Died in jail or a lockup
Sam Ramey
Sam Ramey was held in the jail at Owingsville, Kentucky, in September 1881. A brief dispatch in the Savannah Morning News, published September 14, 1881, reported that he was taken from the jail on Sunday night and hanged, under the headline A Kentucky Lynching. A later account in The South Kentuckian, published September 20, 1881, says a mob took him from the jail and lynched him. None of these sources say who in the jail was on duty, whether the sheriff or jailer resisted the mob or handed over the keys, or how the mob got in.
Cause of death, as reported: Taken from custody and lynched
Reported by: A Kentucky Lynching news report (1881) (reporters); The Sentinel-Democrat retrospective column (reporters).