Judge Lynch Clubs William Woodward to Death

  In early June 1900, eighteen-year-old Lurena Thomas of Searcy County, Arkansas, swore out a complaint against her thirty-five-year-old stepfather, William Woodward, charging him with rape or, as one report phrased it at the time, "forcing her into improper relations with him." Woodward, who lived in Richland Township (the northwest part of the county), was arrested on or about June 8 and brought before a local justice of the peace for a preliminary hearing on the charge. The defendant, who had a prior reputation for mistreating both his stepdaughter and his wife, was bound over for trial, and an officer started with the prisoner for the county jail at Marshall, about 20 miles to the east. When the officer stopped to borrow a saddle from a neighbor, Woodward made a break for freedom. The officer fired a shot at him but missed, and Woodward made his escape. The fugitive managed to get loose from his handcuffs and hurried back to his home.
   Fetching a Winchester rifle, he went to a nearby field, where he found Lurena and her mother, thirty-nine-year-old Margaret (who was also the mother of six younger kids by Woodward), working in a cotton patch. Lurena started running when she saw her stepfather with the rifle, and he immediately opened fire at her. Two of the bullets took effect, mortally wounding her. Woodward then tried to give his wife the rifle, urging her to kill him. When Margaret refused to do so, Woodward shot himself in the breast. The wound likely would have proved fatal, but Woodward didn't live long enough to find out.
   Lurena died about 3:00 a.m. the next morning, and one hour later a mob of about fifteen men entered the Woodward home with clubs and beat her rapist and killer to a pulp. He was barely breathing when the mob departed, and he expired soon thereafter. Woodward had said after first shooting Lurena that he was not sorry for the heinous deed, but on his deathbed he reportedly expressed regret for killing her and claimed that he loved her. But few people had any sympathy for him.