Published October 11, 2020
By Dwain Preston
A hanging was scheduled to happen in August of 1893, and it
was causing Sheriff Vancil to lose sleep. William Jamison would be the last
person legally hanged in Adams County and the execution would go off without a hitch,
but Sheriff Vancil didn’t know that. And he wasn’t about to repeat his
disastrous mistakes from the previous attempt to conduct a hanging two years
before. That one got away.
The Quincy courthouse was an imposing and beautiful building
that occupied the block between 4th and 5th streets on
Vermont. It served many functions. It housed the courts, many elected
officials, the jail with its inmates, and the jailor’s private quarters where he
and his family lived in part of the upper basement.
Security was adequate in the jail wing, but crude by modern
standards. Thick iron bars and walls and padlocks provided reassurance that
prisoners would remain incarcerated. But
humans are ingenious creatures and what one can create, another can overcome.
The tale of the escape reads like a
movie script. Dan Porter, with aid from
another prisoner and/or a visitor, made or somehow acquired wooden skeleton
keys that fit his cell padlock, and the door to the corridor. The keys were
fashioned from a hard maple wooden broom handle, and somehow were whittled to
match exactly the jailor’s keys.
Obtaining a key to the cell was only
the first problem. The padlock was hard to reach through the bars, and the
keyhole was in the bottom. It was not possible for Porter’s arm to reach
through the opening down to the lock and then upwards to insert and turn a key.
So, the key was screwed to the handle of a feather duster using screws from his
harmonica and fastened at the correct angle for it to be used.
Porter unlocked his cell door and
then two other doors and moved through the jailor’s room where he acquired two
loaded revolvers, then through the basement to the Sheriff’s living quarters.
There he entered the bathroom looking for an outside window. Sheriff Vancil,
having checked the jail and turned off the lights earlier that evening, decided
to take a bath. He undressed to his skivvies, entered the bathroom. Leaning
over to check the water noticed two feet behind some clothing hanging on a hook.
Straightening up he confronted a man with two revolvers.
Sensibly, he ran, chased by the man.
Vancil managed with the help of his wife, to close and hold a door against the
armed man. The man left and Vancil suspected he would try entry from another
door and attempt to force the sheriff to open Porter’s cell and release him.
Little did he realize that it was Porter himself, who returned to the bathroom
and bent down the bars on the window to escape.
These bars were much lighter than those near the cells, and Porter was a
powerful man. By the time the sheriff dressed, went to check the cells, found
Porter missing and managed to raise the alarm, the fugitive’s tracks in the
early March snow lead nowhere.
Porter had pistols and a substantial
lead. The Sheriff called out and deputized over a hundred men, and the alarm
went out in all directions. Households were searched in Quincy. Riders went
north, south and east. Telegrams went to all localities, but in spite of a
spate of false alarms, Porter was not seen.
Porter’s mother lived in St. Joseph and the Missouri papers
loved the story. Porter was eventually tracked down to a shed belonging to
Charles Myers near Fairmont, Missouri, in the Kahoka area. Four local men armed
with rifles, demanded his surrender. There are two stories from this point
forward. The first says Porter surrendered a revolver and a straight razor but
kept one pistol in reserve with which he shot himself rather than
surrender. This story was adhered to
until the four transported the body to Quincy where it was positively
identified as Porter. At that point, Butler, one of the men, admitted to
shooting and killing the man. There was a $1500 reward for the escapee, dead or
alive. But prudently, Butler wanted to be sure it was the right man before
admitting his part in the death.
After offering $1000 of reward money, the Adams County board
of supervisors reneged and refused payment. On March 13th, they said
they did not have the legal right to offer a reward, and so couldn’t pay it.
Citizens were outraged, not least of all the four Missouri men who looked to
split the money. A St. Louis paper said, “The citizens of the county are
ashamed of their penurious Supervisors, who have refused to pay the $1,000
reward to the men who killed Dan Porter…The money is being raised by
subscription.”
Dan Porter wasn’t done. If you believe the two men walking
down the St. L. & N.W. Railroad track a mile south of Alexandria. They
instantly recognized as Dan Porter, the man who appeared walking toward them on
the tracks. The men said the spectre was silent, motioned to them with one
hand, and pointed toward his head with the other. His head had a bullet hole in
the back of it.
Not to be outdone, Quincy reported: “Considerable excitement
has been raised here over a report …that three citizens, one a negro, met the
spook of Dan Porter standing near the jail in the courtyard in Quincy last
Friday night.” This spirit also pointed out a bullet hole in his head. Other
sightings were reported along his escape route through Missouri.
Every odd
occurrence at the courthouse was blamed on Porter’s ghost. When all the gas
lights in the courthouse went out at exactly noon, Vancil laughed and said it
must be Porter. Privately the sheriff said he and his deputies could keep the
town entertained with ghost stories till at least the Fourth of July. After
that, he thought it might be too hot to make them up.
Sources
“Dan Porter.
Quincy
Daily Journal
, 02 March 1891.
“The Dan Porter Reward.”
St.
Louis Post-Dispatch
, 13 March 1891.
“The Last ‘Fake.’
”
Quincy Daily Journal
, 27 March 1891.
“A Murderer’s Ghost.”
St. Joseph Weekly Gazette
, 26 March
1891.
“Porter Captured.“
The Palmyra Spectator
, 12 March 1891.
“Won’t Pay the
Reward.”
St. Joseph Gazette-Herald
,
14 March 1891.
