I See by the Papers...

They made a terrible racket, shattering the early morning peace by honking horns and cranking sirens as the caravan entered Healdsburg and rounded the Plaza. Many in town, however, were probably awake and anxiously awaiting just such a signal - that they had pulled off a perfect crime and killed three men.

This is a postscript to the series on the 1920 lynchings in Santa Rosa, “THERE WILL BE PRICES PAID” and looks into the most significant of the conspiracies of silence that followed: How people in a small farm town executed a triple murder, then kept the planning behind it and the names of all those involved secret for 65 years. Now - more than a century later - new details have emerged that show the vigilante operation was even more cunning than suspected.

A previous chapter, "VENGEANCE FOR SUNNY JIM" covered events of just that night as reported at the time by first-hand witnesses. Also incorporated were later comments by Clarence H. "Barney" Barnard, the only member of the vigilantes to talk about it. Gaye LeBaron broke that story in 1985 after he spoke to her and in 1989 she recorded an interview which is available on the SSU website.

Barnard said the decision to raid the county jail and lynch the gangsters was made the same day that Sheriff James A. Petray was killed. On that night - Sunday, Dec. 5 - a mob of up to 3,000 had attacked the jail to seize them but the sheriff and deputies, reinforced by the Santa Rosa police and fire departments, were able to repel the rioters. It's likely many of the Healdsburg vigilantes were also on the scene and came away with the lesson that brute force was no guarantee of success.

"We could have had 500 men, if we'd wanted them," Barney told Gaye in 1985. "But the fellow who got it all organized, the Captain would only take 30. he wanted everybody to have an assignment and didn't want anybody who was going to get trigger happy and blow it all."

After a day spent organizing the crew, they gathered together for the first time on Tuesday night to begin rehearsing the mission in the back part of the Standard Machine Works building.

They drilled again on Wednesday night and made a final run-through on Thursday before leaving for the county jail in Santa Rosa. Each man knew his role and was expected to act without supervision.

Before they left, Barnard recalled the Captain saying, “If any one of you wants to back out, this is the time. Do it now. There won't be one word said. Nobody will think you a coward. But if you stay, from now on, we're all one." Barney repeated much the same thing in his 1989 interview, except changing the speech to end with, "after tonight, we’ve got an active war."

The rest of this article can be read at the SantaRosaHistory.com website. Because of recurring problems with the Blogger platform, I am no longer wasting my time formatting and posting complete articles here. I will continue to create stubs for the sake of continuity, but will be publishing full articles only at SantaRosaHistory.com.

- Jeff Elliott