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Sea Coast Echo, August 31, 1928
RICHARDSON CAPTURED AFTER LONG MAN HUNT NEIGHBOR TIPS OFFICERS
Negro Neighbor Gives information Which Leads to Arrest of Negro, Who Killed John Dambrino and Shot Bay St. Louis Chief of Police.
Bay St. Louis and surrounding communities were notified Sunday of the capture just before noon of Silas Richardson who had been sought by officers since Tuesday, August 14, as the alleged murderer of John Dambrino of Kiln and for the wounding of Chief of Police Mark Oliver of Bay St. Louis as he shot his way to freedom from the Bay St. Louis city jail where he was held on a charge of alleged theft of an automobile.
The capture of Richardson was effected through information given by Raphael Favre, negro, who resides next door to the parents of Richardson and who saw Richardson go under the house which his parents occupy. Favre went to Albert Favre, who with his brother, Octave Favre, both deputy sheriffs, arrested the negro and lodged him in the county jail, he remained in jail for an hour and a half before Sheriff J. C. Jones who was in Bogalusa arrived on the scene. During this time quite a crowd assembled about the jail but there was no effort on the pat of the crowd to take the negro from the jail.
Later Sheriff Jones accompanied by Lemuel Miller and Albert Favre, deputies and Will Colmer of Pascagoula, district attorney, took the negro from the jail and boarded the afternoon train to New Orleans. Sheriff Jones had phoned to Gov. Theo. Bilbo for advice and had been told to do as he thought best and for the best method of upholding the law, and acting on the feeling that it would be better to take the negro out of the county went to New Orleans. The Bay St. Louis officers and prisoner were met at the L. & N. station by a patrol wagon and squad of policemen who took the negro to the third precinct jail where several hundred persons viewed him before he was taken by Sheriff Jones and deputies to Jackson on the midnight train. At Jackson the sheriff turned the prisoner over to the officers who have placed him in the hands of some unnamed Mississippi county sheriff where the negro will be kept until brought back to the Bay to stand trial.
The Negro’s Story
After Richardson’s capture he was questioned by the county and district attorneys whom he told that he had left the Bay on a southbound L. & N. freight train the night following the fatal shooting and had been living openly under his own name in New Orleans since that time, until returning to the Bay on a late train Saturday night preceding his capture. He stated that he had lived at “Aunt Melissa”s” boarding house at 1221 Poydras street and he had worked daily with a ditching contractor, using his own name.
Richardson told Sheriff Jones that he came to the Bay to get his clothes and when he was found under his father’s house he had a bundle of clothes ready to take with him. He stated that when he arrived in the Bay Saturday night he found the door to his parents house locked and slept the remainder of the night under the house and that next morning when his father went to the jail to take some things to Richardson’s mother, he went inside the house. As he saw his father returning from jail he ran under the house and it was then that the neighbor saw him and reported his presence in the Bay to the Sheriff s office.


Last Hanging Hancock County The Capture, Trial, and Execution of Silas Richardson SCE 1928-1929 (05)
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