On This Day in History: November 26

Vigilante justice for the murder of Brooke Hart

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Ah, 1930s America: When vigilante justice was an event the entire family could enjoy. It happened in San Jose, California. The heir to a wealthy business was kidnapped then murdered. Then his murderers were murdered while thousands of men, women, and children watched and cheered. The local media and even the governor of California were all fuck yeah do it!

--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: November 26, 1933--

Brooke Hart was 22. The son of a department store owner, he was kidnapped on November 9, 1933. Almost immediately after taking Hart, Thomas Thurmond and John Holmes murdered him by bonking him on the head, binding his hands, then tossing him off the San Mateo Bridge into San Francisco Bay. Then the pair of killers spent several days trying to extort a ransom.

Thurmond was caught a week later by traced phone calls. He confessed and named Holmes as his accomplice. The Hart department store and family was beloved in the city, and people wanted fucking blood. Newspapers reported the killers were going to plead not guilty by reason of insanity, or say their confessions were coerced. The cries for mob justice grew. Continues below …

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Holmes’s father had money and paid a princely sum to a famous lawyer to defend his son. Outside the jail the mob grew in size and volume. Holmes’s lawyer called the governor to ask for the National Guard to protect his client. Not only did Governor Rolph decline, he said he would pardon anyone who participated in a lynching.

And so, there was a lynching. Hart’s decomposed and crab-eaten body was found on November 25, half a mile from the bridge he’d been tossed from, providing the final impetus to do some vigilante killin’. There was no question of guilt. The pair described the location and method of Hart’s death before the body was found. The next day, November 26, 1933, local radio broadcast the killings like they were a fair attraction, saying hey everyone there’s gonna be a lynching of Thurmond and Holmes at St. James Park TONIGHT!

That night, the crowd outside the jail demanded the prisoners be turned over. When they weren’t, they laid siege, battering ramming their way into the jail and seizing the pair. The crowd numbered approximately 10,000 people. Thurmond and Holmes were marched across the street to St. James Park. Thurmond was stripped from the waist down, and Holmes had all his clothes removed. Meanwhile, the crowd chanted “String them up! String them up!”

Thurmond was hanged from a mulberry tree while proclaiming he was innocent. Holmes followed seconds later, strung up on a neighboring elm. As the crowd left the scene, people sang and danced. The pair hung there for 45 minutes until police cut them down. Newspapers ran photos of the lynching, deliberately smudging the faces of those who participated in the extrajudicial killings so as to protect them from prosecution.

Governor Rolph publicly praised the lynching. Eventually, seven people were tried for the killings, but no one was ever convicted.

Thanks, Carla, for the suggestion of today’s topic.

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