The Execution of Oscar Jones: November 4, 1892 – Bath County’s Last Hanging

 

On a chilly Friday morning in the fall of 1892, Bath County gathered to watch a man die.

On November 4, 1892, a Black man named Oscar Jones was publicly hanged in Owingsville, Kentucky, for the murder of Sharpsburg town marshal Taylor Vice. The scaffold stood behind the county jail, near where West Paul Lewis Drive meets Thompson Road today — and it would be the last legal hanging ever carried out in Bath County.¹

Christmas Eve Trouble in Sharpsburg

The story began the previous winter, on Christmas Eve 1891, in Sharpsburg.

That night, Oscar’s son, George Jones, had been drinking heavily and causing a disturbance at the family home. Town marshal Taylor Vice stepped in to calm things down, performing the ordinary but often dangerous duties of a small-town lawman.² Witnesses later testified that George grabbed a club or stick, and Vice wrestled it away from him. In the confusion of the fight, Oscar Jones rushed in and stabbed Marshal Vice.³

Vice’s wounds proved fatal. Oscar and George fled Sharpsburg, but Oscar was captured the next day in Mount Sterling and brought back to Bath County to face murder charges.³

A Prisoner in Danger

From the moment Oscar arrived at the Bath County jail, tension hung over Owingsville.

Jones was a Black man accused of killing a white marshal during an era when mobs often carried out “justice” without the courts. Rumors of a lynching spread quickly.⁴ Jailer Sam Nixon armed himself and his son Will, determined to protect the prisoner.

On the night of February 21, 1892, a masked mob forced its way into the jailer’s living quarters, intending to drag Oscar out and hang him. Instead, they met Nixon and his son standing firm with shotguns, announcing they would protect their prisoner “to the death.” The mob backed down.⁴

In a time when racial violence often replaced due process, this moment is unusual and historically significant.

Trial, Sentence, and Bascom’s Field

Oscar Jones was tried in March 1892 and convicted of murdering Marshal Vice.⁵ The judge sentenced him to death by hanging, and officials selected a spot behind the jail — Bascom’s Field — for the execution.¹

The hanging was first scheduled for May 20, 1892, but an appeal delayed it. When the appeal failed, the governor reset the execution for November 4.¹

Public executions were still legal in Kentucky, and they often drew large crowds. It would not be until the 20th century — especially after the infamous 1936 hanging of Rainey Bethea in Owensboro — that the state abolished public executions entirely.⁹

November 4, 1892: Bath County’s Last Legal Hanging

When the day finally arrived, people poured into Owingsville.

A large crowd gathered at Bascom’s Field that morning. Around 9:30 a.m., Sheriff C.C. Hazelrigg led the guarded procession from the jail to the gallows.⁷ Jones was dressed entirely in black and wore white gloves — a detail that stuck in local memory.¹

He took time for prayer and a final chew of tobacco.¹ A black hood was placed over his head, and the rope adjusted around his neck. At approximately 10:00 a.m., the trap was sprung.¹

Local physicians Dr. F.P. Gudgell and Dr. Robertson examined the body and declared death at 10:11 a.m.¹ This would be Bath County’s last legal hanging.¹

A Last-Minute Confession?

Local tradition — passed down through families and recounted in later interviews — claims that Oscar Jones may have confessed the night before his execution, saying that his son George delivered the fatal blow and that he took the blame to save him.¹¹

No surviving newspaper account verifies this claim. Contemporary reporting simply notes that “Oscar Jones (colored) was hanged at Owingsville Friday for the murder of Marshal Taylor Vice…”⁶

It remains one of those Appalachian stories that sits somewhere between memory and myth.

Race, Justice, and the Line Between Law and Mob

Looking back, the Jones case exposes several uncomfortable truths about 19th-century justice in Kentucky.

• Race: Black defendants in this era faced harsh sentencing, limited legal protection, and frequent threats of lynching.¹⁰

• Law vs. Vigilantism: Jailer Nixon’s refusal to surrender Jones to the mob stands out as a rare act of defiance against racialized mob violence.⁴

• Public Spectacle: Executions were community events — moral theater as much as punishment. It took decades for Kentucky to move executions behind prison walls.⁹ ⁶ ¹²

Oscar Jones’s execution sits on the dividing line between frontier-style public justice and the more restrained but still controversial capital punishment of the modern era.

Walking the Ground Today

If you walk behind Family Drug in Owingsville today, down West Paul Lewis Drive toward Cemetery Street, you pass close to where the gallows once stood.¹ Some locals say the area still feels heavy — a sudden chill or the sense of someone walking beside you.

Whether viewed as a straightforward case of crime and punishment, a tragedy shaped by race, or a haunting memory of public death, the execution of Oscar Jones remains one of Bath County’s most enduring and somber historical moments.

---

Endnotes

1. Narrative History of Bath County, Kentucky, Vol. 1.

2. “Execution in Bath County.” Bath County News-Outlook.

3. Montgomery County Sentinel (Mt. Sterling), Dec. 26–30, 1891.

4. Lexington Morning Herald, Feb. 22, 1892.

5. Bath County Court Records, Commonwealth vs. Oscar Jones, March Term 1892.

6. Semi-Weekly Interior Journal (Stanford), Nov. 8, 1892.

7. Mt. Sterling Advocate, Nov. 9, 1892.

8. Bath County Historical Society Archives.

9. Kentucky Historical Society, “The Last Public Execution in Kentucky: Rainey Bethea, 1936.”

10. Equal Justice Initiative, Lynching in America: Kentucky Supplement.

11. Bath County Oral History Project, Paul Lewis Interview (1974).

12. Smithsonian Magazine, “Public Executions in the United States,” 2016.

The Farmer Who Never Came Home: The Life, Crime, and Execution of Harve Burton (Elliott County, Kentucky, 1933)

 

On a gray November morning in 1933, a shallow grave lay open on a hillside in rural Elliott County. Men from the Burton community had already been chosen as pallbearers. A preacher had been selected. Family members gathered inside a small farmhouse, waiting for the word that was supposed to arrive at any moment: the electric chair had done its job, and Harve Burton—tenant farmer, husband, father, and condemned murderer—was dead.

But the message never came.

Unbeknownst to the family, while they prepared for his funeral, Harve Burton was still very much alive in a cell nearly three hundred miles away at the Kentucky State Penitentiary in Eddyville. A telegraph from Governor Ruby Laffoon—granting Burton a last-minute stay of execution—had been sent. But Elliott County in 1933 had no telephone service, no railroad access, and no telegraph station. The news simply did not reach them.

It was a moment that captured everything about life and death in rural eastern Kentucky during the early 20th century: isolation, poverty, rough justice, and a community trying to make sense of a tragedy that began long before the electric chair was ever turned on.

Harve Burton was a tenant farmer in his mid-50s, living with his wife and children on the farm of a local physician known simply as Dr. Brown. Like many families in Elliott County during the Depression era, the Burtons lived a hard, work-driven life—planting corn, tending onion patches, and scraping by from season to season.

But beneath the surface, something darker was brewing inside Harve.

Court testimony later revealed a marriage marred by suspicion and hostility. Burton, suffering from untreated pain and poor health, became convinced—entirely without evidence—that his wife had infected him with a “loathsome disease.” His paranoia worsened. Relatives and the court later described his wife as “a good and upright woman,” but Burton’s fixation grew until it consumed him.

The stage was set for one of the most brutal domestic killings in Elliott County history.

May 10, 1932: The Garden Murder

The couple had argued for months, but on a spring morning in May 1932, things took a violent and irreversible turn.

According to the official Kentucky Court of Appeals opinion, Burton asked his wife to help with the crop work that day, promising her the corn harvest if she would return home and assist him. She agreed.

Later that morning, as she hoed onions in the garden, Burton approached her. Something ignited—anger, delusion, or a sudden loss of reason. He knocked her down once, then again as she rose. He jumped onto her chest with both knees, pinning her to the earth.

Then he drew a knife.

The Court described the act plainly: three deep thrusts into her neck.

His wife staggered a few yards, helped briefly by their young daughter, before collapsing with the final words: “Let me rest.” She died there in the yard.

Burton fled.

Local folklore and later newspaper accounts sensationalized the killing even further, claiming Burton “cut her head off with an axe and hoe.” Whether exaggeration or misinterpretation, one truth remained: the attack was savage, shocking, and final.

The Trial and Death Sentence

Burton was arrested and taken to jail for trial. His defense attempted to argue insanity, desperately leaning on his irrational delusions, but the jury wasn’t convinced. The Kentucky Court of Appeals later said he had “utterly failed” to prove insanity.

He was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in the electric chair.

The appeals process moved swiftly—this was 1930s Kentucky, after all—and by late 1933, Burton was sent to Eddyville to await his fate.

A Death Warrant Signed — and a Grave Dug Too Soon

On October 27, 1933, Governor Ruby Laffoon signed multiple execution warrants, including Burton’s, scheduling him for November 3, 1933.

Back home, his relatives accepted the verdict.

They dug his grave.

They gathered at the Burton home. They selected a preacher and pallbearers. His daughter traveled to Morehead to make arrangements for his body to be shipped back to Elliott County.

The community was ready to bury him.

But Eddyville was a long way from Elliott County. When Governor Laffoon issued a stay of execution, postponing the date to November 10, the Burton family simply didn’t hear about it. With no telephones, no rail line, and no telegraph, the holler remained in the dark.

A reporter for the Big Sandy News-Recorder described it with quiet astonishment:
The funeral party was assembled before they ever learned Harve Burton was still alive.

The Execution That Followed

The stay changed nothing in the end.

After a brief delay—some records place the final date as November 10, others as November 11—Harve Burton was executed in the electric chair at the Kentucky State Penitentiary. He was one of dozens executed in Kentucky during the pre-Furman era of centralized electrocutions.

His body, as the family had planned days earlier, was returned to Elliott County and laid into the grave that had been waiting for him.

A Story Larger Than One Man

The tale of Harve Burton is not simply a crime story—it is a portrait of Appalachia in the early 20th century:

• Isolation so deep that a man’s execution could be postponed without his family knowing.

• Poverty so entrenched that tenant farming meant living at the mercy of landowners and crop seasons.

• Mental illness left untreated, misunderstood, or outright dismissed.

• Domestic violence hidden behind the farmhouse walls.

• A justice system that moved swiftly, decisively, and often without much room for nuance or mercy.

In the end, Burton’s story—brutal, tragic, and largely forgotten—remains one of Kentucky’s starkest reminders of how thin the line could be between home life and horror, between the farm fields and the electric chair, between the man a community thinks it knows and the darkness he may be carrying inside.

Nearly a century later, the hillside grave dug too early tells the story better than any court document:

Harve Burton was a man doomed long before the state ever strapped him into the chair.

The Forgotten Triple Murderer of Carter County: The Story of Melvin Collins

 

In the spring of 1918, Carter County, Kentucky found itself at the center of one of the most shocking and volatile murder cases in its history. The man at the center of the storm was 23-year-old Melvin Collins, a troubled laborer from Olive Hill whose paranoia and simmering resentment erupted into a deadly rampage that left three men dead, two others wounded, and the entire region on the brink of vigilante justice.

Today, more than a century later, Collins’ name is nearly forgotten — buried under fragments of newspapers, genealogical entries, and fading local memory. But his story remains one of the most violent episodes ever recorded in Carter County.

Very little survives about the early life of Melvin Collins. Genealogical records place his birth around 1894, most likely in or near Olive Hill. Contemporary accounts suggest he already had a reputation as a “bad actor” before the murders — a young man frequently in trouble, often armed, and unpredictable in his behavior.

In 1918, Collins was working around the Hitchins Fire Brick Company, a large industrial plant near Grayson. It was a tough but steady job, and many local men who labored there were also preparing for possible service in World War I. The era was tense. “Slackers” — those who refused or failed to register for the draft — were under intense social pressure, and communities often turned on anyone suspected of dodging military duty.

This atmosphere would prove deadly.

On May 25, 1918, something inside Collins snapped.

He had recently been fined for failing to register for the draft, insisting he was underage. But in his mind, the fine wasn’t the real problem — the problem was who he believed had “turned him in.” Collins became convinced that several co-workers at the brick plant were responsible for reporting him to the authorities.

Fueled by anger and paranoia, Collins armed himself and set out for revenge.

On May 25, 1918, something inside Collins snapped.

He had recently been fined for failing to register for the draft, insisting he was underage. But in his mind, the fine wasn’t the real problem — the problem was who he believed had “turned him in.” Collins became convinced that several co-workers at the brick plant were responsible for reporting him to the authorities.

Fueled by anger and paranoia, Collins armed himself and set out for revenge. At the end of his rampage, three men were dead:  D. V. Carpenter , John Howard, and Cleve Sparks.

Collins fled the plant and took refuge in a nearby farmhouse. As word spread, lawmen and armed citizens converged on the property. A violent standoff erupted:

• Collins fired from a window, wounding Levi Shields in the hip.

• A civilian, Tony Stephens, entered the house to negotiate. But when he exited unexpectedly, the posse mistook him for the gunman and shot him by accident, wounding him seriously.

The sheriff and his men prepared to burn the house down to force Collins out. Faced with the prospect of being burned alive, Collins finally surrendered.

But he was far from safe.

As officers transported Collins toward Olive Hill, a furious mob gathered, shouting for blood and demanding that he be turned over to them. The sheriff drew his revolver, ordered Collins into a car, and sped through the crowd. To avoid lynching, they took him to the safer Catlettsburg jail in Boyd County. Even then, rumors spread that the mob might follow.

Judge Cisco ordered Collins moved again that very night.

Carter County had avoided a lynching by inches.

A grand jury was summoned almost immediately. Collins was indicted for the three murders, with two additional assault victims making the case even more severe.

Witnesses described Collins as cold, emotionless, and fully aware of his actions. Any hint of insanity was dismissed.

The jury convicted him, and he was sentenced to die in accordance with Kentucky law.

By 1918, Kentucky no longer hanged murderers at county jails — executions had been centralized at Eddyville in Lyon County, where the state’s electric chair had been in use since 1910.

According to Kentucky’s official execution records, Melvin Collins was executed on July 12, 1919, for the triple murder committed at Hitchins one year earlier.

His body was returned to family and buried in Woodland Cemetery in Ironton, Ohio.

The killings at Hitchins created deep shockwaves through Olive Hill and Grayson. All three victims were respected local men; two had prior law enforcement experience. The violence was sudden, senseless, and frighteningly personal.

In the end, Collins’ name slowly slipped into obscurity — overshadowed by World War I, the influenza pandemic, and the passage of time. But for those living in Carter County in 1918 and 1919, it was one of the defining tragedies of their era.

Three innocent men were murdered. Two more were shot. A community nearly descended into mob justice. And a troubled 23-year-old from Olive Hill became one of Kentucky’s most notorious killers of the early 20th century.

Remembering stories like this matters — not to sensationalize them, but to preserve the truth and acknowledge the real human cost behind headlines long forgotten.

Kentucky’s Sons of the Six-Gun: Bluegrass Roots of the Old West

 

Introduction: From the Bluegrass to the Badlands

The American West may have been settled on horseback, but many of those horses carried men from Kentucky.
From the hollers of Rowan County to the banks of the Ohio River in Mason County, the Bluegrass State sent forth some of the most famous — and infamous — figures to ever wear a six-gun.

They became outlaws, lawmen, and legends — men who carried with them the same stubborn pride, quick temper, and moral code they’d learned back home.
In truth, much of the Old West was Kentucky, reborn on the frontier.

---

Boone Helm: The Kentucky Cannibal

Born Levi Boone Helm in Lincoln County, Kentucky, in 1828, he grew up on the edge of civilization — a boy with an iron will and an uncontrollable temper.
After his family moved west, Helm’s violent nature erupted. He killed men in duels, robbed travelers, and during desperate winter treks through the wilderness, he ate human flesh — earning the infamous nickname “The Kentucky Cannibal.”
Helm was hanged in Montana in 1864, but his legend lived on as one of the West’s most terrifying frontiersmen.

---

Virgil Earp: Hartford’s Gift to the Law

Long before the O.K. Corral, there was Hartford, Kentucky — where Virgil Walter Earp was born in 1843.
The Earp family later moved to Illinois and Iowa, but Kentucky was their first home.
That same steady, justice-driven spirit of the Bluegrass would carry Virgil into history as one of the Old West’s most respected lawmen — a man whose courage and calm hand defined frontier justice.

---

Jack McCall: The Assassin from Jefferson County

Jack McCall, who shot Wild Bill Hickok in the back of the head during a poker game in Deadwood, was reportedly born in Jefferson County, Kentucky, around 1852.
He claimed his motive was revenge, but most historians believe he sought the notoriety that came with killing a legend.
McCall’s short, violent life ended on the gallows — one more Kentuckian forever tied to the West’s blood-soaked mythology.

---

Clarence Hite: Kentucky’s Outlaw in the James Gang

Clarence Browler Hite, born in Logan County, Kentucky, joined Jesse James and the infamous James-Younger Gang during their string of robberies in the 1870s.
Wounded during the Northfield, Minnesota raid, Hite represented a type of man Kentucky produced often in the Reconstruction years — proud, desperate, and unwilling to bend to federal authority after the Civil War.
In many ways, he was a Confederate raider who never stopped fighting.

---

Harvey “Kid Curry” Logan: Wild Bunch, Bluegrass Blood

Harvey Alexander Logan, known to history as “Kid Curry,” was one of the deadliest members of Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch.
Though born in Iowa, both of his parents — William Harvey Logan and Martha Ann Sturdivant — hailed from Fleming and Rowan Counties, Kentucky, where they married before moving west.
Pinkerton detectives called him “the wildest of all the Wild Bunch,” and his story — like so many — began with Kentucky grit in his blood.

---

Johnny Ringo: The Gentleman Gunfighter of Montgomery County Descent

John Peters “Johnny” Ringo, famed gunfighter and rival of the Earps, was born in Missouri in 1850 but descended from Kentuckians.
His father, Martin Albert Ringo, came from Montgomery County, Kentucky, and his grandparents, John Ringo Sr. and Mary Peters Ringo, were among that county’s early settlers.
Though Johnny’s end came in a lonely Arizona grove, the blood that ran through him came from the Kentucky foothills — genteel, proud, and defiant.

---

Judge Roy Bean: The “Law West of the Pecos,” Born in Mason County

Phantly Roy Bean Jr., better known as Judge Roy Bean, was born in Mason County, Kentucky, around 1825, near the town of May’s Lick.
Before becoming Texas’s legendary “Law West of the Pecos,” he was a Kentucky boy with a restless spirit and a quick wit.
Operating out of his saloon, The Jersey Lilly, in Langtry, Texas, Bean dispensed his unique version of frontier justice — often with a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a six-shooter in the other.
His rulings were eccentric, his methods unorthodox, but his roots were pure Kentucky: a mix of stubbornness, humor, and self-assured independence.

The 1912 Rose Run Riots of Bath County, Kentucky

 

The Rose Run Riots of Bath County, Kentucky (1912)

Bath County, Kentucky is known for its rolling hills, springs, and horse country—but over a century ago it was also home to one of the most significant iron-ore operations in the state. The Rose Run Iron Company, situated between Olympia and Polksville, promised jobs and industry for a rural county that badly needed both. By the summer of 1912, however, those promises gave way to strikes, sabotage, armed guards, and a court-ordered disarmament that locals would long remember as the Rose Run Riots.

---

A Promising Mine

Geologists had been aware of Rose Run’s value for decades. The Kentucky Geological Survey identified the Rose Run and Preston deposits as among the most significant iron-ore banks in Kentucky, with ore bodies running through the Brassfield (Clinton) beds.¹ By 1905, the Rose Run Iron Company near Owingsville was producing tens of thousands of tons. A U.S. Geological Survey bulletin noted “the mine of the Rose Run Iron Company near Owingsville, Ky.” and tallied roughly 25,000 tons of ore shipped that year.²

This wasn’t a backwoods furnace—it was an operation with outside capital, professional engineers, and connections stretching as far as St. Louis.³ The tramlines and wooden trestles that carried ore out of the hills symbolized more than infrastructure. They were lifelines, and in 1912, they became battlegrounds.

---

The Strike of 1912

By early summer 1912, the mineworkers of Rose Run had walked out. Wages, hours, and dangerous conditions fueled the decision. The strike dragged on for months, leaving the operation divided between strikers, loyal men who stayed on the job, and company-hired guards watching over the property.

On Wednesday evening, July 17, 1912, around 6 p.m., the trouble surfaced again. The Bath County News-Outlook reported:
*“Lawlessness broke out again… two bents of a trestle were damaged.”*⁴

The matter-of-fact tone only underscored the seriousness. This wasn’t the first incident, but it was one that made the county sit up. A damaged trestle could derail cars, cost money, and kill men.

---

Violence Makes the Wires

By September, the dispute had gone beyond Bath County and hit the regional news wires. On September 20, 1912, a Lexington dispatch printed in the Augusta Daily Herald summarized the scene:

• The strike had been “in progress for the past three months.”

• The company had posted armed guards.

• A reward was offered for the “trestle burners.”

• Around 300 strikers were holding firm.

• And, perhaps most damning, there had been “much damage” at the plant.⁵

Just days later, another wire report described an explosive encounter. Strikers lined up on both sides of the track and challenged ten guards riding a train near the mines.⁶ The imagery is stark: a train rolling into contested territory, guards staring down a gauntlet of men who had once worked those very tracks.

---

Court Cracks Down

By October, Bath County’s legal authorities were compelled to intervene. On October 23, 1912, Bath Circuit Judge Young issued a sweeping order requiring the strikers to **“come into court and surrender their arms.”**⁷ Newspapers across the region described it as a “drastic order” intended to halt the “rioting and fighting at the Rose Run mines.”

Reports from the same period noted that not only had a trestle been destroyed, but two company-owned tenant houses were also burned.⁸ Violence was no longer limited to the mine’s infrastructure—it had reached into the homes tied to the company itself.

One out-of-state paper even singled out a man named Browning, a former employee, in connection with the unrest.⁹ Whether he was an instigator, a symbol, or simply a recognizable name among the strikers remains unclear, but his mention shows how personal the conflict had become.

---

Legacy of the Riots

The Rose Run Riots did not become as bloody or infamous as the coal wars in Harlan or Mingo, but for Bath County the summer of 1912 marked its own labor war. Families were split, property was destroyed, and a sitting circuit judge ordered workers to lay down their guns in open court.

The mining continued in later years—photographs from 1919 show men still working the Rose Run ore banks—but the events of 1912 left an imprint.¹⁰ Long after the smoke cleared, locals could point to the old trestle embankments along Rose Run Creek and recall the season when the county’s promise of iron and industry nearly came undone.

---

Endnotes

1. Kentucky Geological Survey, “Iron Ore,” notes Rose Run and Preston deposits as the most significant iron-ore deposits in the state, with a 1919 photograph of Rose Run mining.

2. E. C. Eckel, Iron and Manganese, U.S. Geological Survey, Contributions to Economic Geology (1905): “Section at mine of Rose Run Iron Company near Owingsville, Ky.” Production ~25,000 tons in 1905.

3. Engineers’ Club of St. Louis, 1904 roster lists Philip N. Moore as treasurer of the Rose Run Iron Company of Kentucky.

4. Bath County News-Outlook, July 17, 1912: “Lawlessness broke out again… about 6 o’clock p.m. two bents of a trestle were damaged.”

5. Augusta Daily Herald, Sept. 20, 1912, Lexington dispatch: strike three months, armed guards, reward, ~300 strikers, “much damage.”

6. Wire report, late Sept. 1912 (New York–area press): strikers “lined up on both sides of the track” and challenged “ten guards on a train” near Rose Run.

7. Owensville, Ky., Oct. 23, 1912 press report: Circuit Judge Young orders strikers to “come into court and surrender their arms” to halt rioting.

8. Regional brief (Mt. Sterling press), Oct. 1912: “trestle and two tenant houses destroyed” in Bath County during Rose Run strike.

9. Out-of-state Kentucky digest, Oct. 1912: mentions former employee “Browning” in relation to Rose Run unrest.

10. Kentucky Geological Survey archives, 1919 photograph of Rose Run mining operations in the Brassfield (Clinton) beds.

The Man Who Beat Alcatraz; The Story of Kentucky's John Paul Scott

 

For nearly three decades, Alcatraz stood as the unbreakable fortress of American incarceration. Surrounded by the treacherous, ice-cold waters of the San Francisco Bay and fortified with the nation’s tightest security measures, “The Rock” was believed to be escape-proof. But in December 1962, a prisoner born in Springfield, Kentucky, would prove otherwise—if only for a fleeting moment.

John Paul Scott, inmate AZ-1403, was not as widely known as Al Capone or “Machine Gun” Kelly, but he carved his own place in criminal history by accomplishing something thought impossible. He didn’t just escape from Alcatraz—he swam to freedom.

A Kentucky Beginning

John Paul Scott was born on January 3, 1927, in the small town of Springfield, Kentucky, nestled in the heart of Washington County. His early years are not heavily documented, but by the time he reached adulthood, Scott had drifted into a life of crime. He was convicted in Lexington, Kentucky, for armed bank robbery and illegal possession of firearms. The nature of his offenses and his repeated escape attempts earned him a 30-year sentence and a ticket to Alcatraz—the last stop for the country’s most troublesome federal inmates¹.

Life Inside the Rock

Arriving at Alcatraz in 1959, Scott was assigned to culinary detail in the prison's basement area beneath the main kitchen. While this may have seemed like a mundane assignment, it provided him the opportunity to observe the infrastructure of the prison more closely—and it was here that the seed of escape was planted.

Scott began working alongside another inmate, Darl Lee Parker, and over time, the two hatched a bold plan. Using a concoction of stolen tools, strings coated in abrasive powder, and pure ingenuity, they gradually sawed through the iron bars of a basement window. With each shift, they concealed their work by covering the window with cardboard and strategically placed grease².

The Great Swim

On the cold evening of December 16, 1962, Scott and Parker made their move. Slipping out of the kitchen basement, they descended to the rocky shore of the island and entered the bay’s frigid waters.

Unlike other escapees before them, they had fashioned flotation devices out of prison-issued rubber gloves, which they inflated and wore as water wings. The water temperature hovered around 54°F (12°C), and the tides were strong—conditions many believed impossible to survive³.

Just minutes into the swim, Parker lost consciousness and was pulled back to the shore by currents, where he was recaptured. But John Paul Scott kept going. With determination fueled by desperation, he continued to battle the waves, the tide, and the cold.

To the shock of both prison officials and the broader public, Scott made it.

A Shocking Discovery

Around dawn the next day, a teenage boy bicycling along the waterfront at Fort Point—located beneath the Golden Gate Bridge—spotted something strange: a shivering, semi-conscious man lying on the shore. The boy alerted the authorities, and the man was soon identified as none other than John Paul Scott.

He was suffering from hypothermia and exhaustion, but he was alive. The Coast Guard transferred him to Letterman General Hospital at the Presidio, where he was treated and stabilized before being returned to Alcatraz⁴.

This marked the first—and only—known instance of a prisoner successfully swimming from Alcatraz to the mainland.

The Aftermath

Scott’s escape stunned prison officials and reignited national debate over the viability of Alcatraz as a maximum-security facility. His successful swim shattered the myth of its natural defenses and exposed vulnerabilities in the prison’s infrastructure. Just three months later, in March 1963, Alcatraz was permanently closed, citing rising costs and concerns over outdated security systems⁵.

Scott, meanwhile, was transferred to other federal prisons including Leavenworth and Marion. His life behind bars continued for several more decades until his death on February 22, 1987, at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tallahassee, Florida⁶.

Legacy

While Scott’s escape was short-lived, his story remains a testament to human endurance, cunning, and the will to survive. Though other inmates—including the famous Anglin brothers—vanished during escape attempts, none were ever confirmed to have reached the mainland alive. Only John Paul Scott achieved that feat.

He may not have remained free, but for a brief moment, the boy from Kentucky defied the odds and beat Alcatraz.

References

1. Wikipedia contributors. "John Paul Scott (prisoner)." Wikipedia.
2. "The Alcatraz Escape That Worked." Blue Ridge True Crime.
3. SFGenealogy. "Alcatraz: The Only Successful Escape."
4. Reddit - Today I Learned. “Scott is the only confirmed escapee to reach the San Francisco shore.”
5. "Closure of Alcatraz." AlcatrazHistory.com.
6. Federal Bureau of Prisons Records; summary via Find A Grave and official archives.

Glen Rogers : The Casanova Killer

 

Glen Edward Rogers, infamously dubbed the "Casanova Killer" and "Cross Country Killer," is a convicted serial killer whose violent spree across the United States in the mid-1990s left a trail of devastation.

Born on July 15, 1962, in Hamilton, Ohio, Rogers's life of crime culminated in convictions for two murders, with suspicions of his involvement in several others. He is currently on death row in Florida, with his execution scheduled for May 15, 2025.

Early Life and Troubled Beginnings

Rogers was one of seven children in a working-class family. His early years were marked by instability; he was expelled from school before turning 16 and married young. The marriage ended in divorce, with allegations of physical abuse. These formative years set the stage for a life characterized by criminal behavior and violence.

The Cross-Country Killing Spree

Rogers's confirmed murders span several states, with his killing spree beginning in 1995:

• Sandra Gallagher (California, September 1995): A 33-year-old mother of three, Gallagher met Rogers at a Van Nuys bar. Her strangled and burned body was found in her pickup truck the next day.

• Linda Price (Mississippi, October 1995): Price was found stabbed to death in her bathtub. She had been living with Rogers, who disappeared shortly after her murder.

• Tina Marie Cribbs (Florida, November 1995): Cribbs met Rogers at a Tampa bar and was later found stabbed in a motel bathtub. Rogers was arrested in Kentucky driving her car.
  
  Andy Jiles Sutton (Louisiana, November 1995): Sutton's body was discovered in her apartment, stabbed and hidden inside a waterbed mattress.

Arrest, Trials, and Convictions

Rogers was apprehended on November 13, 1995   after a high-speed chase in Waco, Kentucky.

He was first tried and convicted in Florida for the murder of Tina Marie Cribbs, receiving a death sentence in 1997. Subsequently, he was extradited to California, where he was convicted in 1999 for the murder of Sandra Gallagher and again sentenced to death. Despite the California sentence, Rogers remains incarcerated in Florida.

Rogers during his capture in Waco, KY in 1995.

Claims of Additional Murders

While in custody, Rogers claimed responsibility for up to 70 murders across the country, though these claims have not been substantiated. He later recanted, stating he was joking. Nevertheless, law enforcement considers him a suspect in several unsolved cases that share similarities with his confirmed crimes.

On a regional level, Rogers is believed to have killed 71-year old veteran Mark Peters of Hamilton (Butler County). Peters' body was found in January 1994 in Beattyville KY in Rogers' family cabin.

Alleged Involvement in the O.J. Simpson Case

In a controversial twist, Rogers claimed involvement in the 1994 murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. According to the 2012 documentary My Brother the Serial Killer, Rogers told his brother and a criminal profiler that he had been hired by O.J. Simpson to steal a pair of earrings from Nicole and that he was instructed to kill her if necessary. The Los Angeles Police Department dismissed these claims, maintaining confidence in Simpson's guilt.

Rogers' Mugshot as an inmate.

Imminent Execution

After decades on death row, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed Rogers's death warrant in April 2025. His execution by lethal injection is scheduled for May 15, 2025. This decision has brought a sense of closure to the families of his victims, who have waited years for justice to be served.

Conclusion

Glen Rogers's life is a chilling narrative of charm turned deadly, leaving a lasting impact on communities across the United States. His case serves as a stark reminder of the complexities involved in tracking and prosecuting serial offenders, as well as the enduring pain inflicted upon victims' families.