Smith - Christmas Slay Ride: Most Mysterious and Horrific Christmas Day Murders

Ashland, Kentucky in 1881 was a quiet and orderly town poised on the Ohio River. Like any community, it had its share of crimes. There were robberies, assaults, acts of vandalism, and the rare murder. Most homicides resulted from drunken confrontations, and caused little excitement.

December 24 of that year changed everything.

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The Gibbons family was small and hardworking. John Gibbons spent weeks at a time away from his family, doing odd jobs so that he could send money home to his wife, Martha, and their three children. The oldest child, Robert, was seventeen and crippled after losing his leg in a freight car accident years earlier. Fanny, aged fourteen, was an attractive teenager said to be physically developed beyond her years, something that was not lost on a lot of men. Sterling, the youngest, was eleven.

Early on the morning of December 24, a fire broke out at the Gibbons home, a small frame house at the corner of 28th Street and Carter Avenue in Ashlands East End. Alarmed neighbors rushed into the building and dragged out three bodies that were later identified as Robert and Fannie Gibbons and Fannies friend, fifteen-year-old Emma Carrico. Three doctors who arrived on the scene examined the corpses before making a shocking announcement. All three had their skulls caved in, and the girls had been sexually assaulted.

The townspeople were aghast. How could such a terrible thing happen in Ashland? When dawn broke, the police searched the smoldering house for evidence and found bloody pillows and sheets as well as a crowbar and axe, both of which were caked with blood and hair.

Mrs. Gibbons and Sterling had not been home that night. They were in Ironton, Ohio, visiting family. Emmas mother tearfully exclaimed that she had let her daughter sleep over at the Gibbon house to keep Robert and Fannie company. She was the one who had noticed the unnatural light flickering in the windows of the Gibbons place at 6:00 a.m. and screamed for assistance.

Two days later, on December 26, services were held for the three murdered teenagers at the Methodist Episcopal Church. Afterwards, they were interred in Ashland Cemetery. Hundreds attended both events, eyes red-rimmed and faces tight with anger. The communitys sense of security had been shattered, and someone had to pay.

Later that afternoon, acting mayor John Means called a meeting to raise money to hire detectives as well as offer a reward. One private detective from Ohio thought John Gibbons was the murderer, but Deputy U.S. Marshal Heflin had serious doubts. He thought that more than one assailant must have been involved, and besides, Gibbons had no motive to do something so terrible. On December 31, he located Gibbons in West Virginia and gently broke the news. The grieving father was able to prove that he had been out of state when the crime occurred.

A few days later, a bricklayer named George Ellis walked into the Ashland General Store. Powell, the proprietor, sold him a cigar and tried to make conversation by saying, Well, now that old man Gibbons is in the clear, I wonder who it is going to fall on now?

Ellis looked frightened and lowered his gaze. Hands trembling, he said he knew who the killers might be and muttered something turning about states evidence. Then he hurried out and walked the streets for hours. Finally he went to Marshal Heflins hotel room and said he might know something about the murders. After asking Heflin about the logistics of turning states evidence, Ellis confessed that he and two other bricklayers, George Craft and William Neal, had committed the crime.