In the town of Jackson, Kentucky, on a Thursday in the autumn of 1910, the life of John Wesley Turner, a 35-year-old male, was abruptly ended. On November 10th, while walking with acquaintances, Turner, the Breathitt County Jailer, had a fatal encounter with a man who harbored a deep-seated grudge against him. That man was "Bad Jake" Noble, a former inmate of the very jail Turner oversaw.
The animosity Noble felt towards the jailer culminated in a moment of shocking violence.
Noble, seizing a weapon from a friend, opened fire on Turner, killing him instantly on the street. In the immediate aftermath, Noble fled, disappearing into the surrounding area and prompting the formation of a large posse to hunt him down. Initial reports that surfaced four days later claimed the posse had caught up with and killed Noble, but these proved to be erroneous. The man who had gunned down the jailer remained at large, a fugitive from justice.
The pursuit of "Bad Jake" Noble became a protracted and frustrating affair for law enforcement. Over the next several years, reports of his capture would occasionally surface, only to be debunked. In 1911, he was mistakenly identified and apprehended first in Williamstown, West Virginia, and later in Fayetteville, Arkansas. The real Noble, however, continued to elude the authorities. His notoriety was such that by May of 1915, Governor James B. McCreary increased the reward for his capture to over $1,000. Noble's violent history was well-known in the region; he was suspected in the 1905 killing of Breathitt County Deputy Sheriff Grant Holliday, a charge for which he was tried and released. He had also been previously imprisoned for killing a young boy during a dispute at a turkey shoot in 1900, an incident in which he also killed his cousin but was acquitted of that murder. The last known report of Noble was in a Kentucky newspaper in June 1916, which stated he had killed another man in Breathitt County. Despite the extensive manhunt and the significant bounty on his head, there is no clear record of "Bad Jake" Noble ever being brought to justice for the murder of Jailer John Wesley Turner, who was survived by his wife and ten children.
