6. The feud turned violent on another election day in 1882
In 1882 during an election day in Kentucky, alcohol and mutual contempt led to a brawl involving another brother of Devil Anse, Ellison Hatfield, and three McCoy brothers, Tolbert, Bud, and Pharmer, sons of Randolph McCoy. The fight may have erupted over Hatfield’s treatment of their sister, Roseanna McCoy. One of the McCoy brothers used a knife to stab Ellison numerous times, with some sources saying more than two dozen stab wounds were inflicted, several of them in the back, before shooting the helpless and gravely wounded man as he lay on the ground. Local constables, several of them Hatfields, arrested the McCoy brothers and prepared to transport them to Pikeville, the county seat.
Devil Anse organized a posse of his relatives and friends, intercepted the party on the way to Pikeville, and seized the McCoy prisoners. The constables were ordered to disperse. Anse and his party then kept the McCoy brothers in custody. Meanwhile, Ellison Hatfield lay dying. Anse kept the McCoys in bonds until his brother died of his wounds, after which he had the three McCoys taken into the woods and tied to pawpaw bushes, according to the legend. The Hatfields then shot each of the three brothers, with more than fifty shots fired in total by the dispensers of vigilante justice. The murders led to about twenty of the Hatfield clan being indicted, but they continued to elude arrest, leading the McCoys to take vigilante action of their own.