Law Enforcement

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Entry Category: Law Enforcement - Starting with F

Filmore, Isaac (Execution of)

On April 3, 1874, a sixteen-year-old Choctaw boy named Isaac Filmore was hanged in Fort Smith (Sebastian County) for the murder of a German man who was traveling from California. According to the warrant issued for Filmore’s arrest in the United States District Court for the Western District of Arkansas, on Saturday, July 19, 1873 (or thereabouts), he and another man named William Grayson (a.k.a. “Black Bill”) murdered the unnamed German man, who was “a white man and not an Indian.” Both Filmore and Grayson were arrested in the Creek Nation on July 21. Filmore reportedly made a voluntary statement when he was arrested. He said he was leaving town on Saturday (July 19) when he met Grayson. They were …

Fooy, Samuel W. (Execution of)

On September 3, 1875, a Native American man named Samuel W. Fooy was among the first six men to be executed in Fort Smith (Sebastian County) under “hanging judge” Isaac Parker. Fooy was convicted of robbing and killing a Kansas schoolteacher in Indian Territory several years earlier. Sam Fooy was born in Sebastian County in 1849. He was part Cherokee; his father was James E. Fooy of Memphis, Tennessee, and his mother was named Mary Ann. Sam married Amanda Talitha Beattie, and by 1872 they were living near Webbers Falls in the Cherokee Nation (in present-day Oklahoma). At the time of Fooy’s death, they had three children. An 1875 article in the Arkansas Gazette described him as “well educated and …

Ford, L. L. (Execution of)

L. L. Ford was one of two men hanged for the 1879 murder of a Crittenden County man, though many believed him innocent and he denied being involved in the crime. On October 26, 1879, four masked men rode up to the home of John Broadway, age fifty-five, about ten miles north of Marion (Crittenden County). One of them was John Potter, who worked for Broadway and believed that Broadway had $300 in his home. When Broadway tried to defend himself, another robber, Hiram Jeffries, shot him down. The four men fled, having netted only eight dollars. Potter, Jeffries, L. L. Ford, and Cal Huey were arrested and charged with Broadway’s murder. Huey got a change of venue to Mississippi …