The Ashland Tragedy Case, Pt. 2: Justice

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