Wilbur Sanders, an attorney, the leading voice of the Vigilance Committee, joined the abductors at the moment of the killing. Stone-faced, he addressed the sheriff. “It is useless for you to beg for your life,” he said. “You are to be hanged. You cannot feel harder about it than I do, but I cannot help it if I could.” Plummer still begged. Just a year or so earlier, he’d opened his home and his town to Sanders and Edgerton, given them Thanksgiving dinner. What were the charges? He had the right to a trial. At the gallows, the rope was tied around Plummer’s neck and pulled tight. The doomed man
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