LOCKETT, Will (Petrie KIMBROUGH)

Sometimes, people about to be executed, spontaneously confess to more murders. There is no investigation, as the person is about to die. It is taken as truth, a sign that the killer wanted to “get right with God.”

That’s the case with African American Will Lockett (aka Petrie Kimbrough) in 1920. He confessed to three more murders at a murder trial, making him a serial killer. “I don’t want to die with a lie on my lips,” Lockett said.

Lockett’s first crime for which he was arrested, was insulting a white woman, a crime that could have got him killed. He later tried to assault a white woman, and “aroused the entire countryside.” He said he changed his name from Kimbrough to Lockett after fleeing Todd County, Kentucky. Some later reports have the 1905 crime not as an insult, but a murder.

On February 4, 1920, Lockett was arrested shortly after killing 11-year-old Geneva Hardman in a field in Fayette County, Kentucky. He later said he had tried to rape her and failed, then killed her. He had already been detained when bloodhounds following the trail, found him.

The murder of a white girl by an African American man almost caused a riot. Right after his arrest, a crowd gathered and demanded he be handed over. Instead, Lockett was transferred to a Frankfort reformatory.

Later that day, a line of cars drove to the Frankfort reformatory, in the hopes of lynching him. The Governor told the vigilantes that Lockett would be defended by all means necessary. The men dispersed.

Lockett confessed to Warden John Chilton after his arrest. He said he raped and murdered a white woman (Clara Miller Rogers). It was “at the junction of the L. & N. and Big Four railroads at Carmi, Illinois, in 1912 or 1913.” He admitted to choking an African American woman (Sallie Anderson Kraft) to death. He had sexually assaulted her. She was killed near Camp Zachary Taylor in February, 1919. The training camp for WWI soldiers closed a year later.

Lockett also confessed to raping and choking an African American woman (Eliza Morman) in Evansville, Indiana in 1917. He left her for dead.

Word spread. On February 9, 1920, the crowd attacked. The lynch mob was now hundreds strong, and advanced toward the courthouse. Told to turn back, they pressed on. Someone gave the order to fire. The National Guard began firing into the crowd. The mob did not disperse until machine guns started firing into the air.

A patrolman who was guarding Lockett was shot by a member of the mob, and later had his arm amputated. He claimed at least 50 gunshots were fired by the mob.

County Judge Frank A. Bullock denied firing out the court house window into the crowd.

Rumours spread that 1,500 well-armed mountaineers were on the train, heading into town. The military searched every train and found “only a normal number aboard.”

An inquiry was later held into the handling of the riot, but generally, blame was put on Lockett. The NAACP commended the Govenor for controlling the lynch mob. Over the next few weeks, various people were tried, but exonerated, for their roles in the riot.

On March 11, 1920, at 4:32 a.m., Lockett was electrocuted. He took 15 seconds to die.

Grant Smith, an African American in Kentucky, faced exactly that fate less than a month after Lockett was executed. A lynch mob got hold of him and killed him, without any trial at all.

Books include

The Murder of Geneva Hardman and Lexington’s Mob Riot of 1920, by Peter Brackney (Arcadia Publishing, 2020), and

Legal Executions In Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky And Missouri: A Comprehensive Registry, 1866-1965 by Daniel Allen Hearn (McFarland, 2016)