True Crime Chronicles: The Phantom of the Noose – John Childers and the legend of the gallows

Picture this: It's a pitch-black night in 1873 Fort Smith --"Hell on the Border," where the federal gallows loomed like a skeletal finger pointing to judgment. Iron bars rattle. A file whispers against metal. And from the shadows of a cell block packed with killers, a broad-shouldered half-Cherokee outlaw named John Childers vanishes like smoke.

No explosion of gunfire, no posse in hot pursuit, just a ghost slipping the devil's leash. This wasn't his first breakout, and in the fevered lore of the frontier, whispers grew: Childers didn't just escape jail. He escaped the gallows themselves.

The legend of John Childers' escapes isn't mere history--it's the stuff of dime novels, saloon ballads, and ghost stories that still chill Oklahoma backroads. Over two daring jailbreaks while under sentence of death, he became the man who mocked the noose. Recaptured and hanged in a thunder-ravaged spectacle, his tale endures as proof that some souls cheat fate... until the storm calls them home,

John Childers wasn't born to legend--he was forged in it. Born in 1846 on Cherokee Nation land along Cowskin Creek (northeastern Oklahoma), the son of a white trader father and Cherokee mother, he grew up in the post-Trail of Tears wilds. The Civil War claimed his youth; fighting for the Confederacy left him scarred, and restless, a 5'11" brawler with a gambler's eyes and a Colt strapped low

.In October 1870, desperation met opportunity on a foggy trail near Tahlequah. Reyburn Wedding, a Missouri peddler with $280 in cash and goods (~$6,000 today), rattled by in his wagon. Childers, broke and hearing whispers of a $10 bounty on the man's head (for debts or horse thievery), saw his chance.

One shot from his Navy revolver, right through Wedding's skull. He rifled the body, mounted a stolen horse, and vanished into the Nations' endless timbe

r.Deputy U.S. Marshal Red Jackson Vannoy, a Cherokee lawman with ice in his veins, hunted him down near the Illinois River. Childers surrendered peaceably... but peace wasn't his style

Hauled to the leaky Van Buren Jail (the Western District's holding pen across the Arkansas River from Fort Smith), Childers marked his 25th birthday on May 3, 1871, with fireworks.

The jail was a joke: 100 inmates in a stone barn meant for 50, guards bribable with whiskey or silver.

Childers, already plotting with six "desperate characters" (horse thieves and whiskey

At midnight, they filed through window bars like termites through wood. Childers led, rappelling a 20-foot rope of knotted blankets. No alarm until dawn. The Van Buren Press screamed: "SIX FIENDS ESCAPE! Childers, the Peddler Slayer, at Large!" 

He bolted into Cherokee hideouts, kin feeding him venison and intel. For four months, he dodged posses, leaving taunting notes: "The noose can wait--I'm dancing free."

Recaptured in September near Sallisaw, dragged to Fort Smith for trial. Convicted November 1872 under Judge William Story. Sentence: Hang by the neck until dead. But as the gallows rose--a crude pine platform by the fort's powder magazine--Childers grinned.

"This is the legend's heart--the escape that blurred jailbreak and miracle. Locked in Fort Smith's new federal jail (a log stockade overrun with Parker's future "guests"), Childers awaited execution. His May 1873 appeal failed. Date set: August 15. But in February 1873, with the scaffold visible from his cell window, he struck again.

Supposedly 9as the legend goes) , Cherokee visitors (or bribed guards) smuggled a steel chisel disguised as a belt buckle. Night after night, Childers chipped at a lower-tier window grate--quiet as a prayer.Under a howling storm (frontier accounts love the drama), he pried the bars, knotted bedsheets into a 30-foot lifeline, and dropped into the muddy Arkansas River bottoms.

Guards slept through it; hounds bayed too late. Mounted a waiter's horse, Childers ghosted 100 miles into the Nations through Sallisaw, Tahlequah, and even Kansas border camps. He taunted Marshal John Sarber with carved trail signs: "Gallows? I laughed at 'em." 

A $200 reward yielded nothing; posses chased shadows.

The Fort Smith Elevator wailed: "MURDERER MOCKS THE LAW! Childers Escapes as His Own Rope is Knotted!" 

For four months, he was a specter--stealing grub from farms, whispering to allies: "They'll never hang a free man."

 Sarber's 50-man manhunt ended in June near Sallisaw: Childers, cornered in a thicket, surrendered with a shrug. "Third time's yours, Marshal." Irons this time—double-locked, under 24-hour watch.

August 15, 1873: 5,000 packed Fort Smith's execution grounds--a frontier circus of picknickers, Cherokee in feathers, soldiers with rifles.

The gallows, oiled and ready, bore Childers' name as its first. He climbed, cigar lit, unrepentant: "I killed for money--would again. Ain't repentin' to no white man's God."

At 1:40 p.m., Sarber sprang the trap. Disaster. The drop stretched the rope; no neck snap. Childers strangled for 15 minutes, legs kicking, face blackening, as the crowd gasped. Then the storm: Lightning cracked the sky, thunder boomed like cannonade, rain lashed the scaffold. Witnesses swore flames licked the ropes; one woman fainted, yelling, "Childers escaped hell--the devil's fetchin' him hisself!

Buried in Oak Cemetery--no rites, just dirt--Childers' legend exploded. Saloon tales claimed his third escape: soul slipping the noose as thunder masked his final break

Childers' double escapes lit the fuse for "Hanging Judge" Isaac Parker's reign—87 executions followed, the gallows a blood-soaked stage. But the legend? It's bigger:

• Dime Novel Hero: 1880s pulps recast him as a "Cherokee Robin Hood," escaping "the tyrant's rope."

• Ghost Lore: Fort Smith rangers report August storms; locals near Cowskin Creek see a horseman on foggy nights.

• Cultural Echo: Cherokee oral histories frame him as resistance to federal nooses; modern books like Hell's Half Acre call him "the man who beat death twice."

  
  

Today, at Fort Smith National Historic Site, his plaque reads outlaw not phantom. But ask old-timers: John Childers didn't hang. He escaped. And on stormy August 15ths, when the river howls, listen close and you'll hear chains rattle... and laughter.

 The gallows claimed a body. But John Childers? He's still riding.