Will Lockett, born Petrie Kimbrough in Kentucky in 1896, killed three adult women and a ten-year-old girl across Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky between 1912 and 1919. The victims were strangled or beaten, and the cases involved rape. He was a black man who left Kentucky and did most of his travelling, and killing, under the assumed name that followed him to the electric chair.
His trial in Lexington in February 1920 became the more consequential part of the story. A crowd gathered outside the courthouse intending to lynch him. The Kentucky National Guard, ordered to hold the building, fired on the mob; several people were killed and martial law was declared in the city. The episode is cited as the first occasion in the American South on which state force was used successfully to prevent a lynching, and became known as the Lexington defense.
He was convicted and executed by electrocution on March 11, 1920, five weeks after the trial.