"Bad Bill" Waters: The Scourge of Menifee County

 
I plan to do an in depth blog about "Bad Bill" Waters in the future. His story goes a little deeper than this article portrays.  But for now, here is this article that was written by Mary Lou Brown and published in the Courier-Journal, Louisville, KY, June 8, 1986.


"Bad Bill Waters

The Scourge of Menifee County 

His hot temper and violent, impulsive nature were nourished by a taste for the juice of mountain stills. But he always sounded calm and deliberate when he said, "I believe I'll just kill you."

By Mary Lou Brown

 

It was customary, he could have anything he wanted to eat, the warden told him, but the condemned man ate an unusually light last meal of fried oysters, sweet, milk, biscuits and coffee. Oysters a coveted food highly touted as an aphrodisiac, a rich man's food not readily available to a mountain man in the lean, hungry 1930s. Was the choice symbolic? He ate his oysters and spent his few remaining hours writing letters to friends and family.

At exactly 12:03 a.m. on Nov. 3, 1933, "Bad Bill" Waters, scourge of the Menifee County hills, stepped into the death chamber of the Kentucky State Penitentiary at Eddyville. Waters nodded to newsmen and to others gathered to witness his execution. No, he would have nothing more to say, except to deny that he had killed as many men as reputed.

He had said all he wanted to say in his appeal, which was denied. He acknowledged Floyd Willis, a Montgomery County farmer. "Well, Floyd, is this the first execution you've ever seen?" Willis nodded. Reporters later described Waters' tone as "bantering." The current was applied at 1 2:06 and "Bad Bill" Waters was pronounced dead at 12:09, ending a career of crime unparalleled in the history of Menifee, a Cumberland foothills county infamous in its early days for moonshine stills and a general climate of lawlessness. 

The road that Bill Waters traveled was a meandering trail of violence and murder leading from a small house on Hawkins' Branch, near Means, to the "big house" at Eddyville. Legend has it that Bill, "the meanest man in these parts," killed 13 men, but when pressed for specifics, old-timers will talk vaguely of "a man he killed over in Powell County" or of "two or three men he killed up in Ohio," supplying little or no evidence to support the legend. Jim Walters, 82, Bill's last remaining brother, states flatly that his brother did not kill 1 3 men. Jim long ago left Menifee for Grant County and is reluctant to talk about events of more than half a century ago, but he does so, he says, to "set the record straight" Jim is tall, as was his brother, straight as a yellow poplar, with a thatch of white hair and keen, blue eyes as perceptive as a hawk's. (Jim explains that the family name is actually "Walters," but through constant misspelling the "1" was finally dropped, reducing the name to He freely admits that his brother had a quick, murderous temper.

"Quick to get mad and quick to get over it He liked guns; always had a gun handy. That's what happened to the pack peddler," he said It has been rumored for 60 years that the itinerant peddler was Bill Waters' first murder victim. Bill, then 14, confessed the murder to Jim, but not to his parents, Polly and Ellis Waters. "A pack peddler came up Hawkins' Branch one day," said Jim. "You know how they used to walk the hollows with a pack on their backs, selling pots and pans, washboards, thimbles and thread? Our mother was at home alone.

The pack peddler got aggravated be-, cause she wouldn't buy anything. Talked right mean to her, she said, called her stingy. She wasn't She just didn't have any money." Bill came in from the field, and Polly told him about the rough manner of the peddler. Bill asked which way the peddler had gone, then slipped into a back bedroom and retrieved his shotgun. "He told me that he shot him, throwed him and his pack behind a log," Jim continued.

"A neighbor found the body, but the peddler was a stranger. Nobody asked any questions, and nobody ever came looking for him. That was the end of it for all I know." Jim describes his older brother as restless, searching always for adventure, excitement and money, which was rare on Hawkins' Branch. "He never was content to stay home and help Mother and Daddy, but he was a good worker. When just a boy, he bought two big goats and made him a can, harnessed his goats to it and went over to Powell County, where we used to live.

He hauled water for people in Clay City and made more money than my Daddy!" Bill then started going to Clay City at night, drinking and gambling. "It was more like home to Bill in Powell. That's where he got what little schooling he got" At an early age Bill tested for himself the potency of an illegal, home-distilled product made and sold locally in a Mason fruit jar. His fondness for drinking, fighting and gambling in Clay City did not go unnoticed. "First thing you know the law got an indictment for Billy, and he had to lay low for a while," said Jim.

"He was courting preacher Silas Amburgey's daughter, Bertha, and they got married. Then he joined the Army mostly to stay clear of the law in Powell County." World War I was in progress; the "long toms" were booming in France when the raw recruit arrived at Fort Knox for basic training. The restrictions of Army life palled on the impulsive mountain man, more accustomed to squirrel hunting in the early dawn than standing reveille. He simply walked away one morning, home to Menifee County. When the Army sought to reclaim him he turned himself in voluntarily, but in a few weeks he was home again.

Military police came for the recalcitrant soldier that time, but his third attempt at becoming a civilian succeeded. "Never knew if the Army turned him loose that last time or if he had deserted. He didn't say. Anyhow, nobody ever came after him," said Jim. Bill and Bertha settled down to serious housekeeping.

Four daughters Delma, Thelma, Hildreth and Gladys were born in quick succession. He found a job and seemed, on the surface, fairly content Other than his two vices, drinking and gambling, only one passion kept Bill away from home. When a baseball game was scheduled anywhere in the countryside, Bill was there. He was a pitcher, and a good one. When tempers flared on his favorite playing field at Chambers Station, Bill was known to walk away from the argument, holding his explosive temper in check.

But at home, he had no such control. With Bill away from home so much Bertha was lonely and "took to drinking," according to Jim. 

"Billy thought a lot of Bertha but couldn't get along with her after she started drinking. I kept him from killing her twee. She'd get drunk and just wander around, and it made him so mad he couldn't stand it.  Billy and I came in late one night, and Bertha was sitting on the side of the bed, drunk, with the little girls standing around. Billy was drunk, too. He said, 'Bertha, I believe I'll just kill you.'  He up and fired three shots at her with a .38 before I could stop him." Jim doesn't know to this day how he missed her.

"She never did raise her head up while he was shooting at her. I wrung the gun out of his hand, pushed him down on the bed and took his shoes off. He went to sleep." The next day Jim pointed out to his brother the bullet holes in the walls and in the ceiling. Bill said he remembered nothing of the incident, but Jim had his doubts.

 "Another time she was on the floor, drunk.  He said the same thing, 'Bertha, I believe I'll kill and leveled down on her with a Winchester shotgun. Again I ran under his gun, and he fired into the ceiling." 

Bill then moved to Ohio, a mecca of opportunity for a man wanting to work. But a state line did not cure what ailed Bill Waters: within a year he had shot and wounded a law officer who came to arrest him and was sentenced to a term in the Chillicothe Federal Reformatory. A short time later he and fellow inmate Ebra Thompson tunneled out of prison after first hiding in a drain pipe before lock-up.  The two men hid out by day and walked at night, heading for a refuge in the Kentucky hills that was always open to Bill: the home of Lulu and Taylor White on Science Ridge, a few miles from the Menifee County line, in Montgomery County.

 Lulu White, Taylor's 96-year-old widow, lives in Dayton, Ohio, with her daughter, Gertrude. Her ancient body is bowed by age, her red-rimmed eyes still bright with passion as she recalls the Chillicothe escape and the many "lies" told on her good friend, Billy. "That pore little feller had walked all the way from that prison," said Lulu. "His feet was a' bleedin' where he'd walked through the briars, him and that other feller.  Swum the Ohio River, he said. He said, 'Lulu, I don't want to bring no trouble down on and I got right down on my knees and I said, 'Billy, honey, you're not leaving here. You're staying. And if the law comes we'll fight it out with them right here on my front Would've, too," she added grimly. 

For the first few days the two escapees rarely left the confines of ." the White farm. But Thompson, a stranger to the area, soon became bored and began making daily trips to a general store, sitting and chatting with local denizens who loafed and whittled there. Bill thought Thompson was talking too much and to too many people. One day Bill invited the loquacious and unsuspecting Thompson for a little stroll in the woods. After a while Bill ordered Thompson to turn and face him. He pulled his gun and said casually, "I believe I'll just kill you." He aimed at Thompson's head, but Thompson ducked, instinctively shielding his face, and took the bullet in his arm.and asked Bill to take him to a doctor.

Thompson was bleeding badly. They walked back toward Lulu's, and by the time they reached the house Bill's anger had cooled. He agreed to let the man be taken to Mount Sterling to a doctor, which proved to be his undoing. 

The doctor immediately recognized the markings on Thompson's clothing as prison identification numbers. The two men were arrested and returned to Chillicothe. 

Bill had by now acquired a nickname that followed him to the end of his short life. "Bad Bill" a volatile man, eminently capable of murder, as explosive as kerosene on live coals; a man who would bear watching by friend and foe alike. 

When Bill was released from Chillicothe, he had no home to return to. Bertha, unable to cope after Bill was locked up, had put the four girls in an orphanage and had disappeared to make a new life. Bill went to Lulu's, his haven in any storm. 

 Lulu and her family were delighted to have him. "Billy was the most fun," said Lulu, and daughter Gertrude agrees. "We sang, laughed and talked," Gertrude recalls. "He played the French harp and the fiddle, and he'd take us to square dances and parties. We had an old 14-year-old dog that died of old age, and we took him up on the hill to bury him.We gave him a funeral, put flowers on the grave and cried over him you know how kids are." 

And Bill, not averse to killing another human being, cried over the dog's grave. He told the children that when he died he wanted his grave dug there beside the dog. "He said that we thought more of that dog than most people did of him. And he was buried there for 13-14 years, until his brother Jim had him dug up and moved to Williams' graveyard on Hawkins' Branch. He never wanted to be buried up there where so many people had been against him," said Gertrude.

Lulu also hastened to portray Bill as a kind, caring man, unaware of the inconsistency in her story: "I had an old cat, and little gang of chickens. Billy fed those little biddies, sat and played with them by the hour. The old cat ran out from under the porch one day, grabbed a chicken and killed it Billy came into the house, got his shotgun, and killed my cat I was mad! I asked him, 'Billy, why'd you kill my cat? He told me he just couldn't stand by and see his little chickens killed. He was tender-hearted as he could be." 

Bill grew restless, and when he heard that a distant cousin, Charley Neal, needed someone to help at his moonshine still Bill went to East Fork, near Means, and 'moved in with Charley. Bill was then a tall, well-built man in his early 30s, with a head of black hair and an infectious grin. He is described by women who knew him as "the prettiest man you ever laid two eyes on" and a man rumored to "have a way" with women. 

In welcoming Waters into his home, Charley Neal unwittingly set the stage for a three-cornered romance that led eventually to four violent deaths. Charley Neal was 55. His second wife, Carina was 20 years his junior, a good-looking woman who wore "paint and powder," tweezed her eyebrows and danced the "Charleston." (Charley had earlier swapped one of his young daughters and a shotgun to Corny's first husband for Corny. Both men were apparently satisfied, each having obtained a younger woman in the trade.) 

Charley was spending long hours at the still while his helper spent more and more time with Corny. Bill was badly smitten, says Lulu, but Charley was becoming suspicious. Charley would have to go. Although it was never proven, many who knew the couple (including Lulu White) believe that Corny actively participated in the murder as first charged. "She done it," said Lulu. "Killed her own man and blamed it on Billy. All Billy done was bury him."

 Many versions of the murder of Charley Neal have been told, but suffice it to say that with or without the help of Corny Bill Waters murdered Charley Neal at his moonshine still one day while they were working. Bill claimed that they had an argument, that he shot Charley in self-defense.  But a more likely scenario has Bill mildly telegraphing his move (as he usually did) by saying, "Charley, I believe Fll just kill you." 

Waters gave his victim a hasty burial and took immediate possession of Charley's cabin and, presumably, his wife. Neal's stepson alleged that Waters sat on the slain man's porch later that night playing his fiddle as if he hadn't a care in the world. When the stepson commented on Charley's absence, Bill warned him to say nothing and threatened to take him "squirrel hunting" in the woods a message clear and unequivocal if he talked to neighbors about Charley's disappearance. 

But Charley Neal's young children did talk, first among themselves and finally to neighbors. Their daddy was missing.Bill Waters had taken over the household, and they were afraid their daddy had been killed. 

Jess Amburgey, now of Jeffersonville (near Mount Sterling), lived on East Fork at the time. He recalls what happened next: 

"Charley Neal's kids came by my house one morning on their way to the store. They told me they thought Bill Waters had killed their daddy because he had never come home from the stilL I told them to go on back home, but to say nothing to Bill Waters about what they'd told me, or he might kill them. I talked to Rollie Goodpasture, who lived next to me, and we both wondered what to do about it I had the only car on the East Fork at the time a '28 Chevy and we decided to go to Frenchburg and get a warrant for Waters.

"When we got to town we found that Judge Elmer McGlothin was a' preachin' down this side of Frenchburg, on 460. We waited until he got done preaching and got ahold of him when church let out.  He went to the courthouse with us and Rollie swore out a 'John Doe' warrant for Bill." 

The next afternoon Sheriff John Lewis Back, along along with deputies Stanley Helton, Allie Henry, Johnny Cox and Marion Stapleton, Jailer W.S. Hogge, Constable Roy Williams and Menifee Spencer, a neighbor, headed toward East Fork to bring Waters in. "I warned them," said Amburgey, still shaking his head in disbelief at the officers' imprudence. "I told them they'd better wait until just before daylight the next morning to take him. I wouldn't go with them because I knew that Bill had that big old long, single-barreled shotgun loaded with buckshot, and I knew he would use it. He was already mad at me because I wouldn't loan him my pistol the day before.He was expect ing them to come and get him, see, and he was going to be ready. But they wouldn't listen to me, went up on that branch in broad daylight" 

The men found what they had feared they would find: the body of Charley Neal, about 150 yards from the still. He had been shot in the head with a shotgun; his body had been thrown into a ravine and covered with several burlap bags and 4 inches of earth. The body lay face-down in the shallow grave. (Neighbors who later witnessed the excavation of the body reported "scald burns, where hot still "slop" had been poured over the body either before or after death.)

 The sheriff and his men cautiously approached Neal's house, fanning out into a knee-high potato patch and a heavy growth of weeds. Sheriff Back called into the house. He had a warrant for Waters' arrest; would he come out peaceably? 

He would not.  He punctuated his answer with a blast from his shotgun. The lawmen returned a salvo of their own, and then a lull followed.  Deputy Marion Stapleton decided to creep up close to the house to peer into a window. It was the last decision he ever made - a blast from Waters' shotgun almost severed Stapleton's head.

The officers, firing indiscriminately, sprinted for cover, some falling face down in the potato patch, others hiding in the high sedge grass around the house. The bloody saga later prompted a song, describing the fears of at least one member of the posse: Johnny Cox, he hid in the grass And held his breath until Bad Bill passed... 

And pass he did, out a back door and into the rugged hills beyond. Waters was no stranger to the forest of black oaks, sweet gum, poplar and yellow pine in Menifee County. He knew the hilly terrain as well as he knew his own hand. 

The stillness of death blended with the acrid blue haze of gun-smoke around Neal's now deserted cabin. Their quarry had escaped, and Sheriff Back now took stock of his casualties. Marion Stapleton had been killed. Stanley Helton, who  died later that week at the hospital in Mount Sterling after issuing a deathbed statement, lay gravely wounded. Constable Roy Williams was bleeding profusely. 

"They wasn't up there more than an hour when they came back," said Amburgey, "a lot worse off than when they went in. Bill Waters was a mighty dangerous man. I told 'em so, but they wouldn't listen." 

After fleeing Neal's house into the woods on that hot July afternoon, Waters made a circuitous journey through the briars and thickets to a thick clump of trees near Taylor White's. 

"When we heard about the killings, we knew he'd come to us," said Lulu. "But then so did the law. They watched our house day and night, but Billy was out in the woods, watching them." 

Woodrow White, son of Lulu and Taylor White, still lives near the old homeplace.He was 13 years old in 1932. He remembers the morning that Waters made contact with the family. "I went with Willard Shepherd to an apple tree up on the hill behind the house to knock down some apples. We heard someone hollering, and it was Bill He was in bad shape, his clothes nearly torn off. He could hardly keep his pants up because his belt had been cut in two in the gunfight, but he wasn't hurt He asked us to bring him something to eat, and we carried stuff to him in the woods several days." 

But Bill started acting strange, according to Woodrow.But Bill started acting strange, according to Woodrow. "He talked about giving up, said that he'd got to 'seeing' his mother out in the woods, and it scared him."

The Menifee Fiscal Court had approved a $500 reward for his capture, while rewards from individuals, including the slain men's relatives, brought the total to $1,200, quite an inducement to his capture in those days. Still, no one seemed eager to become a hero. 

It was former Menifee Sheriff Ben Wells, a man Bill Waters knew and trusted, who finally talked the fugitive in. Wells, certain that Waters was hiding somewhere near Taylor White's, arranged a meeting between himself, White, Waters' friend Sam Shepherd and the wanted man.  The details of the surrender were worked out:  White and Shepherd would claim the reward for taking Waters in; the reward money would be used for Waters' defense. On July 19, 1932, Waters, accompanied by Wells, White and Shepherd, surrendered to authorities in Mount Sterling. (Waters would say later that surrendering was the worst mistake he'd ever made.) W.B. White, a Mount Sterling attorney, agreed to handle his defense. The case would be tried in Montgomery County because of intense feelings in Menifee.

Three murder indictments had been returned, but the commonwealth chose to try Waters for the murder of Stanley Helton, and he was moved to the Fayette County jail for safekeeping until his trial. A festive atmosphere prevailed in Mount Sterling when the trial began on Nov. 22, 1932. Families came in wagons, on foot, on horses and mules. Vendors hawked their wares on street corners, and eager spectators tried to squeeze into the packed courtroom.

Waters appeared unruffled, relaxed as he greeted friends before the trial. Witnesses for the prosecution testified that Waters had told them he would kill any officers who tried to take him into custody. Back and his deputies related the activities of the posse when Helton was killed. Admitted into evidence was Helton's dying statement "I am Stanley Helton. I am in serious condition and don't believe I can get well.

I was shot by Bill Waters today, July 13, 1 932." The only witness for the defense was Waters himself. He admitted firing at the officers. He didn't know the armed men in Charley's yard were law officers. He didn't believe that the slugs from his shotgun killed Helton; Helton was caught in the crossfire and killed by his own men. (A statement still accepted as gospel by those who knew Waters, including his brother, Jim.  Even Boone Helton, Stanley's father, entertained doubts about the shooting when Waters looked him in the eye during the trial and said, "Mr. Helton, I did not kill your boy.)" 

The jury deliberated one hour, 25 minutes. The verdict, guilty. The penalty, death in the electric chair. Waters made no comment on the verdict, but on his return to jail he observed: "This looks like they mean to get rid of me." 

Waters was to be taken to Eddyville, where on March 9, 1 933, according to the order of Montgomery Circuit Court, "the warden or his deputies shall proceed before sunrise to inflict on William Waters, the condemned, a current of electricity of sufficient intensity to cause death as quickly as possible..."

 On death row Waters kept busy. He drew pictures, wrote numerous letters and made a fiddle for Millard, a brother. In April 1 933 an appeal was denied, and a review of the merits of the case was denied in September. Inexorably, in spite of petitions on his behalf being circulated in Menifee, Powell and Montgomery counties, the date of his demise drew near. 

"It was the worst time of my life," said Lulu.She was bitter that Sam Shepherd had spent his part of the reward money without contributing a dime to Bill's defense. She and Taylor were working diligently to get names on petitions to take to Gov. Ruby Laffoon.

 "I got a letter from Billy every week," said Lulu. "He'd draw the prettiest pictures of little birds on his letters, and he drew a picture of his coffin.After he was dead I gave it all to his sisters because they wanted it Oh, I tried so hard to save him!" 

Lulu went door to door with the petition, getting more than 1,000 signatures. "I had a long paper just filled with names. I took it to Governor Laffoon's office. They wouldn't let me talk to him --shut the door in my face. I made three trips down there to talk for Bill, and they never would let me in to see the governor."

 Lulu paused, dabbing at her eyes with her apron.  "Ah, chillern, it was an awful time. Poor old Polly, Bill's mother she was taking it so hard. She prayed every night and day for them to save her boy." 

In late October Waters wrote to Taylor White and Bill Chapman, his "true" friends of long standing, commenting upon the treachery of Sam Shepherd. He urged them to write the governor in his behalf, but he professed little hope for a last-minute reprieve. To Lulu, he wrote that he had a lot of personal belongings in his cell that he wanted her to have.

"But I didn't get a thing. Some girl Bill had started writing to got it all, after all I'd done for him." 

Nov. 3 was a day firmly fixed in the minds of Bill's aging parents, who had moved to Bourbon County. They waited every day for a message saying that a stay had been granted. Instead, Ellis Waters was summoned to the nearest telephone.  When he came back, his gray head was bowed. Polly screamed and then fainted. Millard, who was shaving when his father brought the news, dropped his razor. Gov. Ruby Laffoon had spoken: No clemency, no last-minute reprieve.

"Polly cried until her voice broke, and she sounded just like a little kitten mewing," said Jim's wife, Dee. "She was down on her knees at midnight, asking God to have mercy on her son. He was her son; she loved him in spite of what he'd done." 

Lulu's family also waited, watching in fear as the hands of the clock crept slowly toward the dreaded hour. When the clock struck 12, the girls cried, and Lulu screamed. "They've killed him. They've killed the best boy that ever lived." 

Bill's body arrived that day at the Mitchell Funeral Home in Mount Sterling. Later, it was taken to Lulu's home. As customary, a large crowd gathered at the White home that rainy, cold night to "sit up" with the body. The house, the barn, even the yard were so full of people that Gertrude and her husband had to sleep in the back seat of an old car parked in the barn.

 An even larger crowd assembled on  Sunday for the funeral.  Bill's grave had been dug on the spot he had requested at the brow of the hill close to where the White's aged dog reposed. "Billy preached his own funeral," said Lulu, triumphantly. "He shore did. He wrote me a letter that I was to give to Asa Little, the preacher. And when it came time for the funeral he read what Billy wrote, right there on my front porch.Prettiest sermon you ever heard."

 Lulu, who grieved mightily, had a strange dream that night, after the grave had been closed and the last mourners had gone. "I dreamed that Billy was sitting in a chair where he always sat I went to him and put my hand on his shoulder. I said, 'Billy, are you satisfied with where you're at? and he said, 'Lulu, I'm the best satisfied man ever was. I'm all right' When he said that, a little bird flew out of his mouth and sung the prettiest song you ever heard." 

Lulu bowed her head, weeping. "I'll never forget him, and I believe Billy was a saved man. He'd done got right with the Lord. They killed him for nothing," she said, her red-rimmed eyes sorrowful. "They done away with him, killed him for nothing, and now he's a layin' in a lonesome old grave...

 Does it ever occur to Lulu that at least four victims also lie in "lonesome old grave?" A pack peddler, unknown and unmourned. Charley Neal. Marion Stapleton. Stanley Helton.And "Bad Bill" Waters, a Menifee County legend in his own time, put them there..

 MARY LOU BROWN is a free-lance writer who lives in Ntcholasville, Ky. "

Enterprise, Kentucky: A Once Booming Town

 

Ever since reading "The Ghost Towns of 174" by Willie Davis (Legal Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases), I have been somewhat interested in the history of the Carter County, Kentucky community of Enterprise.  I'm not sure why, but I have. Maybe it's because I worked for several years in Carter County as a licensed funeral director and embalmer, I don't know.

I currently live about 15 miles from Enterprise and have most of my entire life. And yet living that close to that community, I was not aware that it was once a booming town with numerous businesses, at least not until reading Mr. Davis' book.

Fortunately, I ran across this newspaper article written by F.M. Griffin and published in the Portsmouth Times in Portsmouth Ohio, on August 25, 1894. Mr. Griffin goes into great detail about the history of  Enterprise and the businesses that were once there. You can read the article from the link, but it's very difficult to read. So I've transcribed it here:

"ENTERPRISE, KENTUCKY

Nestled among the rugged, but fertile hills of old Carter, about two and 

one-half miles from the Rowan County line, lies Enterprise. It is a narrow 

straggling village with one principle street running through its center. 

Its entire length being nearly one mile. The town was laid out in 1882 and 

W.H. Griffey built the first house just after the depot was built. William 

Cooper built a large store house here, the first year of the railroads 

life. He also built a mammoth hotel, and for the years Mr. Cooper was the 

king bee of Enterprise and commanded the largest general merchandising 

trade between Mt. Sterling and Ashland. It is said in those days, that $100 

per day was considered an average business, though some days $250 would 

find its way from the pockets of the people to the coffers of Mr. Cooper. 

Though the business done then was immense, I have yet to hear anyone say 

that they never got value received from Bill Cooper as he was familiarly 

known. Mr. Cooper is now in business in Morehead. Many that remember him 

say that he will never be a millionaire, because of his wonderful 

generosity. Bill Cooper has given to the poor enough to keep himself and 

his family the rest of his days.

About the year 1880, James Hollan succeeded Mr. Cooper as proprietor of the 

Star Hotel and the owner of the large store and business. Mr. Hollan did an 

immense business for several years, and built a mammoth saw and flouring 

mill. The last venture proved disastrous from some cause, and today the old 

mill building and the historic Star hotel sands vacated as monuments to of 

the greatness of our town or relics of its ill spent fortunes. Hollan was 

sold out by law in 1892 and left here in a short time to Iowa where he now 

lives. About the year 1892 the Post Office was established here and named 

Jamison in honor of William Jamison the president of the Jamison Fire Clay 

mining Company. Wm. Jamison was appointed the first post master. Jamison 

was succeeded by James Hollan , who in turn gave way to Mary D. McBrayer. 

F.M. Griffin the present master was sworn in May 9th, 1892.

Adams Express company established an office here early in the history of 

the town, which has had the following agents; B.S. McComas, Wm. Cooper, 

C.S. Conner, W.H. Tyree, M.B. Mark, M.E. Callihan, W.A. Weaver, W.J. 

Vaughan, W.E. Watkins, J.L. Robbins, and O.L.Shay.

The C & O railroad company has had the following agents; Wm. Jamison, C.S. 

Conner, J.E. Cowgill, A.O. Fields, W.A. Weaver, W.J. Vaughan, W.F. Watkins, 

J.L. Robins, W.G. Patton, W.H. Turee, R.L. Scott, G. H. Crooks, M.E. 

Callihan, F.J. Guin, A.E. Ford, O.L. Shay.

Fire clay has been an important article of commerce ever since 1883 though 

thousands of cars of staves, cross ties, shingle, tan bark, lumber and hoop 

poles, have been shipped to the worlds markets. At present, little else but 

fire clay is shipped, the Shay Bros. being the principle dealers in that 

article.

The past of Enterprise is said to be like a dream to many that remember the 

good old flush times of the 80's.

The present and future of Enterprise is what interests us most. We want to 

see the town blossom as a rose and expect to see a partial return of her 

former greatness in the future. But the future outcome of our town lies not 

in the stave, tan bark, or lumber tree.  Tobacco will most certainly be 

king, and why shouldn't it be? Our lands are the best in the world to 

produce the weed, and it can be purchased very cheap. In 1894 there will be 

ten thousand pounds raised, where five years ago there wasn't one pound 

raised. In less than ten years from now every foot of tillable land in this 

end of the county will be cleaned up, and the future will eclipse the past 

as far as the good old times excelled the day when it was fifteen miles to 

the nearest post office.

Enterprise today is composed of about 100 citizens, all told, men, women 

and children. There are two general stores operated by Conley & Son. And 

L.D. O'Roark.

The firm of Conley & Son does an immense business. They sell hundreds of 

dollars worth of caps, boots, dry goods, groceries, etc. In fact you can 

buy anything from them from a thimble to a wagon. They have a large trade 

in Elliot and Lewis Counties a large many coming 20 and 25 miles just to 

trade with Conleys on account of the merits of their goods and their low 

prices. The senior member is Isaac Conley. Mr. Conley is about 47 years of 

age and began life as a common laborer. By thrift he has succeeded in 

accumulating quite a fortune. Uncle Ike is as honest as they day is long, 

and everybody likes him. He is a Free Mason and a Golden Eagle, being a 

charter member of No. 21, of this place. Stanton Conley, the son of the 

firm is 25 and one of the shred business men in eastern Kentucky. He is not 

married but lightly hinted that this can not be said of him ere the dawn of 

1895. He is a prominent I.O.O.F. and K.G.E. man, and well thought of and 

destined to make his mark on the world of finance.

L.D. O'Roark is a firm within himself and is present operating the old Geo. 

Cooper stand. He does not carry a very large stock of merchandise but keeps 

a variety equal to any other store in the country. Lan is a hustling 

bustling kind of man about 37 years of age and a man of good business 

qualities. In short a scholar and a gentleman, Republican in politics, 

and in religion an ardent Methodist of the Episcopal persuasion.

  The health of our community is looked after by two physicians. Dr. W.D. 

Williams came here a few years ago from Harrison County and has built up a 

wonderful practice. The doctor is an accomplished gentleman and popular. In 

politics he is a democrat and is considered a party leader.

Dr. G.R. Logan came here in the earlier days of the town's history. He has 

a large and reliable practice and is one of the best dentists in the state. 

He is a native of Nicholas County and is said to be a distant relative of 

Gen. John A. Logan of war fame.

The only place of entertainment is kept by Mrs. J.C. Shay. Her table is 

supplied by the best the land affords and the jolly drummer is always glad 

when he strikes Enterprise because he knows the inner man will be well 

cared for.

Among the leading citizens and pioneer farmers are W.H. Griffey and A. 

Underwood. They have lived here for years and considered honest, upright 

and straight forward men.

Our community also boasts of one "drummer and his grip". W.L. Hodgins has 

married and settled here. He believes in the future greatness of his 

adopted home and has purchased two houses and a lot. He is a salesman for 

the great Mark and Stix the great wholesale boot and shoe company of 

Cincinnati.

We have no lawyer but have considerable lawing. Squire F.M. Bailey's court 

is in session once a month to settle all differences.

We boast of good school privileges and although our school house is not a 

good one by any means, I think are citizens are awakening to the needs of a 

good house, and I think they will build one in the near future. Since the 

writer has been here such teachers as J. Milton Fraley, Miss Minta McGlone, 

and C.S.Gilkerson have taught the young ideas how to shoot.

Preachers, yes we have one local preacher, Rev. Joel N. Fitch. Rev Fitch is 

a Methodist Episcopal though we often have sermons from the various other 

denominations.

This completes the past and present of Enterprise. I hope ere another 

decade to see at least 1000 people here and must say I have great faith in 

her future greatness. Long may the upward banner move."

Unfortunately, Mr. Griffin's wishes for a prosperous Enterprise never came to pass. 

If you drive through Enterprise today, all that remains of the once booming town 

are a few houses along Route 174.  The businesses are long gone, lost to time. 

Sadly, most of the small mining towns in Eastern Kentucky met the same fate as Enterprise.

At least we have the memories. At least some do anyway.

When Justice Triumphed

 When Justice Triumphed

Mountaineer Convicted of Murder While Supposed Victim "Just Traveled Around."

by Frank. H. Ward and published in the Daily News, 

New York, New York, August 21, 1932.

The Cumberland Mountains were quivering with the heat of an early August afternoon.  The woods  rang with the mellow echoes of axes, and the thundering crash of big trees.

Three mountain girls- Mary Stewart, Goldie Stewart, and Mary Vickery- strolled up the steep road from Coxton, KY., toward the farm of the Stewart girls' grandfather.  They were after apples.

It was hot and dusty and when Will Middleton came along in his car and offered  a lift, the girls climbed in. The errand completed, Middleton stopped at the bridge in Coxton to discharge his passengers.

The Stewart girls got out; Mary Vickery lingered behind, chatting with Middleton.  After waiting five minutes, the Stewart sisters moved on; Mary was still talking earnestly to Middleton. 

That night Mary Vickery did not return to her home in Coxton.  In the morning her father, E.C. Vickery, a carpenter, reported her disappearance to Sheriff J.H. Blair of Harlan County.

Vickery described his daughter as short, heavy set, with sandy colored bobbed hair and blue eyes. She had on a black and white striped dress, black patent leather slippers and brown stockings.  One of the stockings had been snagged when Mary climbed a fence, and it had been darned with a white thread.

Mary Vickery

Mary was the eldest of his five children, Vickery said.   She was only 14, but she had the development of a woman.  Her mother had died when she was two, and she had been raised by a stepmother. 

Middleton, on the strength of  the story of the Stewart sisters, was arrested on August 18, 1925- the day after Mary disappeared.

GIRL REPORTED SEEN IN A MYSTERY CAR

Both Middleton and his brother-in-law, Otis King, who had been in the car with the three girls the day before, stoutly affirmed that Mary Vickery had left the machine within five minutes after the Stewart sisters departed.

A few minutes later, they said, they had a puncture.  While fixing the tire at the roadside, Mary passed in a Ford [sedan]. She waved her hand at them as she went past.  A man was driving the car, but they couldn't see his face.  They knew the girl was Mary because of the black and white dress.

Sheriff Blair visited the neighbors along the mountain road to see if anyone else had seen  Mary Vickery in the  Ford.

Miss Capitola Smith, who lived in a cabin perched on the mountainside above the Coxton coal tipple, had seen a girl in a black and white dress in a Ford that afternoon.  The car had a little long glass window in the rear and a spare tire on the back. And on the front axle dangled a small sign which read "Taxi."

There was one Ford taxicab arriving in Coxton serving Coston and the adjoining city of Harlan.  It was own and driven by Condy Dabney, a former coal miner. He had come to Harlan from Coal Creek, Tenn., where he had a wife and two children, two months before.  He was in his early thirties. 

Condy Dabney

Sheriff Blair readily located Dabney, awaiting the next train at the Harlan Depot for a possible fare.  He found a tall, virile looking man, with blue eyes set deep in a burned face.   There was a tilt to the brim of his slouch hat.

***

Dabney appeared astounded when placed under arrest on a white slavery charge. He denied knowing Mary Vickery.  She might have been in his car as a passenger - he hauled many women - but he had no recollection of carrying a girl in a black and white dress.

The taxicab driver was held in jail until the Grand Jury met.  That body did not feel that there was enough evidence for an indictment.  Dabney was released.

The mountaineer tried to resume his taxicab business.  But women wouldn't ride with him.  Some of his best men customers passed him up.  Dabney gave it up as a bad job, failed to get a position in a coal mine, and left Harlan County.

On Oct. 21- two months after Mary Vickery disappeared-Deputy United States Marshal Adrian Metcalf received a tip that a still was in operation in the abandoned Bugger Hollow mine, on Ivy Hill.

SKELETON FOUND IN ABANDONED MINE

Metcalf and a colleague penetrated deep into the mine.  Ploughing through several inches of water, they crawled over a pile of slate.  About one hundred feet from the drift mouth, they saw a human arm bone protruding from beneath the slate.

Removing the slate Marshal Metcalf found the complete skeleton of a woman. She had been small of stature.  There were tan oxfords, brown stockings, peach colored bloomers, and a black coat on the body, but no dress.

When news of the discovery reached Vickery, he went to the mine with Sheriff Blair to view the body.  There was not enough flesh to identify it.  The hair on the skeleton was course and black, but it was  bobbed.

The tan shoes were the same size as his daughters' black ones, No.6-unusually large for a small woman.  There was an L-Shaped tear in a stocking. It had been darned, but the yarn had so discolored that it could not be ascertained if white thread had been used.

"How about the teeth?" asked Sheriff Blair.

"Mary had two prominent teeth in front, with small, crooked teeth on each side," said Vickery.

So had the skeleton!

The next day Vickery returned to Bugger Hollow mine with Deputy Sheriff Tobe Reliford.

While they were searching around in the slate pile, Vickery turned to Reliford and said, "Here's Mary's ring. I bought it for Mary in Knoxville on her birthday, June 4."  Vickery handed Reliford a small, cheap ring with a red stone. 

Vickery, struggling to support four small children, could not afford to bury Mary.  So the county took charge.  Neither Vickery nor his wife went to the funeral.  It seemed odd that the family evinced no more interest.

Sheriff Blair now went to Coal Creek and brought Dabney back to Harlan.  This time he was charged with first degree murder.

Harlan now thoroughly enraged, and County Attorneys George R. Pope and C.J. Jarvis, and Commonwealth's Attorney W. A. Brock began to to build up a case.  With Sheriff Blair  they re-checked the movements of Condy Dabney on Aug.17 the day Mary Vickery disappeared.  It was found that he boarded and roomed with Tom Pope at Coxton.

Pope said Dabney had breakfast at his boarding house on Aug.17, ate no meals there on the 18th, and appeared for breakfast on the 19th.  Dabney then ate regularly until the 29th, when he left, displaying a letter to Mrs. Pope from his wife at Coal  Creek, calling him home because of the illness of one of his children. 

Pope couldn't say whether or not Dabney had occupied his room on the night of the 17th.

Mrs. Pope, however, was positive that Dabney had not been home on the night of the 17th.  She said Dabney's taxicab always stood in the yard when he was in the house, and it was not there that night.

Willard Collier, who boarded with Tom Pope, told the authorities that a few days after Mary disappeared, when the authorities were searching for her in distant cities, Dabney had remarked to him this was a waste of time, as he thought she'd be found nearby.

THE TAXI DRIVER MEETS THE VICTIM

On this evidence the Commonwealth began preparations to present the case to the Grand Jury.  The authorities were not very sure of their case.  One reason was that Vickery admitted to Deputy Sheriff Reliford that he was not certain the body was that of his daughter.  The second was that brown shoes were found on the body, while both the Steward girls and Vickery stated that she wore black slippers when she disappeared.

Then the authorities got a break.  Marie Jackson, a 19-year-old Harlan girl, went to Sheriff Blair with this story:

On Aug. 17 she and Mary Vickery were walking along t he highway between Coxton and Harlan when Dabney came along in his machine, bound for the Harlan Depot to meet the incoming train.  Marie flagged Dabney, with whom she had had dates, and inquired if he had a fare on the down trip.

Receiving a negative answer, Marie asked if she and Mary could ride down.  She got in the front seat, and Mary Vickery sat in the back.

En route Dabney looked back over his shoulder and remarked, "Marie, that's a mighty pretty girl back there.  I'm going to try to date her up."

Marie left the cab at Bob Marler's restaurant in Harlan.  Mary was still in the cab.  After eating, Marie went to the door and was standing there smoking a cigarette when Dabney drove up.  Mary Vickery was now in the front seat.

Leaving Mary in the car, Dabney came to the door and said "I've got that little Vickery girl to go for a ride, but she won't come unless you come along. Have you anything to do now?"

  Marie re-entered the cab, this time taking the back seat. It was now late in the afternoon.  They went up to Ivy Hill, driving part of the way up the mountain.   Then they got out and walked up above the entrance to Bugger Hollow mine.  All three sat down on a log for a while, there in the deep woods.

After a few minutes, Dabney said "Marie, get up and go down the hill. I want to tell Mary something."

Marie obeyed but she sat down at a vantage point where she could watch Dabney and Mary.  Soon Dabney put his arm around Mary and tried to kiss her. She pushed him away.

Dabney grabbed the Vickery girl again, and when she pulled loose from him, the taxi driver picked up a club and struck Mary over the head.  The girl fell backwards from the log, and lay very still.  Dabney now called out for Marie, and she went to him. She leaned down, and saw that the girl was dead.

"Marie, don't you tell this, "Dabney said.  "If you do, I'll take you to the highest peak in the Cumberland Gap, tie you to a stake and burn you.  If they get me before I kill you, I'll have some of my people do it."

Dabney then picked Mary Vickery up in his arms and carried her down toward the Bugger Hollow mine.  Marie hurried away from the vicinity. She was thoroughly frightened and decided to leave town.

The next morning, she was waiting at the Harlan Depot, when the Dabney taxi drove into sight. She told Dabney she was going to Manchester.  Dabney volunteered to take her as far as Pineville - some  twenty miles on her way - and she accepted.

They did not discuss the crime en route.  Dabney did not open the subject, and she was afraid to do so.

After a few weeks Marie Jackson returned to Harlan.  For a long time she was afraid to tell any one a bout the murder.  Then after the body was found, Marie t old Bob Marler and his wife-the restaurant folks.  They advised her to tell the sheriff. So she did.  

That was Marie's story.

Asked about Mary Vickery's attire that afternoon, Marie said she had a dark coat and tan shoes.

On the strength of this eyewitness story, the Grand Jury indicted Condy Dabney for murder in the first degree. A tiny court room, packed with curious mountain folk, was the setting for the trial that opened at Harlan on March 29, 1926, before Circuit Judge J.G. Forester.

Dabney's nemesis proved to be a  tiny, dark-haired girl of 19.  She could not be shaken from her story by C.G. Rawlings, defense counsel. Rawlings brought out, however, that she lived a free and easy life in which she kept no books on her income.

Dabney never took his eyes from her in all the hour and twenty minutes of her ordeal.

Marie Jackson did not blush or cast down her eyes in shame when Pearl Nowe, Police Chief of Harlan testified that her reputation was bad.  On her way to and from the stand she held her head high and walked with a firm step.  She left the impression, she had decided to tell it all and have it over with.

DEFENDANT TAKES STAND IN OWN DEFENSE

"Hit hain't fair," said the raw-boned mountaineer defendant, when he took the stand in his own defense. "I never knowed this gal, Mary Vickery.  I never was on Ivy Hill. I'm a-takin' up for what's right and fair. I never done no meddlin' in other folks' business."

There was a strange silence in the court room as Dabney went on with the story of his life. He had worked in Tennessee coal mines since he was a child. He first came to Harlan a few months before, worked in the mines when there was work, and finally converted his old Ford into a taxi.

He had met Marie Jackson. He often had hauled her to Paw Paw Hollow with a man.  He had an idea what they went there for, but he never asked questions.  He said Marie Jackson tried to get him to leave his wife and children for her.

Dabney  insisted he never preyed on girls, and that his relations with women passengers were purely professional. 

But the story of Marie Jackson and the identification of the body by Vickery as that of his daughter satisfied the jury. On the first few votes it looked as  though Dabney was going the short route which ends just beyond the little green door. The jury compromised on life imprisonment. 

Dabney shivered when the verdict was read.  He sat there  by the trial table in a  daze, climbing again the stairs of his  thirty-three years.

***

Condy Dabney  had been behind the gray walls of the state penitentiary at Frankfort for almost a year when, on March 19, 1927, a short, chunky girl entered a hotel at Williamsburg, some sixty miles from Harlan.

Mary Vickery.  The name stirred a dormant chord in the memory of the clerk.  He called in Deputy Sheriff  Charles Cadell of Whitley County.  To him it was more  than reminiscent, and he made a dash up the stairs.

There sat the girl for whose murder a man was serving life.

Mary Vickery had left Coxton on August 17, 1925, because, she said, her  father had beaten her with a broom handle. She changed her name to Rose Farmer. Her first stop was at Livingstone, where she worked as a waitress in a coffee shop.  She moved on to Berea, where she obtained employment as a maid.  After a few weeks, wanderlust seized her again and she gravitated to another city.  On December 26 she heard  that she was supposed to have been killed, and that Condy Dabney had been sentenced to life imprisonment. 

Asked why she didn't let officials know that she was alive, Mary Vickery replied, "I just never thought of that."

On March 18, 1927 Mary, having saved up some money, decided to travel some more. So she boarded a train for Williamsburg.  Her family had formerly lived  there, so she became Mary Vickery again.

She denied knowing Marie Jackson or Conley Dabney.

More than two thousand citizens of Harlan County were at the railroad station on Sunday, March 20, 1927, when the fleshly shade of Mary Vickers back from "just travelin' around," arrived at Harlan in the company of Sheriff George S. Ward of Harlan County.

THE VICTIM RETURNS HOME

Among  the absentees was Marie Jackson.  She was in jail. 

Marie Jackson's Mugshot

On Monday the Grand Jury again took up the Mary Vickery case.

"A frightful travesty has recently been committed in Harlan County" said Judge Forester to the inquisitorial body.  "It is of such a nature as to horrify even the most calloused.  A man was indicted by this court on the charge of brutal murder and assault of a fourteen-year-old girl.  This man is serving time in the penitentiary, under a life sentence for murder of the girl, who is alive and at the present moment in Harlan.

The jury decided the case upon the evidence of witnesses.  One of these witnesses detailed the murder of the girl as an eyewitness.  A more dastardly deed is inconceivable -  to swear away the life of an innocent man is a crime for which the law, unfortunately, does not provide sufficient punishment.

There can be nothing lower or more degraded than to make an innocent human being suffer the tortures of a trial, to hear perjurers swear his life away, to hear the verdict of a jury confining him to prison and misery for life."

Marie Jackson was indicted for perjury. On the anniversary of the day that Condy Dabney was convicted of murder, the chief prosecuting witness against him was found guilty and sentenced to five years imprisonment in the same prison that housed Dabney.

But Marie had not yet commenced her prison term as Condy Dabney was whizzed from the prison to the State House in the automobile of Governor Fields.

A few minutes later a  tall figure walked slowly down the marble steps of the Capitol of Kentucky. He went with unseeing eyes, unconscious of the few passersby who bowed or spoke to him respectfully.  He was very tired.  He had in his pocket a document which represented the official apology of the Commonwealth.  It was March 22, 1927.

"The signature that freed the victim. Gov. William J. Fields of  Kentucky (left) is shown
signing of the pardon of Condy Dabney, who stands beside the Governor. Dabney was still a convict."

Four days later Mary Vickery was married at Harlan to C.E. Dempsey in the office of one of the lawyers who had proved her dead - C.J. Jarvis.

clipped from the Lexington Herald
Lexington, KY
March 27, 1927
This was not part of the original 
article. I added it.

The skeleton found in the Bugger Hollow mine never was positively identified, but it is believed to have been that of Letetia Cole, who vanished a year before Mary Vickery ran away from home.

Marie Jackson was released February 26, 1931. She was not again seen in Harlan.

Editors Note: Condy Dabney passed away on February 18, 1966 in Whitley County, KY and is buried in Rocky Top, Tennessee.  I found no further information on any of the other individuals mentioned in the story.

The MYSTERY of the MISSING HEAD

 
This article was written by H. W. CORLEY and appeared in the March 1929 edition of True Detective Mysteries Magazine.  We have transcribed it, word for word here since issues of that magazine are very difficult to find.

EARLY on the morning of February 1St, some years ago, John Howling, a young colored lad, started off to work at a farm which lay a mile from his home down the road to Fort Thomas, Kentucky. His path lay through a field belonging to John Locke, and as there was no snow he decided to cross Locke's farm and thereby shorten his journey.

The air was crisp and he walked along with no sense of impending horror, when suddenly he stopped short and drew back in alarm, gaping at an object that had caught his eye in the grass just off the pathway.

A girl lay there, clad in a thin, cotton-crepe kimono of cheap material. From its edge her bare legs and feet protruded, half hidden in the grass.

She lay on her side in an odd position, her arms with hands together flung in front of her. He could not see her face, or understand for a brief moment how she had managed to hide it.

Why had she fallen there? Was she sleeping? Or-his flesh crept as he wondered-had she died in the bitter cold? Perhaps she had walked in her sleep and the cold had overcome her, letting her fall to freeze and perish.

The boy walked gingerly about the body of the girl and laid a red-mittened hand gently on her shoulder to arouse her. As he did, he drew back sharply, let out a fearful yell, and ran back through the fields, terror-stricken, as fast as his stumbling legs could carry him.

For the body was without a head! And even this untutored boy knew that it had been cut off with a dull knife and very hastily. The ground about was stained dark red. Even in that moment of horror he noticed that the bushes near-by, rising to a height of six feet or more, were splashed with blood to their very topmost branches!

Shrieking and sobbing alternately, the boy stumbled' along to the nearest house and tremblingly blurted out his story to the woman who came to the door as he begged admittance. "A girl with her head cut off, lying in the thicket?" she repeated indulgently. "Johnny, somebody is trying to play a joke on you. You are seeing things!

But the tad insisted and was quaking so violently that the woman, realizing he had received a terrible shock, called her husband to listen to the story.

"She lay dar, like she was daid, or sleepin'. Then I saw she wan't sleepin', nohow, for she ain't got no haid!"

"Johnny means what he says," the farmer told his wife, finally. "I am going along to see about this. You wait here while I call some of the hands to go with me."

By this time a curious head or two had protruded from the barn, and, calling these men to accompany him, the farmer set out for the place where the body lay. The boy refused flatly to go back to the dreadful spot.

There, as the lad had said, lay a woman, headless, about twenty, they judged from the condition of her hands, which were very young in appearance and too well-kept to belong to any of the farm girls of the neighborhood. Although her clothing was cheap, it was apparent that it had been hastily placed on her body after decapitation, for while it was hardly stained, the flesh beneath was covered with dried blood.

Her fingers had been stripped of rings which marks on the flesh indicated she had worn. Yet for some reason the men sensed that the motive behind the deed had not been robbery.

Why, then, had the murderers taken the rings? Why had they cut the head off? Was it for the same reason-to hinder identification of the girl?

A careful examination of the clothing gave no hint of who the girl might be-but the first search of the ground toward the road which ran through the thicket on the way to Fort Thomas caused the men to shout in triumph.

Here, evidently dropped by the fleeing murderers in the darkness, were bits of clothing of a very different type, which proclaimed the wearer a woman of means and refinement. Here were a pair of gloves of delicate kid, hardly worn twice, a new pair of expensive' corsets and a single shoe of far from cheap material. And in the shoe was a dealer's name, with his address-Lewis and Hays, Greencastle, a little town in Indiana.

"THEY have had their pains for nothing," the men remarked. "The body can, without doubt, be identified in half an hour. Greencastle is a small place. Poor little girl!"

Leaving the body covered with a coat, the men hurried to report their pitiful find to the police, who came, looked the body over and examined the articles of clothing found. Without, delay, the police sent detectives to Greencastle to identify the dead girl.

"Yes," said the dealer in Greencastle, after he had turned the shoe over in his hands thoughtfully for a moment. "I remember selling those shoes to a Miss Pearl Bryan, not more than three weeks ago. As you can see, they haven't been worn much. She was going to visit some friends out of town, she told me, and was getting some pretty clothes. But then, she was always buying shoes -she was one of our best customers."

"Where was she going to visit?" asked the detectives with alacrity. But the man, after a moment, shook his head. "I didn't ask her and if she mentioned it, it has slipped my memory. But Pearl was always traveling. She had lots of well-to-do-relatives."

"Who is Pearl Bryan?" he was asked.

"She is the daughter of one of our most well-to-do citizens. A fine, pretty girl, moving in the very best social circles in town. How did you get the shoe?  I would be sorry to hear that anything has happened to the girl. Was there an accident? 

Evading this question, the men asked to be directed to Mr. Bryan's home, a fine structure on the best residential street in Greencastle. Mr. Bryan was at home when the detectives reached there.

He Looked On In Horror

Yes, he had a daughter Pearl. She was not at home just now, as she was visiting friends in Indianapolis.

 No he had not heard from her for several days, possibly a week. Why did they ask? Was anything wrong?

Then they laid the clothing before him, and he identified everything, even to the handful of hairpins scooped up by the detectives from the path leading to the Fort Thomas road by which the girl had evident1y come to the spot where, as seemed likely, she had met her terrible fate.

"Yes, these belong to my girl," he said. "What is the trouble?"

As gently as they could, they broke the news of the girl's death, intimating an accident and refraining from telling the sorrowing man the true facts, that she not only had been murdered but had been decapitated also.

When they told him that her body had been found in Kentucky, the heart-broken father was as mystified as they. Kentucky? She knew no one there. What was his girl doing in Kentucky?

This interview occurred February 4th. Less than four days, therefore, had been consumed in the identification of the headless body - a record case, and one which filled the local Police Department with much pride, for many a body whose head remained intact had lain in the Morgue unclaimed and unidentified for twice that time. The Kentuckians were justly proud of their efficient police.

BUT in solving the mystery of why Pearl-who had never reached Indianapolis at all-had changed her plans and gone to Kentucky, or, as seemed more probable, to Cincinnati, just over the river from the Kentucky county in which Fort Thomas is located, the police were completely at sea. Pearl's father, Mr. Bryan, said that, as far as he knew, she knew no one in Cincinnati.

They began careful questioning of the father, who might, they felt, be holding something back. But they soon found that they knew more of his daughter's past life than the poor man ever dreamed of.

 As in similar cases, they sought a man-one in 'whom the girl might have placed her trust-a sweetheart, perhaps, to whom she was openly or secretly engaged.

But Pearl, though vastly charming and popular, had no such sweetheart, it seemed. She went to the little balls and parties of' the neighborhood in the safe company of her mother, where, to be sure, her partners flocked about her. But she had no sweetheart, her father said.

Was it possible that the girl might have developed a secret, love for one of these young men, and have eloped, using the visit to Indianapolis as a blind until time to announce the wedding to her father? Was there any young man who had paid attention to Pearl and who was now absent from Greencastle?

But  no such young man could be discovered who was absent either then or at any time prior to the discovery of the girl's body.

Mr. Bryan flinched at the implication that his daughter might have deceived him, and stoutly denied that it could be true. He had always been in his daughter's confidence, he said.

"She was studious and quiet, and would do nothing of her own initiative. She had no secret fancy for any young man. Of that I am sure!"

"H'm," detectives remarked, and kept to themselves certain information which bad been given them by the coroner. For at the time of her death this delicately reared, carefully nurtured girl was shortly to have become a mother! Yet, apparently, her father had not the slightest idea in the world that this might be so.

Without divulging this side of the case--for no one had the heart to add to the poor father's sorrow-tbe detectives looked about the neighborhood in the hope of deciding who Pearl's secret suitor might be. But no one had ever seen her alone with a young man, so carefully had she been guarded. No one could aid the detectives in any way.

And then, when everything looked hopeless, came a bit of information which set them on a track that promised to lead directly to the murderers. The detectives were seated in one of the hotel rooms, discussing the futility of remaining longer In Greencastle. "I'll run up to the station and wire the Chief that the case is dead here," said one of the men. rising from his chair as the discussion abated. "Then we can get out of this burg!"

In less than fifteen minutes he returned, his eyes blazing, every trace of lethargy swept from his countenance.

"BOYS," he cried "come down and hear what the wire operator has to say!"

The men rose, knowing that their companion had found the trail, every nerve alert as they clattered down the stairs after him.

A. W. Early, the telegraph operator, took them into the inner office and closed the door before he told his amazing story.

"He is a young friend of mine," he began slowly, "and I expect I am telling tales out of school. But the wires you fellows have been sending have made me realize that I have no right to keep my mouth shut. I will tell you all I know.

"This boy, William Wood, is the son of the Methodist minister here in Greencastle. Great friend of Pearl's, I don't care what her father says about that. They were always meeting when the folks thought they were at home in their beds.

"He didn't say he was responsible, mind, but I put two and two together.  A little while ago Wood came to me with the tale that Pearl had gotten into difficulties.  He was near crazy-the girl had a fine reputation, and he wanted to help her keep it.

"Well, last summer, and a few other summers back, there was a young man about Bill's age who used to visit his grandmother on his vacations, here in Greencastle. He and Bill were chummy, and of course he knew Pearl-saw her at parties and picnics like the other boys of the neighborhood'

"Bill told me that this young fellow, Scott Jackson, was taking a medical course in Cincinnati and that he knew of someone who would help Pearl. "So the girl got ready to go to Cincinnati-her father gave her a lot of money to buy clothes 'with, thinking she was going to Indianapolis-and the next thing I knew, I saw her on the platform there, being kissed by her dad.... Well, it's the last time he ever kissed her.•.. You know the rest."

That might explain, of course, how Pearl had come to Kentucky, for Cincinnati is just across the bridge from Newport, Kentucky, the city nearest Fort Thomas. It did not explain many other 'things, but it was probable that young Jackson could throw light on many phases of the mystery-and they determined to give him the opportunity.

HOT on the trail now, the detectives wired the authorities at Cincinnati to arrest Jackson at the medical school and hold him for questioning. Then they took young Bill Wood, the minister's son, into custody. But Wood merely repeated the story as told them by Early. Pearl had been badly in need of help, he said. He had arranged with his friend, Scott Jackson, to see that she was cared for in Cincinnati, both young men wishing to help the girl preserve her very excellent reputation.

He was vague as to who was responsible for her condition, and the detectives, at the moment, did not press him. This, they thought, could wait. They went to Cincinnati.

Jackson, the medical student, however, was not so affable as Wood and far more wary in his answers. He fluctuated between attitudes of indifference to the fast-forming suspicion against him and amusement that the detectives should waste valuable time barking up the wrong tree.

He denied that he had ever laid eyes on Pearl Bryan outside of the little town in which he had met her casually, as a visitor will meet all the prettiest girls in the social set. Nor had he heard from Wood, he said, on this or any other subject-certainly he had not arranged for an illegal as well as dangerous operation for a girl whom he barely knew. And that was that.

He admitted chumming with Wood in Greencastle, and admitted, too, that were Wood to write him, if caught in a difficulty, it would not be strange, as they had been close friends.

The authorities were not quite satisfied with Jackson's answers or his attitude and declined to free him.  Then one day - as they had hoped - he weakened.   Angrily, he declared that while he knew nothing about the case, the authorities would do well to see what was known by his roommate, Alonzo Walling, also a student at the medical school.

 Walling was younger than Jackson, twenty-one years old to the latter's twenty-eight years, and seemed a man of far less initiative.   He was also far more easily handled.  After declaring at first that he had never heard of Pearl Bryan beyond what the newspapers were saying, he admitted that he had heard Jackson speak of her.

Now, as Walling had not fled when Jackson was taken into custody, it seemed to the police logical to infer that he was not seriously involved or afraid of being questioned.  So, after a little more questioning, they let him go free, whereat he departed expressing contempt for what he called a practical joke on the part of Jackson in getting him into the affair.

But his triumph was short-lived.  His sang-froid had convinced them all of his innocence - except one veteran detective who had said little, and who within an hour swore out a warrant for Walling's arrest and brought him back to the station.

"Mark my words, that boy knows what is what in this case," this detective said.  "I don't know whether he is guilty, but I do believe he knows all that we want to know.  Keep him here a while and he will tell us all about it!"

Then William Wood was brought from Greencastle and lodged in the same jail with the other two, who were loud in their denouncements of him for getting t hem into the mess, as they called it.

For some time, sulky and silent, all three languished in jail, while the police began to wonder if they were, after all, on the right track of t he mystery.

Wood stoutly insisted on his own innocence, said that he knew nothing about the whole affair beyond sending Pearl  to Cincinnati to meet Scott, and was released finally on $5,000 bail.

Wood's release infuriated the other two, but did not have the hoped-for effect of wringing either accusations or confessions of value out of them.

The case rested.  Every clue followed by the police led to blind alleys, and the detectives who had distinguished themselves by a swift identification now were completely nonplused.   Nothing more developed.   The prisoners waxed sarcastic and made cutting remarks regarding  the efficiency of those responsible for their incarceration.

Then, just when it looked as if, after all, the prisoners would be allowed to go free, there occurred a startling development that  served to strengthen the frail thread of evidence against them.

A colored man, waiter in a Cincinnati saloon of ill repute, dropped into Headquarters.

He recalled that the two men in custody - identifying them by the pictures in the newspapers - had been in his saloon  the night before Pearl Bryan's body was discovered.  A young girl, closely resembling the published pictures of the dead girl, had been with them, and the party had been served in a private room.

The owner of the café was summoned. He corroborated his waiter's story.

"Did anything occur- did you overhear anything - that served to fix the trio in your mind?" t he proprietor was asked.

Beads of perspiration stood on the man's forehead as he answered:

"Yes! The girl looked nervous and out-of-place in her surroundings.  But - more than that-once, when I entered the room myself, I saw her g et up and leave the table to go to the retiring room in the back, and just then I overheard one of  the men say " ' Gee, I'd like a woman's head t o dissect!'

"I saw the girl turn, a look of fear on her face, but just then she saw me and kept on going.  I knew the men were medical students, put down the remark to youthful enthusiasm, and forgot all about it - until the next day."

Then, with the newspapers full of stories of a headless body found just across the river, the proprietor speculated. Only after he had convinced himself that it was his duty to tell all he knew, had he allowed his waiter to talk.

Without hesitation, both men identified Jackson and Walling as the men in the café that evening.  Jackson hotly argued that anyone could so identify him if they chose to, as his picture had been public property in all the papers, and scornfully denied ever having set foot in the cafe. 

He faced his accusers with an insolent air of boredom and refused to allow their accusations to shake his testimony.

Walling, however, did not  quite bear his former roommate out, now, in all his statements.  Yes, he admitted, he had been in the saloon that particular night; he placed the date because it had been the night before he first read of the frightful discovery of a girl's headless body.  He had not quite sensed the s tory in all its horror, he said, because of the "morning after" head with which he had read the news.

"But there was no girl with us, and as for the remark about dissection- that's pure fabrication!" he insisted. 

Walling, obviously the weaker, was  then treated to several hours of relentless questioning.  Finally he begged his inquisitors to cease and, breaking down, told the most complete story he had given so far. 

They were right- he sobbed aloud as he told it.  He had known Pearl Bryan. And Jackson, with either an injection of cocaine or one of prussic acid, had caused her death in  his rooms that night, while Walling looked on in helpless horror.  But that was all he knew.  How she got to Fort Thomas was as big a mystery to him as it was his tormentors.  

This put  another aspect on things, and the police encouraged the boy to talk a little further. For, although it had not been made public, the coroner's investigation had resulted in the discovery of cocaine in the body. just a Walling had said.

The boy could not have guessed this -he must therefore, to some extent, be telling the truth.

Jackson refused to add to the story and swore that  Walling was lying. Then he began to add a few accusations of his own. Walling had killed the girl and was shielding himself by throwing the blame on his friend and roommate.

Walling, he said, had killed Pearl. Walling had agreed to perform the operation. It had been unsuccessful and she had died, To cover his crime, Walling  had caused her to be placed in the thicket near Fort Thomas . Jackson had no idea who had cut off her head, he said he hardly believed that Walling would commit an atrocity like that.

"And if you don't believe me," Jackson told the police, "just look over Walling's effects back at school!"

The police followed his suggestion promptly, with gratifying results. In a locker belonging to Walling, they found an old pair of trousers, caked with mud such as might be found out Fort Thomas way, and darkly stained with blood.

When he was confronted with them, Walling broke down completely. He said that if they would look in a sewer at the corner of John and Richmond Streets, they would find clothing in a similar condition belonging to Jackson. Moreover, the pockets were filled with belonging of the dead girl.

Guided by Walling, the police found the bloodstained trousers in the sewer. The pockets contained a blood-covered shirt, and six little handkerchiefs marked "P. B." Later, the handkerchiefs were identified by Pearl's father.

Now, although it seemed an easy case, there was -and the boys knew it-an amazingly delicate situation. The police believed that they had proof of Jackson's and Walling's guilt, but it was practically useless without certain important additions.

For it entangled the legal machinery of two States, Kentucky and Ohio. Where had the girl died-in Cincinnati or near Fort Thomas? Had she been dead when the body was taken to the thicket where it was found, or had she gone there alive and come to her end at this fateful spot?

And where was her head now? No one could - or would-answer these questions.

And at the advice of their lawyers the two young men, now staunch enemies and bitterly accusing each other, maintained a dignified silence, hoping against hope that the mysterious elements of the case would work to set them free.

For a man can stand only once in jeopardy of his life, before the Law. Try him in the wrong state-and let the defense prove this-and he would go free! He could not then be brought back to go to trial for the same crime in the other State.

Every bit of mystery was to the advantage of the prisoners , and they made the most of it. Although there was no doubt of their guilt, there were many flaws in the proof of it, and detectives scouring the city for missing links in the chain found it hard sledding. Nothing that they turned up served to draw the net any closer about their catch.

In vain the detectives tried to account for the week which they believed Pearl had spent in Cincinnati-for she had left home on January 26th, and thereafter, until she was seen that night in the café, there was no trace of her.

Then they found that on Thursday morning, the day before he was found dead in Kentucky, she had been in the Cincinnati railway station, apparently about to start for home. But he had not bought a ticket, and a dark young man, who later proved to be 'Walling, had accompanied her out of the station again.

Why had she changed her mind about leaving?

Was murder at that moment in the mind of the one who dealt the mortal blow? If Jackson had dealt it, why had Walling prevailed upon her to remain, and for what purpose? Had he knowingly taken her back to her subsequent death?

But Walling was weak-it seemed unlikely that he alone had instigated the foul deed. Yet why should he have taken this terrible risk for Jackson?

Another bit of news-gruesome in its implications- drifted in from the college.  For the few days between the finding of the body and his arrest, Jackson had carried a valise about with him everywhere he went - to his classrooms or to the dining hall-which was so conspicuous that the boys joked him about it. He would not let it out of his sight.

Upon investigation, the police found the bag. It was empty, but blood-stained on the inner lining!

Had the valise contained the head?

If so, where was it now?

Then the case rested again-the authorities dared not risk a trial even with the evidence they had. Popular opinion was with them, to be sure. Nevertheless, popular controversy centered about the jurisdictional difficulties presented by the two states. Everything had to be done carefully.


LITTLE by little, additional evidence came to hand. A man from Covington, Kentucky, dropped in to say that he had seen two men haggling with a colored man on the corner of George and Elm Streets in Cincinnati on the night of the murder. They were arguing over a price concerning a closed surrey, which had later driven off in the direction of a bridge leading to Kentucky. The men, he felt sure, were Walling and Jackson, whom he subsequently identified.

The colored man he could not describe - they all looked alike, he said, after sundown! The police offered no only immunity but a reward as well if the Negro would put in an appearance. News of this was circulated through the colored districts and through every colored organization. It met with no response.

At this point a  Miss Lulu Hollingsworth stepped into the fray.  She came, she said, all the way from Knox City to help the police in their baffling problem. She had been a friend of the dead Bryan girl. She knew that Pearl had come to Cincinnati for an illegal operation - Pearl had, in fact, asked Lulu to meet her at the train, she said.

As was obvious, Pearl had died instead of returning home to Greencastle. She had died in Jackson's rooms, said Miss Hollingsworth, and the young man, alarmed at the occurrence, had written to Lulu in great agitation, telling her everything!

Decapitation had taken place in Kentucky after the death of the girl. A colored man, hired in Cincinnati, had driven the body thither, had cut off the head and had cast it from the bridge on his way back from Newport.

This story made hardly a ripple in official circles. In the first place, it told nothing save that which had been published in the paper, or that which could not be proved -for Miss Hollingsworth, unfortunately, could not produce the letter, saying that in her agitation she had destroyed it immediately. Then, too, the police felt hat as astute a young man as Jackson, were he to commit murder, would hardly put his guilt in writing, particularly when that writing was to be entrusted to Lulu's hands.

Moreover, the authorities were inclined to believe that she did not even know the trio involved in the affair. She could give only hazy descriptions of Pearl, or of the young men, and when they hotly declared that they never before had laid eyes on her, the police believed them, probably for the first time.

O February 12th, just twelve days after the discovery of Pearl Bryan's body-so rapidly did the case move-the coroner's jury met and found:

1. That the headless body found on February 1st on the road near Fort Thomas was that of Pearl Bryan, of Greencastle, Indiana; that cocaine had been administered, and that decapitation had taken place while the girl was still living, and at the place where the body was found.

2. They found that Pearl Bryan, Scott Jackson and Alonzo Walling had been seen entering a cab together at one A.M., February 1st, at the corner of George and Oak Streets, Cincinnati, [an intersection was not far from George and Elm Streets], which had driven off in the direction one would take to the bridge leading to Kentucky.

They based the finding that Pearl Bryan had been alive when her head was removed on an important and remarkable point: that blood had spurted to a height of six feet on the surrounding bushes and was found only on the under-side of the leaves, which proved that it had not been spattered in passing. And only blood from a living body spurts.

Formal charges were brought at once against the two men in Ohio, following these revelations. But they were indicted in Kentucky, and the Governor of Ohio finally released them and sent them across the state line for trial. While they remained in a jail at Newport, the prosecution went ahead with unusual care.

If the defense could still show that the trial was being held in the wrong state, the young men would go free, and by a fluke of technicalities the prosecution would be helpless . They delayed the trial, accordingly, as long as they could, hoping for more evidence to drop like manna from Heaven into their hands.

And then the star witness for the State walked into the police station arm in arm with Patrolman Swain.

Swain's beat lay past the grounds belonging to a Major Widdekind at Mount Auburn, and he had often seen the Major's coachman, an old 'darky, pottering about the stables and the lawns. Therefore he was not surprised when the old fellow hailed him one day.

They discussed a few topics of local interest and then, as did everyone, touched upon the Pearl Bryan case.

"Have they found the girl's head?" the coachman asked Swain.

Swain replied that they had practically given up hope of ever recovering it. He was about to move along when the colored man stepped closer to the fence and dropped his voice. "You know that coachman that they say drove these fellers to Fort Thomas - if they catch him, would they hang him, too?"

Swain explained that unless the driver had been party to the murder or the plans concerning the murder, he would be blameless.

Then the coachman -his name, too, was Jackson - clutched Swain by the sleeve and told him, tremblingly, that he was the long-sought driver who had driven the surrey across the bridge into Kentucky the night of the murder!

He told a straightforward story.

It was the night of the drill for the Caldwell Colored Guards, a military organization of Cincinnati, of which he, Jackson, was drill-master. After the meeting, he had stood at the corner of George and Elm Streets talking with some of the men. A closed surrey had driven up stopped, and the man driving had asked if anyone there on the curb wished to make five dollars before going to bed,

"There is a sick lady in the carriage, who is being taken home by her doctor," the man had explained. "She lives across the bridge. We don't know the exact way from Newport."

Now, that was his business-handling horses-and so Jackson, the coachman, offered to do the driving. Accordingly, he climbed on the box, took the reins and started off, the man who had been driving remaining beside him. He was a tall, dark man, and wore a corduroy cap, the colored man remembered.

"As we drove along, I could hear strange sounds inside the carriage. I thought at first it was just because the lady was sick, and then I thought the doctor was hurting her, she kept moaning so and crying.

"Finally I got scared, I didn't think that everything was right, and I didn't want to be mixed up in things. I was just about to draw up and leave them to do their own driving, when the man beside me pulled out a gun and stuck it into my ribs.

I'll make an end of you right here if you don't do as I tell you!' he said. 'Keep your seat and take those reins!'

"Then he asked me my name and address. I was so scared that I told him the truth, and he said that if I ever breathed a word of what went on that night, if I ever told a soul, they would find me and kill me. He said that if they got into any trouble and were put where they couldn't get at me, they had friends on the outside who would finish the job!"

THE poor man had lived in mortal terror of his life since that evening, for he knew that what he could tell would be fatal to the case of Jackson and Walling, and at every moment he expected to be killed in order to silence his tongue.

He had driven the surrey, with the pistol at his side, across the suspension bridge and through Newport, out on the Fort Thomas road.  Finally the man beside him pointed to a dark patch of thicket at one side of the road and said:

"Stop! The lady's house is down there a way."

They told him to wait there to take them back to Cincinnati, explaining that the carriage could not get through to the house and they would accompany her to the door, coming back in a few moments.

The man in the surrey got out and carefully helped the woman to alight. She was wrapped in a long, dark cloak and was heavily veiled. She seemed weak, as though she could hardly stand without leaning against someone. The man on the box took hold of her other arm, and together the two men walked away with the sick woman between them. It seemed as though she were being carried, her feet dragged so along the path.

But she had not then been dead, the coachman was certain, in telling his story to the police. As the trio disappeared the driver thought he heard a scuffle, then a scream-unquestionably a woman's scream. Something was terribly wrong, he knew, and he decided to get out of it as speedily as possible, five dollars or no five dollars.

"I got off the seat and ran like the devil was after me through the woods, over the bridge and back to Cincinnati! The carriage did not pass me on the way. I got home at four o'clock in the morning and went straight to bed, and never breathed a word to nobody!"

However, when he heard next day that a headless body had been 'discovered on that same road, he thought at once of that poor girl. And when Jackson and \Valling were taken into custody, he knew that these were the two he had driven on that terrible night.

Later, when he was certain that he was not being followed by their friends, the darky determined to tell everything he knew.

The police were at once inclined to believe the coachman's story, for he told it in a straightforward manner and showed no signs of breaking down under questioning. He added a significant remark, when he told it the second time, which practically convinced them.

"I tied the horse to a railway iron I saw on the ground while I was waiting," he said. Now, that tallied perfectly with the findings of the police, for the clothes found in the sewer had been weighted down with a railway iron, which presumably the men had taken along from the spot on the Fort Thomas Road for this very purpose.

The colored man identified Walling immediately as the dark man who had sat beside him and had directed his movements on the hair-raising drive.

He hesitated as to Scott Jackson, who stood in the line-up, for he had not seen him as closely. Finally, he selected with great indecision a man the same height as Jackson, then changed to another, and then admitted that he was not sure.

"But if I hear them all talk, I can pick out the voice of the man in the carriage," he assured his examiners.

Sure enough, when the men repeated severally the threats which the colored man declared had been made, he at once selected Scott Jackson from the group, by his voice, though he could not see them at the time.

His story was supplemented by the Walnut Hill Cab Company, which reluctantly admitted that a closed surrey hired from them that evening by men whose description tallied with that of the men in custody, had not been returned until a hostler next day found it in a side street and drove it back to the stable.

The toll collector at the bridge recalled a closed surrey driven by a colored man early in the morning of February 1st.

But to verify the story beyond doubt, the authorities asked the colored Jackson to point out the spot on the Fort Thomas Road whither he had driven that night.

They set forth, police, detectives, reporters, et al.-while the coachman, not a little pleased with the sensation that he was making, drove with them, stopped the horse not twenty yards away from where the body had been found, and pointed without hesitation in the right direction.

"The two men took the poor lady there that way'" he said.

One more important bit of evidence was added to the already overwhelming pile. A keeper of a house of ill repute came into the police station with a pair of man's over hoes stained with blood and still muddy, which she said had been left under a sofa in her establishment shortly after the murder, by a man whom she believed to be Walling.

The shoes fitted Walling to a nicety. He denied owning them, naturally enough, said they probably would fit half the men in Cincinnati, and insisted that he would rather claim them than admit that he had ever been in her house.

NOW William Wood, the Greencastle minister's son, began to talk, and while they were not admitted into the evidence, he repeated verbatim two letters which he said Jackson had written him about Pearl Bryan. The first letter, according to Wood ran as follows:

Hello, Bill:

I expect you think that I have forgotten you, but I haven't. I have been awfully busy this week. I haven't been over to Kentucky yet, so you may know that I have been awfully busy. I work all day jn the college and then in the dissecting room, so you see I am busy for sure.

Well, for business. Tell Bert [a nickname, Wood explained for Pearl] to come on. I have a very nice room with a nice old lady. A friend of Walling's will do the work, an old hand at the biz.

We go to his house to-night for supper. He is a chemist. I think I will have money enough, but tell Bert to bring all she can, as it may come in handy. Tell her to leave so as to get here Monday night.

Tell her she can go home in four or five days. Push it along. Don't go back on me now, as I am near out of my trouble. Be sure and burn this when you have read it.

"D."

"D," Wood explained, was merely a fictitious initial to prevent discovery in case of loss of the letter.

The other letter was said by Wood to have been written after Pearl's death. It ran: 

Hello, Bill:

Be awfully careful what you say. I am expecting trouble. Oh, Lord, stand by me. Do you think Doc will? Write him. I made a big mistake and it's going to get me in trouble. Don't forsake me now.

Now is when I need you most. Write Doc, he will stand up for us, won't he? Say, Bill, I wish I had never seen that girl and never seen Greencastle-my tough luck, anyway. Be sure and burn this. Don't let anyone see it. Now, Bill, stand by your old chum! - "D"

Was Wood merely trying to fix the blame for Pearl's condition on Jackson? If not to blame, why had Jack on been so eager to assist in the matter? It was all very strange.

But Wood had burned the letters. And the oral renditions of them were worthless.

The two men, Jackson and Walling, were tried separately. Jackson's trial began in Newport, Kentucky, on April 22nd, 1896, and la ted nearly a month. Alonzo Walling was tried in an adjoining county.

Both were found guilty and sentenced to be hanged. Counsel for the defense had tried to show that Pearl Bryan had met her death in Ohio, and that she had been taken dead to Kentucky. They poohpoohed the story that the colored man had told, said that Negroes were not to be relied upon on the witness -stand, then turned about and brought in another Negro to swear that he had been with the coachman that night until early morning and that Jackson. therefore, could not have driven the surrey!

The defense lawyer for Scott Jackson. Colonel L. J. Crawford, had been able that Mr. Bryan, in alarm lest his daughter's death should go unavenged had thrown all his resources in behalf of the State and himself paid for an eminent lawyer to aid in the prosecution of the case.

The trials over, both prisoners were lodged in the same jail to await execution. Few gave Scott Jackson any sympathy, but the younger man, Alonzo Walling, aroused much pity through the press. The Governor's desk was flooded with appeals for his life on the ground that he had been the tool for the older man.

Nothing moved the Governor, who refused to interfere in the punishing of the perpetrators of what was the most dastardly crime of the decade in that locality. The Law was allowed to take it course.

Up to the last moment, however, nobody thought that the Governor would let Walling die. This belief was shared by the sheriff, who delayed the hanging from the usual hour of seven in the morning until nearly noon, to give a message of commutation time to arrive from the capital. None came. And the two men were led forth to pay the supreme penalty for the murder of Pearl Bryan.

With them died much that might have been interesting to know in connection with the case.

WHO was Pearl's betrayer? Did Jacksson intend murdering her when he lured her to Cincinnati under pretense of helping her? Was she murdered to conceal her condition-or was she murdered for her head? Where was her head now? Large rewards were offered for the recovery of the head, but it was never traced. To this day its disposition remains a mystery. The poor girl's body lies under its stone-minus its head-tragic end of a life meant for happiness.

The Sugarloaf Mountain Volcano

This is an article that I did a few months back for the Rowan County Fiscal Court's "Rowan Review" publication. 


As the administrator of the Memories of Morehead & Rowan County Facebook group, one of the most popular subjects on the group has been the "Sugarloaf Mountain Volcano." Yes, you read that correctly, the "Sugarloaf Mountain Volcano."
 
Not only is the "Sugarloaf Mountain Volcano" popular on today's social media, but back in the day, it made the newspaper headlines literally across the United States.

 The story began on January, 1904 when Hiram Purvis was cutting railroad ties on the mountain side. He noticed a thin wreath of smoke rising above the tree line some distance up the mountain.

 As he put it, he was "thinking that some hunter was a-smokin' out a varmint,” so he went to investigate. As he drew near, the smoke breathing became difficult; but he kept looking around and came upon a clearing where the underbrush had been scorched and shriveled. The trees were warped and twisted and stripped of their branches due to the heat.

 In the center of the clearing was a large hole from which smoke poured into the air 30 to 40 feet. Beneath his feet the ground felt hot. And he heard recurring rumblings and what sounded to be dull crashes as the masses of rock falling into a cavern.

 The heat had attracted so many rattlesnakes that the ground was covered with them. Purvis, though frightened, continued to look around and discovered five to six fissures from which the smoke was pouring. Purvis then left the mountain and spread the news about what he had seen.

 The very next day, Purvis, accompanied by Hilda, KY postmaster James Thompson, returned to the site of the "volcano." Together they broke away the stones that chocked the throat of the largest of the craters, releasing even more smoke.

  Other witnesses, including William Allen of Rowan County, claimed that all the trees nearby had been blasted into splinters and were dead as if "struck by lightning", according to one report in the Cincinnati Enquirer.  And they also reported that smoke poured from five fissures on the side of the mountain. The smoke was accompanied by a deep rumbling noise. 

A strong smell of gas was reported to have filled the atmosphere in the area. People were afraid to strike matches or start a fire in fear of causing a major catastrophe. 

clipped from the
Cincinnati Enquirer, Cincinnati, Ohio
January 11, 1904

The Cincinnati Enquirer reported that "the volcano is there and likely at any moment to lose its head and kill hundreds of people if they do not make their escape in time."   The residents in the area became terror-stricken and prepared to move should the “volcanic” activity worsen.  And some in fact did pack their belongings and move.


As the days went on, there was some speculation regarding the alleged volcano.  The Fort Wayne Daily News in Fort Wayne, Indiana reported that an investigation was made into the alleged volcanic activity.  And as a result of that investigation, it was believed that the smoke was coming from a burning coal mine due to the strong smell of gas and coal.  There was a coal mile approximately 14 miles from Sugarloaf Mountain and the coal that was believed to be burning was thought to be an extension of that coal vein.


Another explanation that was given was the "volcano" was the result of numerous lightning strikes on the mountain.

However these explanations were not convincing to Deputy Marshal George W. Castle of Carter County.  Deputy Castle "smelled a mouse." 

For quite some time Deputy Castle had been in search of two noted moonshiners.  They had been missing from their usual locations.  So he decided to make a tour of Sugarloaf Mountain section of Rowan County. 

As he explored the community and spoke to its residents, he learned that the two men he wanted had in fact been seen in the area.   Upon learning that fact, Castle returned to Carter County and summoned a posse of men and returned to Sugar Loaf Mountain.

The posse went straight to the largest of the fissures with their weapons drawn.   They advanced until suddenly they rounded a corner and came upon two men who were busy stirring and fixing something in a vat.  The two men had been so busy that they had not seen the officers.

"Hands Up!" said Deputy Castle. And the men's empty hands shot upward.

"Howdy George, you've got the drop on us this time," said John Hildebrandt, one of the most notorious moonshiners in all of Kentucky.

"Yes, Johnny, and I am glad to see you. You have scared half the people in the mountains almost crazy with the smoke and noises you have been turning out of here," said Castle.

Hilderbrandt's accomplice(s) remains a bit of a controversy. One report gave Charley Donathan as the accomplice. But most reports list the accomplice as Presley Crowe. Perhaps it was both of them.   Regardless, the men were arrested during the moonshine raid. 

Clipped from the Fargo Forum and 
Daily Republican
Fargo, North Dakota
November 22, 1904

As they boarded Deputy Castle's wagon for the long trip to the jail in Carter County, Hildebrandt remarked: "These guys around here ought to be arrested for lunatics.  Those holes in the mountains make lovely chimneys, and it was oh, so easy to roll a barrel or two around to rumble some, and throw a little mud and a few rocks out of the place."

He then looked up at the mountain whose actions had terrified the community, and said "Ta, ta old chap; I'll return some time."  And then they were taken off to jail.  The "volcano" was extinguished.