“Think we’d better hold the inquest anyway, while we’ve got these people here. I see you’ve had Mrs. Rickey come along. We can make our investigation afterwards. Inasmuch as there seems to be a good deal of mystery about the boy’s death, it’s better not to have the Coroner’s jury cast suspicion on anyone until we have our facts together and are ready to act.”
A Coroner’s jury of six men was then selected, but little helpful information was elicited from the evidence.
Among those heard was Dr. Dan Fortune, a local physician, who testified that he had examined the boy’s body and concluded that little Roy had been dead about three days. He felt quite sure the lad was dead before he had been hanged. The youngster’s parents and Jim Andy Day told of the boy’s strange disappearance, but stated that they had no knowledge of what had happened to him between Wednesday evening and Saturday morning, when his body had been found.
In further verification of the officials’ suspicions that it was a case of homicide, not suicide, Earl Adams, Sam Barker and Ersel Maggard, all residents of Soldier, stated that they had been within sixteen feet of the scrub oak which served as a gallows, as late as two o’clock Friday afternoon, and that they were sure no body was hanging there at that time. If the boy had been dead three days, he must have been killed first and then hung from the tree sometime between two o’clock Friday afternoon and six o’clock Saturday morning, when the tragedy was discovered.
Clyde Rickey, father of the dead child, heard neighbors tell the jury how he had lashed Roy unmercifully only a few days before the boy’s death, causing blood to trickle down the little fellow’s arms and drip from his finger-tips. There were murmurs from the crowd, and a movement toward the parent, but they subsided as additional testimony was given.
Having heard all the information that was forthcoming, the jury returned the verdict that: “Roy Rickey came to his death by unnatural means at the hands of a person or persons unknown.”
Thus was thrown into the lap of the officials the mystery of who had killed Roy Rickey – and why? The poignant question reiterated earlier in the day in childish treble. “What’s Roy doing hanging there?” had now to be answered by the county’s investigators.
The verdict of the Coroner’s jury was not without its effect on the residents of Carter County. Among those who had seen the pathetic picture of the youngster hanging dead in the sunshine and shadow of that Saturday morning, the tales of parental brutality were a constant topic of conversation. If the germ that lay in the minds of many were ever matured it would have provided all that was needed to sweep the feelings of the community into a lynching fever.
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