Sarah Wyckoff Imprisoned for 42 Years, Bob McCorkle, Hung for Same Offense, Were Both Innocent, Feb. 4, 1921

Sarah Wyckoff, an aged white woman who had served more than 40 years in state prison at Raleigh for a crime of which she was not guilty, died in prison this week without other friends than the prison officials and attendants. Mrs. Wyckoff came from Alexander county, and 42 years ago she was convicted of complicity in the murder of her husband. Bob McCorkle, a negro, who was accused of being her accomplice, was swung into eternity for the same offiense. About three eyars ago, a man on his dying bed confessed that he, and no other, had killed Wesley Wyckoff back in Alexander county 39 years before. His confession came too late to do the poor old woman any good. In the 39 years of her imprisonment, all her friends and relatives had died and she knew no one outside prison walls. She begged to spend her few remaining days inprison because she had no where else to go. Ben Dixon MacNeill tells the pathetic story of this gruesome miscarriage of human justice in the News and Observer, and tells it well. From The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., Friday, Feb. 4, 1921