Baty Byrd
Baty Byrd (1884-1958) was a deputy sheriff, constable, and coal miner from Scott County who was murdered inside his home in the Straight Fork community in 1958.
Biography
Born May 22, 1884, Baty Byrd was the son of William Riley Byrd (1842-1899) and Margaret Luvania “Peggy” Adkins (1848-1938). His siblings included John Adkins Byrd (1865-1934), China Byrd Boshears (1879-1914), Elmina Byrd Neal (1883-1917), Patsy Jane Byrd Sharp (1888-1971), and Leona Byrd Neal (1890-1928).
He was part of the extensive Byrd family from the Fairview and Straight Fork areas in eastern Scott County. His paternal grandparents were William Byrd and Elizabeth Shoopman, and his uncle was Farrell “Bratcher” Byrd, a prominent member of the Byrd family. They had seven children: Harold Byrd, Flora Byrd Grubbs, Eloise Byrd Wilson, Gladys Byrd Siler, Roscoe Byrd, and James P. Byrd. All three of the Byrd boys — Harold, Roscoe, and James — served in the U.S. armed forces. There was also a son who died in infancy in 1934.
Death
On Sunday, March 16, 1958, Byrd’s nephew entered Byrd’s home in the Straight Fork community and discovered Byrd’s body, sitting upright in a chair. Investigators determined that he had been bludgeoned to death. Sheriff Dorsey Rosser said the weapon used to kill Byrd may have been a hatchet, but it was never proven.
The coroner, Dr. W.S. Cooper, determined that Byrd had been killed two days earlier, on March 14, 1958.
Suspicion immediately centered on Virgil James Russell, a 28-year-old Coast Guardsman from Caryville, Tenn., who had been arrested two days earlier and charged with robbing First National Bank of Oneida. A teller at the bank had provided Russell’s description and license plate number to authorities, and he was arrested less than three hours after the robbery at a federal roadblock in London, Ky. In his possession was a .38-caliber handgun, which authorities were able to link to Byrd. The Russell family had once been Byrd’s neighbors and Virgil Russell visited Byrd frequently.
Authorities contended that Russell visited Byrd’s home the morning of the bank robbery and killed Byrd in order to steal his handgun, which was used in the bank robbery. They produced a witness, a neighbor, who said she saw Russell driving by her home that morning.
However, Russell contended that he had borrowed the gun from Byrd the night before the robbery, saying Byrd had no idea what he intended to use the gun for. His attorneys produced a separate witness who said that he was in Oneida the morning of the robbery, and another who said she saw Byrd alive at about the same time that Russell was being arrested in London.
At his first trial, in August 1958, the state sought the death penalty against Russell. The jury wound up deadlocked, 8-4, and a mistrial was declared. A new trial was held in January 1959. The state did not seek the death penalty the second time around. Byrd was acquitted. After serving a federal prison sentence for robbing the bank, he left East Tennessee and lived in Massacusetts and Cincinnati.
Byrd was buried at Allred Cemetery in the Straight Fork community, where his wife had earlier been buried in 1934. His last surviving child, James Byrd, died in Elizabethtown, Ky., in 2022.