A Dead Man Turns Up Alive

On August 31, 1891, two masked men held up the American Bank of Corder in Lafayette County, Missouri, carrying away about $600. The men retreated through a rear door, mounted their horses, and started north. 

An alarm was given quickly, and a posse started in close pursuit of the bandits. One of the robbers' horses tired, and its rider dismounted and darted into the shelter of a cornfield but not before he was spotted by one of the posse members. The man was soon found inside the cornfield, captured, and brought back to Corder. The captive, who gave his name as Andrew Murrell, had about half of the stolen loot on his person. 

Two law officers were getting ready to take the robber to the county seat at Lexington when a mob formed, overpowered them, and took the prisoner away. He was strung up to a nearby thorn tree and, according to at least one report, his body was riddled with bullets. The body was left hanging until the next morning, when the county coroner arrived to cut it down. 

Although the man who was lynched had given his name as Andrew Murrell, circumstantial evidence suggested that he might really be Jesse Messer, who had disappeared from neighboring Pettis County a few days earlier. Relatives of Messer traveled to Lafayette County and identified some of the personal effects of the dead man as having belonged to Messer. The body was then dug up and the identity of the man confirmed as Jesse Messer. 

Everyone thought that was the end of the story, but it took a strange twist when Messer showed up at his home near Houstonia (Pettis County) in June of 1892, ten months after he had disappeared. He said he'd gone to Saline County when he left home and had been working there ever since. He had heard about his supposed lynching, had got a good laugh out of it, and, thinking it was an insignificant matter, had neglected to inform his family that he was not dead. He asked their forgiveness for not telling them. 

The question that now arose, as one newspaper asked, was, "Who was the man lynched?" It was suggested that perhaps the dead man's name was indeed Andrew Murrell, just as he had told officers, but, as far as I've been able to learn, the mystery was never solved with certainty.