Jerry Blalock (Execution of)

Jerry Blalock, a young gambler, was hanged at Jacksonport (Jackson County) on May 12, 1883, for a killing he claimed was committed in self-defense.

Jerry Blalock was born in Jackson County on March 6, 1859; he said he was abused as a child, adding, “but when I grew up I permitted no one to insult me.” He joined the Campbellite church in 1879, the year before the murder he was convicted of committing.

While no record of his trial for the 1880 slaying of Thomas Brandenburg near Tuckerman (Jackson County) appears to exist, and newspaper reports are sketchy, it can be inferred from Blalock’s later statements that testimony indicated he was hired by his brother-in-law W. D. Carter to kill Brandenberg. The purported payment for the deed included $1,500, two gold watches, and two gold rings found in Blalock’s possession, although Blalock claimed that he had won these from Charles Spencer of Illinois at Carter’s saloon in Swifton (Jackson County), saying that Spencer “was drunk and I got him drunker.”

Blalock claimed that several people lied on the witness stand, and the Arkansas Gazette reported that he maintained that he was “led to commit the crime by associating with two women who were employed by Brandenberg, thereby exciting Brandenberg’s wrath.”

The condemned man met with a couple of reporters on the morning of his execution and, while holding that the slaying of Brandenberg was in self-defense, confessed to another murder, saying he shot romantic rival Charles Tinsy in Craighead County in 1878, blasting him with a shotgun and burying him in a hollow six miles south of Jonesboro (Craighead County). He also told them that at age twenty-four he was “pretty young to die – but I’m not afraid. I’m not even nervous.”

Blalock was transported to the gallows at 11:10 a.m. on May 12, 1883, and the “condemned, with head upright, not a muscle quivering…walked…up the stairs to the scaffold.” The sheriff granted him thirty minutes to address the considerable crowd that had gathered to watch him hang, and he spoke for twenty-nine.

He admitted that he “loaded the gun and did the killing,” but again asserted self-defense, saying he should have been sent to the penitentiary for second-degree murder instead of hanging for first-degree murder, declaring, “I did not kill for mules or wagons, Carter or money.” Addressing the young boys in the crowd, he said, “I warn you against card-playing, whisky-drinking and bad men and women; they will ruin you, sure, as they have me.” An observer wrote that his speech “swayed that vast crowd as the forest trees bend before the hurricane.”

Blalock dropped to his knees as his death sentence was read, then “shook hands with those near him, the rope was adjusted, the black cap pulled down, and in exactly eight minutes from the words of farewell, he was dangling in the air at the end of the rope.”

For additional information:
“Blalock’s Execution.” Arkansas Gazette, May 11, 1883, p. 1.

“A Noted Criminal.” Arkansas Gazette, May 13, 1883, p. 4.

Mark K. Christ
Central Arkansas Library System