There is little extant biographical information about Louis Laferdetta. Newspapers of the time did not report on his personal life, and his murder was written about in brief articles without any identifying information. Contemporary reports used the same language about his class status, that he was a \u201ctramp\u201d or a transient worker. There\u2019s also a negative connotation with tramp that existed during the time when he was lynched. It\u2019s possible that his status as a transient worker was misrepresented to justify the crime. Furthermore, if he was a \u201ctramp,\u201d then Laferdetta would not have been recorded by the U.S. Census because he may have been overlooked by census takers for not having a permanent residence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Laferdetta arrived on an unknown day in Burlington, Boone County, where he befriended farmer William Wheelock. On July 17, 1894, newspapers reported that Laferdetta murdered Wheelock but the newspapers offered no information about the circumstances of Wheelock\u2019s murder. Laferdetta was arrested and taken to the Boone county jail. That night a mob broke into the jail and took him just a few blocks away from the jail and hung him. Laferdetta was the second of three people hung in a bloody 48 hours across the state of Kentucky. The other two were Marion Howard and Edwin Traughber. Traughber’s biography can be found here<\/a><\/strong>, as part of the Documenting Racial Violence archive. <\/p>\n\n\n\nLocation of the Lynching<\/h3>