Richard Ellis
Richard Ellis was Scott County’s 17th sheriff, serving in that role from 1922 until his assassination in 1925 amid a moonshine war.
See Also: Sheriffs of Scott County
Preceded By: Mitchell Phillips • Succeeded By: Isham Chambers
Early Life
Richard D. “R.D.” Ellis was born September 12, 1883, the son of Truman and Martha Marcum Ellis. He was the fifth of sixth children.
Like his father before him, R.D. Ellis was a Baptist preacher.
By the 1920s, moonshining was in full swing in Scott County. In the remote sections of the county, moonshine stills were nearly as numerous as homesteads. Prohibition would not be repealed until 1933, and moonshining would not be romanticized until after the end of Prohibition. In the 1920s, moonshining was generally frowned upon — and not just by law enforcement.
When R.D. Ellis ran for sheriff in 1922, he campaigned on tackling Scott County’s moonshine problem. He won election with 1,264 votes, to 529 for Sam Sexton and 223 for Mitchell Phillips.
“There was right smart of moonshining on back here. People round about most everywhere, right smart of moonshining went on. They was so many of ’em making it they had to drink it mostly.” — Harold Foster, No Business resident, in an oral interview with the National Park Service in the 1990s
Events leading up to assassination
On Thursday, January 31, 1924, Sheriff Ellis and his deputies were raiding a moonshine still near what is now the Big South Fork National River & Recreation Area west of Oneida when they were ambushed. One of his deputies, Johnny Acres, was shot in the chest and died almost instantly.
Acres, the son of David and Rebecca Phillips Acres, had celebrated his 37th birthday just eight days earlier. He was also the chief of police in Oneida.
Ellis was narrowly re-elected to a second term in August 1924.
On November 6, 1924, Sheriff Ellis assisted a party of federal revenuers from Knoxville who were raiding a still near Huntsville when a large gunfight broke out. The team of law enforcement officers were raiding a still operated by Filmore Sexton, and they were armed with a warrant for Sexton’s arrest. Sexton, who was married to Gertrude West and had five young children at home, all younger than the age of seven, was killed in the gunfight.
Another man was killed in the gunfight, and two more men — Lee West and Howard Griffith — were wounded. West was shot nine times, but survived. Sexton’s wife was said to have stayed by his side throughout the firefight, even reloading his gun. However, his gang fled when he was shot in the forehead.
The moonshine war was in full swing.
“The sheriff told me I’d have trouble with Sexton but I didn’t think so, so I started down toward his house and still. I never heard the like of shooting in all my life.” — Col. Bob Smith, Clinton, Tenn., to the Knoxville News Sentinel
Assassination of R.D. Ellis
Sheriff Ellis was assassinated at the front entrance of the Scott County Jail in Huntsville on Tuesday, August 11, 1925.
Smith had returned to Scott County and arrested a suspected moonshiner, George Foster. He needed somewhere to keep him, and Ellis told him to bring Foster to the Scott County Jail. The two lawmen met in front of the jail. Sheriff Ellis took custody of Foster, then turned to enter the jail, and was shot from ambush.
According to the Aug. 13, 1925, edition of The Knoxville Journal, two men fired on Ellis from ambush, hitting him three times in the back. They then fled over the hill towards New River.
“The sheriff started with (Foster) toward the jail door and — bang! The sheriff tumbled over dead, shot through the head, and the prisoner just a standing there.” — Col. Bob Smith, Clinton, Tenn., to the Knoxville News Sentinel
Aftermath
Bloodhounds were brought in from Dayton, Tenn. and picked up the scent of the killer at the jail. They tracked the gunman to Paint Rock Creek, but eventually lost the scent.
Sheriff Ellis, age 41, was buried at Sexton Memorial Cemetery at Paint Rock.
Ellis was the second Scott County lawman to be gunned down in the moonshine war; in a span of 19 months, both the high sheriff and the Oneida chief of police had been killed. In another 19 months, a third lawman — John Wesley West — would also be killed.
Isham Chambers, a deputy sheriff, was appointed by Scott County Court in October 1925 to fill the unexpired term of Ellis.
Newspapers initially said that law enforcement officers were focusing on “two youths” who were believed to have killed Ellis. It was said that they were friends of two more youths who had been charged in the death of a man whose skull was crushed with an axe. In fact, it had been reported that a mob was forming at the jail with the intent of lynching the two murder suspects on the day Ellis was killed.
The two suspects were first identified by the Nashville Banner on Aug. 21, 1925, as Lee West and Segel Sexton. According to the newspaper, “they claim a letter sent to West’s brother at the jail and signed ‘L. & S.’ told the prisoner not to be worried, as ‘we will get Rich,'” that being the Sheriff’s given name.
West was one of the moonshiners who was wounded in the 1924 shootout that killed Filmore Sexton. Segal (Seagle) Sexton was a brother to Filmore Sexton.
At the same time the suspects were named, Tennessee Gov. Austin Peay authorized a $250 reward for the arrest and conviction of whomever was responsible for assassinating Ellis. The Knoxville Journal reported on Jan. 13, 1926, that West and Sexton were convicted in August 1925 of murdering John Morgan. That is not believed to be accurate.
Before the month was over, it was reported that Burdette Keeton, age 25, had been arrested in connection with Ellis’s death. He was not initially charged, newspapers reported, because his accuser was on his honeymoon. In January 2026, it was reported by The Knoxville Journal that West and Sexton had been indicted. The Chattanooga Daily Times reported that same month that a reward had been issued for the arrests of West and Sexton, and that two other men had also been indicted and were already in jail — Keeton presumably being one of those.
West and Sexton were arrested by Deputy Sheriff J.M. Griffith at the home of Tifford Worley two miles east of Huntsville in January 2026. In April 26, The Knoxville Journal reported that the two men were moved to a jail in Knox County, Tenn., for safekeeping after attempting to escape from the jail in Huntsville. The newspaper reported on July 8, 1926, that Lee West, Segal Sexton, Burdette Keeton, Tom Jeffers, and W.W. Lawson were all set to go to trial for the death of Ellis.
There’s no newspaper record of the trial’s outcome. Sexton later left Scott County and moved to Indiana, where he lived until 1972. Burdette Keeton died sometime between 1930 and 1935.
Also in July 1926, Lawrence Hill, 23, was arrested in Cincinnati, Ohio, and charged with Ellis’s murder, according to newspaper accounts at the time. Allegedly, according to the papers, he shot Ellis because Ellis intended to arrest him on liquor charges. However, later newspaper reports stated that Hill was being extradited back to Scott County on charges of grand larceny.
“Since his induction into office Sheriff Ellis had been a persistent foe of the moonshiner and bootlegger, and had been responsible for the arrest and conviction of a number of liquor men, thereby incurring their deadly hatred. His life had been threatened often for his activity against the outlaws.” — The Knoxville Journal, Aug. 13, 1925.
See Also: The assassination of Scott County’s preacher sheriff (Murders in the Heartland)