1891 ‘Lynching’ Remains A Mystery 
by Dixie Kline Richardson 



Frank Dice, the Slayer of His Rival in Love, Hanged in Jail at Spencer.

Dateline July 18, dispatched from Spencer, the news of a lynching in Owen County was reported by The Indianapolis Journal, under 
the sub headline claiming the prisoner 
was “strung up” by a well-trained mob. The Journal reported that many believed that Dice killed himself and “the mob only found 
his dead body upon which to vent its rage.”
This 1891 vigilante justice is still a puzzle.

The Clay County Enterprise, published in Brazil tells it this way: Between midnight and daylight this morning (July 18), a crowd 
of men, variously estimated in numbers from 
twenty-five to fifty, of whom one acted as spokesman, called at the Spencer jail and notified Sheriff Johnson they had a prisoner 
in custody. The sheriff opened the door, 
whereupon he was seized and bound and prevented from making an outcry. The mob then searched the cell until Frank Dice was found, 
and he was overpowered and hung to the 
inside of his cell door, an undershirt being used as a rope. The job was quickly done, after which the mob quietly withdrew and 
disappeared as mysteriously as they gathered.
 The nearest residents to the jail were not awakened until after the departure of the lynchers.

“The sheriff gives a dramatic account of the affair. He was awakened by the call of two who were supporting an apparently drunken man between them, 
and when he appeared at the window one of them remarked, ‘We have a bird for your cage.’ Unsuspicious that treachery was afoot, 
the sheriff unlocked the door and called out in a jocular vein, ‘Bring in your bird.’ Scarcely were they within the door before 
the sheriff was seized and forced to the floor while one of the men, addressing him by his given name, assured him that not harm 
was contemplated toward him, but they had come for Dice and were going to have him. Meanwhile the remainder of the lynchers rushed 
in, and while some of them assisted in binding the sheriff, a man who was familiar with the premises, walked upstairs to the sheriff’s 
bedroom and addressing his wife by her given name, gave similar assurance that no injury would come to the sheriff and his family, but they 
were after Dice.

“The keys were wrestled from the sheriff and the leaders proceeded immediately with their deadly work. The first cell visited 
aroused the wrong man who assured the visitors that he was not Dice, and he clinched his assertion by pointing out the cell in 
which the victim was located. Then Dice’s cell door was thrown back and the lynchers rushed in. Not a word was said by Dice, 
nor was there any sound of a struggle, and in a few moments the lynchers marched out and went downstairs, one of them laughingly 
remarking at the head of the stairway, apparently for the information of the inmates: ‘The --- scoundrel anticipated our visit, 
didn’t he?’

“After the departure of the lynchers, the dead body of Dice was found hanging to the cell door with his undershirt used as a rope 
and the supposition is that he was strangled in his cell while asleep or before he was sufficiently awakened to comprehend what was 
taking place, and his dead body was then elevated to the doorway to convey the impression that he had committed suicide.”

The Indianapolis Sentinel reported that Dice was in an upper cell of the cage and three prisoners in the adjoining cells “can tell 
but little of the affair.” According to The Journal, a doctor who had been seeing a patient heard the levers of the doors being 
thrown back as he passed along (the jail), and observed men on guard around the jail and at each corner of the square saw “posted 
sentinels.” By this time, the victim was dead and the jail was being relocked. Two or three others joined the doctor on the corner 
just as the masked gang left the jail... no words were spoken, only the command of the leader, “One, two, three, march,” and the men 
passed down Main Street, turning at the Sanitarium toward the fairgrounds where conveyances were in waiting. Those watching went to 
the jail where they found the sheriff in a “dazed condition.” He admitted the doctor and the others to the cell; attempts at 
resuscitation were futile. Marks on the neck, The Journal reported, had the appearance of having been made by a rope or some 
material coarser than an undershirt.

The violent death of Frank Dice was the result of (as Shakespeare called it) “savage jealou- sy.” He shot William Chaney in a 
dispute over a young woman who is never named in any of the newspapers. She was a Jordan Village resident. One paper reported 
Dice and Chaney had a confrontation at a public sale, and that Dice went to the home of Chaney’s father and asked if anyone 
had a bottle of whiskey. William walked to his coat hanging on the wall; when his back was turned Dice drew his revolver and 
fired. The Brazil Democrat wrote that Chaney was killed at a dance near Poland in March. Because Dice obtained a change of 
venue to Putnam County, his trial was delayed. Incarcerated at Spencer, he escaped from jail the Sunday before the hanging 
but was quickly found hiding in the courthouse. This near miss of retribution may have motivated the locals to act on their 
own instead of waiting for the slow wheels of the system.


It was reported that Dice left two letters, one to the girl in question, “to whom he was engaged,” and another to a friend 
asking a favor which would assist in clearing him. “A characteristic love letter,” the article says, with the letters 
A-K-T-N written by someone other than Dice added at the bottom. These were thought to be printed by one of the mob.

The incident leaves no one to give primary source information; all who would have discussed, assessed, and reassessed what 
happened are long gone. The news reports and my report all have interesting holes. Did the general populace believe it a 
suicide or an actual act of a mob? Who were the participants, the 15 men who crowded into the sheriff’s space, and the others? 
It’s a fact there was vigilante activity in the county, especially in western Owen.

There was a lot of silence in Spencer during and after the untimely death of Frank Dice.