machine and none of the calls were returned. Mary decided that it was time to call the police. First, she checked with them to see if there were any accidents on the highway, and then she asked them to go do a welfare check at the Wholaver house. The dispatcher she spoke with seemed to have as much interest in their job as the officers Kevin’s mom talks to in Home Alone when she tried to get them to check on Kevin. The Pennsylvania officers told Mary to call back the next day if they still hadn’t shown up or heard from them. Brushing them off as possibly delayed by the weather.
By the next morning, Jean, Victoria, Elizabeth, and baby Madison had still not arrived. Mary called the police again and asked again for a welfare check. Sergeant Robert Givler went over to the home just after 7 am. When he first arrived, he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Sgt. Givler knocked on the front door and rang the bell, but got no answer. The blinds were drawn in the house making it difficult for him to look into the windows so he made his way around to the back of the house and this is when things began looking more suspicious. The glass in the windows of the door to the garage had been broken in and when he checked to see if it was locked he found that it wasn’t. Givler opened the door and saw Jean’s car.
He then knocked on the door from the garage to the house and still got no answer so he tried that door, too. It was also unlocked. Givler called out to anyone in the house to make his presence known, but he still got no answer.
Then Givler found the first body.
Just in the kitchen was the body of a woman later identified as the body of 43-year-old Jean Wholaver. Givler went to check her pulse and found she was cold. Police assumed that she had been making her morning coffee around when someone shot her from behind causing her to drop the coffee filter she’d been holding. Sgt. Givler called for back up so they could clear and secure the scene. He called for the Homicide Unit and the Crime Scene Investigation Unit. Once backup arrived, Givler and the other officers cleared the first floor. Then they heard a noise. It was coming from upstairs so they proceeded with extreme caution. Is the murderer still in the house?
At the top of the stairs looking down the hallway, the police find another body but this one isn’t alone. Lying beside her is a screaming baby. An officer takes baby Madison to the EMTs, and it’s discovered that she’s unharmed despite being dehydrated and probably hungry and definitely in need of a diaper change. The body in the hallway would be identified as Victoria (Madison’s mom). She had been shot once in the top of her head and police think she was curled over the baby to try and protect her when she was shot.
In the bedroom closest to Victoria’s body, the third and final body that was later identified as Elizabeth was lying on the bed. She had been shot once in her left eye and at such a close range that she had burns on her skin around the wound. Elizabeth also had burns on her hands indicating that perhaps she grabbed the gun when it was fired. All three women were murdered by a single shot each with a small-caliber gun, but there was no weapon found at the house.
As officers continued to secure the crime scene, they found that the phone lines were cut outside the house. They couldn’t have called for help even if they had been able to. As in pretty much all investigations, the officers start with the people closest to the victims and work their way out. Jean had recently separated from her husband Ernest Wholaver, Jr. having just filed for divorce that summer.
Even more damning was the sexual abuse case that Victoria and Elizabeth had filed against their father. According to sources, Ernest had been molesting Victoria for years, but she had not said anything because he’d promised he wouldn’t do anything to Elizabeth as long as Victoria kept it a secret. But she found out that he hadn’t kept his end of the deal and was hurting Elizabeth as well. The girls pressed charges.
Jean filed for a Protection from Abuse order against Ernest that would make it illegal for him to be near either of his daughters or Jean, and he had to move out of the house. After those allegations, Ernest got out of jail on a $100,000 bond and moved in with his parents and his younger brother, Scott in Cambria, 3 hours away from Middletown. A trial was set to begin on January 3, 2003. Learning this backstory, police had Ernest come in to talk to them about the murders. He tells police that he heard about the murders from family, and he didn’t know who could have killed them. He gave them the alibi that he and Scott had been out in the woods hunting deer and coyotes from about 2 am to 9:10 am. Scott confirmed this alibi.
Police didn’t want to have tunnel vision so they looked at other suspects. One suspect was Frank Ramos, the father of Madison. Apparently, “Frankie” and Victoria had a kind of tumultuous relationship. They had lived together for a while and during that time police had become acquainted with their address. Frankie had not believed that Madison was his child at first and only accepted it once there was a paternity test confirming that “you ARE the father!” However, police were able to rule out Frankie Ramos when they discovered his solid alibi that had placed him in Reading over an hour-and-a-half away.
The investigators also looked into a more recent on-again-off-again boyfriend of Victoria’s. Turner Higgins and Victoria were currently off-again and Higgins had worked at a locksmith and had been the one to change the locks for Jean when Ernest moved out. However, he was also quickly cleared by his alibi. Police executed search warrants at Ernest’s parents’ house where he’s been living as well as in his car. In the car, they found a notebook where Scott had written, “we were out spotting deer and coyotes.” This seems suspicious. As though he’d been planning the alibi he’d told them.
Investigators had him come back in, but Ernest refused to speak and asked for his attorney. He left later with his attorney. But Scott, was less taciturn. At first, he stuck to the same story that he originally told police; he and Ernest had been in the woods together from 2ish-9ish. That switched when the police showed him crime scene photos of his sister-in-law and nieces shot dead. He gave up. Scott told the police everything he knew:
He had driven Ernest to Middletown in the wee hours of the morning on December 24, 2002, when Ernest told him that he wanted to get his dog back from Jean. Scott knew this was illegal because of Ernest’s restraining order and the conditions of his bail, but Ernest had been verbally abusive to Scott and they had both been drinking so Scott caved. Once in Middletown, they parked a block away from the house and Ernest got something out of the backseat before he left. Scott was told to stay in the car. Ernest came back about 10 minutes later looking more frantic and jittery, but he wouldn’t tell Scott what happened. Scott drove Ernest back to Cambria and into the woods where Ernest disposed of the pistol and the shotgun he had.
After confessing and implicating his brother in the murders, Scott took the police out to the woods to find the guns. The serial numbers on the gun showed that it belonged to Ernest’s uncle (mom’s brother). One source said ballistics tests confirmed that the pistol was the same pistol used to kill Jean, Victoria, and Elizabeth. However, another source said that the gun and ammo were too degraded to get an accurate comparison. In January 2003, when the trial for sexual abuse should have started, Ernest was charged with 3 counts of 1st-degree murder as well as burglary, and reckless endangerment for leaving Madison alone.
The prosecutors would combine the original sexual assault charges with the rest of the charges and use Victoria and Elizabeth’s testimony when the accusations were made. Typically this would be hearsay, but there was an exception to that rule called “forfeiture-by-wrongdoing exception” as the theory was that Ernest killed them to get rid of the witnesses for the sexual abuse case. Scott was charged as an accomplice and both were held without bail.
But… Ernest is a blabbermouth and doesn’t know how to be cool which works out for the prosecution. While he was in jail awaiting his trial, Ernest came up with a new plan to get himself out of this mess. He turned to the obviously very trustworthy, fellow inmate, James Meddings. Ernest approached Meddings to attempt to hire a hitman to kill Frankie Ramos. See, genius Ernest thought that he could get a hitman to kill Frankie and make it look like a suicide. Then, they would leave a “suicide note” where Frankie would confess to the murders.
Meddings was like, cool cool cool…I’m going to go talk to a police officer about something completely different. NOT ABOUT YOU! But I’m gonna just go over here and talk to this guard about…something…else. Meddings told the police about Ernest’s desire for a hitman. Police got a DEA agent to pose as a hitman and then recorded them discussing the plans to murder Frankie using “Tank” as a code name for Frankie Ramos. So, then criminal solicitation was added to his charges.
Ernest’s attorney claimed there was no physical evidence to link Ernest to the scene and the only real evidence they had was Scott’s “patently ridiculous and absurd” story. He said that “the case is thin to the point of nonexistence.” The defense originally claimed that the reason Ernest had tried to get a hitman to kill Frankie Ramos was because he (Ernest) believed that Ramos killed his family so he was getting his revenge. But then, when that didn’t fly, they flipped that and said that, actually, Ramos wasn’t the killer, but another guy was the killer. Despite Ernest’s nonsensical explanation for hiring a hitman, the arraignment was scheduled for April 17, 2003.
Scott testified against Ernest in exchange for a lesser charge and sentence. He told the court about how when Jean filed for divorce in July, Ernest told him that he was going to shoot her. Scott also told the story of that Christmas Eve and that Ernest had told him to lie about where they’d been that night.
In the end, Ernest was convicted of 3 counts of 1st-degree murder for all 3 women, along with conspiracy, reckless endangerment for Madison, burglary, and criminal solicitation. He was sentenced to 3 death sentences. Scott was convicted of 3rd-degree murder and sentenced to 12-25 years.
In January 2014, the Pennsylvania Superior Court decided that Ernest would keep the sexual abuse charges on his criminal record because they are “inextricably tied to the murders” and Ernest wasn’t “entitled to ‘no relief’ that would expunge his record.”
Due to appeals (which he’s now exhausted on the state level) and a moratorium on executions by Governor Tom Wolf, Ernest Wholaver is still on death row.
The Murder of the Lawson Family
On Christmas Day 1929, 43-year-old Charlie Lawson walked the grounds of his tobacco farm in Germanton, North Carolina. He had been reportedly behaving “erratically” recently and had talked to his doctor C.J. Helsabeck about the headaches and insomnia he’d been dealing with. Whether this is the reasoning behind his actions or not, Charlie Lawson wouldn’t live through Christmas and neither would most of his family.
According to Greensboro.com’s article about the case, the newspapers for Greensboro and Winston-Salem reported the details of that day:
Lawson found 2 of his daughters by the barn. They were unsuspecting when their father approached them and didn’t see it coming when he shot them. 12-year-old, Carrie Lee and 7-year-old, Maybell died there in the snow. Lawson used 2 rocks from the barn and laid their heads on them like pillows and then crossed their arms over their chests like they were already in a coffin.
Then, Lawson walked toward the family’s cabin where his 37-year-old wife, Fannie was. He shot her as well. Lawson entered the house and shot 17-year-old Marie who had just made the family a Christmas cake. Then, for whatever reason, Lawson stopped shooting. Instead he “bludgeoned” his 4-year-old son, James and his 2-year-old son, Raymond. Finally, Lawson beat the youngest daughter Mary Lou to death. She was 3-months-old. After murdering his family, Lawson put their heads on pillows and like Carrie Lee and Maybell, he crossed their arms.
Then, Lawson walked to the woods with the family dogs, Sam and Queen on his heels. Footprints in the snow tell his next actions almost as well as words. He walked to the nearby creek and washed the blood off his hands, then he walked in circles around a tree for an unknown amount of time (could be hours). Finally, Lawson shot himself.
This was rural North Carolina and on Christmas day it was tradition to go rabbit hunting. Neighbors or anyone within hearshot wouldn’t have considered it unusual to hear multiple gunshots so the bodies were found later that day by family members who had come by for Christmas. Instead of finding a cheerful scene of a family celebrating the holiday, the family members find a house covered in blood with all the furniture out of place. They also find the small children laying with their heads on pillows and arms across their chests.
Charlie was found in the woods with 2 notes in his pockets written on tobacco auction receipts. Neither made a great deal of sense and seemed like incomplete, incoherent thoughts: “Trouble can cause” and “Nobody to blame” Only one member of the Lawson family survived this attack and it’s unknown if that was on purpose or pure accident. Arthur Lawson was 16-years-old and he had gotten permission from his dad to walk to Walnut Cove with a friend to get ammunition for rabbit hunting. It was thought that maybe Charlie let Arthur go because he was big enough and strong enough to have intervened with Charlie’s plans.
The family and friends, along with deputies, removed the bodies from the house themselves. It was a difficult process since the hill the Lawsons lived on was covered in snow and was quite precarious. Each body was wrapped in bed sheets and laid on top of an improvised sled and then carefully guided down the hill to hearses that were waiting on the main road.
The hearses took the bodies to a funeral home in Walnut Cove, but they were not equipped to handle autopsies and embalming on this scale so they were taken to a funeral parlor in Madison. This funeral home was above a hardware store and this building is now Madison Dry Goods, Co., but upstairs is reportedly still a museum to the funeral parlor with memorabilia from when it was a working mortuary. Dr. C.J. Helsabeck, who had heard Charlie Lawson’s complaints about his health, was also the coroner for Stokes County, so he was responsible for the autopsies. They began the autopsies that same Christmas day.
Stokes County Sheriff John Taylor must have used his position to pull some strings. His brother, Dr. Spottswood Taylor was home from Maryland for the holidays. He worked at Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore, and he would return there with Charlie Lawson’s preserved brain in a jar of formaldehyde. It’s unknown where the brain is today or if it still exists. When conducting the autopsy of Charlie Lawson, it was noted that his brain was “relatively small” and a central portion “seemed underdeveloped.”
2 days after the massacre, 5 hearses carried 5 coffins to the Browder County Cemetery. 3-month-old Mary Lou was in the coffin with her mother, wrapped in her arms. The family was buried in a mass grave that had been dug by their friends and family. Thousands of people showed up. Friends and family, yes, but random people and the press also joined the mourners out of curiosity. Everyone was curious about this family and their horrific end. No one knew why Charlie Lawson had killed his wife and 6 of his 7 kids. There were obviously rumors. One rumor was that Charlie had impregnated his oldest daughter, 17-year-old Marie, and he was embarrassed and ashamed so he killed them all and himself. However, nothing in the autopsy would suggest she had been pregnant.
After the family was buried, Charlie’s brother Marion Lawson decided to open the Lawson house to the public as a museum or tourist attraction. Everything was left as it had been the day of the murders, including the cake Marie had baked that no one got to eat. Marion claimed that he did this to raise money for Arthur who was now an orphan and left to deal with the mortgage on the farm. One infamous visitor to the house was mobster John Dillinger. Just after he escaped from prison, Dillinger was on his way to Florida with his girlfriend and a friend. It was reported that they took a detour on their travels to visit the Lawson house and while they were in Germanton, Dillinger supposedly left a note for a local lawyer that taunted him for “missing America’s Most Wanted of the era.”
The Ashland Tragedy
On December 23, 1881, 15-year-old Emma Carrico was having a sleepover with her friend across the street, 14-year-old Fanny Gibbons. Fanny’s mother, Martha Gibbons and younger brother Sterling (11) were going to Ironton, Ohio to visit their older, married daughter/sister for the Christmas holiday. The mother and son would be gone overnight and Mrs. Gibbons had arranged with Emma’s mother for Emma to stay the night and keep Fanny and her 17-year-old brother, Robert company while she was away.
Robert had been injured a few years earlier in a freight car accident and lost his leg. Fanny was described as “magnetic,” “outgoing,” and “cheerful.” She was also described as being a beautiful young girl who looked older than 14. She turned heads. Fannie and Emma and Robert were home alone since their mom was gone and their dad wasn’t really around the house often. John Gibbons did what he could to provide for his family, but it was hard doing that with irregular, low paying jobs that kept him away from the house for weeks at a time. In fact this time, he’d been gone this time since December 16th.
Around 6 am on Christmas Eve Day, Emma’s mother saw flames from across the street. She rushed over and screamed for help, but nothing anyone did could have saved the 3 teenagers. People in the neighborhood rushed to help and even went in the cabin to rescue the kids. When they were brought out of the house they were already dead. At the time, everyone assumed they had died from the fire and smoke, but once there was literal light shed on the situation (the sun came up) it became apparent that the teens were dead before the fire was started.
Physicians from the community came to the scene and noticed that all three had had their skulls crushed and had been murdered in a horrific fashion. Fannie and Emma were sexually assaulted. The community was outraged and banded together to solve this unspeakable crime. All business in Ashland was halted and evidence was collected from the scene. Bloody sheets and pillowcases and an axe and crowbar that were covered in hair and blood were all secured as evidence along with the clothing the kids had been wearing.
On December 26th, a service was held at the Methodist Episcopal Church for all three teenagers and there were hundreds of people in attendance. Then the bodies of Emma, Fanny, and Robert were buried in a “common” grave at Ashland Cemetery. Acting Mayor John Means developed a committee to investigate and raised money to support the effort. In just a few days, $1,000 was raised. 2 detectives came to aid. Deputy US Marshal George Heflin and J.B. Norris.
1880’s or 1980’s or 2080’s – doesn’t matter – the first place they look is those closest to the victims and work their way outward. Suspect 1 was John Gibbons. He hadn’t been seen since the 16th and no one knew where he was. J.B. Norris was gung ho about it being John Gibbons. Despite there being no evidence other than his absence, Norris’s accusation gained traction within the community. So much so that the Cincinnati Enquirer straight up called for John Gibbons’ to be arrested and hanged.
Deputy U.S. Marshal Heflin wasn’t as confident that Mr. Gibbons was the murderer of 2 of his kids and a neighbor’s child. Not only that, but Heflin thought that this had to be the work of more than one person. He felt Gibbons was innocent and located him to try and prove it. On Saturday, December 31st, 1881, Gibbons was located in West Virginia where he had been living and working. Heflin had to be the one to tell Gibbons about his children and then had to tell him that there were people blaming him for it.
Gibbons was being boarded by a man named Andrew Hager who Marshal Heflin dragged back to Ashland so he could alibi for John Gibbons, Hager said he had seen Mr. Gibbons every day since the 16th of December. Hager also noted that there was no way that John Gibbons could have gotten from his remote house in West Virginia to Ashland, Kentucky and back in less than a day.
J.B. Norris was like, Well this is embarrassing…and caught the 1st train out of town.
With John Gibbons cleared, the town was back at square one. Until January 2, 1882…
Reportedly, a man named George Ellis walked into the Ashland general store. He was a somewhat regular customer there, and when he was buying his cigar, one of the owners was just making small talk. And the only thing anyone was talking about was the Gibbons/Carrico murders so he said something to the effect of, “Well now that they cleared Gibbons, who’s going down for this?” The owner said that at this comment, Ellis got visibly nervous. He lost all the color in his face, and his hands started shaking then he mumbled something and left.
Ellis walked the streets for hours until he ended up at Deputy US Marshal Heflin. Ellis had decided that he needed to get something off his chest. Heflin had some other people come to be witnesses to the confession and according to one source there are 2 versions of the 1st confession one more graphic than the other – like one person was taking more detailed notes than the other. The source shared the less graphic of the 2 first confessions:
“A few evenings prior to the 24th I met Craft who stated that he was going to see Fanny Gibbons and take her some black candy, and that he was going to have intercourse with her and he wanted me to come. About midnight, the fatal night , we all started, Craft, Neal, and myself, and then we got to the house. Craft raised the window with an old axe and stepped in first. Neal followed and I stayed behind on the porch and afterwards I went in. Robbie was the 1st aroused and started to get up when Craft said, ‘You had better lie still.’ Craft then went to the bed where the 2 girls were sleeping and began to take improper liberties with them. Robbie said, ‘You better stay away from there’ when Craft hit him with the axe. He fell back on the lounge then plunged forward and fell fully left from under the stairs where he was found. The girls screamed when Craft jumped on the bed and they both said, ‘George Craft, what are you here for?’ Emma also started to jump from the bed when Neal choked her and pulled her onto the floor. She fought him and I held her while he outraged her. Neal then struck her on the head with the big head of the crowbar and she instantly died after throwing up her hands. Craft also had some trouble with Fanny Gibbons and called on me to come help him. He then outraged her and killed her. Neal proposed killing the girls and after they were dead I took some coal oil, poured it over their bodies, and set fire to them with a match. We then left the house.”
Ellis also told Heflin that the men had actually been talking about this for months and once, he and William Neal were doing yard work when Emma Carrico walked by. Ellis said that Neal “swore that he intended to have ‘carnal communication’ with her before Christmas.” Ellis said Craft had made similar comments about Fanny Gibbons.
George Craft and William Neal were arrested and taken to the county jail where they were placed in the same cell as George Ellis. You know, the guy who had just snitched on them? By the next morning, Ellis was recanting his previous confession. He would continue to go back and forth confessing and recanting multiple times throughout this. The grapevine got word around quickly that the men had been arrested and that there was a confession. There was talk of vigilante justice and while some people agreed that they wouldn’t do anything without solid evidence and a judge’s ruling, others had less scruples.
After one court date, the men were moved to Lexington for their safety and placed on a ferry. The less law-abiding people of the community tried to follow, but the officers were able to dodge them. Back in the Lexington jail, Ellis tried to claim his original statement was coerced by Heflin who had made him confess at gunpoint. It didn’t matter, things were in full swing.
On January 16, 1882, Neal and Craft were taken to their trials. Neal was up first. There were witnesses called saying that they had seen him in the vicinity of the Gibbons’ home that night. One testimony being from J.D. House who had helped carry the bodies out of the house. There was no physical evidence at all, but the prosecution had their star witness: George Ellis.
Ellis was reportedly calm on the stand as he told his story:
“I have resided in Ashland since May. Have been engaged as a laborer at Powell & House’s brickyard most of the time; I am acquainted with the prisoner Neal, also with Craft; we three worked together at the brickyard; I did not see either of them during the day of December 23rd , I saw them later that night, they came to my house and called me; I was in bed and asked what they wanted. Craft told me to get up, they wanted to see me, I did so, put on my clothes and boots and went out to the gate. Craft said you must go with us, I asked him where, he said to the Gibbons’ and we will have some fun. I told him no, it was too late, I won’t go. They said I have to go and Craft drew his revolver. Neal said bring him along and we started. When we got inside the gate at the Gibbons, Craft picked up an axe and Neal got a crowbar from under the porch floor. Craft pried open the window and Neal was the first to go in, Craft next. I did not want to go in but Craft drew his revolver and said come on and I did so.
They took the axe and crowbar in the house with them; we passed through the front room to the second room middle room where the girls and Robbie were asleep. Craft and Neal went to the bed where the girls where Craft took hold of Fannie Gibbons and Neal of Emma. They stifled the girls by putting their hands over their mouths and choking them. The noise awakened Robbie who was sleeping on a lounge in the same room. Craft, who had choked Fannie near to death, left her and struck Robbie in the head with the axe and killed him, and then returned to the bed. Neal dragged Emma off the bed onto the floor and Craft ordered me to hold her until Neal accomplished his purpose which I did. After Neal let her up she began to raise up, crying, and said she was going home to tell her mother. Neal said, “I guess not”, and struck her on the head with the crowbar and she fell back on the floor dead.
Craft ordered me to come and help him, I went to the bed and put my hand on Miss Gibbons’ shoulder and Craft outraged her after which he got the ax and killed her. Craft then said to me, you have done none of the killing, but you must have a hand in it and ordered me to get the coal oil and pour it over the dead body of the girls. I did and Craft set them on fire and we left the house. When we got out we separated. I was going home. I don’t know where they went. I got home about half past three o’clock and my wife [got up] to make breakfast. I laid down but did not go to sleep. I heard the cry of fire about half past five when I was at breakfast. I went to the burning house but did not stay long. On the following Sunday morning when Craft and I met at the place where the house was burned and Craft asked me to take a walk. We went out towards the cemetery, he begin to talk about the affair and said it must be kept quiet. We met Neal and we all talked about it. They wanted me to sign a pledge never to tell about it, I told them I would think about it. They told me I better do that and if I did not do so by the next Saturday night they would put an end to me. We separated, I went home and Craft and Neal went away together.”
The defense team actually used George Ellis’ wife as a witness for them. Thomas R. Brown was the defense attorney and also, the son of the judge presiding over the case…and he called Mrs. Ellis to testify that she woke up a few times that night and every time she did, her husband was there. She claimed to not have heard any noise that night like the other men coming to the house or her husband leaving and coming back. She was convinced that Mr. Ellis hadn’t left the house that night.
On February 6, 1882, William Neal, 36-year-old, husband and father of 2 was found guilty after the jury deliberated for 17 minutes. He was sentenced to die by hanging on February 14th. Days after his trial was done, Craft’s was also completed and he too was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging on the same date.
Ellis would once again tell a different story when in February of 1882, he told a Cincinnati newspaper that he and 2 black men he had hired were the ones to commit the rapes and murders. He claimed that the 2 men had held the girls down. and he did everything else. Then he said that while they were leaving the house, he’d seen Neal and Craft walking so he decided to implicate them. But a few days later, he denied ever saying this.
In May of 1882, Ellis was taken to his trial and by June 2nd, he was found guilty and sentenced to life. While some people of the community were satisfied, others were not. They felt he should die too. So, around midnight that same night, a group of about 20 men and boys hijacked the engine house of Chattaroi Railroad in Ashland and demanded that the watchman supply them with 2 flat cars.
The mob of angry men and boys arrived in Catlettsburg and the jail around 3 am and demanded to be let in. They were, of course, refused, so they busted in by force and took Ellis out. They took him back to Ashland and hanged him from a giant Sycamore tree not even 100 yards from the scene of the murders. His body hung there until after noon when the coroner cut him down. Neal and Craft won appeals and were granted new trials. Without the ever changing testimony of George Ellis, there wasn’t much to say that these men had actually been in the house much less murdered the children.
Their executions were delayed until the results of their new trials and both men were certain they would be released. When the new trials were to begin in the fall of 1882, governor G.W. Blackburn told the community that if they didn’t act right, he was not afraid to have every one of them killed in order to “uphold the law.” He will not stand for shenanigans from a mob. Neal and Craft won a change of venue request and Judge George N. Brown relocated the case to Carter County and set the date for February of 1883.
Blackburn’s warnings went unheeded and when talk of unrest came to their knowledge, Major Allen (commander of the militia guarding the prisoners) switched the plan of taking the prisoners on the train to taking them via a passing steamer. As they were loading the men, a mob of over 200 came to demand the prisoners be released to them. Allen said no and finished boarding.
The mob hopped on the train and, since the train ran alongside the river, they shot at the steamer while they rode. In Maysville, the mob commandeered a ferry and caught up to the steamer and boarded. It’s unknown who shot first, but with the mob boarding their steamer, the militia was forced to retaliate. In this gun fight, stray bullets found innocent bystanders such as Colonel L.W. Reppert who had tried to calm the mob on shore. He died from his wounds. Also killed by a rogue bullet was George Keener (a young father), 14-year-old Willie Serey, and 25-year-old Alexander Harris.
More were injured, including the husband of the Gibbons oldest daughter (the one Martha and Sterling had gone to visit), James McDonald. He was shot 3 times. Mrs. H.B. Butler was sitting at the train depot when she was hit in the thigh. In an inquest, the militia’s actions would be found “justifiable.”
In February of 1983, Craft’s new trial began and by the 23rd the jury was deliberating. After 10 minutes they returned saying that a juror had fallen ill so they were released until the next morning when they would deliberate for 21 minutes before coming back with another guilty verdict. The judge asked Craft if he had anything to say:
“I can say one thing – I am not guilty of that charge. I did not have time to put all of my witnesses here that I ought to have had, and I consider that I have not had a fair trial for I know that I am not guilty of that. I never as much as laid my hand on them. I never did. You might as well take a little innocent child and hang them as to hang me. The closest I was the Mrs. Gibbons’ house that night was when I lay in my bed at home asleep. I did not see the house or George Ellis or Bill Neal or any of the children that night. The last time I saw any of Mrs. Gibbons’ children was on the Wednesday before that. I saw little Fanny and spoke to her. That was the last time. I was aroused by the alarm of fire. I could, knowing the children were burned up, stand on the scaffold and hold my hand up and swear in the sight of heaven that I did not see those eight children, Neal or Ellis that night. I am as innocent as the angels of that thing. I never thought of such a thing I was better raised and had more respect for the people about me. I respected Mrs. Gibbons and her children. I am glad I can stand here and say that I am innocent. It is the truth. It is a put up job. Gentlemen, the day is coming when I will be found innocent…”
Whatever he was going to continue saying was cut off by the deafening wails of Mrs. Gibbons. She had to be removed from the courtroom because she could not pull herself back together. Craft didn’t finish and sat down while the judge set the date of execution for May 4, 1883. However, he was once again granted a reprieve when Governor Blackburn refused to confirm the date of execution (which he had to do in order for the execution to be carried out). But his successor was less squeamish about being responsible for the death of these men. After Blackburn left office, Governor Knott set the execution date for October 12th, 1883.
Craft’s supporters tried to get the new governor to hold off at least until Neal’s trial in case new evidence was presented, but Knott was not a fan of dilly dallying so he denied their pleas. On October 11th, Craft was taken to the gallows and his final words were “Lord receive my soul.”
William Neal’s trial began on April 30, 1884 and he was once again found guilty and sentenced to death. He again tried to appeal his case, but other than delaying the execution the appeals were unsuccessful. On March 3, 1885, Neal was the last of the men taken to the gallows. He made a speech about his innocence at the train station saying:
“Farewell good people, I hope to meet you in heaven. I am persecuted to my death by Campbell and Redlin, who persecuted themselves and bulldozed that lunatic George Ellis into swearing lies against me. It’s a fearful thing to walk upon the gallows and die for a crime I did not commit. Bare in mind that I will be proved innocent of this charge just as I say now I am innocent. I have to be dragged back and hung like a dog for what I didn’t do. I thank the citizens of Mt. Sterling for their kindness to me. I hope to meet you in a better land.”
But then, for reasons unknown, the execution was delayed a little bit. Not to worry, it was only delayed until the 28th. Upon the gallows, Neal continued to proclaim his innocence and his final statement was: “Oh Lord, thou knowest I am innocent: into thy hands I commit my soul. I am innocent.” And upon that last word the trap door was released. He was pronounced dead after 10 minutes. No one in his family was there.
Despite these men being convicted and hanged for the murders, there is still speculation of their innocence and one detective on the case was quoted as saying, “How would Ellis, Craft, and Neal know the children were alone that night? Only three people knew that the children were alone; Mrs. Gibbons, her son Sterling, and Mrs. Thomas.” He suggested that based on that, logically it would be one of them.
Sources for this episode
10 Of The Most Shocking Murder Cases That Happened During The Holidays
Holiday Horror: 8 Real-Life Christmas Murders
Wholaver family killed on Christmas Eve in Middletown, Pa.
Wholaver death penalty appeal over 2002 murder of wife, two daughters in Middletown is rejected
Testifying Against Brother, Who Is Charged In Triple Murder
