Burned Alive: The Lynch Murder, Mutilation and Mayhem of Ell Persons

Burned Alive: The Lynch Murder, Mutilation and Mayhem of Ell Persons – [patheos.com] – On May 2, 1917, after a two day search into the whereabouts of 15 year old Antoinette Rappel, a search team found her decapitated body lying in the woods. The News Scimitar described the scene as such: “Lying on its back, with arms and limbs outstretched, and with clothing torn and disheveled, the headless trunk of Miss Rappal’s [sic] body was found. Near her right foot was the severed head, its golden tresses clotted and tangled with blood. The wide-staring blue eyes bore a frozen expression of horror.” A doctor concluded that “Miss Rappel had been sexually assaulted, but could not determine whether this happened before or after her death and “scratches and bruises on her shoulders and arms seemed to indicate that she had resisted her attacker.”[1] According to newspaper accounts, detectives initially suspected that a white man killed Rappel. Her bicycle “had been discovered leaning against a tree about one hundred feet from the road, with her belongings still in the basket. This seemed to indicate that she had not been forcibly seized and dragged away from the road because detectives surmised that she would not have “left the road” to go to a black man but might have “followed a white man she knew.” Even a respected doctor at the time, Lee A. Stone, believed that a “white man committed this terrible crime.” Dr. Lee went so far as to reason that the man who killed Rappel was a necrophiliac who killed her before sexually abusing her.”[2]