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On a late summer morning in 1897 the denizens of Ripley County, Indiana awoke to the news that five men, who the previous night had been lodged in the County jail, were dead and hanging in the cemetery from a soon to be famous elm tree.
The Coroner's official report explanation of events that led to the five murders was so preposterous that it raised the eye of then Indiana Governor, James A. Mount, and prompted him to dispatch his Attorney General to Versailles, Indiana to report on the event.
The following March Attorney General William A. Ketcham filed his report to the Governor that declared:
“That Lyle Levi, having been incarcerated in the jail, and not being satisfied with his surroundings or associates, and knowing that Wilder Levi’s revolver was at McCoy’s store in Osgood, broke jail – it is not important in this connection to ascertain how he broke jail – and went to Osgood-the manner of his getting to Osgood is likewise immaterial-that he broke into McCoy’s store, stole Wilder Levi’s revolver, returned to Versailles, broke back into jail, without the knowledge of the guards, who were apparently were asleep at their posts at this time, returned to his cell, shot himself, then killed Schuter and Jenkins and with a rope he had got hold of somehow, but the evidence does not disclose how or in what place he obtained it- hung the dead bodies of Schuter and Jenkins to the tree, put the finishing touches to his crime by hanging Andrews and Gordon and then, in order that suspicion might be directed against innocent men, finally hung himself, and his nefarious conduct in attempting to distract attention from himself and divert suspicion to the good citizens of Osgood, Napolean, Milan and Versaillles..”
In actuality, a citizen mob of 400 seized the men from the jail, murdered them and left them hanging in the cemetery.
No charges were ever filed and for years to come Ripley County became a place of hushed whispers and drawn curtains... and a famous elm tree.
