The Mike King hanging
The hanging of Mike King occurred in May 1895, when a Winfield man was hanged in Huntsville for the December 1894 murder of a schoolteacher named Aaron “W.A.” Beck. It is noteworthy because it was the only legal hanging — and only one of two legal executions — in Scott County’s history.
Background
Mike King was born in 1872, and spent his entire life around the TN-KY state line between Strunk, Ky. and Winfield, Tenn. He was the son of Thomas Braxton King and Nancy Blevins. He married China Cordell, the daughter of Joseph “Mart” Cordell and Nancy Elizabeth Strunk, on May 3, 1892. They had one daughter, Essie, born on July 29, 1894. After his death, the Chattanooga Daily Times newspaper reported: “He was of good family, and always bore a fair reputation until the time of the murder.”
King had only one hand.
Aaron Beck was a 46-year-old school teacher from Russell County, Ky., the son of John and Martha Beck. He had been married and may have had a child. In the 1880 census, 33-year-old Beck lived with his mother and three siblings in Jamestown, Ky. His marital status was listed as married. A 17-year-old Nany A. Beck was listed in the residence, as well, as a daughter-in-law of Martha Beck. She had a six-month-old son, William L. Beck.
At some point several years later, Beck moved to Scott County to teach school in the mining community of Paint Rock east of Oneida. The historian H. Clay Smith, in Dusty Bits of the Forgotten Past, wrote that Beck was an elderly music teacher. However, he was not elderly and also apparently not a music teacher; it was widely reported at the time that he was a writing teacher.
Beck and King became acquainted, and soon became friends. Beck taught King to write. The Knoxville Journal and Tribune wrote that Beck “took a deep interest in him and spent some time in teaching King to write well enough to teach a writing school.”
Beck apparently loaned money to King on several occasions, and King began to plan to kill Beck to steal what he believed to be a large sum of cash that Beck possessed.
The murder
King shot Beck with a .38 caliber handgun on the night of Dec. 23, 1894, as Beck slept inside King’s home in Winfield. He also hacked him with a hatchet, before burying the body in a hole left by an uprooted tree approximately 100 yards behind his home.
In Dusty Bits, the historian Smith wrote that Beck awoke just in time to see King reaching for his throat: “Mr. Beck pleaded with his murderous attacker, saying that if the latter would let him live he, Beck, would give him everything he had,” Smith wrote. “But it was all to no avail: King kept on striking and choking until the school teacher was dead.”
The newspaper accounts of the time told it differently. The Chattanooga Daily Times included a statement from King, as told to Scott County Sheriff John Goad, saying that he had planned to ambush King at Tunnel Hill east of Oneida as King returned from Paint Rock on a train: “I made up my mind to kill Beck about Dec. 20. I went to the tunnel on the Oneida and Paint Rock railroad, armed with a Winchester rifle and watched for Beck all day, intending to kill him for his money. He did not come. I then went back to Isham and came to Oneida on Tuesday, Dec. 23; met Beck and persuaded him to accompany me home, at Isham, where we arrived about 10 o’clock and went to bed without supper. About 11 o’clock I got up, shot Beck through the head with a 38-caliber pistol. He flounced a little and I hit him with a hatchet. He died at once. I rifled his pockets, getting $54 in cash. I carried and dragged his body to the woods and covered it up.”
King’s wife was not at home when the murder occurred; she was visiting in Lancing, Tenn. When she returned home, King told her the house was haunted and they needed to move away. In the meantime, he had burned Beck’s clothing and worked to remove the blood stains from floor boards inside the home.
When Beck went missing, acquaintances assumed that he had returned to Kentucky to visit family. However, the Knoxville Journal and Tribune reported that King began to raise suspicion because he flaunted his money at stops along the railroad, despite being known to be poor.
Discovery and arrest
Beck’s body was discovered on Jan. 20, 1895 by the wife and children of Hannibal Ross. Ross was a 46-year-old farmer who lived in Winfield with his wife, Malinda, and their seven children.
Smith wrote in Dusty Bits that the discovery of the body was made when a small boy was in the woods with his mother and another woman, gathering firewood, and saw Beck’s hand sticking out of the hole where he’d been haphazardly buried. A newspaper reported at the time, however, that it was the smell of Beck’s decomposing body that led Ross’s family members to his location.
In any event, Ross apprehended King at gunpoint and the body was carried back to King’s home for an inquest. Newspapers reported that King was forced to help carry the body to his home. Initially, King told Sheriff Goad that another man had shot Beck and that he only hacked him with the hatchet after Beck was dead. After he was transported to the Morgan County Jail in Wartburg, however, he gave a full confession.
King was housed in Wartburg to lessen the likelihood that he’d be lynched by an angry mob. Following his trial in March 1895, he was housed at a jail in Chattanooga, Tenn. until time for his execution.
Trial and execution
King stood trial at the Scott County Courthouse in Huntsville on March 20, 1895. Judge Rodgers, of Loudon, Tenn., presided over the trial and sentenced him to hang. The case was prosecuted by Judge W.H. Potter.
The hanging was scheduled for Friday, May 17, 1895. King did not appeal.
It was written that Goad, ordered by the court to hang King, was so upset at the prospect of killing a man that he considered resigning his post as sheriff. But King convinced him otherwise, saying, “This is your duty and you must perform it.”
The day of the hanging was a spectacular affair in Huntsville, as men, women and children crowded into the county seat to see King die. The size of the crowd was estimated at 2,000.
Historian Esther Sharp Sanderson, in Dusty Bits of the Forgotten Past, wrote that “men, women and children had been pouring into Huntsville since daybreak in order to have a point of vantage from which they could see and hear plainly.” Smith wrote that people rented horses and wagons to make the trip into town for the hanging. Among them were Smith’s father and mother, who rented a wagon from their neighbor and drove themselves and other neighbors into town to witness the execution. Smith wrote that they regretted making the trip.
The Tennessean newspaper in Nashville wrote: “That the people appreciated the unprecedented character of the event was shown by the crowd present, which began arriving as early as yesterday in every manner of conveyance.
“Scott County is the roughest county in Tennessee. Last night toughs terrorized the town. Horses were driven at break-neck speed through the streets to an accompaniment of yells and pistol shots.
“This morning things were quieter, but with moonshine whisky flowing like water it was still very lively. The people made it a gala occasion. Venders of red lemonade and bologna made a small fortune. Peanuts were everywhere. The women were as numerous as the men and entered as heartily into the fun. It was a regular picnic.”
George Cecil, a well-known minister in Scott County, preached King’s funeral from the gallows. King also gave a speech, telling the crowd that God had forgiven him of his sins and he was ready to die.
“He advised all young men in the sound of his voice to avoid the ways of sin and dissipation, and advised them to take warning by his sad end and conduct themselves according to the laws of the land and the teaching of the church,” the Chattanooga Daily Times wrote. “After which he bade the sheriff and his deputies good bye, as well as all who were present.”
King’s wife and small child were present, and his wife clung to his side before he was hanged. The two sat side by side, with their baby in her arms, through the funeral service. The Knoxville Journal and Tribune wrote: “Old fashioned hymns swelled out on the silent air from the throats of the vast multitude. Meantime husband and wife wept in each other’s arms.” The Daily Times wrote: “It was the saddest scene ever witnessed and there was not a dry eye in the jail enclosure, and many wept copiously at the piteous moans and cries of the poor woman and the innocent tears of the poor child.”
The Knoxville Journal and Tribune wrote that King “with the tears streaming down his face addressed the people and told them he would meet them in a better world as God had forgiven him. Sheriff Goad attempted to speak but his voice was drowned with emotion.”
At approximately 12:30 p.m., the trap was pulled and King was hanged. He was pronounced dead at 12:37 p.m.
Aftermath
The Knoxville Journal and Tribune wrote that King was hanged with the same rope that was used to hang Buddy Wooten in Chattanooga on Jan. 11, 1895. Wooten and another man, George Mapp, both black, were hanged for robbing and murdering a white saloonkeeper, Marion L. Ross.
Following his death, King’s body was transported to Isham Cemetery in Winfield for burial. It is not clear where Aaron Beck was buried.
King’s widow, China, remained single for more than 30 years before marrying John Anderson in 1937. However, they had several children together before their marriage, the first of which was born in 1899. She died in 1941 at age 66. They’re buried side-by-side at Chitwood Cemetery in Winfield.
Essie King, Mike King’s daughter, married Rev. George Oscar King of Whitley County. He was an employee of the Stearns Coal & Lumber Co. and a member of the First Baptist Church of Oneida. They had eight children together. Essie died in 1979 and was buried beside her husband at the Lower Hickory Grove Cemetery in Revelo, Ky.
John Goad, who had considered resigning to avoid having to hang King, did indeed resign after his two-year term as sheriff was up. Frank Hughett, a former sheriff, was elected to replace him, and Goad instead ran for and won a race as Scott County Trustee. He later served as Circuit Court Clerk. He owned a house on the corner of the courthouse square where the Baker law office would later be built. After his stint in public office, he operated a store on Rugby Highway near Robbins with his brother-in-law, Scott County Superintendent of Schools William Fred Lee. He spent the last 18 years of his life serving as superintendent of Oneida Hosiery Mills. He died in 1933, at age 72 and was buried at Potter Cemetery in Huntsville. He has the distinction of being the only sheriff in Scott County’s history to have hanged a man.