Murder in Harlan County (Harlan County, Ky)

Due to the popularity of the television series Justified, many people have been introduced to Harlan, Kentucky.  Some, in fact, likely think it is a fictional place.   The real Harlan County is tucked into the southeast corner of Kentucky and both isolated and sheltered by mountains on all sides.   However, Harlan is known as Bloody Harlan as a result of mine related battles in the 1930s, like many hardscrabble places in Kentucky, has long had its share of violence over the years.

On April 7, 1919, Harlan County Deputy Sheriff Richard Joseph Johnson went to the bunkhouse where Delbert Thomas had started a “row” with his wife near the Poor Fork (now Cumberland) station.  Thomas was a motorman in the mines located at Benham.   The initial news reports of the killing were unclear for which law enforcement agency Johnson worked, as some called him the Benham Police Chief, however, subsequent court proceedings indicated Johnson was a Harlan County deputy sheriff.  Thomas and his wife had been at her relatives’ home earlier that evening and on the way home, he bought and became intoxicated on “julep” – described as a sort of wine or cider.   (He had apparently purchased it from “foreign” miners.)   After having supper with his wife on the porch, he retrieved a shotgun from the house and fired it several times.  His brother and father were finally, after a struggle, able to get the shotgun away from him, but he continued to drink the julep.  In search of a pistol, Johnson also fought with his brother-in-law and tried to cut him, beat his sister, “upset practically everything” at their home and broke up household furniture.   A neighbor summoned law enforcement.   Learning that a deputy sheriff was on the way, Thomas hid at the corner of a shed, lying in wait for the deputy.

When Deputy Johnson arrived, Thomas felled him with an ax blow to the head, beat him into insensibility, and then used Johnson’s own pistol to shoot him twice, killing him.   The neighbor, who had called for Johnson and witnessed the shooting, fled, with Thomas firing at him.    Thomas then headed for the bunkhouse and yelled for the dozen or so men inside to “come out and bury your dead.”  Not receiving a reply, apparently, he broke through the door and started firing indiscriminately.  One man, Charles Hunter, was not quick enough and was allegedly shot through the side, suffering a dangerous wound.  Another of the men was forced at gunpoint to go out and get the sheriff’s body.  Most of the men escaped, however.

In the meantime, the neighbor had sought help and returned with a number of men.   Thomas had left the immediate area and apparently went to his father’s home, and that of some neighbors, trying to get cartridges for his weapon.  By this time, it was near midnight.  He explained he’d killed Johnson and tried to purchase some cartridges with a watch that he’d taken off Johnson’s body.  He told one neighbor he also had Johnson’s pistol, badge and money.   He finally simply stole cartridges from a neighbor’s mantel.

Thomas fled the area, apparently hitching a ride between two train cars on a train headed towards Pineville.  At some point, four deputy sheriffs caught up with Thomas and he “got the drop” on them, killing one of the possemen, David Elliott.  (Elliott he was a special deputy who was sworn in as a member of the posse for the chase, as he actually worked in the commissary at the Wisconsin Steel Companies.)  At least one other man was injured.  Two of the posse members were named Halcomb and Coldiron, and they too were called Benham police officers in some news accounts; it is certainly possible they were, in fact, city police officers.  Thomas was subsequently arrested near Dry Rock, later that day, after a gunfight.   He still had the watch, pistol and some cash he’d taken from Johnson and admitted to his captors that he had killed Johnson and was apparently aware he’d also killed another man.

At trial, Thomas did not deny he committed the murders, but claimed it was due to an overindulgence in julep. During closing arguments, the Commonwealth Attorney mentioned that Thomas had killed another man, in addition to Johnson, for whose murder he was currently on trial, and wounded a third, as well.  He was convicted and sentenced to die for Johnson’s murder.  This, Thomas argued on appeal, was highly prejudicial and improper.  The Kentucky Court of Appeals, at the time the highest court in the Commonwealth, in the case of Thomas v. Com., 214 S.W. 929 (Ky. 1919), agreed that evidence connected to a separate, unrelated crime is normally irrelevant and inadmissible.   However, there are exceptions, and the Court noted that the “general rule does not apply where the evidence of another crime tends to directly prove defendant’s guilt of the crime charged.”   It is also admissible when two (or more) crimes are so inextricably linked together that one cannot be fully explained without proving the other.  The Court noted that in Thomas’s case, the fact that despite his defense of intoxication, the fact he was able to take so many actions within a few hours, was probative.  In effect, when Johnson committed the second, independent murder, in the time frame, he refuted his own argument that he wasn’t competent due to intoxication.   He deliberately took items from his first victim, and used one of those items, a pistol, to kill a second victim, and he made ‘rather substantial preparations to defend himself” by obtaining cartridges.  In its, decision, reported on October 6, 1919, it was reported that the Court of Appeals had upheld his conviction and sentence.  On December 3, however, Governor James Dixon Black commuted Thomas’s sentence to life imprisonment, apparently accepting that Thomas, who reportedly had always been a sober and industrious worker, had committed the heinous crimes under the influence of a liquor provided to him by the foreign miners.

   Governor James Dixon Black

Deputy Johnson left behind 4 daughters and a son; his wife  Josephine (Josie) predeceased him.  He is buried in the Willis Cemetery in Hancock, Tennessee.  David Elliott left behind a wife, Birdie, and possibly as many as nine children.  He was returned to Pittsburgh, in Laurel County, for burial.

Neither Deputy Sheriff Richard Johnson nor Posseman David Elliott are on the National Law Enforcement Memorial.”