Willard Richards

Willard Richards was an apostle of the Church and a firsthand witness to the killings of Joseph Smith and Hyrum Smith at Carthage Jail on June 27, 1844. He survived the attack by remaining unnoticed behind a door; afterward, he and John Taylor declined to testify at the defendants’ trial, fearing that returning to Carthage would put their lives at risk. His brief physical survival thus became part of a larger story of violence, witness, and the difficulty of securing justice.

Identity and Role

Richards was among the apostles visiting Joseph and Hyrum Smith in their quarters when militiamen from Warsaw returned to Carthage and attacked the jail. He was not merely nearby: he was inside the room with the brothers and John Taylor as the assault began, placing him among the small number of direct witnesses to the killings.

The Attack and Survival

As the attackers tried to force their way into the bedroom, Richards and Taylor took up walking sticks and tried to push back the gun barrels coming through the partly opened door. When the assault overwhelmed the room, Richards ended up on the hinge side of the doorway. As the door swung open, he was squeezed between it and the wall, where he remained standing and unnoticed until the shooting stopped.

Once the militiamen had left, Richards emerged unharmed apart from slight wounds where a bullet had grazed his throat and earlobe. He went to the window and saw a crowd gathered near Joseph Smith’s body, with more people arriving around the corner of the jail. He then noticed Taylor on the floor, badly wounded but still alive. Richards’s account of what followed links his own narrow escape to Taylor’s survival and to the immediate aftermath outside the room.

Witness and Aftermath

In May 1845, nine men were indicted in connection with the killings, and seven were brought to trial in Carthage. Richards and Taylor, the Mormon apostles who had witnessed the attack, refused to appear in court. They feared, with reason, that going near Carthage would result in their deaths. Their absence meant that two direct witnesses did not testify in the proceedings.

The trial went ahead, and all nine defendants were found not guilty. Richards’s refusal was presented in the context of the threats surrounding the case, while the verdict underscored the gap between having witnessed a murder and being able to pursue accountability in a hostile setting. The book therefore places him both inside the decisive event and among those whose fear shaped its legal aftermath.