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.

Book Review

Deaf Row

A Mystery Novel by Ron Franscell

Review by Robert A. Waters

By the second paragraph of Deaf Row, I was invested. When retired Denver detective Woodrow “Mountain” Bell visits a nursing home in a high-mountain mining town, author Ron Franscell describes the scene: “Pale September twilight swathed the cheerless room as white-haired shadows silently drifted in for dinner, like dust that hadn’t been blown away yet.” At the facility, Bell meets a man whose daughter disappeared decades before. She was later found murdered, with one eye sewn shut. The father has dementia and can only recall brief, flickering remembrances now of his beloved daughter, but Bell is hooked.

In many fiction books, the good writing drops off somewhere in the middle, only to be brought back to life near the end. Not this book. Franscell’s narrative never fails as Bell weaves his way through obscure clue after obscure clue. The former cop enlists help from each of the characters at the restaurant where they meet every morning.

Those friends are drawn with a masterful hand. Each has a colorful background, and the author's witty, fast-paced writing makes them seem alive, if sometimes poignant. For instance, Roxy has discovered the “secret math of solitaire.” He plays the card game for hours every day, trying to master it. Even though the other members of the gang rib him about his obsession, Roxy's mathematical expertise helps Bell develop key information about the killer. And when Bell grows discouraged, Catholic Priest Father Bert Clancy prods the former cop to continue his quest.

Unknown to everyone, the predator lurks nearby, hiding in plain sight. In the unforgiving cold of the mountain town, Bell tracks his prey. The killer’s motives, based on interviews of real serial killers, will leave the reader stunned.

I love it when writers can bring a scene to life. This description of a mountainous road is one of many examples: “The road to the asylum was unearthly. Over the past fifty years, the mountain had reclaimed the steep, bumpy two-track. It was now a barely visible, frozen crease through a narrow gap in the pines.” With those words, I can see that trail crawling up the mountain.

Here is a description of a greasy diner in another mining town: “The mahogany walls—original to the eatery’s opera-house days—were festooned with dozens of old hardhats, each one bearing the name of countless area mines and the name of the miner who wore it. Some dating back to the 1800s weren’t hardhats at all, merely shellac-brimmed derbies with carbide lamps. Seven different calendars from seven random years adorned the place. And slapped across the front of the old-fashioned cash register was a bright red bumper sticker: We’re all here because we’re not all there.”

I can’t say enough about Deaf Row, except that I thoroughly enjoyed it and highly recommend it. Ron Franscell is one of our finest modern literary masters and this book proves it.

All the Pretty Little Girls

 

Mary Proulx

Killer of Children

The May 6, 1936 edition of the Boston Globe reported that "James H. Folsom, confessed slayer of 12-year-old Annie K. Knights of Fairfield and 7-year-old Mary Proulx of [Waterville, Maine] led police authorities on a gruesome before-dawn reenactment of both crimes today." (Investigators used the early morning darkness to avoid a possible lynching of the hated killer.)

On the afternoon of October 7, 1935, Annie K. Knights left her Lawrence Avenue home in Fairfield, Maine to pick apples. A few hours later, a local high school student found Annie's body in a roadside ditch.

Dr. Julius Gottlieb, who performed the autopsy, said the child died of "asphyxiation by gagging." A handkerchief had been stuffed into her mouth, obstructing the air flow, and she'd been brutally raped. The Lewiston Daily Sun stated that, "Annie, frail and small for her age, was lying on her back, her arms bound and tied to a stump."

One witness, Mrs. Olive Lacombe, told investigators she saw the girl walking with a man and holding a paper bag. Lacombe described the man as being thick-set and wearing a gray suit, a light hat, and white shoes.

Within minutes of finding the little girl's remains, police swept the countryside, arresting dozens of people. No man who had been out and about that day was safe. One suspect, David Roy, a 44-year-old Fairfield carpenter, was brought in and interrogated hard. He vehemently denied his involvement, so police coerced him into taking a "lie detector" test. Professor Edward J. Colgan, of Colby College, who administered the test, told reporters the lie detector is a "psycho-galvanic reflex apparatus which registers the principal emotional changes in the electrical conductivity of the skin and can tell if a suspect is lying." After nearly twelve hours, the machine "proved" Roy had been truthful. Over the next few days, throngs of men were hauled into the police department, only to file out later with no charges.

Maine's hard winter came and went with cops no closer to finding the killer.

Waterville, a town of 15,000 souls, lay three and a half miles from Fairfield. It was there on May 5, 1936, that a second child went missing.

King Features crime writer Jack Martin wrote that "it was about 4 o'clock on a sultry Sunday afternoon when Mrs. Lena Proulx...ran hysterically into the office of Chief of Police Alfred Poirier to report that her 7-year-old daughter, Mary, had disappeared." The chief was slow to react, believing the child had gotten lost and would soon be located.

When Mary hadn't been found by Monday, police launched an all-out search. Hundreds of cops and residents scoured the town and nearby countryside. Poirier became so desperate that he emptied the local high school so students could help. Within a couple of hours, Robert Rancourt, a senior, stumbled on the body lying beside the Mesalonskee River, a few hundred yards outside Waterville.

Martin, who had interviewed some of the cops, wrote: "The child had been fiendishly tortured. A handkerchief had been jammed into her mouth as a gag and it was held in place with another handkerchief tied around her head. Her hands were bound across her chest with a piece of stout twine, such as is used in many stores to wrap heavy parcels." When compared, the twine turned out to be similar to that used in Annie's murder. As in the previous child murder, death was said to be due to "asphyxiation by gagging." Mary had also been raped.

It immediately became obvious to cops that the killer of Annie K. Knights had struck again. Chief Poirier, perhaps feeling pressure from the community at not having taken Mary's mother seriously, threw his entire force on the case.

In the end, a cop from another district provided critical information. While in Skowhegan helping to search for the killer, Somerset County Chief Deputy Sheriff William Goulette spied an ex-convict he knew well. He'd arrested James H. Folsom for "taking indecent liberties with children," and the pedophile had served time in Windham Prison for that series of crimes. Goulette soon learned Folsom was out on parole and wasted no time contacting Chief Poirier. Cops arrested Folsom at the sawmill where he worked.

The suspect quickly confessed and led investigators on that night-time recreation of his crimes. His chilling confession read, in part: "I, James H. Folsom, admit I am guilty of killing [the] girl in Waterville, Me., on Sunday of 3rd of May, also Annie Knight (sic) of Fairfield. Both were the same. They started to cry and I was afraid someone would hear so I tied their hands and gagged them both. I did not know either one [and I] was not of this world until afterwards..." He admitted "taking indecent liberty's (sic) with both and attacked both. I seemed not to know or care what I was doing."

Folsom told detectives he lured each girl away by offering them "pennies."

A search of Folsom's belongings revealed conclusive evidence. Investigators learned that Folsom had rented a room at the YMCA one hour after Mary had been taken. He'd left a box there containing several items, including handkerchiefs exactly like the ones used to gag the girls. Detectives also located a ball of twine that matched the bindings on Mary and Annie's hands.

One month later, Folsom pleaded guilty to the murder of Mary Proulx and received a sentence of life in prison without parole. He died in Maine State Prison 51 years later, at 87.

Student Attacks Teacher's Aide at Florida School (VIDEO)

GRAPHIC VIDEO - Be forewarned

On February 21, 2023, Brendan J. Depa allegedly assaulted Joan Naydich, teacher's aide at Matanzas High School in Palm Coast, Florida. Depa, who stands six-feet-six inches tall and weighs 270 pounds rushed Naydich, shoving her full-force to the floor. She hit her head on the tile, knocking her unconscious.

Video footage shows the assailant kicking the downed woman and beating her with his fists until other employees intervened. After pushing her down, Depa landed 15 blows before help arrived. Five staff members eventually pulled him off Naydich and held him until deputies arrived.

Cops handcuffed Depa and took him to jail. He was charged with aggravated battery on a school board employee, a first-degree felony. If convicted, Depa could spend thirty years behind bars. The Seventh Judicial Court set his bail at $1 million.

Although Depa is only seventeen, he already has three arrests for battery. Because of his age, officials would not release details of those alleged assaults.

After his arrest, investigators said Depa spat on Naydich and vowed to kill her once he is released. He told lawmen he attacked her because she took his Nintendo Switch from him. Naydich denies that. "I just want to set the record straight," she said. "I never took the Nintendo Switch from him. I've been told this was unfortunately misinformation."

Paramedics transported Naydich to a local hospital where it was reported she had suffered a concussion and broken ribs.

I have published the video released by the Flagler County Sheriff's Office.