Livingston County had never seen anything like it. Fifteen hundred people gathered at Smithland, the county seat, from all over southwestern Kentucky. A 16-year-old girl had her neck broken when a car turned over hurrying through the dawn to get there on time. A professional executioner had been brought in from Illinois. And William Thomas De Boe had dressed himself as if he were going down to Paducah for a dance when he marched up the 13 steps to the scaffold to become the first white man hanged for rape in Kentucky's history. What...
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