The Santa Clara County Jail off N 1st Street and E Saint James is a distinguished neoclassical building with a concrete arch over the double doors. On the evening of November 26, 1933, two white males in their late 20s were placed in cells. They have confessed to the kidnapping and murder of Brooke Hart, the 22-year-old scion of one of the city’s most prominent families.
A crowd of several thousand has gathered in front of the Sheriff’s Office, enraged by the news and radio reports, prepared to exact their own justice. The crowd demanded the two men be turned over to them. The sheriff refuses.
The sheriff asks Governor “Sunny Jim” Rolph to deploy the National Guard. The Governor refuses. At 11 p.m., the mob crashes into the jail’s entrance, shouting for Thurmond and Holmes. Hundreds of men in three-piece suits and hats try to smash and shove their way in. Wood splinters from where a makeshift battering ram slams into the doors. Rocks fly. Windows shatter.
The mob pummels deputies, shoving them aside, and striking the sheriff with a brick. One of the accused is taken from his cell, stripped, beaten, and dragged to a tree. He begs for his life, thrashes as a noose is tightened around his neck. “I’m not the man you want,” he cries, and he is punched in the nose. His naked, bloody, living body is strung up more than 10 feet in the air where he twists in torment until his neck finally breaks.
The second of the accused is discovered in a closet near his cell and dragged to the same tree. He does not resist. He has been knocked unconscious. In suit jacket and shirt, he too is strung up as hundreds sing and cheer and watch his body sway.
After hours of chaos, the crowd dissipates. As they head back to their homes, they leave debris, destruction, and murder behind. Peace Officers clean up the aftermath, cut down the two bodies and return the corpses to their custody.
Three months before the incident, a bill is passed adding a section to the Penal Code, which says that the “taking by means of a riot of any person from lawful custody of any peace officer is a lynching…punishable by imprisonment in the State prison…”
That is the fate of John Holmes and Thomas Thurmond, the two men who confessed to Brooke Hart’s kidnapping and murder. No indictment. No arraignment. No trial by a jury of their peers. Just crowd vengeance and knotted ropes slung over the broad branch of a cork elm tree in St. James Park.
It is the first and last lynching in San Jose since 1854 and is generally considered to be the last lynching in California.
One deputy compares the mob to animals. A professor applauds the mob in his classroom. Governor Rolph praises the mob violence, saying California sent a powerful message to future kidnappers. Anyone involved in the lynching will be pardoned, Rolph vows. Six months later, Rolph dies before any charges are filed.
The San Jose City Council orders the cork elm be cut down. Police must hold back souvenir hunters eager for a piece of the “gallows tree.”
Nicky Park is a Law Librarian at the California State Library. She has a Master’s in Library and Information Science from Indianapolis University Purdue, a Bachelor’s in Professional and Creative Writing from Sacramento State University, and a Master’s in English, emphasis in Creative Writing from California State University. Her work experience includes working as a paralegal, clerking for the courts, freelance writing and teaching.