Desperado!
William Holly Griffith and the
Killing of a Gassaway Policeman Part II - The Run
The evening of the shooting, as soon as night fell on Gassaway, Holly Griffith left the woods at the edge of town to begin his run. He followed the railroad tracks to Sutton, then along the B&O tracks to Flatwoods where he left the tracks for the road crossing Dyer Hill. From there he hiked to a point on the B&O’s Richwood branch, then up the railroad to Centralia where he planned to catch the morning train for Richwood. After a scuffle with a B&O railroad officer, in which both fell from the moving train, Griffith hit the hill again, emerging at the tracks above Centralia. There, he was able to jump another train, riding back to a point near Holly Junction where he learned that the posse had just passed by within minutes of his arrival. He walked a distance down the tracks where he sat down on a pile of crossties to remove some of the cinders that had accumulated in his shoes.
