Robert Paul Prager
Robert Paul Prager was a 45-year-old man whose parents lived in Dresden, Germany, and who had taken out his first papers and applied for full citizenship in the United States. Police had hidden him in the basement of the Collinsville, Illinois city hall after a mob chased him from Marysville, but in early April 1918 a mob overpowered the lone guard, broke in, took him, and hanged him from a tree on a hill above the Mississippi River. The mayor pleaded with the crowd to stop, but his appeals were ignored. Before he died, Prager wrote a final note to his parents, and friends said he protested his loyalty to the United States, saying he was all for America. Accounts give the date of death as April 4 or April 5, officials disagreed over who should make arrests, and eleven men tried for his murder were all acquitted on June 1, 1918.
Cause of death, as reported: Taken from custody and lynched. A mob broke into the Collinsville jail and hanged Robert Paul Prager, an enemy alien, from a tree after overpowering the lone guard, and the accounts agree that no arrests had been made by early April 1918.
Reported by: Edwardsville court, in the murder trial of the 11 men charged (court); news reports.