In October 1882, Kentucky Gov. Luke Blackburn sent state troops into Eastern Kentucky to protect two condemned men awaiting retrial — one of the largest military deployments the commonwealth had ever made over a criminal case.

Newspapers reported he had said the troops were there to support the dignity of the law, if the whole of Boyd County had to be killed protecting the prisoners. A later state report argued the words were wrongly attributed to him. It hardly mattered. Someone had already hanged Blackburn in effigy from the same sycamore where George Ellis was lynched.

When a mob tore up the railroad between Ashland and Lexington, Major John Allen loaded roughly 180 soldiers — many young and barely trained — and both prisoners aboard a commandeered steamboat called the Granite State. People gathered along the Ashland bank to see it pass. Then all hell broke loose.

At least five civilians were killed when soldiers fired their guns into the crowd. Most were bystanders. The soldiers and the official report describe the steamboat being fired on first from the shore; witnesses at the coroner's inquest testified no organized gunfire came from the bank at all. Both accounts are in the record, and they cannot both be right. The jury found Allen culpable. Nothing came of it, and he was later promoted.

The series concludes with the retrials in Carter County and the executions of Ellis Craft in 1883 and William Neal in 1885 — three years, three months and three days after the infamous child murders that became known as the Ashland Tragedy.

Hosts Marcus Roland and Emily Steele are joined by historian Joe Castle.

This is Part 4, the final installment, of a four-part series.

Keywords: Kentucky true crime, Kentucky Case Files, Ashland Tragedy, Granite State incident, Ashland Kentucky, Boyd County, Kentucky State Guard, Luke Blackburn, Major John Allen, militia shooting, Ellis Craft, William Neal, Carter County, Grayson Kentucky, due process, historical true crime, Joe Castle, true crime podcast, Kentucky history podcast

On June 1, 1882, a jury convicted George Ellis and sentenced him to life in prison rather than death. He had confessed. He had testified against the other two men. He had given the Commonwealth its case.

He was dead before morning.

After William Neal and Ellis Craft were sentenced, a private investigator named Alf Burnett — hired by Craft's wealthy brother — argued in newspapers across Kentucky that Ellis' confession had been coerced, and pointed the case instead at three Black railroad workers. One of them, Will Direly, was tried and acquitted. Burnett was later charged with kidnapping him. Deputy U.S. Marshal James Heflin then told the Courier Journal that he had invented the theory himself to draw Burnett away from the investigation.

Just after midnight on June 2, roughly 18 masked men forced their way into the Boyd County jail and lynched Ellis at a sycamore near where the murders had happened. Their identities were never established. Craft and Neal were guarded by hundreds of soldiers. Ellis had one jailer.

A week later, a Lawrence County newspaper correspondent closed a routine community column — a school trustee election, wet weather ruining the corn — by reporting that the news had been received with satisfaction, and that the only regret was that the hangmen had not brought two more ropes.

Hosts Marcus Roland and Emily Steele are joined by historian Joe Castle.

This is Pt. 3 of a four-part series.

Keywords: Kentucky true crime, Kentucky Case Files, Ashland Tragedy, Ashland Kentucky, Boyd County, George Ellis, lynching, mob violence, Alf Burnett, Will Direly, James Heflin, Reconstruction Kentucky, vigilantism, 1882, historical true crime, Joe Castle, true crime podcast, Kentucky history podcast

On Jan. 3, 1882 — the day after three men were arrested for the Ashland murders — as many as 1,500 people descended on Catlettsburg, Ky., for a preliminary hearing. That is more than the population of the town itself.

The railroads ran extra trains. People came from 50 and 60 miles away. Business in the town stopped entirely. Then the court delayed for want of witnesses, and by 10 that night reporters were writing that a crowd had gathered at the public square and there were fears of trouble before morning.

The next day, 77 newspapers across the country carried the story, most on the front page. Editorials openly questioned whether men accused of murdering children deserved the protection of the courts at all. Ashland's leaders spent that winter fighting on two fronts — keeping their own neighbors from lynching the prisoners, and keeping the rest of the country from branding their town a lawless place.

The Ashland Tragedy Case, Pt. 2: Justice covers what happened when the case reached a courtroom: a judge who moved the prisoners downriver using three steamboats and a deception played out in front of thousands of spectators, and two murder trials held less than a month after the crime.

Hosts Marcus Roland and Emily Steele are joined by historian Joe Castle, author of The Ashland Tragedy: Murder, a Mob and a Militia in Kentucky.

Content warning: this episode contains graphic descriptions of violence and sexual assault drawn from trial testimony.

This is Part 2 of a four-part series.

Keywords: Kentucky true crime, Kentucky Case Files, Ashland Tragedy, Ashland Kentucky, Catlettsburg, Boyd County, George Ellis, William Neal, Ellis Craft, 1882 trials, accomplice testimony, Judge George Brown, Ohio River, steamboats, Gilded Age justice, historical true crime, Joe Castle, true crime podcast, Kentucky history podcast