Twenty-three-year-old Luella Mabbitt disappeared suddenly in 1886, never to be seen again. The people of Delphi, Indiana, suspected her former beau Amer Green, who came from a crime-ridden family and flew the coop during the investigation. Green, however, insisted that Luella was alive and well and living in Texas. With no body and no evidence, the townspeople took it upon themselves to lynch Green.
On the night of October 21, 1887, some two hundred men quietly marched through the streets, surrounding the county jail. They broke their way in and confronted the sheriff, demanding the keys to the prison. When he refused, some of the mob overpowered him, and the others used sledgehammers to break the locks leading to the cells. They went straight to the cell containing Amer Green. At gunpoint, he was seized and tied up. He was led outside and forced into a covered wagon. It drove off, with the bulk of the crowd following.
The wagon drove to the woods of Walnut Grove, about eight miles away. It was soon joined by a large caravan of carriages, wagons, and men on horseback. Green was taken out of the wagon and ordered to confess his guilt.
Green maintained the stolid calm of a man who knows he’s doomed. He quietly maintained that Luella was in Fort Worth. When asked why, if this was the case, she didn’t come home and resolve the mystery, he replied, “She would if I had the time to send for her.” He claimed that Luella had been desperate to leave her home for some time, and on the night she vanished, he had merely assisted in her desire to run away.
After Green was killed by the lynch mob, the investigation moved to Texas, where some intriguing clues emerged. Read the rest of the story of Luella Mabbitt, and also that of her sister and brothers who ran into legal troubles, at Strange Company.