Before he was hanged, James' mother, Katherine Roberts, wrote a letter to Sheriff Werner, noting that James was born on November 28, 1890, making him 17-years-old. The letter was introduced in James' trial, but the state fixed James' age to 23-year-old. After James was hanged, Roberts gave an accounting of James' life to Springfield newspapers before she left with his body. She maintained that his birthday was November 28, 1890. However, on his death certificate, the state recorded him as being 23-years-old. Upon James' arrest, Officer Golden was said to have found a "penknife" near where James was found sleeping (though, it was never stated if there was any blood found on the knife). It would later be reported that the penknife was found near Ballard's home – "near the place where the death struggle between the two men began." However, the small, two-bladed penknife was always determined to be incapable of inflicting the types of wounds that Ballard sustained, in particular the "knife thrust" that punctured his lung and the deep cuts across his arms, below his elbows, that had "severed muscles to the bone." Because of this, authorities conceded that they did not know what type of knife was used to kill Ballard, nor was one that was capable ever found. When confronted with this discrepancy, the Ballard family dismissed the findings, stating that "the negro used both hands in a manner that seemed to indicate that he had a weapon in each." Cause Because Springfield was "an average American city," within a state considered to be a "microcosm of the U.S.," and also because the town name, "Springfield," is the most frequently occurring community name in the U.S., with at least one "Springfield" found across 25 of the 50 states, the attacks represented the average white American pathos toward black Americans. The attacks in Springfield were the fourth such attacks to occur in an American "Springfield" over a four-year period: In 1904, in Springfield, Ohio, after a police officer ended up dead following a domestic disturbance, a black man was dragged from his jail cell by a mob and hanged from an electric pole. The mob of 1,500 men then procured combustible waste materials at the railroads and took them to the black "Levee" neighborhood along the Mad River, where they drove out occupants and set seven building on fire, leaving 150 black people homeless. The police