article_snippet: A new book claims that his elderly hired man staged an elaborate sucide .
article_snippet: The crime was deemed a 'lynching' by editorial writers from Boston to Washington to the civil rights-era South.
article_snippet: (All the players in Vermont were white, but white supremacists in the civil rights-era South used the story to cry white supremacists in the South were being unfairly singled out for the mob killings of black men.)
article_snippet: they speak of threats they believe were intended to keep people quiet, including one in which a note was stuck with a knife to a tree outside the home of a potential witness.
article_snippet: Evidence of a crime, including depressions in a grain bag where a crime appeared two men had sat, drag marks on the floor and a crushed milk pail, was found .
article_snippet: — the story about the beating of his hired man.
article_snippet: In the barn, his hired man saw evidence of a crime, including depressions in a grain bag where his hired man believed two men had sat, drag marks on the floor and a crushed milk pail. '