The day of the trial drew near with the officials discouraged over the possible outcome. Each felt that the murderer of Little Roy was actually in custody, but they were still without the means of separating the guilty one from those who might be only partially guilty.
The night before the eventful day, Coroner Henderson, Deputy Sheriff Stephens, and County Attorney McGill gathered in the office of the last named to map out the plan of prosecution. With this decided on, it was suggested that they give the sphinx-like trio a final “work-out.”
As the questioning went on, the County Attorney studied the suspects. As he interpreted them, Mr . and Mrs. Rickey listened with more or less contempt to the cross-examination, saying little, and speaking with cold indifference whenever they were forced into answers. Clyde Rickey repeated the statement he had given several times, that he knew nothing of what had happened to little Roy; nor did he have any idea how he came to be suspended from the white oak tree. Mrs. Rickey expressed the same thoughts, but occasionally there was a look of gloating in her eyes, as if she felt sure she had tricked the officials, and knew that the law would be unable to fasten the crime on any of them.
Not so with Jim Andy Day. He quailed under the County Attorney’s stern glances, and shifted uneasily as penetrating questions were put. Was his attitude the opening wedge? McGill thought so. Anyway there was nothing to be lost by a last minute attempt to play the apparently scared lover against his paramour and the husband he had wronged. So he had Mr. and Mrs. Rickey returned to their cells, and dismissing his two colleagues, concentrated on Jim Andy Day.
After some rapid-fire questioning with the man becoming more and more nervous, the County Attorney suddenly changed his tactics.
“Jim Andy,” he said kindly, “I’d like very much to get the truth from you. This is your last chance to tell all you know, and telling the truth now may save your life. You must consider the following things carefully.
“We know little Roy Rickey was murdered, and we can prove it. We know the cord used in hanging him was that used by your father in tying an old suitcase together. We know that Roy returned to the house after taking the cow to pasture, and we’ve found neighbors who heard his screams shortly after he reached home. You’ve admitted you were in the house at that time. Therefore, you know what happened to Roy when he got back home. Better tell us and save your hide, don’t you think?”
The bluff of the County Attorney about neighbors seeing the boy return and hearing the screams, had a visible effect on Jim Andy Day. He moved uneasily, moistened his lips, looked silently at the floor. Then he asked:
“Judge, have you got a cigarette?”
“Sure, Jim,” replied the County Attorney. “Here’s a whole pack that you can keep.”
Day’s face brightened as if he had at last found an unexpected friend.
McGill continued, “Jim Andy, we don’t want to kill you for this thing if you didn’t do it, but the way it stands now, you’re in it as thick as the other two.”
“But Judge, I’m afraid to say anything, yet if I don’t tell, they’ll frame me. I’m afraid.”
“Tell the truth, Jim Andy,” said McGill inexorably, “and you’ll be all right if you haven’t been mixed up in this awful crime.”
Jim Andy put his hands to his face and brokenly sobbed, “I’m afraid to tell! I’m afraid of being mobbed and I’m afraid of that woman too!”
“We’ll not let anyone harm you, Jim. We’ll take you to the Federal prison at Catlettsburg, if necessary, where lynchers can’t get to you. And we h ope to put that woman where she will never hurt anyone again.”
After several seconds had ticked by, Jim Andy suddenly said:
“All right, Judge—but you do everything you can for me.”
“I will, but tell me who killed Roy Rickey?”
“It was Eliza—I mean Mrs. Rickey. It was this way. Roy came back Wednesday evening late. We were eating supper, when Roy said something about telling his Dad on Eliza and me. We had been together a lot and had some big times. Roy was around all the time and once or twice he came in on us when we were intimate. Roy showed he didn’t like it and that night he acted like he was sure going to tell on us. Mrs. Rickey was sitting across the table, and she got mad at Roy. She picked up a dish and threw it at him. It hit Roy in the face and he threw up his hands and started screaming. I was scared and didn’t hardly know what to do. He had fallen down, but I picked him up and tried to keep him from crying.
“Mrs. Rickey rushed around the table awful mad. She grabbed little Roy and choked him while I was holding him. When she stopped he was dead.
“We both were scared, then, and we quickly wrapped him up in a quilt and put him in a corner of my room. We, or rather Mrs. Rickey, was going to have prayer meeting at the house Friday night, and because she was afraid the body would smell, she made me carry it down to the old mine.
“We took it back in there late Friday night. We thought that we might bet by if we hung the body in a tree. So in the darkness, we put it up in the tree. I guess we did a bad job of it. Of course, I couldn’t tell that night what condition his body was in, and I was so afraid I didn’t know what to do. I just did what she told me to, and that’s all there is to it, Judge.”
McGill listened to the astounding story, and drew a breath of relief. He felt sure Jim Andy was now telling the truth. Finally he asked:
“What about those bloodstained clothes found in the yard, Jim?”
“I guess she used them to wipe the blood off the floor in my room.”
“Did Clyde Rickey know anything about all this?”
“No, but he didn’t do anything much about finding him.”
After a few more queries, McGill took Day back to his cell.
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| Circuit Judge G.W.E. Wolford Presided at the trial |
The County Attorney then called his associates and told them the news. Deputy Stephens, Coroner Henderson and McGill met in the latter’s office and rearranged their presentation of evidence with the determination of sending Eliza Rickey and Jim Andy Day to the electric chair for as repellent a murder as ever was committed in Kentucky or any other state.
Governor Ruby Laffoon of Kentucky named former Governor William F. Fields as prosecuting attorney to succeed Thomas S. Yates who had recently resigned, and he began at once to prepare his case. He elected to try Eliza Rickey first and use Jim Andy Day as a witness for the Commonwealth against his paramour.
In jail, the stepmother’s contempt had changed to an attitude of defiance. She still expressed her belief that she would be cleared of killing little Roy, as she was unaware that the story of her brutal strangling of the child in a fit of anger had been told to the County Prosecutor by Jim Day. She knew that the people of her home county execrated her and were clamoring for her conviction, but this did not appear to trouble her.
When she faced Judge Wolford in the village of Grayson, the count y seat, on September 19th, 1932, it was just twenty-nine days after little Roy’s bruised body had been cut down from the white oak tree. She was defended by two of the best legal minds in eastern Kentucky, Samuel J. Sparks of Ashland and Benjamin F. Thompson, an attorney of Olive Hill. The story of how Jim Andy Day had held the youngster while his own mother choked him to death with her hands had been spread far and wide and people came from all over the State to crowd the little courtroom and get a glimpse of the two fiends, hoping to hear them sentenced for their awful crime. Almost everyone believed they would be found guilty.
The defense attorneys immediately asked for a change of venue, contending with some truth that a fair trial in Carter County would be impossible because of the vindictive feelings constantly expressed against the pair. However, this indignation was not confined to the people of the county in which the crime had been committed, but extended throughout the State, and recognizing this, Judge Wolford ruled against the motion and ordered the trial to proceed.
As outlined in the foregoing, most of the evidence against the black-eyed woman was circumstantial. The highlight of the trial was expected to be the detailed story of Jim Andy Day confirming the facts he had given in his confession to the County Attorney. Much to their surprise Day, when he took the stand, refused to “tell all” as he had promised but contented himself with the statement that “Mrs. Rickey only choked Roy,” leaving it to be inferred that death had occurred accidentally when she seized the youngster by the throat in a fit of anger. The prosecution endeavored to extract all the details from their star witness but failed.
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