In December 1891, soon after the first anniversary of Tillman's taking office, a black Edgefield man named Dick Lundy was charged with murdering the sheriff's son, and was taken from the jail and lynched. Tillman sent the state solicitor to Edgefield to investigate the matter, and ridiculed the coroner's jury verdict. As usual in cases of lynching, it stated the deceased had been killed by persons unknown. Tillman said, "the law received a wound for every bullet shot into Dick Lundy's body." The "News and Courier" opined that had he been present "with true Edgefield instinct, would probably have been hanging around on the edge of the mob".