Another False Lynching

Lynchings were relatively common during the 1800s and early 1900s, but falsely or incorrectly reported lynchings were also not altogether uncommon. I know this was the case in Missouri, and I assume it was true elsewhere as well. Sometimes the reported victim had, in fact, escaped the would-be lynchers or otherwise survived the lynching attempt. And sometimes a crime took place and newspapers reported a subsequent lynching when mob action against the perpetrator of the crime had not even been attempted but rather only rumored.
An example was the case of Katie Jacobs, a twelve-year-old girl living near Verona who was sexually assaulted by a black man on January 21, 1894, as she was on her way home after Sunday morning church services. The man raped her and then gagged her and tied her to a tree with her own clothing. As he left, he told her he had a nearby partner who would soon be there to take his turn at raping her and that the second man would kill her if she tried to scream or get loose. A black man did show up and assault the girl again, but authorities later concluded that it was the same man who’d simply changed hats and otherwise tried to disguise his appearance.
There were several false reports in the immediate wake of this incident, including one report that a black man had been apprehended and burned at the stake. Two black men were, in fact, captured at Purdy as suspects, but they were soon released when it was determined they had nothing to do with the rape. Two other suspects were arrested at Nevada and one as far away as Willow Springs, but they, too, were quickly released.
On January 24, H. B. “Pete” Barclay, a black man from Weir City, Kansas, was arrested at the Gulf Railroad station in Springfield, largely on the grounds that he’d come into town from a westerly direction and had been seen at the Billings train station, which was not terribly far from Verona. He was taken to Verona but was released after Katie Jacobs said he was not the man who had assaulted her.
In late May, a black man named Andy Boyd was arrested at Pierce City on suspicion of being the person who’d raped Katie. When he was taken before the girl, she said she thought he was the man but that she couldn’t be sure. He was locked up on suspicion, nonetheless. At his preliminary hearing in June, Katie seemed more certain that he was the man who’d violated her, and Boyd was bound over for trial on a charge of rape. When his trial came up in late August at Mt. Vernon, the jury decided that, although they thought he was guilty, there was a reasonable doubt. They therefore voted to acquit.
As far as I’ve been able to determine, nothing else ever came of this case, but nonetheless “two unknown Negroes” were listed in a 1922 report of the Missouri Negro Industrial Commission as victims of lynching near Verona, Missouri, on January 22, 1894. And, indeed, this bit of misinformation has continued to be passed down to the present day and is still listed on certain websites that purport to keep track of all known lynchings in America.