An Occurrence at Gill Creek

The Drowning of A.N.W. Belk

(NOTE: Louise Pettus was a South Carolina researcher and author. Her archives are stored at Winthrop University. This story takes place in the Waxhaws, a Carolina border community.)

Abel Nelson Washington Belk (pictured) was the father of the Belk brothers, founders of Belk Department Store.

Lousie Pettus wrote the following true story. It reminds me of Ambrose Bierce's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge."

"More than 80 years after the event, William Henry Belk could still recall his father and several black men hitching up the horses to wagons loaded with household goods. William Henry Belk was only 2 years and 8 months old. He was left behind with his brothers--one 4 years old and a baby of 7 months--and his mother, Sarah Walkup Belk.

"In 1950, LeGette Blythe set down William Henry's memory of that day in question. 'My father had heard that old Sherman (i.e., General William Tecumseh Sherman) was heading our way on his march towards Charlotte. Abel had what in those days they called weak lungs and hadn't been strong enough to join the Confederate army.

"'He figured that if the Yankees came along by our place and caught him at home, they'd probably hang him and take all the horses and anything else they wanted, and burn down the house...'

"For Abel Nelson Washington Belk, the decision to leave his home on the south side of Twelve Mile Creek in Lancaster County proved to be fatal. The Yankees didn't come that far north but turned to the east when they left the town of Lancaster.

"Abel Belk had headed for his father's place on Gills Creek some 6 or 7 miles east of Lancaster where his father owned a small gold mine.

"William Henry Belk said that the Yankees 'caught a fellow down that way who figured he'd save his own hide and get in the good graces by turning up my grandfather, old man Tom Belk. This scoundrel told them that my grandfather had barrels of gold hid out at his mine and said that if they caught him, they could make him tell where the gold was.

"It was later revealed that the troops found Abel Belk instead of his father and when they tried to force Abel to tell him where the non-existent barrels of gold were hidden, Belk could only say that he did not know. He was taken to the creek and his head pushed under the water time and again in an attempt to make him talk. Abel Belk, already sick with fever, collapsed and drowned.

"On March 8, 1865, Herron Belk, brother of the drowned man, wrote Sarah Belk, the widow, that 'there was a certain person buried about one and a half miles below here, in Graham's field, who I suppose is Abel.' One of the blacks who had accompanied Abel was able to identify Abel's dead mule near the creek.

"Herron Belk asked Sarah Belk to bring horses (the Union forces had taken every horse in the community) and a wagon to his house so that they could move the body to Shiloh Church.

"After seeing her husband buried, Sarah Belk returned home to raise three little boys. A college graduate, she would be able to give her sons the rudiments of an education. It would be far more difficult to operate a farm in the hard postwar years.

"With Alexander, Ely, Ben, Amanda, and Moriah (former slaves), now free, she labored and finally paid off the mortgage on the farm in 1872.

"In 1873, Sarah Belk married John Simpson, a man she had hired as an overseer. The family moved to Monroe, N. C.

"It was in Monroe that William Henry Belk, at the age of 14, went to work for Benjamin Dawson Heath in a dry-goods store. He proved to be indispensable to Heath who frequently left Belk in charge while he pursued other business interests (one of his businesses was the Bank of Charlotte which evolved into the present NCNB banking chain.)

"When he was 26, William Henry Belk opened the first store of what would become Belk Brothers, a large chain of department stores now simply known as Belk."

NOTE: Gold was first discovered in South Carolina in 1802. The Carolinas and Georgia had enough gold deposits that an assayer named Bechtler began minting gold coins (see picture). Today, these coins are rare and collectible. 

Maryland Killer May Never be Known

The Unsolved Murder of Little Alva Jean Parris

By Robert A. Waters

Newspapers of the day called Riverdale Apartments in Essex, Maryland a “low-rent housing project.” Fredonia Parris, estranged from her husband, lived there with her four children and mother-in-law. While Fredonia worked the day-shift at Western Electric, Minnie Parris, the paternal grandmother, watched the children.

On the morning of June 10, 1960, 9-year-old Alva Jean Parris left her apartment to walk to her aunt’s residence, just three blocks away. By 1:30 P.M., when the child hadn't arrived, the family began searching for her. At 5:30, Fredonia reported her daughter missing. 

And thus began a case that has gone unsolved for 63 years.

It was nearly dark when the Baltimore County Police Department received word of the missing child. They began searching immediately. Within hours, dozens of cops had scoured the entire neighborhood looking for Alva Jean. They checked every basement within several blocks of the Parris residence, thinking someone may have hidden the girl there. Next morning, hundreds of cops and volunteer searchers began an all-out hunt for Alva Jean. Investigators contacted her father, Ralph Parris. He lived in Tennessee, so investigators quickly eliminated him. During the first days after the vanishing, detectives brought in dozens of “suspects.” None, however, were arrested.

Newspapers reported that Alva Jean had “big saucer eyes and pretty bangs,” with hair that draped to her shoulders. She attended fourth grade at Middlesex Elementary School and went to a nearby church. She had one sister and two brothers. Fredonia told investigators her daughter had no difficulties with anyone. The grieving mom said there seemed to be no reason for her to be missing.

The search continued for five days. Finally, on June 15, a group came to a swampy marsh on the outskirts of Baltimore. There they found a pair of discarded shoes that belonged to Alva Jean. Searchers noticed a long-deserted farmhouse back in the woods and headed that way. Cops said the place was surrounded by a grove of gum saplings, “some of the thickest woods in Baltimore County.” Two searchers came across a shallow grave covered by a piece of linoleum, some sod, and twigs. The missing girl’s body had been located. (They later discovered the linoleum had come from the ramshackle home.)

The Baltimore Sun reported that “Alva Jean was dressed in green shorts, a figured blouse and pink socks. She was lying on her back.” In a strange twist, detectives told reporters the killer had poured lye on the girl’s abdomen and genitals. This may have been an attempt to disguise a sexual assault that had occurred. Other newspapers reported that “the child’s face was battered and her teeth knocked out.”

Her aunt, Elizabeth Queen, identified the body at the morgue.

Inside the abandoned home, cops located a “drunk” who had been living there. They unceremoniously hauled him down to the station and interrogated him hard. The drunk was given a lie detector test which he evidently passed, since he was released. It turned out that dozens of homeless people lived in the woods surrounding the old house. After investigating each of the vagrants, none were ever charged.  

In a stunning turn of events, Assistant Medical Examiner Dr. William Lovitt told reporters he could find no cause of death. The Associated Press reported that “medical examiners have resorted to chemical and microscopic analysis to determine how Alva Jean was slain. The body was in an advanced state of decomposition when it was found.” Lovitt even tested the remains for poison, but the results came back negative. The Assistant Medical Examiner said he thought the girl had been dead for five days—in other words, she died shortly after she went missing. Lovitt examined both external and internal organs for signs of foul play, but never determined how the child died. (He said if he had to guess, he would say she'd been strangled.)

On June 19, the Sun reported that “funeral services for the murder victim were held yesterday afternoon at the Protestant Community Church, Edgewater, where Alva Jean had been a Sunday School member for five years, and her mother a member since childhood.”

Two weeks after the girl’s body was found, a teenaged boy was seen near the abandoned house waving a knife around. Cops arrested him and grilled him about the murder, but he was soon released.  

Investigators administered polygraph tests to Alva Jean’s mom and all her relatives. Cops said Fredonia’s results were “inconclusive” and detectives continued to suspect she had additional knowledge about her child’s death. The fact that she had an unbreakable alibi didn't seem to matter at all. (She had been at work from 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. on the day Alva Jean went missing.)

The investigation floundered. Cops “canvassed” hundreds of homes within a few miles of where the girl had disappeared but found no evidence relating to the case. Several children claimed to have seen a man wearing a sailor’s hat hanging around the neighborhood on the day Alva Jean went missing. Cops never identified the possible “witness.”

Years later, investigators told reporters they devoted more time to the Parris case than any other in the department’s history. Yet, with all their hard work, detectives never identified the killer.

So, who abducted the schoolgirl just a block or two from her home?

Here are a few assumptions we might make:

At the time of this post, if the killer is still alive, he’ll likely be in his eighties or even older.

Like many killers, he attempted to hide his crime. He placed his victim in a desolate area, probably within hours of kidnapping her. Then he buried her in a shallow grave, shrouding the body with debris. He seemed experienced at covering his tracks.

He was almost certainly a known sex offender. His compulsion to sexually assault young children would likely have brought him to the attention of law enforcement. Newspapers indicated that cops relied heavily on polygraph tests to eliminate suspects. If so, that was a mistake. “Lie detector tests” are notoriously inaccurate, which is the reason they aren’t allowed as evidence in most American courts. Could a sociopathic killer have fooled the polygraph and walked free? (There is a long list of violent criminals who successfully lied to the lie detector and were turned loose to continue their deviant behavior. For example, Gary Ridgway, the Green River killer, was given a polygraph early on in the case. He passed the exam, was released, and went on to murder another 49 women before he was caught.)

The abandoned farmhouse and its surroundings should have been a major emphasis for investigators because the linoleum covering her body came from that house. In other words, the killer was in that house at some point. Did one of the vagrants abduct Alva Jean and bring her back to bury her?

The killer covered Alva Jean’s genital area with lye in an attempt to conceal his crime. That seems strange—in the 1960s, DNA testing did not exist and would not for another 30 years. Blood typing could be used by cops, but that alone would not identify a suspect. Pouring lye on the body may mean the killer had been caught before and was obsessive about not leaving identifiable clues behind.

Are there any other cases during that time-frame, anywhere in America, when investigators found a female victim with lye on her genitals? Certainly, that is a unique clue worth looking into.

After 63 years, Alva Jean Parris still lies in a dark grave awaiting justice.

NOTE: The exact movements of Alva Jean on the day she went missing are clouded. Many newspapers of the day said that at about 9:00 A.M., her mother sent her on an errand to the Queen residence. Mrs. Queen said she never arrived. Most news sources reported that instead of going on an errand, she went to play with her cousin. Still others said she played with a friend in a park until 4:30 when she started home. Whatever the case, sometime between 9:00 A.M. and 5:30 P.M., Alva Jean vanished. 

If you don't believe me about lie detector tests, check out this story I wrote a few years back:

Kidnapping, Murder, and Mayhem: Would You Take a Polygraph? (kidnappingmurderandmayhem.blogspot.com)

A Bearer of Nothing But Misery

Karen Slattery

39 years after the murders of innocents, Duane Eugene Owen is scheduled to be executed by the state of Florida

By Robert A. Waters

Duane Eugene Owen stalked women by night. A career criminal, he rarely worked, so he had plenty of time to slink into ritzy neighborhoods and peep through windows. Sometimes, if no one was home, he’d break in and steal items he could sell for booze and drugs. If a pretty female was home alone, he would often break in and assault her. Within a span of a few months, he brutalized at least six girls and women in south Florida, murdering two. Those who didn’t die survived only to battle life-altering injuries.

On the evening of March 24, 1984, in Delray Beach, Florida, 14-year-old Karen Slattery babysat the two daughters of the Helm family. At ten o’clock, as the kids slept, she called her mother. They spoke briefly, then Karen’s mom hung up. A pretty girl, she’d just had braces removed from her teeth—she told her mother she was happy because now she could chew gum, even though she wore a retainer. Karen attended Pope John Paul High School where she was a straight “A” student and a star diver on the swim team.

Shortly after midnight, William and Carolyn Helm returned home. As he walked to the front door, William sensed something was wrong. Lights in the living room were turned off, which was unusual. The television would usually be going, but now it sat mute. And the lights in the kitchen were on, which was not normal. An appeals court document recounted the scene: “Mr. and Mrs. Helm walked up to the house; [As he entered], Mr. Helm called for Karen, but there was no response, he then saw the pool of blood, and the hammer laying (sic) next to it. Mr. Helm also noticed the trail of blood into the master bedroom, where he noticed the doors closed, and could tell the light was on in the room as it was shining through the bottom of the bedroom door.” Alarmed, he told his wife to go to their neighbor and call 9-1-1. Then he took his daughters from the residence and waited for help.

Police found Karen’s shoes and retainer scattered about the kitchen. The phone was “askew.” Detectives discovered the master bedroom window had been cut. Because leaves and mud were on the screen and nearby bed, police determined the killer had entered there.

A court report read: “Officer Ernest Soto of the Delray Beach Police arrived at 12:15 a.m. on March 25, 1984 at the Helm's residence at 1221 Harbor Drive, Delray Beach, Florida. The officer saw a pool of blood and a hammer next to it; and a trail of blood leading to the master bedroom. When he opened the doors to the bedroom he found the naked body of Karen Slattery, with her blouse and bra pulled up to her shoulders, and a towel covering her head; her legs were spread open.” She wore pearl earrings and a gold chain around her neck.

Medical Examiner Dr. Frederick Hobin performed the autopsy. His report confirmed that Karen had been sexually assaulted: “The doctor determined the cause of death to have been multiple stab and cut injuries, a collapse of lung tissue, as well as internal bleeding. The autopsy revealed Karen had been stabbed and cut 18 times—14 stabbings and 4 incisions.” The victim had been stabbed in the back, the face, and the neck. The Medical Examiner stated that “there was one very deep cut to the throat which exposed the muscle on the neck and cut all the way through the esophagus.” For some reason, the hammer had not been used in the assault.

In court, Dr. Hobin testified that Karen’s heart was still beating when all the injuries were inflicted, but she was not conscious at the time of the sexual assault.

In late May, Duane Owen had been identified by two different burglary victims as the person who had broken into their homes. He was also picked out of a lineup by numerous students at Florida Atlantic University for exposing himself. (He was not yet suspected of Karen’s murder, nor of a similar murder, that of Georgianna Worden.) Police sent out an order to street cops to hold Owen if they found him. In nearby Boca Raton, Officer Kathleen Petracco, patrolling Country Club Boulevard, encountered a man who looked similar to Owen. She stopped him and he gave her a phony name and ID, but she was sure he was lying. She called her supervisor who arrived and determined the suspect was indeed Owen.

During interviews with Owen, the burglary suspect dumbfounded investigators by confessing to the Slattery murder. He told detectives where they could find several items from the residence he’d hidden after fleeing the scene. These items included a pair of blood-stained gloves he’d taken from the home and used during his attack on Karen. Other items were his undershorts (he’d taken most of his clothes off before entering the Helm residence) and his bloodstained socks. Cops hurried to the location and collected the items. Owen told investigators that while looking in windows, he saw Karen braiding the children’s hair. He said he went to a nearby bar and drank a few beers until he was sure she had put the kids to bed.

In 1984, DNA had not yet become a tool in the arsenal of law enforcement. However, a few years later, cops sent several items from the case to the FBI for testing. DNA from semen matched Owen while the items found with blood on them corresponded with Karen’s DNA profile.

In a matter-of-fact voice, Owen told investigators that after entering the home, he blitzed Karen. He’d come in through the master bedroom, he said, and ran straight toward the terrified girl. Karen stood in the kitchen holding the phone, he said. He yelled at her, demanding she put the phone down, but possibly from the shock of seeing a nearly-naked intruder running toward her, she held onto it. Owen struggled with Karen for the phone and he said he knocked it out of her hand and put it back in its holder. He said he thought she was trying to call 9-1-1, but it’s likely she was just starting to hang up after talking with her mother.

Owen said, “She kind of went to grab ahold of me or something trying to punch me away. And I think that’s when I came up from behind her...I thought I only stabbed her in the back probably more than once. When Karen fell to the floor she fell on her back. She didn’t fight…anymore…and didn’t talk.”

Angry cops could only imagine Karen’s terror when Owen suddenly appeared in the kitchen. She fought briefly until he began stabbing her.

Karen Slattery, living a life filled with wonder and promise, had been reduced to a lifeless corpse, splayed out in an obscene sexual pose.

Other Crimes Committed by Duane Owen

Owen was born in Gas City, Indiana. His mother was an alcoholic and his father a brutal drunkard. After his mother died of cancer when he was 10 and his father committed suicide, he and his brother became wards of the state. While in his early teens, Owen racked up several arrests. As soon as he turned 18, he enlisted in the U. S. Army under an assumed name. After 29 days, he was discharged and moved to Delray Beach to live with his brother.

Here is a list of a few (not all) crimes committed by Owen.

Shortly after moving to Florida, in February, 1982, police arrested him for indecent exposure. In July, he was also arrested for two burglaries. The arresting officer recommended “counseling for deviance” when stolen women’s undergarments were found in Owen’s apartment. Whether he received counseling is unknown.

On November 1, 1982, Owen attacked Virginia Sada, manager of the Peter Pan Hotel in Boca Raton. After breaking into her live-in office/home, he attacked her with a plumber’s wrench. Owen clubbed her so hard that a portion of her skull broke off and penetrated her brain. The attack left Sada with permanent brain damage. After disabling her, Owen raped his victim.

In 1983, Owen moved back to Michigan where he was soon arrested for “substance abuse” and several burglaries. While in jail, he received treatment for drug addiction. After being released, he came back to Delray Beach.

On February 9, 1984, Owen broke into the home of 17-year-old Marilee Manley in Boca Raton and beat her nearly to death with a wrench. She underwent brain surgery, but doctors informed her family she would never fully recover.

According to the Boca Raton News, on May 24, 1984, while Monica Simpson slept in her apartment, Owen broke in. He found a steam iron in the apartment and beat her unconscious. Fortunately, Simpson survived.

Dumille Gorman also survived an attempted break-in at her home. She prepared a composite sketch of Owen which helped to lead to his arrest.

In December, Owen climbed into the ceiling of the University Bowl and Recreation Center and crawled to an area above the women’s bathroom. When arrested, he told police he “wanted to watch girls.”

Somehow, he escaped serious punishment for his many crimes.

The Georgianna Worden Murder

On the night of May 28, 1984, Owen broke into the Boca Raton home of Georgianna Worden. He bludgeoned her to death with a hammer as she slept, and sexually assaulted her.

Worden taught at Boca Raton Community College and worked a second job with an architectural firm. Her two children found her body as they prepared for school. After confessing to the murder of Karen Slattery, Owen confessed to Georgianna's slaying.

In an odd twist, investigators found Owen's fingerprint on a library book in Worden's home. (The book was Mistral's Daughter by Judith Krantz.) He was charged with first degree murder, sexual battery and burglary.

In 1985 and 1986, jurors convicted Owen of all charges for killing both Karen Slattery and Georgianna Worden. The courts imposed death sentences for each murder.

In 1990, the Florida Supreme Court overturned the verdicts on a technicality. Owen was retried for murdering both victims and again sentenced to death. For decades, he launched appeal after appeal, dodging justice.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis recently signed a death warrant for Owen. The killer is currently scheduled for execution at 6:00 p.m. on June 15, 2023. One thing is sure: if he is indeed stretched out on a gurney and given a cocktail of death-dealing drugs, his passing will be easier than that of his victims.

The Unsolved Murder of Cynthia Clements

 Ghouls Among Us

By Robert A. Waters

Nineteen-year-old Cynthia Clements vanished on Labor Day, September 1, 1980.

The Tampa Bay Times reported that “Miss Clements was last seen inside the Li’l General Store at 6185 54^th Avenue North in Kenneth City [Florida], where she had just taken a job as a night clerk. A St. Petersburg Times delivery man dropped off a load of newspapers and spoke with her briefly. The delivery man said later that nothing appeared unusual.”

At about 5:30 A.M., customers flagged down a Pinellas County Sheriff’s deputy and informed him the clerk was missing. Investigators found Cynthia’s purse still in the store, an unfinished crossword puzzle on the counter, the radio playing, and the cash drawer unopened. There appeared to be no signs of a struggle—the cashier had just…disappeared. Cynthia had no car, so she had likely been taken away by someone in a vehicle. A detective told reporters that “there is no shred of evidence to indicate that Miss Clements left the store voluntarily.”

Pinellas County spokesperson Merrill Stebbins said that Cynthia “has no criminal record. There is no suggestion she had done this kind of thing before. There’s just nothing to indicate she was anything but a personable, quiet, religious person.” Cynthia, who studied her Bible often, had written her former pastor back home to tell him she was searching for a “good” church.

Just a month earlier, the family had moved to the St. Petersburg area from Birmingham, Alabama. Her father, John, told investigators he’d worried when she told him she was taking the convenience store job, but she assured him the neighborhood was safe. “Cynthia was never involved in any drugs, any alcohol, any misfits,” said her mother, Nancy. “That’s why we know something bad happened to her, because we know her.” 

Six weeks after she disappeared, on October 14, a hiker found Cynthia’s decomposed body in the woods off Bryan Dairy Road near Largo. She had been strangled. Although no semen was found on or inside her (due to the decomposed state of the corpse), cops believed she had been raped. At the time, there were no surveillance cameras in the store. Due to a lack of physical evidence or an eyewitness, the case quickly went cold.

Numerous other girls and young women had gone missing from the same area, so this case garnered a lot of local publicity. At the time, none of the cases had been solved. The Tampa Times received a letter that spoke for many. “There are…ghouls among us,” said the writer, “who wait for the cover of darkness to carry out their ghastly deeds.” He suggested that convenience stores hire two clerks for the night shift.

On October 21, Cynthia’s parents laid her to rest in Memorial Park Cemetery. The Tampa Bay Times reported that “while Pinellas County sheriff’s detectives stood behind trees watching for her killer, a young Baptist preacher prayed for the quiet 19-year-old woman and stunned survivors she left behind.” No suspicious individuals showed up for the funeral, and cops went home with no leads.

As the search for Cynthia’s killer went on, Li’l General stores offered a $2,500 reward.

Since many young women had gone missing or were murdered in various locales around St. Petersburg and Tampa during that time, investigators thought it likely that a serial killer might be responsible for some of those crimes, including that of Cynthia Clements. For instance, a career criminal named James Delano Winkles abducted and murdered at least two young women, one in 1980, the other in 1981. He kidnapped real estate agent Margo Delimon, held her for several days while he brutally raped her multiple times, and then killed her. He also snatched and murdered a dog groomer named Elizabeth Graham. Detectives questioned Winkles about Cynthia’s murder but could never find the evidence needed to confirm his involvement. The killer died while on Florida’s death row.

Fast-forward forty-three years: her killer still has not been identified and justice seems a long way off.

NOTE: Here is a list of several girls and women who disappeared or were murdered in the Tampa/St. Petersburg area in the early 1980s. None of these cases have been solved. 

Leandra Hogan, 16. A runaway, Leandra's body was located off Hillsborough Avenue in Hillsborough County near Tampa. She died as a result of upper body trauma.

Barbara Barkley, 22. (Pictured). Disappeared from Pipe Furniture Store in Pinellas County. Although her car was later located in nearby Clearwater, her remains have never been found.

Melinda Harder, 20. Disappeared while walking to her boyfriend’s home in St. Petersburg. Remains were found 9 years later in Maximo Park.

Carla Hanavin, 14. A runaway, her body was located in Tampa. As far as I can tell, this case was never solved.

ANOTHER NOTE: From 1976 to 1983, at least 35 young women and teenaged girls were murdered inside the city of Tampa. At the time, none of the crimes had been solved. In several of the cases, investigators suspected one or more serial killers were working the area.

The Rampant "Disease" of Gun Violence

Review of America, Guns, and Freedom: A Journey into Politics and the Public Health & Gun Control Movements by Miguel A. Faria, Jr., M.D.

Publisher: Mascot Books, 2019

Review written by Robert A. Waters

 

Civilian disarmament has been a long-time goal of many liberal Americans. As with most progressive issues, the anti-gun crowd has spread its tentacles into all sorts of little-related or even non-related areas in its effort to convince the public of their cause. “Gun violence,” said Judy Schaechter, M. D., “is America’s most preventable disease.” Who would have thought that gun violence could be classified as a disease? Like cancer? Or polio? Or diabetes? Yet this has become a standard argument for some who wish to eliminate, or heavily curtail, the ownership of guns.

Dr. Miguel Faria, Jr., a brilliant neurosurgeon, has different beliefs. Dr. Faria, born in Cuba, saw what happened after communist dictator Fidel Castro confiscated all civilian-owned guns. Dr. Faria’s danger-antenna warned him that his adopted homeland could be next. As a physician, he realized how easily data can be skewed in one direction or another. And as editor of the Journal of the Medical Association of Georgia, he had enough clout to at least attempt to bring clarity to the issue. “Gun violence studies,” Dr. Faria writes, “do not fall within the discipline of biology, but within the spheres of sociology or criminology.”

Under President George W. Bush, Dr. Faria became a member of the Injury Research Grant Review Committee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). During his tenure there, he blocked grants that were blatantly anti-gun.

America, Guns, and Freedom picks apart each argument of the medical professions’ attempts to link guns and public health. Several chapters deal with that issue.

Since my personal interest in the gun control debate lies in the self-defense issue, I’ll concentrate most of this review on that aspect of the controversy.

In today’s world, even the right to self-defense is being questioned. The Declaration of Independence declares that citizens have the “unalienable right of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” If that is so, the right of self-defense is paramount to human existence. The problem for the anti-gunners is that self-defense stories can be highly emotional and, if allowed to become widely known to a suggestible public, can turn the argument against the controllers.

For instance, did you know that a rape victim shot and killed her attacker when he returned to assault her in her Lake City, Florida home? Did you know that a ring of carjackers in Milwaukee were captured after a nurse shot one of the violent gang members who tried to steal her car? Did you know that an 11-year-old boy shot a home invader who broke into his residence and threatened to kill him? Did you know that numerous attempted mass murders have been stopped by armed citizens? Even when a gun is not used, it can deter a violent attack. For instance, all an Idaho woman had to do to get a home invader to flee was point her gun at him. As soon as he saw the weapon, he hightailed it. There are thousands of such true cases on the internet. And these are just the stories that made a local newspaper somewhere.

The CDC, the media, and other gun control advocates like to stick these stories on a back shelf when discussing the issue. In fact, in their “research” into gun violence, they rarely mention the other side of the issue, i.e., the numerous cases of successful self-defense by everyday citizens. The elephant standing in the room is completely ignored. Dr. Faria discusses this phenomenon at length.

“Backed by the public health establishments,” Dr. Faria informs readers, “liberal politicians…continue to espouse the erroneous concept of guns and bullets as virulent pathogens that need to be stamped out by limiting gun availability and ultimately eradicating guns from the citizenry.” Dr. Faria writes that researchers such as Florida State University Professor Dr. Gary Kleck studied the issue of self-defensive uses of firearms for many years. Kleck’s studies revealed that each year up to two-and-a-half million Americans may use firearms for self-protection. Only two percent actually fire their weapon—in most cases, just showing a gun will deter a criminal.

For instance, when Hurricane Andrew blasted through south Florida in 1992, it destroyed billions worth of property, leaving citizens to fend for themselves for months. It was not unusual for news photos and television broadcasts to show residents of destroyed homes guarding their property with shotguns, rifles and even AK-47-type weapons. Few of those citizens ever fired on a looter. Just the knowledge that armed citizens were not going to be easy targets deterred most predators. This has happened in many cases, such as the Los Angeles riots, the Ferguson riots, and many, many others.

These historical precedents do not fit into the narrative that no citizen needs a gun, so they're rarely mentioned by the anti-gunners.

Throughout the book, Dr. Faria hits the reader with facts that tear into the liberal narrative. Whether it’s a blackout on the issue of self-defense, biased information in medical journals, the prejudices of the American Medical Association (AMA) and CDC against gun ownership, or the media’s complicity in narrating a one-way version of events, Dr. Faria takes them all on.

I highly recommend America, Guns, and Freedom to anyone who has an interest in the gun control debate. 

The Quiet, Sad Life and Death of Little Georgie Melber

No Room in her Life for Georgie

By Robert A. Waters

Be warned in advance--this story is disturbing.

 

On a bitterly cold afternoon in 1911, Edith Gibeau Melber visited an apothecary in Schenectady, New York. There she purchased a small bottle of carbolic acid, also known as phenol. Attractive and personable (when she wished to be), Edith had been widowed five years earlier. Her husband, George, had worked as a machinist for General Electric Company. After squandering the $2,500 life insurance she received, she began placing her five-year-old son, Georgie, in various "orphan's homes" in the area. He would remain in each institution for a few weeks, then she would move him to another. 

On January 6, Edith picked Georgie up from his great-uncle's home. The Schenectady Gazette reported that "her attitude toward her husband's family was cold and reserved." Charles F. Smith, a musician, and his wife Margaret, relatives on her husband's side of the family, had kept Georgie during the Christmas holidays. They loved the bright, attractive child. Disapproving of Edith's wild, erratic lifestyle, the well-to-do couple attempted to persuade her to let them adopt Georgie. She refused.

Edith walked with the boy to the Schenectady Children's Home and asked staff to admit him. She had left him there on previous occasions but had neglected to pay the small fee they required. Because of this, the Children's Home turned her down. Georgie wore a brand-new white Buster Brown suit (given to him at Christmas by a couple she had briefly worked for). 

Edith and her son took a trolley headed toward Albany. Somewhere between Schenectady and the state capitol, they disembarked. In a rural, isolated area, the mother and son began walking aimlessly through the countryside. Edith handed Georgie a bag of chocolate drops which he ate as they trudged along. For the last five years, she had resented the boy and his need for her. Because of him, she found it hard to hold a job and had little social life. Many men wished to date her, but none seemed to want to raise another man's child.

As they walked, Georgie looked up at his mom and asked for something to drink. His mother handed the boy the bottle of carbolic acid. She later told investigators he drank from the bottle. The medicine is corrosive to whatever it touches. As it reached his respiratory tract and his stomach, the child must have been in excruciating pain. (Since no one would willingly drink the acidic poison, detectives surmised that she had forced the drink down the boy's throat--burns on her hands backed up that theory.)

Edith left Georgie lying on the frozen ground, his white suit standing out against the yellowed weeds.

Later that day, Edith was back in Schenectady where she visited her new lover, Howard Kirk, a draftsman for General Electric. On January 12, two days after she'd murdered her son, Kirk drove her to the train depot. She bought a ticket for an early train headed west. "I kissed her goodbye," Kirk told reporters, "and she said, 'I may never see you again.'"

On January 14, a hunter found Georgie's body. The Elmira Star Gazette reported that "Little George Melber's body, badly burned in the face by carbolic acid, frozen stiff by the cold, was found Wednesday afternoon by Harry Sprankland, a hunter, as he followed his dogs across a stretch of frozen swamp-land, about 1,000 feet south of the Schenectady turnpike and just inside the city limits. The autopsy, postponed until Thursday morning to allow the body to thaw out, proved conclusively that death was due to the effect of carbolic acid."

Charles F. Smith was among those who formally identified the sad corpse. Georgie's father's relatives saw that he received a church funeral and was interred at St. Joseph's Cemetery in Schenectady.

Detectives soon arrested Edith and, within an hour, she had confessed.

On March 6, 1911, Edith went on trial. More than a thousand spectators fought to get into the courthouse. While most were there to see her receive justice, a few sympathized with Edith.

On March 16, a twelve-man jury found the mother guilty of second-degree murder. The judge sentenced Edith to a prison term of 20 years to life--at hard labor.

Five years later, Edith fashioned her bedsheet into a noose and hanged herself. Was she unable to live with herself for what she had done? Or was she depressed about her loss of freedom while in prison? We'll never know, but her death brought an end one of the most poignant and senseless cases of murder.

Four Long Years of War in Florida

A Wilderness of Destruction: Confederate Guerillas in East and South Florida, 1861-1865.

By Zack C. Waters

Mercer University Press, April, 2023

Review is written by Robert A. Waters

(Today's Florida is a tourist mecca, a gathering place for northerners fleeing sub-zero temperatures, a retiree's paradise, and a haven for the wealthy who wish to flee high-tax states. It was nothing like that in 1861. Florida, with a population of 140,000, had far fewer residents than any of the other states that seceded from the Union. Many of its citizens hailed from southern states, particularly South Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia. A scattering of Yankees had moved to the "Land of Flowers," and others came from Cuba and Spain, as well as several European countries. 60,000 enslaved persons made up the mix, and, in the Everglades, licking their wounds, were remnants of the Seminole Indian tribes. On January 10, 1861, Florida became the third state to tear away from what its citizens believed was a tyrannical United States government.)

Award-winning author Zack C. Waters has once again delved into uncharted territory in historical research. His new book, A Wilderness of Destruction, is a fast-paced telling of how Confederate Floridians fought a long-term guerilla war against northern invaders. Because of this resistance, the Union could never control the interior of the state. Tallahassee was the only Confederate capitol to never be captured. Waters has discovered many little-known, or in some cases, previously unknown skirmishes, that occurred between Union invaders and Confederate sympathizers.

Almost immediately after the war started, the Union began an assault on Florida's coastal cities. Since Florida had no manufacturing industry, except for the making of salt, Northern military strategists reasoned that St. Augustine, Jacksonville, Tampa, Key West, Pensacola, and Cedar Key would quickly become a pipeline for goods flowing from Europe into the Confederacy. Within the first year, Union armies occupied all those cities. Yankee ships endeavored, with some success, to stop the flow of gunrunners and smugglers. As the war progressed, it became harder for Southern partisans to sneak through the armada of ships lined up along the coasts.

Throughout the war, Union soldiers attempted to occupy inland Florida. Raiders such as Confederate Captain J. J. Dickison, with the help of Rebel supporters, made life miserable for the Yanks. In the Battle of Horse Landing, for instance, three Cuban sisters warned him of a planned attack on his camp. In the dead of night, Dickison moved his troops to a more strategic location and destroyed the attackers, with no loss of his own men. Throughout the war, Southern civilians provided information to guerillas, helping to keep the Union armies bottled up in the coastal cities.

As the war progressed and the tide turned in favor of the northern invaders, it became more difficult to keep the Rebel armies fed. Once Vicksburg fell, the conduit of Texas beef to the Confederacy ended. Confederate General Braxton Bragg, leader of the Army of Tennessee, wrote to Florida leaders: "We are now dependent on your state for beef. The future of the army depends on how well it is fed, and this in turn depends upon our ability to secure food from Florida." Unfortunately, there was no railroad from Florida to Georgia, so the armies of Lee and Bragg would be dependent on old-fashioned cattle drives for their sustenance.

Waters writes that "the huge herds of half-wild cattle that roamed the prairies of South Florida came from the Andalusian cattle brought to the New World by Spanish conquistadors, settlers and monks. By 1860, estimates of the size of the herds in the southernmost state numbered at 658,609..." Jacob Summerlin, a die-hard Confederate, was one of several ranchers in Florida to be tasked with getting the beef to Georgia. There the Southern government would move the cattle by train to the theaters of war. Waters writes: "The task of maintaining an avenue to drive the cattle to the Confederate supply centers would become a job for the guerilla companies of Florida."

The actual driving of the cattle was a difficult endeavor. "The cowmen," Waters writes, "had to traverse a wilderness region inhabited by bears, panthers, wolves, Unionists, deserters and other predators." Even as General William Sherman was burning Georgia to desolation, the Florida cowboys continued to find ways to get the coveted beef to Confederate armies.

In the spring of 1865, when the Confederate States of America surrendered, members of the Confederate cabinet faced a conundrum. If captured by Union troops, they might be tried and executed. Jefferson Davis was arrested in Georgia. Others were captured or gave themselves up. None were hanged, although Davis faced that prospect for several years.

As northern newspapers howled for the blood of Confederate "traitors," Judah P. Benjamin, former Secretary of State, devised a plan to outwit his pursuers. His scheme depended on former Florida guerillas leading him to freedom. By disguising himself as various tradesmen, and sometimes as a French traveler, he eventually made it to the Bahamas. From there, he traveled to England where he became a respected barrister. For many years, he kept in touch with the men and women of Florida who assisted him.

Confederate Vice President John C. Breckinridge was the most wanted of all. Even the Union general who burned Atlanta advised him to make a run for it. "General Sherman--at a meeting with Confederate officers following their capitulation--advised Breckinridge to flee, explaining that the people of the Northern states felt especially bitter toward the former U. S. Vice President who took up arms against the government."

Once again, Captain Dickison took charge. He advised Breckenridge to flee to Cuba. Waters writes that "Breckinridge's party began their escape from the United States on the west bank of the St. John's River, near Palatka. They traveled up the waterway, constantly beset by swarms of gnats, mosquitoes, and a scorching sun..." Eventually, they landed in Cuba. Breckinridge traveled to Europe and the Holy Land before settling in Canada. Had he been captured he almost certainly would have been executed.

During the 1960s, Zack C. Waters learned his writing skills from some of the finest Southern authors at the University of Florida. Over the years, he has written dozens of articles about his favorite subject, the Civil War. A Wilderness of Destruction is his third book about that war that changed history. I HIGHLY recommend it.

NOTE: This book is a goldmine for genealogists. If you, like me, are interested in learning more about your Florida ancestors, buy this book.

The Last Legal Hanging in America

Justice at 12:04 A.M.

By Robert A. Waters

 June 12, 1979. Midnight. Delaware Correctional Center in Smyrna.

The cold wind snapped Billy Bailey’s jacket as about a dozen spectators watched him trudge up the stairs of a makeshift gallows. Two prison guards escorted him to the platform where his sentence would be carried out. They wore black jumpsuits, black hoods and black baseball caps to hold the hoods in place. Prison warden Robert Snyder, also wearing black, waited near the center of the scaffold. Bailey, about five feet tall and weighing more than 200 pounds, seemed not to notice the noose swinging in the wind. In fact, he never seemed to notice or care about anything, much less the pain he inflicted on humanity during his sordid life.

Mary Ann Lambertson, daughter-in-law of murder victims Gilbert Lambertson, 80, and wife Clara, 73, was one person struggling with mental pain caused by Bailey’s actions. He’d broken into the couple’s modest farm home near Dover and shot-gunned them. Mary Ann, working nearby, heard the blasts and witnessed Bailey fleeing across a fifty-acre field. Racing to the home, she found Gilbert, half his face blown off, and Clara, with gaping holes in her shoulder and abdomen. Her hand had a gunshot wound, too, as if she’d raised it to try to ward off the buckshot tearing into her soul. Even years later, Mary Ann could not forget that wrenching scene.

In the frigid air, Mary Ann spoke to reporters. “I think it’s really past time this [execution] should have come about,” she said. “It’s been too many years. When they know for a fact that someone did something, it shouldn’t take 16 years to execute him.”

For most of his life, Billy Bailey had been a terror to almost everyone who came in contact with him. He’d been imprisoned six times, and when he killed the Lamberstons, should have been on a prison work detail. However, he escaped due to a clerical error. Within minutes of going on the lam, he attempted to hold up a liquor store. When the clerk refused to give him money, he tried to shoot her with a .25-caliber pistol. The gun jammed, and he ran from the store carrying a bottle of liquor in one hand and the pistol in the other.

Less than an hour later, Bailey ended up at Lamberston’s Corner.

Gilbert and Clara raised soybeans for a living. Gilbert’s father had farmed the same land and, when he died, the couple inherited his property and home. They raised their children there. Clara liked to make jams and jellies for friends, and both attended church regularly. They were country people with country values. In the scheme of life, it seemed unlikely that they would fall prey to a hardened criminal like Billy Bailey.

Newsman Karl Vick described the execution: “The guards led [Bailey] onto the trapdoor, placed a strap around his ankles and pulled a black hood over his head and upper chest. The noose was fastened over the hood and tightened beneath Bailey’s chin.

“Several times, Snyder felt at the hood to be certain that the top of the hangman’s knot lay beneath Bailey’s left ear, the placement old Army regulations specify to assure the straightening rope has the best chance of bringing quick death by severing the spinal cord. Finally, the warden stepped back and pulled a gray wooden lever with both hands.

“The trap door opened with a thump. Five feet of manila rope followed through the hole and snapped taut 10 feet above the sodden ground.”

Guards quickly placed a canvas tarp in front of Bailey, hoping to conceal the body as it spun in the wind. As friends and relatives of the victims watched, their thoughts may have drifted back in time to a loving couple who had lived ethical lives and died violent deaths. Dennis Lambertson, grandson of the victims, certainly had those thoughts. “One of them watched the other one get blown away,” he said. “They were kind of old, feeble people. My grandfather kind of wobbled when he walked.”

Billy Bailey chose hanging over a poison needle, which was his right at the time he committed the murders. He is said to have commented, "I don't want to be put down like a dog." There will be no more hangings in Delaware since, by law, any new execution will be done by lethal injection.

Whatever anyone thinks about the death penalty, Billy Bailey has never hurt another person since that cold night in June.

NOTE: Much of the information for this story came from the excellent Washington Post article, “An Execution in the Old Way,” by Karl Vick. I also consulted court documents and numerous newspaper articles from the period.

Engineer in 1890 Train Derailment is Immortalized in Song

Story of the Folk Song “Engine One-Forty-Three”

By Robert A. Waters

Trains have always thrilled the hearts of songwriters. “Wabash Cannonball,” “Casey Jones,” “Wreck of the Old ’97,” “Folsom Prison Blues,” and “City of New Orleans” are just a few popular railroad songs. Like almost all folk songs, there are many different versions of the tune, “Engine One-Forty-Three.” This post will use Townes Van Zandt’s version, called “FFV.”

The title “FFV” means Fast Flying Virginian, or Fast Flying Vestibule. The song is about a train wreck that occurred in West Virginia, killing its engineer, George Alley.

Here is the entire newspaper report from the Staunton Vindicator, published October 31, 1890:

Fatal Accident

“On Thursday morning last, about two miles this side of Hinton, the C & O vestibule train ran into a rock which had fallen on the track. The engine, tinder, baggage car and postal car went off the track, the baggage car and tinder going over the embankment. The engine turned over. Engineer George W. Alley of Clifton Forge had an arm and leg broken, and was so badly scalded by the escaping steam that he died before his wife, who had started from Clifton Forge when she heard the news, could get there.

Fireman Lewis Withrow was badly scalded on the neck, arm and side and S. Foster, an extra fireman on his way home to Staunton, was slightly bruised. Engineer Alley’s remains were taken to Clifton Forge and the funeral took place from the Methodist Church there, of which he was a member, on Friday. He leaves a widow and three children. The train had slowed some in turning a curve or it is probable it would have gone over into the Greenbrier River. The track walker, it is said, had crossed over the spot a few minutes previous to the accident and found it clear.”

The Chesapeake and Ohio train ran daily between New York, Washington, D.C., and Cincinnati. Alley’s father and five brothers worked for the railroad.

The Making of a Folk Song

Folk songs usually have a grain of truth, but some can also stretch truth to the outer limits—as happened in this case. “FFV” suggests that George was speeding. There was no indication of that. In fact, he had slowed as he came toward a bend, which may have saved many lives. The song states that George’s mother warned him about speeding. That did not happen as she had died years before. The actual number of the train was 134, not 143. The song states that the train ran off the tracks and hit a rock, but that is inaccurate: the boulder lay on the tracks so there was no way Alley could have avoided it. While his last words may well have been, “Nearer my God to thee,” it’s unlikely that he told anyone he wanted to die along with his engine. In fact, he was said to be asking for his family as he slipped in and out of consciousness. The description of George’s injuries was fairly accurate.

I've always loved this song. No one knows who wrote the initial version, although it has been speculated that a worker for C & O was the author.

Here are the lyrics, as sung by Texas troubadour and songwriter, Townes Van Zandt. Click the FFV link to listen to the song.

FFV

Well, along come the FFV, the swiftest on the line,

Runnin’ on the C & O road twenty minutes behind.

Runnin’ into Seville, headquarters on the line,

Receiving their strict orders from the station just behind.

 

Well, Georgie’s mother come to him with a bucket on her arm,

Saying, “My darling boy, be careful how you run.

Well, it’s many a man has lost his life in tryin’ to make lost time,

But if you run your engine right, you’ll make her just on time.”

 

Aw, but off the road she darted and into the rocks she crashed,

Well, the engine she laid upside down and Georgie’s breast was smashed.

His head lay against the firebox door and the flames were rollin’ high,

“Well, I’m proud to be born for an engineer on the C & O road to die.”

 

Well, the doctor come to Georgie, “My darlin’ boy be still.

Your life can yet be saved it is God’s blessed will.”

“Oh no, no, it will not do, I want to fly so free,

Well, I want to die with the engine I love, one-hundred-and-forty-three.”

 

Then the doctor said to Georgie, “Well, your life cannot be saved,

Murdered out on the railroad and laid in a lonesome grave.”

His face was all covered up with blood and his eyes they could not see

And the very last words that Georgie spoke were, “Nearer my God to thee.”

 

Case of the Doll-like Corpse

Murder of a “Government Girl”

By Robert A. Waters

By October, 1944, the momentum in World War II had begun to shift to the Allies. Yet, with hundreds of American soldiers still dying every day, the United States War Department continued to hire workers to help defeat the Nazis and Japanese.

Shortly after graduating from high school, Dorothy Berrum passed the civil service exam and left Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin for Washington, D.C. Seventeen-years-old, the newly-hired clerk stood only four feet, six inches tall and weighed just 85 pounds. Despite her appearance, she quickly made friends at Arlington Farms, the War Department dorm where she lived, although friends lamented that the young teenager from the mid-west seemed naïve to the wiles of the city.

She’d been in DC for only three months when she vanished.

A few hours later, in the early morning of October 6, two employees of the East Potomac Park golf club discovered Dorothy’s corpse. She lay face-up in wet grass near the sixth hole. The Washington Evening Star reported that “her face bore bruises and scratches, indicating the victim had put up a fierce struggle before her assailant choked her. Coroner A. Magruder MacDonald said death had been caused by strangulation and that she had been criminally assaulted.” Because of her diminutive size, some reporters described her as “doll-like.”

According to the Washington Daily News, cops “found that the girl had been strangled with her own turban gaudy strip of blue, white, green and purple cloth. The body had been clad in a brown dress covered by a red coat buttoned from top to bottom. Later, it was discovered that the victim’s underclothing was torn. She had been raped, it appeared, then strangled.”

Investigators surveyed the crime scene and, about forty yards away, discovered a belt with a bent buckle. Cops knew it would have been standard issue on a Marine Corps uniform. After collecting the belt for evidence, detectives began attempting to identify the victim. A class ring on her finger provided the clue they needed. The ring came from McDonnell High School and had the initials “D. B.” engraved into it. Cops searched several databases and found a McDonnell High School in Wisconsin. After identifying Dorothy Berrum, they had the task of informing her parents that their daughter had been murdered.

The now-grieving parents had been skeptical all along about Dorothy’s move to the big city, but there was no stopping her. In letters home, she emphasized that she was pleased with her new place in the world. 

On the evening of October 5, the “government girl,” as newspapers would soon label her, arranged to meet two girl friends at the corner of 10^th Street and D Street, N.W. When neither friend showed up, a stranger who identified himself as Earl McFarland struck up a conversation with Dorothy. Sporting a neatly pressed Marine Corps uniform, he told her he had fought in Guadalcanal and was on the home front recovering from malaria. (That was true, but he neglected to tell her he was married, had two children, had been arrested for several crimes, and had served two years in prison.)

At 9:15 p.m., they hailed a taxi. She and McFarland got in the back seat, and the driver heard Dorothy tell her companion she was hungry. He asked where she would like to eat and she said, “The Hot Shoppe.” The restaurant, famous locally for its “Mighty Mo,” a triple decker hamburger, and root beer floats, was a few miles away. McFarland told the cabbie, Harold Thomas, to take them in that direction.

The next morning, Thomas saw the girl’s picture on the front page of the newspaper and contacted investigators. The young college-age cab-driver told detectives that after Dorothy had mentioned the Hot Shoppe, the soldier “asked me to have a cigarette and leaned over and whispered in my ear to take them around Hains Point.” Once there, McFarland told him to stop, paid the tab, and exited with Dorothy. Before leaving, Thomas heard the girl ask, “Why are we stopping here?” The cabbie informed investigators that after he let the pair out, he found a switchblade knife in the back seat.

Detectives made a beeline to the Marine Corps barracks located in the city. They had three questions for USMC personnel: Who had been out on pass the night of October 5? Who had lost a knife? And who had lost a belt? The answer to each of those questions turned out to be twenty-four-year-old Earl Jackson McFarland, formerly of Knoxville, Tennessee.

While being interrogated, McFarland lied about everything. He claimed the belt was not his. He wasn’t even wearing a belt on October 5, he said. Another soldier at his barracks contradicted McFarland’s claim and produced a photograph taken in a “quickie joint” earlier on the day of the 5^th. The picture showed a grinning McFarland wearing the belt. What’s more, investigators saw that the buckle had been bent exactly like the one they had in evidence.

McFarland denied the knife was his. He told police he did not know the girl and had never met her, contradicting the cabdriver’s statement.  

And it turned out that even his name, “Earl McFarland,” was an alias. Earl Jack Dills was his real moniker. He had changed names when he enlisted in the military to hide his criminal past.

Detectives suspected McFarland of another murder in the city. Mrs. Margaret Fitzpatrick had been brutally raped and murdered just three weeks before Dorothy Berrum’s corpse was discovered. A friend identified McFarland as the last person to see Margaret alive. He was indicted for that murder but never tried.

As McFarland awaited trial, detectives tracked down the history of the mysterious “switchblade” knife. Marine private John S. Holzberger identified the knife as the one he lent to McFarland while they served in Guadalcanal.

United Press reported that “a Federal Grand Jury today indicted Pvt. Earl McFarland, 21-year-old Marine veteran of Guadalcanal on three counts—each punishable by death—in connection with the slaying of 18-year-old Dorothy Berrum.”

Shortly after being housed in the Washington jail, McFarland and another inmate escaped. An investigation showed they had charmed their way into the guards’ confidence. The website Execution Today states that during a card game played in one of the guards’ rooms, “they imprisoned their jailers, nicked their clothes, and cut their way into a ventilation shaft and out to the roof.” While the other inmate was quickly captured, McFarland spent eight days on the run before being tracked down in Knoxville.

Meanwhile, newspapers began receiving letters criticizing the military for "snatching" girls from all over the country to work in the dangerous city of Washington. One newspaper editor wrote: "The problems imposed by a tremendous wartime influx of young women have been discussed for months but the discussion has reached a new peak in press, pulpit and among government workers themselves since the tragedy of Dorothy Berrum."

McFarland's trial began on January 8, 1945. Defense attorneys produced three psychiatrists who testified that their client was mentally ill. However, the strategy didn't work. Circumstantial evidence prevailed and the former Marine was convicted and sentenced to death. That sentence was upheld by the U. S. Court of Appeals stating that the evidence “clearly established his guilt.”

He was executed in the electric chair on July 19, 1946.