Guilty Parties

The last lynching in the state of California occurred as Prohibition was about to end and the Great Depression was at its zenith. San Jose, California was a sleepy prune town far from the bright lights of San Francisco only forty miles away. Brooke Hart was the son of one of the richest men in what would become Silicon Valley. He was the opportunity and victim of two desperate men imitating kidnapping attempts which seemed to grip the nation in those hard times. Jack Holmes and Harold Thurman were an unlikely pair to actually complete a kidnapping and negotiate the ransom. They were easily caught, but the story doesn’t end here. The good citizens of San Jose took out their vengeance on the pair by breaking into the County Jail and lynching both men in St. James Park in downtown San Jose. The police arguably looked the other way. Police forces from around the Bay Area failed to respond when asked to quell the turmoil erupting in the park just hours before Thurman and Holmes were stripped naked and hanged near the statue of William McKinley. When asked about the incident Governor Sonny Jim Rolf said, “It might be a good idea to have all criminals in the state moved to San Jose.”No one was ever held responsible for the lynching of the men even though photos of the hangmen were readily available. As late as 1978 all public photos pertaining to the kidnapping were doctored to hide faces in the crowd. Guilty Parties is a novel based on these events.