Bio

Lewis W. Lyons was born in 1849. The known turning point in Lyons’s life came years before the murder, after he was accused in a theft case involving a diamond shirt stud. Later historical accounts describe him as having been wrongly arrested for that theft. The case caused lasting bitterness in Lyons and became the source of years of anger toward the legal system and toward attorney J. Ward Gurley.

Lyons tried to take legal action after the theft accusation, but his efforts failed. His resentment then focused on Gurley, who had been connected to the earlier legal dispute. Lyons harassed Gurley for years, threatened him, and even challenged him to a duel in 1901, which Gurley ignored. By 1903, Lyons’s grievance had become violent. On July 20, he went to Gurley’s office armed with a gun.

Murder Story

On July 20, 1903, Lewis W. Lyons went to the office of J. Ward Gurley in New Orleans. Gurley was the Orleans Parish district attorney and had recently been elected to the office. Lyons had held a grudge against him for years because of the earlier diamond-stud case and failed legal action.

Inside Gurley’s office, Lyons shot him to death. After the shooting, Lyons turned the gun on himself and attempted suicide. Early reports said he shot himself in the head, but he survived the wound.

The killing shocked New Orleans because Gurley was a public official and was murdered in his own office. Later historical descriptions called it one of the most dramatic legal murders in the city’s early twentieth-century history.

Lyons was tried for murder and pleaded insanity. He was found guilty, but the Louisiana appellate court ordered a retrial because of a problem with the judge’s instructions. At the second trial, he was again found guilty and sentenced to death.

Before the execution, Lyons’s request for clemency was denied. On March 24, 1905, he was hanged at Orleans Parish Prison in New Orleans. A later legal-history article reported that when he was told to be brave, he answered, “There’s no dunghill in me. I’ll walk to the gallows as easily as I walk through that door.” When asked for final words, he reportedly said, “No. Nothing at all.”