“The Hanging of An Innocent Man”

Early day justice Minnehaha County, Dakota Territory, overlooked innocence when gallows were erected near this site for the hanging of Thomas Egan, a pioneer immigrant farmer from County Tipperary in Ireland. Egan settled in Dakota in 1876.

Egan was arrested, tried, convicted and hanged for causing the death of his wife, Mary. She was murdered in September, 1880, on the family homestead farm 20 miles northwest of Sioux Falls, north of Hartford. She was found in the cellar of their sod home, dead from a bloody beating.

The suspicion of neighbors, which promptly spread through the community, centered on Egan. He was immediately taken into custody and placed in jail in Sioux Falls where he remained until the hanging. Many years later, a surprising revelation would prove his complete innocence.

Mary Hayden Lyons was a widow with a five year old daughter, Catherine, when she married Egan, in 1866, at Madison, Wisconsin. When the couple later moved, Catherine remained behind with relatives. Three sons, Sylvester, John and Tommy, were born to Thomas and Mary Egan before Catherine rejoined the household in Dakota Territory. Soon thereafter, on November 23, 1879, Catherine married a neighbor, James Van Horn. During the trial, James and Catherine Van Horn testified for the prosecution, a fact which angered Egan greatly.

When the day of sentencing arrived, Territorial Judge Jefferson P. Kidder asked Egan if he had anything to say. With an angry scowl he replied ‘Judge, I have nothing against anybody in the Court, or anybody around the country, except the Van Horns. They betrayed me and may the curse of God be upon them. I can stand it, Sir. The law may not reach the Van Horns, but the curse of God will.'

Catherine Van Horn lived 45 years with the words of her stepfather ringing in her ears. On June 3, 1927, on her death bed, at age 65, in Seattle, Washington, she confessed that she had killed her mother. She wrote, ‘Back in South Dakota in the early ‘80’s I killed my mother. We quarreled and I hit her again and again over the head until she died. No one ever suspected me. My stepfather, Thomas Egan, was hung for the crime. He died vowing his innocence.'

It took three drops from the hangman’s trap door on July 13, 1882, to end the life of Thomas Egan. On the first drop, the rope broke and Egan was carried back to the platform. On the second drop, a deputy inadvertently broke Egan’s fall and the hanging man was dragged to stand on the trap door a third time. Following the third drop, the official physician declared him dead. Erected in 1993 by the Minnehaha County and South Dakota Historical Societies and the Minnehaha Century Fund.

Minnehaha County, Near 6th street and Main Ave. (2006)