Rube Burrow, king of outlaws, and his band of train robbers

by George W. Agee

And so it was easily discovered that the ill-fated criminal was battling against opposing ideas. On the one hand he was confronted with the certainty of conviction and an ignominious death at the hands of the hangman, on the other life imprisonment, with the added alternative of standing as a witness against his copartner in crime and assisting to fasten guilt upon him. He had often said:

“I prefer death to imprisonment for life, for what is life without liberty.”

On Saturday, the 8th of November, two days before his suicide, he said to a fellow prisoner, whose hat was worn and old:

“You need a new hat; you may have mine Monday.”

Brock had evidently made up his mind, as indicated by these remarks, to take his own life. About nine o’clock on the morning of November 10, 1890, the day set for his trial, Detective Thomas Jackson and United States Marshal Mathews went to the penitentiary building to bring the prisoner to the Federal Court, as he had been notified would be done. Sergeant Montgomery sent the officer of the prison charged with the special surveillance of Brock to bring him into his office, where the detective and marshal awaited him. At night he was confined in one of the cells on the ground floor of the prison, but was permitted to occupy during the day one of the guard rooms situated on the third floor of the building. The prisoner was in this room when the keeper went after him to bring him to the sergeant’s office. Just as the keeper was in the act of unlocking the door, Brock walked to the iron barred window of the room, and beckoning to a fellow convict standing in the yard of the prison, threw out of the window the following note:

November 10th, 1890.

To all who may read this, I write this to inform you that my name is L. C. Brock; was born and raised in Coffee county, southeast Ala. and I am not guilty of the crime for which I am imprisoned. I am innocent, the God of Heaven knows it. I have suffered all the while for the crime of some one else. On the 29th of September I wrote to L. B. Moseley, Deputy U. S. Marshal, Jackson Miss. to come and get the names of my witnesses. he has not come yet. I do not believe the letter was mailed to him at all. through August I had fever and nothing to lay on up stairs (daytime) but the floor, fainted 25 or 35 times from weakness. I am telling this to show or give you an idea of how I have been treated. They entend to force me to a trial without my witnesses. You show this to any and all if you wish.

Respectfully,
L. C. Brock.

The officer, unlocking the room door, announced that he had come to take him to the sergeant’s office, where the marshal and Detective Jackson were in waiting to take him to the courtroom. “All right,” said Brock, and immediately followed the officer out.

The penitentiary cells are four deep, one above the other, around a large corridor, eighty feet long, making an open court sixty feet deep. When the prisoner reached the head of the stair-way, in front of the door of his room, instead of descending with the officer he turned down the hall-way and commenced to ascend the stair-way leading to the fourth floor. At the same time he drew a murderous looking knife, which he had secured and secreted in some unaccountable manner, and bade the guard stand back or he would cut him. Sergeant Montgomery was at once notified of the unusual conduct of the prisoner, and, in company with Detective Jackson and Marshal Mathews, immediately repaired to the rotunda of the court and inquired of the prisoner what he meant by such conduct. Brock was then calmly walking to and fro along the floor of the fourth story brandishing his knife, and at once declared his intention to jump to the ground beneath and kill himself. Meantime the note thrown from the window had been handed to the officers of the prison, and Brock was asked to name the party to whom he had given letters, asking that witnesses be summoned. This he refused to do, but stated that the Southern Express Company intended to “railroad” him either to the gallows or to life imprisonment without giving him even the shadow of a showing, whereupon Marshal Mathews assured him that he should not go to trial without counsel, and further stated that he would see that all the witnesses he desired should be summoned.