Died in jail or a lockup
W. J. Overstreet
W. J. Overstreet was held in the Farmersville jail in Union Parish, Louisiana, in late October 1879. According to a New Orleans telegraph dispatch printed in the New York Herald, a large crowd came to the jail late at night, demanded the man held there, and took him from his cell. The dispatch says the jailer handed over the keys without resistance, and that Overstreet, already wounded from earlier attempts to seize him, could barely stand. A mob hanged him in a nearby grove, and the dispatch reports that no action was expected against those involved.
Cause of death, as reported: Killed by another person in custody