Maxey, Lexington Herald-Leader, June 3, 1909

 Lynched on Capital Bridge

Mob at Frankfort Hangs John Maxey And Then Riddles His Body With Bullets– Victim Had Fatally Shot Bert Bowers, Of Kansas, A Director Howe Circus– Lexington Detectives Save Man From Probable Death Earlier in the Night, But Later Masked Men Overpower Jailer Bridges, Take His Prisoner to Viaduct Over River and String Him Up.

Frankfort, Ky., June 3– A mob of seventy-five masked and armed men overpowered Jailer Bridges at 2:30 o’clock this morning, took a Negro prisoner from the Franklin county jail and under the glare of the electric lights, hanged him from the bridge over the Kentucky river.

The Negro was John Maxey, who shot and perhaps fatally wounded Bert Bowers, one of the directors of the Howe Shows, which exhibited here yesterday.

The mob, which was orderly and determined, appeared in the vicinity of the jail without any previous intimation of its coming. While the main body waited about the jail where the prisoner was confined, a committee of about a dozen called for Jailer Bridges, saying they wanted to speak with him. Not suspecting their intent, Jailer Bridges came out and was quickly told by the members of the mob to surrender the keys to the jail as they wanted Maxey, the Negro who had shot Showman Bowers.

Jailer Bridges refused to give up the keys, and the leader signaling his followers, they speedily overpowered the jailer, and searched his clothing, securing the keys, and bringing out the culprit, who begged piteously for his life. His appeals however, fell on deaf ears, for he was marched down St. Clair street until the Kentucky river bridge was reached.

Here a rope was produced and he was swung up to a cross arm of the overhead bridge work. An iron column of the bridge was so close to the suspended Negro, that he grabbed hold of it several times.

To shorten the work the lynchers then fired a volley into the dangling form, which ended the agony of the victim. The work of the mob was done so quickly and determinedly that within fifteen minutes after Jailer Bridges was called out of bed, Maxey was a corpse and lynchers had dispersed before even the police had time to reach the scene.

None of the members of the mob were recognized.

Shortly after the mob had gone, the police aroused by the volley of shots which had ended the life of the Negro, hurried to the scene only to find a dead body swinging from the bridge. The Coroner was notified and a few minutes afterward the body was cut down by his directions and taken to an undertaker’s establishment.

Hundreds of persons passed over the bridge this morning from South Frankfort past the very spot where the lynching took place, without knowing what had been done there by the mob a few hours before, as there were no grewsome [sic] signs left to tell the tale.

It is probable that Maxey would have been lynched earlier in the night had it not been for the intervention of Chief of Detectives Malcolm Brown and Detectives Dudley Veal and Thomas Donlan, who happened to be in Frankfort and who rescued Maxey after a fierce fight, from a crowd of showmen who had taken his trail after the shooting of Showman Bowers.

The shooting was nothing short of a desperate attempt on the part of Maxey to assassinate Showman Bert C. Bowers of Wichita, Kansas.

Bowers is one of the directors of the Howe Shows. While walking through the lot from one tent to another he saw the Negro ripping the tent of the main show. He told the Negro to stop and went to get a policeman to arrest him.

When he returned Maxie raised a revolver he was carrying and fired on him four times, one bullet penetrating his abdomen. The surgeons do not know yet whether the wound is fatal. Bowers is an Elk and is in the hands of the Elks in this city, and will be well cared for.

After shoot [sic] Bowers, the Negro ran toward a hill, but was pursued by a lot of Negro employes of the show. Maxey was hit in the head with a stake and dazed. When the employes caught him, they put a rope around his neck and he would have been hanged to the limb of a tree in ten seconds, but for Chief Brown and detectives Veal and Donlan, who ran in and after a fierce fight with the showmen rescued Maxie, who was later hurried to the county jail. Maxey was an ex-convict and a desperate Negro. He was shot in the neck by Policeman Johnson, during the pursuit, but not seriously injured.

Showman Bowers was operated upon at a local hospital, and while the full extent of his injuries are not known yet, his condition is regarded as precarious. There is no apparent excitement here this morning as a result of the lynching of Maxey, but hundreds of people visited the river bridge to view the scene of the mob’s work.