The other three escapees—Charlie Enlow, Jess White and Jim Fleming—were pursued in a manhunt of sheriff deputies, camp guards, a posse of local concerned citizens and bloodhounds from Pickens County. Enlow spent the night on the side of Hogback Mountain but was captured the next day.

The search continued for five days, but it was finally apparent that White and Fleming had escaped from the state over the mountains behind Hogback.

At a coroner’s inquest held at the courthouse on September 21, Townsend testified that he saw Blakely strike Garrett on the back o f the head with a shovel and then reach over Garrett’s body and take his gun.

The autopsy report indicated that the guard’s head “was shattered by a heavy blow from the rear causing a laceration of the right side of the brain, cerebral hemorrhage, fracture of the skull occipital and orbital plates.” The coroner’s jury ruled that Blakely was responsible for Garrett’s death.

Blakely was convicted of murder at a trial in October and sentenced to death but the original indictment was thrown out on the grounds that “it was drawn faultily and the grand jury which returned a true bill was not legally constituted.”

The South Carolina Supreme Court granted Blakely a new trial on October 30, 1930. The Greenville County grand jury returned a new indictment against Blakely and a second trial,which lasted only one day, ended on November 3 when the trial jury returned a verdict of guilty of murder with no recommendation to mercy. Judge E.C. Dennis sentenced Blakely to death on December 19, but an appeal delayed the execution. The appeal was denied on January 19, 1931 and a new execution date was set forMarch 27.