In the predawn hours of October 23, 1911, a posse assembled in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, with a singular purpose: to bring a fugitive to justice. Among them was Hollis Brown Horton, a 29-year-old White male who had been specially deputized for this dangerous task. The man they sought, Frank Richardson, was the primary suspect in the killing of a former deputy sheriff in Northport just a day earlier.
The chase led the posse into the dense woods, a tense and uncertain environment for a manhunt.
As the posse closed in on their quarry near Sander's Ferry on the Black Warrior River, the fugitive refused to surrender. A volley of gunfire erupted in the darkness, the muzzle flashes briefly illuminating a chaotic scene. In the exchange of shots, Hollis Horton was struck by a bullet from a Winchester rifle and fell, mortally wounded. Another deputy in the posse also sustained a leg injury during the shootout. Horton's tenure as a special deputy sheriff lasted only a single day.
The following day, the suspect, Frank Richardson, was captured. He was swiftly put on trial for the murder of Hollis Horton. During the legal proceedings, Richardson was also identified as the confessed murderer of the former deputy, Tom Cooper. Despite testimony to Richardson's generally good character, the jury returned a guilty verdict for murder in the first degree after a short deliberation. Frank Richardson was sentenced to death.
Later, an appeal introduced a seed of doubt, suggesting that in the confusion of the shootout, it was unclear who fired the fatal shot. An affidavit from another deputy, Robert Fowler, claimed that he had fired at the same time as Richardson and that his bullet might have been the one that killed Horton. Nevertheless, the conviction was upheld, and on July 19, 1912, Frank Richardson was executed for the murder of Special Deputy Sheriff Hollis Brown Horton.
