Ray County, Missouri The New York Times transcription;Lynching of Two Prisoners in Missouri, March 23, 1868

Lynching of Two Prisoners in Missouri

From the St. Louis Republican, March 20

A gentleman from Richmond, Ray County, states that the two prisoners, David McGuire and James Devers,
in prison at that place on charges of being participants in the bank robbery and murder of two of the
citizens, some months since, were taken from the jail, on Monday night, by parties unknown (or at least
not named) and hanged at a short distance from town. It is stated a letter had been received a short
time previous from a person in Gentry County requesting Sheriff Reyburn to hold Devers, who, it was
charged, had murdered his (the writer's) brother, and that authority was about to be sent down for him.
On Monday last, three persons heavily armed, purporting to be from Gentry County, one or all of them of
the same family name, with the writer of the letter, were seen near Richmond. During the night, by means
of keys, the jail was entered, the prisoners noiselessly taken out, and next morning they were found
dead. Meanwhile the strangers had disappeared. The circumstances attending the affair, however, seem
to indicate that other parties besides these strangers, even on the supposition that they were
participants, must have been cognizant of, or have assisted in, the tragic, and, as we think, unwarrantable act.


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