Louisiana, D-E, 1831-1979, Undated

ian’s wife, Ada, and their
irry, arrived from their
vn, Miss., accompanied by
ther-in-law from Hatties-
an identified the leg as
and.
Hester that her husband
weeks earlier to go to
- electrical work and visit
ud he was reared in Tal-
ng day Dorman’s sisters,
and Mrs. W. B. Mont-
n, Miss., confirmed the
victim.
» effects at his room, his
missing his gold pocket
vith its large silver-plated

if Dorman was friendly
»wdy or his father, G. R.
ster.

‘w the men,” she replied,
was her first trip to Tal-
ears and that she was

few people there.

ile had matched the shoes
ast scene with those lo-
oom, and made sure they
size, He could locate no
itch amid the ruins of the

st told Hester, “it looks
was nude at the time of
and clothing were doubt-
his identity by some-

2 insurance on young

it this was likely.

ys had now passed with
whereabouts of young
an to fear if the youth
would try to flee the
ational killing had made
t the region. Washing-
horities sent his descrip-
along the Gulf coast and
is.
young Dowdy began to
he frequented beer halls
ind for days the detective
es, picking up fragments
» bit of information was
id a girl friend in Ring-

: once for Ringling. He
lapely young, flirtatious
- Her blue eyes flashed
ier of his suspicions of

he could possibly have
this terrible killing,” she
uldn’t harm a soul.”
nk he has disappeared ?
t?” asked Treecost.
ier sweetheart was on an
which he was likely to
» and Dowdy had talked
told the detective, but
te date as both of them
e a little more money.
iot seen Dowdy in six

ot share the girl’s views

i

y’s early return. He
elry stores and pawn-
nan’s watch and silver
the rounds from Vicks-
vest as Shreveport, La.,

scription was broadcast
| in the newspapers all
tall, dark-haired
ose and protruding
ly were warned to
ucc or face charges of

s jail cell G. R. Dowdy
surance companies de-

manding payment of the policies, claiming his
son had met violent death and denouncing the
investigations as a farce. He said search for
his son would be futile because he was dead.

It was shortly after one such letter had
been posted that Sheriff Hester got an anony-
mous telephone tip: to go to the home of “Old
Joe” Barcus, a gray-haired Negro of 70 who
lived in a settlement on the east edge of
Tallulah. Old Joe, the informant said, knew
something about J. D. Dowdy.

Hester went at once to the man’s home.
He found Old Joe in a rocker beside a wood-
burning. fireplace. The Negro extended a
palsied hand and offered him a chair.

“Boss, I’d never have said nothin’ if you
hadn’t come here. But you being the sheriff
I feel I got to tell you what I know about
Mr. J. D. Dowdy. You know I’m an old
Negro an’ a pore one, an’ a dollar looks
mighty big, and $50 looks that much bigger.
About two weeks ago young Mr. Dowdy
came to me an’ offered $50 to go to you and
say I saw him drown in the river. He said
if I’d say it and stick to it, he’d collect a lot
on insurance. He had it all figured out how.
I could take in his hat and claim I fished it
out of the water. But God Almighty knows
I’m too near to the Kingdom Road to tell a
lie like that, so I told him I wouldn’t do it.”

Sheriff Hester thanked the Negro and de-
parted. This information confirmed his be-
lief in the fraud plot.

That day Sheriff Hester learned that
young Dowdy had taken out a burial policy
on his life on September 25, less than a month
prior to his death. Hester decided to go to
Ringling, Okla., where the war veteran had
lived before coming to Tallulah, on the
theory J. D. might be, hiding out there.

Hester could find no trace of Dowdy in
the little Oklahoma town. There, many in
the community were not surprised at the
fiendish scheme, but others seemed to like
Dowdy, thinking him innocent. It was a
futile trip.

A call from the jail informed Hester that
the elder Dowdy had become noisy and un-
ruly, demanding that he be released. Hester
found Dowdy pacing the floor of his cell.
What positive proof did the sheriff have that
warranted holding him?

“Dowdy,” said Hester calmly, “we believe
now that your son did the actual killing.
We're holding you as an accomplice.”

When the sheiff clanged the jail door shut
a half hour later, Dowdy was still raving.

The report from the FBI in Washington
on an analysis of the cells of the leg bones
indicated the slain man was in the late 30s or
early 40s, supporting the belief that Dorman
was the victim.

The days ticked by without any hint of
young Dowdy’s whereabouts. Then came the
first clue that Dowdy was still.in Northern

Louisiana. Hester got a tip from a jeweler
in the city of Monroe that he had sold a half-
carat diamond, ring to a rugged, unshaven
youth fitting Dowdy’s description. Hester
hurried to Monroe. *

“The man appearéd nervous while he was
making the purchase,” said the jeweler. “He
kept watching the door. I began to fear he
was going to hold me up. Finally he selected
a solitaire which suited him, pulled out a
large roll of bills and paid me for it.”

“A woman’s ring?” asked Sheriff Hester.

The jeweler nodded. He added that the
young man departed hurriedly after the pur-

chase. He had never seen him before, nor
since. Hester questioned the jeweler thor-
oughly. What had the man worn? Were

there any scratches or wounds upon him?
Were his clothes torn? Was there mud upon
his shoes?

The jeweler had been a rather shrewd ob-
server, perhaps largely out of fear of a
holdup from this ill-clad customer and need
for later identification. The man, he noticed,
wore brown trousers and a leather jacket.
He had badly-scuffed brown shoes but there
was no mud upon them.. The. man wore his
jacket unbuttoned and the thing that had
caught the jeweler’s eye was a large silver
belt clasp.

“Sounds like our man,” Hester said.

— FOUND the purchase of:a dia-
mond by young Dowdy puzzling. It
seemed strange he would risk such a deal
with the law so close on his heels. And the
only girl friend the sheriff could trace to
Dowdy was the blonde at Ringling, and
Dowdy had not been seen there.

Two days later Deputy Sheriff Cal Bain
of Vivian, La., 200 miles from Tallulah, sat
gazing through the courthouse window when
he caught sight of a woman walking hur-
riedly across the lawn. The bottom of her
dress was stiff with dried mud where it had
dragged the ground. As she drew nearer, he
could see her face was pallid and drawn with
fatigue.

Deputy Bain did not know this farm
woman in soiled calico who stood before him,
but her manner told him she had something
desperately urgent to say.

“It’s a terrible thing to turn in my own
brother,” she blurted, “but I know it’s right.”
She then told Bain that young Dowdy had
spent the night in her farm home two miles
from Vivian and had departed early that
morning. She had left her two small chil-
dren at home alone to hasten afoot to Vivian
to inform officers the minute J. D. had gone.

She identified herself as Mrs. W. E. Town-
send and said her brother had given her $120
in $20 bills, requesting that she get the money
to his father. He also gave her a half-carat
diamond ring which he said he had planned

WHEN NEW YORK CITY COPS

took the torso of a woman from the Hudson River, they knew they had
a mystery on their hands that little short of a miracle would solve.

There was nothing to identify the dead woman, obviously the victim
of a fiendish murder, except a cheap pillow slip, but tireless homicide
men followed this clue until it led them of all places, to a rectory.

There they learned the identity of the victim—pretty Anna Aumuller,
an immigrant girl who had become the "Bride of the Devil."

Watch for this amazing tale of romance, murder and detective work
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lad

to give his blonde sweetheart at Ringling.

“He said he had bought it for his sweet-
heart but doubted if he’d ever make it to
Ringling as the officers were hot on his trail,”
she said.

Then he had said, “I’ll never see my sweet-
heart again, nor you for that matter, because
they’re going to have to kill me to take me.”

“Did he leave your home afoot?” asked the
deputy.

“Yes. I don’t think he had a car.”

Deputy Bain acted quickly. By telephone
and short wave radio he alerted all patrol
cars and sheriff’s deputies in Northern Louis-
jana. He cautioned them of Dowdy’s threat
to kill. As the day dragged on into night, it
seemed Dowdy had again eluded them.

At midnight officers at Tyler, Tex., 120

miles away, broadcast a report that a man°

of Dowdy’s description, carrying a rifle, had
frightened a farm woman living in the
Neches River bottoms near Bullard, and that
the underbrush was being combed for the
man.

At dawn the posse found Dowdy’s rifle
with his initials carved upon it lying beside
a dirt road where it intersected a highway.
Officers believed he had discarded his gun to
avoid suspicion, and had hitchhiked a ride.

It was midafternoon of the next day that
officers manning a road block at Trees City,
30 miles northwest of Shreveport, halted a
car with two men and a woman. The man
in the back seat aroused their suspicions. He
was unshaven and had a nervous look in his
eyes. The man was J. D: Dowdy.

At sight of the cocked guns of four officers,
Dowdy meekly submitted. He leaped out
with arms upstretched while being relieved
of his pistol. In the posse were Marion
County Sheriff Joe Riggs, Deputy Mance
Fant and Texas State Patrolmen Earl Elliott
and Louis Cowart. :

The motorists who had innocently pick
up Dowdy as a harmless ‘hitchhiker were
allowed to proceed. Dowdy was turned over
to Sheriff J. Howell Flournoy and taken to
the Shreveport jail.

Sheriff Hester arrived two hours later
with District Attorney Thompson L. Clark
to question the young man.

Dowdy conceded the evidence agajnst him
looked bad, but he stubbornly denied he had
slain Walter Dorman. “I went to the house
in a taxi with Dorman, all right,” he said,
“but I had gone outside to pump some water
from the well, which is about 40 feet away,
when the blast went off. I heard it and
threw myself to the ground. That’s all that
saved me from the flying timbers.”

Hester’s voice was coldly harsh when he
spoke. ‘“That’s going to be a hard statement
to stand by, son,” he warned, “when we get
a dynamite expert on a witness stand. First
place, you’d been blown to kingdom come if
you were that-close, and second place, it’d hit
you before you heard it.”

Dowdy did not meet the sheriff’s eyes. He
tightened up like his father had done and
refused to say any more, except to admit
buying the ring and telling his sister that he
feared capture. “I’m innocent, but I know it
looks bad for me, and I can’t prove I didn’t
do it,” he said after a long silence.

On November 8, 1948, G. R. Dowdy and
his son J. D. were indicted by a Madison
Parish grand jury, the son for murder and
the father as an accomplice. Both pleaded
innocent when arraigned and were denied
bond.

In May of this year the Dowdys, son and
father, went on trial before Judge Frank
Voelker and a jury in the Sixth district
court in Tallulah. After all the evidence
was in, the jurors deliberated for five hours
and 11 minutes, and convicted both.

Young Dowdy was sentenced to death in
the electric chair. His father was given a
life term.

RISON OFFICIALS will readily admit

that no rumor can create greater disturb-
ance within penitentiary walls than the grape-
vine gossip that some inmate has managed to
gain possession of a weapon.

Within a prison however, the word weapon
has a broad meaning. It may be a broken
file ground to a dagger point or even a mess-
hall spoon sharpened to a razor’s edge. Nor
need it necessarily be a weapon capable of
dealing death. Imitation guns carved from
wood or molded of soap and covered with tin-
foil have been known to serve the convict’s
purpose.

What the psychological urge is that will
cause a prisoner to risk additional punishment
merely to gain possession of some type of
weapon is hard to explain: Perhaps it is
fear of the other convicts, or a desire to im-
press his fellow prisoners. Perhaps it is
merely to feel prepared in the event a chance
to: escape presented itself. There is no ac-
curate way of telling.

It is this tendency among prisoners that
accounts for the unscheduled shakedowns in
most every petitentiary. Display cases in
wardens’ offices attest to the justification for
such methods and many an ingenious idea
and sample of handicraft skill can be found
there.

None, however could be more unique than
the weapon recently discovered in.a frisk of
the main cell block at the Walla Walla state
penitentiary in Washington.

In the prison library a book on native life
in Africa suddenly became very popular. The
book was always out and withdrawal re-
quests were usually pending. Prompted by
curiosity, one of the inside guards leafed
through it.

He saw that the pages were well worn and
that it ‘contained a number of pictures and

‘illustrations, but there was nothing to arouse

his suspicion and he was about to replace it
when he noted that it automatically opened
to a certain page and picture. He tried the
act again, and again the book dropped open
to the same page. Page 197 seemed to have
been broken in the book’s binding from con-
stant usage.

Puzzled, the guard began to read, and as he
read his interest mounted. Minutes later he
was on his way to the warden’s office and

within an hour a search of the entire prison -
was on, with every available guard assigned

to the task.

The searching party had a good idea of
what it was seeking and it had, also, the
names of prisoners who had at one time or
other signed up for the book on Africa: They
found the item they wanted in the cell of one
of the suspects, cleverly tied to the framing
on the underside of his bunk. ;

To an outsider it was an innocent appearing
gadget, nothing more than a three-foot length

of quarter inch copper tubing with a valve
welded to one end and a flat swivel flange
at its middle. However, the grooved sight-
scratch along its length gave a hint as to its
deadly potentiality once its various attach-
ments were assembled. It was a blow gun,
capable of being mounted to a tripod swivel
and fixed to be powered by blasts of com-
pressed air.

Later the true plans behind the blow gun
and its proposed use became known. The
weapon had been manufactured in the prison
machine shop and smuggled out ‘in a pris-
oner’s pants leg. The cell cache was only
temporary. The machine shop itself was to
be the action site of the weapon when it was
used.

In the shop a vise was fixed to a workbench
near a window overlooking the prison yard
and commanding a sweep of the prison wall.
Nearby were the welding tanks with the
long hose that fed the necessary welding gases
under pressure. Also near at hand lay a bin
of tenpenny nails and several wads of engine-
room waste.

How was the blow gun to be used? What
was the break plan?) The complete details
were never learned, but for prison-wise off-
cials it took little imagination to visualize the
manner in which it might be used.

The break could take any of a dozen forms,
a yard rumpus, a riot inside or a mass break.
Into’ the vise went. the blow gun with its
swivel flange making it possible to aim it in
any direction. On to the valve attachment
went the hose from the tank of compressed
welding gas. The bullets—tenpenny nails
with tiny wads of oiled waste behind them;
silent, deadly, in the hands of an expert the
blow gun could have picked off the armed
guards atop the prison wall one by one with-
out a report to betray its location. After
that...

Page 197 of the book on Africa explained

fully how blow guns powered by a blast of.

human breath might propel a dart with suf-
ficient force to down a man. One of the
prisoners admitted he had been skeptical and
had made a test of the weapon before smug-
gling it out of the machine shop. The blow
gun with its nail bullets, powered by the gas
from the welding tank had proved accurate as
a rifle. The bullet had penetrated a sheet of
metal at the shop’s end—sy J. J. KALFZ

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Dynamite!

(Continued from page 23)

that would prove to be of any value.

RAPPING THE legs in a torn blanket,

Sheriff Hester and Coroner Edgerton
started back to Tallulah. Upon reaching the
funeral home there, Edgerton submerged the
legs in a liquid preservative pending an in-
quest.

It took Hester two hours to locate the
elder Dowdy. He was down on the trade
lot swapping yarns with other farmers when
the sheriff drew him aside.

Hester’s story of the blast left the old
man unmoved. The odor of whisky was
strong on his breath, and this may have
blunted his. grief, but Dowdy showed little
concern. His voice had a note of angry hard-
ness when he spoke. “That boy’s fooling
with my dynamite again and has blown him-
self up and my house with him.”

“You keep dynamite around the house?”
asked Hester.

“For stump blasting, I do. Tryin’ to clean
up my land ; rid it of pesky tree stumps so I
can farm it.”

“But how do you figure it happened?”
asked Hester.

“The boy must have thrown gas on an
‘open fire and the flames shot out and set off
the dynamite,” said Dowdy. “I had a full
case of dynamite in the house.”

Hester had used the explosive on his own
farm. He knew dynamite and what it took
to set it off. He knew it required a jar such
as that of a nitroglycerine cap to set off
dynamite; this type of explosive would
merely burn in a fire, not explode. He
thought it well to keep this fact to himself for
the present. He posed another question. “You
did not go home last night?”

“Nope, my old car failed me. Wouldn’t
run, so I slept in it here all night. Poor
sleeping, too. Cramped up too much. No
room to stretch out.”

“We found only the. legs,”
“and a pair of shoes that didn’t fit the feet.”

“All the clothes I have are on my back,”
said Dowdy. “TI didn’t leave none there.”

Since it appeared the old man’s mind was
befogged by dririk, Sheriff Hester called a
deputy to watch him, and returfied to his own
office. Even if numbed by liquor, a father
could hardly be so indifferent to his son’s
death unless there was some dark reason,
the sheriff felt.

At 5 p.m. Hester’s deputy telephoned to in-
form him he had traced Dowdy to a hotel in
Tallulah where he had a room. The old man
had registered there the day prior to the
blast and had slept in his room, not his car,
the night of the explosion. At 7 p.m. the
deputy called to say that Dowdy had in-
formed the hotel desk clerk he was checking
out in half an hour.

Hester lost no time in hastening to the
hotel. He found the old man hurriedly pack-
ing a suitcase. Dowdy appeared startled
when the sheriff burst in withoyt knocking.
“Going somewhere?” asked Hester.

Dowdy flung the lid-down on the suitcase,
but not quickly enough to prevent Hester’s
glance at the lithographed stack of papers
inside it. “What if I am?” he asked.

Hester flung up the lid and picked up the
papers. He saw at orice that here, bound
together by a rubber band, were several
insurance policies. A $6,000 policy, taken out
October 7, was with the Pan-American In-
surance Company; a $7,000 policy, issued
August 16, was with the World Insurance
Company. Both were on the life of the son

with the father as beneficiary, and were to

ea

said Hester, ,

pay double indemnity for accidental ‘death.
A GI insurance policy for $10,000, reinstated
* the previous June, listed a sister, Mrs. W. E.
Townsend of Vivian as the beneficiary. A
total of $36,000 in insurance for the violent
death of Dowdy’s son!

Sheriff Hester stuffed the policies in his

pocket. Dowdy’s eyes had a hateful look.
The sheriff said, “This looks bad for you.
We’ve reason to believe this is a murder. The
boy carried a lot of insurance for a man of
his meager earnings.”

Dowdy said nothing. He began buckling
the straps on his suitcase. Then he spoke.
“That’s a man’s right, ain’t it?”

“He didn’t last long after taking out that
last policy—only 17 days,” the sheriff went
on.

“If you're tryin’ to put the finger on me,”
Dowdy said, “I wasn’t nowhere near the
place last night, or yesterday, an’ there are
folks here who'll tell you the same.”

The sheriff made no comment. He was
busy scanning the closet and dresser drawers,
but found them empty. Doubtless if the old
man killed his son for the insurance he had
sense enough to set up some alibis. These
could be checked later. “I’ll have to hold you
for investigation. Get your things and come
along,” said Hester. “If you're innocent
you'll be released in due time.”

The old man mumbled his protest, but
picked up the suitcase and followed the
sheriff. After Dowdy had been lodged in a
cell, Sheriff Hester took the suitcase to his
office.and emptied its contents upon his desk.
He found only some old clothes, tobacco, a
toothbrush and other articles of no signifi-
cance. He then placed telephone calls to the
district offices of the insurance firms caution-
ing them not to pay any claims pending a
solution of the case.

An hour later the questioning of Dowdy
was renewed. He was innocent of any plot
to destroy his:son, he said. He was playing
pool in Tallulah at the time of the blast, he
vowed, and deputies sent to verify this came
back convinced that this was true. There

seemed no doubt Dowdy was in Tallulah -

when the explosion wrecked his home. But
Hester still held him. He figured the old

man may have hired a killer. There were
poor tenant farmers in the area, he knew,
S100 would be greatly tempted by as little as
100.

T WAS LATE the following afternoon

that A. D. Treecost of the Pinkerton detec-
tive agency in New Orleans arrived in Tal-
lulah. He had been sent by the insurance
companies to aid in the investigation. A
hound for details, Treecost quizzed: the sher-
iff over and over about each minute clue.

After he had been thorougly briefed on the
case, Treecost suggested, “There are a few
questions I’d like to ask old man Dowdy.”

Hester led him to the cell. Dowdy lay
snoring on a cot, but aroused as they entered.
He sat up, looking them over sourly.

“This dynamite you had in the house,”
Treecost began. “Where did you buy it and
when ?”

“A Sandheimer merchant sold it to us
about three months ago,” said Dowdy.

“And your son took out his first insurance
policy for $7,000 on August 16, only a few
days before you bought the dynamite.’ He
later took out a $6,000 policy and tried to get
$5,000 more from the National Protective
Insurance Company, but was refused. It was
felt he was already over-insured.”

Dowdy scoffed. “There ain’t no connec-
tion between the policies and the dynamite.
We bought explosives all along as we needed
them.”

“Your son had no dependents. Why his
desire to be so heavily insured all at once?”

ba don’t know. That boy had a lot of
notions.”

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Treecost made more notations in his little
black book, and was through with his ques-
tioning. Dowdy was led to the mortician’s
office where he identified the legs as those
of his son.

Hester and Treecost went back to the
sheriff’s office. Awaiting them were sisters
of young Dowdy, Mrs. T. R. Richardson of
Greggton, Tex.; Mrs. Audry McDaniel,
Petralo, Cal., and Mrs. A. L. Trout and Mrs.
Anita Townsend, both of Healdon, Okla.

They were there to claim the remains, and
desired to hold burial services. Hester was
patient, but firm. He explained it would be
impossible to surrender the legs at this time
since foul play was suspected. Treecost sug-
gested the women take a look at the members
to verify identification.

Two of the women paled and swayed on
their feet, and the others sobbed violently at
sight of the severed legs. Mrs. Trout was
the first to speak. “Those are: not J. D.’s
legs. They couldn’t be,” she said. ~

The other women agreed with Mrs. Trout.
Young Dowdy’s legs were slimmer, less
hairy, and the right one had a deep scar near
the ankle, left there by a plow blade in a
farm accident when he was 15.

Questioned by Treecost, the sisters all
voiced the belief that the elder Dowdy knew
of the boy’s scar since he was working with
him in the field when it happened and must
have seen the leg when it was healing, and
later.

Hester knew his next task was to locate
young Dowdy, who seemed to have vanished.
He had found no one who had seen him since
two days prior to the explosion.

The sheriff later that day packaged the
left leg and sent it to the FBI laboratory for
examination by a pathologist to determine if
it belonged to a young or a middle-aged man.

The elder Dowdy, accused of deliberately
falsifying the identification of, the victim,
grew sullen and tight-lipped. He declinéd
to answer questions, and would give them
no hint, if he knew, of young Dowdy’s
whereabouts.

Treecost began his meticulous pursuit. He.

learned that the son had sold his car, which
was in a bad state of disrepair, a month pre-
viously and apparently owned no car at the
time of the blast, since none was registered in
his name. Since the elder Dowdy’s auto was
in Tallulah the night of the killing and had
been there all day, the investigator was sure
someone else drove the youth to his farm
home prior to the explosion.

He began questioning taxicab drivers. The
Second one he approached said he had
driven two men to the shack in the Talla
Bena community north of Tallulah at about
5 p.m. the day of the blast. Both were
strangers to the cabbie, but he remembered
picking them up at a rooming house in Tal-
lulah.

Treecost hastened to the address. The
landlady remembered that one of her roomers
did take a cab on this day. He was Walter
Dorman, a 42-year-old electrician who had
been with her about two weeks. He had not
yet returned to claim his belongings.

The detective searched Dorman’s room,
picking up a pair of shoes. At Treecost’s
questioning, the landlady said she had not
observed if anyone else was in the cab that
Dorman entered. She knew very little about
the man’s habits. She said he worked most
days, leaving ‘his room at around 7 a.m. and
returnjng about 5 P.M. - She did not know
the Dowdys.

Back at the mortician’s, Treecost slipped a
shoe on the dead man’s right foot and
it a perfect fit. He noted depressed and
worn: places in the sole of the shoe matched
the callouses on the. foot.

“Dorman is the man who was killed,” he
told Hester. “Now our task is to find who
slew him.”

That night Dorman’s wife, Ada, and their
6-year-old son,. Larry, arrived from. their
home at Runnelstown, Miss., accompanied by
C. C. Odom, a brother-in-law from Hatties-
burg. Mrs. Dorman identified the leg as
that of her late husband.

She told Sheriff Hester that her husband
had left home two weeks earlier to go to
Tallulah to do some electrical work and visit
old friends. She said he was reared in Tal-
lulah. The following day Dorman’s sisters,
Mrs. W. S.. Lynch and Mrs. W. B. Mont-
gomery of Jackson, Miss., confirmed the
identification of the victim.

Among Dorman’s effects at his room, his
wife observed as missing his gold pocket
nrg and his belt with its large silver-plated
clas

“Did you know if Dorman was on

-with either J. D. Dowdy or his father, G. R

Dowdy ?” asked Hester.

“No, I didn’t know the men,” she replied,
explaining that this was her first trip to Tal-
lulah in several years and that she was
acquainted with but few people there.

Treecost meanwhile had matched the shoes
picked up at the blast scene with those lo-
cated in Dorman’s room, and made sure they
were not the same size. He could locate no
belt or buckle or watch amid the ruins of the
house.

“Fact is,’ Treecost told Hester, “it looks
as if Dorman’s body was nude at the time of
the blast. His belt and clothing were doubt-

_less stripped off to hide his identity by some-

one seeking to collect the insurance on young
Dowdy’s death.” : .
Hester agreed that this was likely.

S SEVERAL days had now passed with

no hint of the whereabouts of young
Dowdy, Hester began to fear if the youth
were implicated he would try to flee the
country as the sensational killing had made
headlines throughout the region. Washing-
ton immigration authorities sent his descrip-
tion to alert patrols along the Gulf coast and
Mexican border areas.

Those who knew young Dowdy began to
talk. Treecost knew he frequented beer halls
and domino parlors and for days the detective
loitered in these places, picking up fragments
of information. One bit of information was
that young Dowdy had a girl friend in Ring-
ling, Okla. ;

Treecost set out at once for Ringling. He
found the girl a shapely young, flirtatious
blonde cafe waitress.
angrily as he told het of his suspicions of
young Dowdy.

“F don’t believe he could possibly have
anything to do with this terrible killing,” she
declared. “J. D. wouldn’t harm a soul.”

“Why do you think he has disappeared ?
Why is he hiding out?” asked Treecost.

The girl believed her sweetheart was on an
innocent trip from which he was likely to
return any day. She and Dowdy had talked
about marriage, she told the detective, but
had not set a definite date as both of them
wanted to first save a little more money.
She said she had not seen Dowdy in six
months.

But Treecost did not share the girl’s views
about young Dowdy’s early return. He

_ began to check jewelry stores and pawn-

shops, hunting Dorman’s watch and_ silver
belt clasp. He made the rounds from Vicks-
burg, Miss., as far west as Shreveport, La.,
but without results.

Dowdy’s description was broadcast
by radio and printed in the newspapers all
over the Southwest—a tall, dark-haired
youth of 23 with sharp nose and protruding
chin. Relatives of Dowdy were warned to
report his visit at once or face charges of
harboring a fugitive..

Meanwhile from his jail cell G. R. Dowdy
was writing the insurance companies de-

- Her blue eyes flashed ,

manding payment of th
son had met violent dea
investigations as a farc:
his son would be futile

It was shortlv after

been posted thi iff
mous telephon: g
Joe” Barcus, z ha

lived in a settlement
Tallulah. Old Joe, the
something about J. D.

Hester went at bne
He found Old Joe in a
burning fireplace. T!
palsied hand and offer:

“Boss, I’d never ha
hadn’t come here. Bu
I feel I got to tell yx
Mr. J. D. Dowdy.
Negro an’ a pore or
mighty big, and $50 k
About two weeks ag
came to me an’ offerec
say I saw him drown
if I’d say it and stick
on insurance. He had
I could take in his ha
out of the water. Bu’
I’m too near to the k
lie like that, so I told

Sheriff Hester than
parted. This inform:
lief in the fraud plot.

That day Sheriff
young Dowdy had ta!
on his life on Septemb
prior to his death.
Ringling, Okla., whe:
lived before coming
theory J. D. might be

Hester could find
the little Oklahoma
the community wer¢
fiendish scheme, but
Dowdy, thinking hi:
futile trip.

A call from the ja
the elder Dowdy ha
ruly, demanding that
found Dowdy pacin;
What positive proof
warranted holding hi

“Dowdy,” said He
now that y a
We're holdu a

When the cl

a half hour iacci,

The report from |
on an analysis of tl
indicated the slain m:
early 40s, supporting
was the victim.

The days ticked
young Dowdy’s whe:
first clue that Dowc

took the torsc
a mystery on
There was
of a fiendish
men followec
There they
an immigrant
Watch for
in the Septen

of

1 of an
ght its

Scene on Lake
near Morgan
iisiana, where
of the murder
vas found by
z-hunters

the BAY O U

aire awrprsmmmapeaponeimarmrsnrcepermnt 3 red:

HEN the peace-loving Acadian farmers were driven
from the rugged shores of Nova Scotia, they were
landed in a region of romance—the Bayou Teche
country of Southern Louisiana, where the Atchafalaya
dows into the'Gulf of Mexico. Here soft southern zephyrs
and languid waters, overhung by  crépe-like Spanish moss,
breathe the tragic love of Evangeline —and here that tragic
love of Longfellow’s heroine has survived through the years
in the descendants of those French Acadians who were sepa-
rated from their families and their sweethearts by their con-
querors. s

What mysteries of romance and tragedy lie buried in the
remote recesses of the bayous of The Teche can only be sur-
mised—but they are many. Occasionally the limpid waters
of The Teche country give up a secret of tragic love that is
the heritage of a people, presenting a problem for modern
authorities to wrestle with—as the waters of Lake Palourde
did on the night of July 6th, 1927.

To Jim Le Boeuf, descendant of those Krench Acadians
who were exiled to this region of romance in Southern Louisi-
ana, and who had been born and reared in The Teche, tragic
love came as a natural heritage When Jim met Ada Bonner,
a pretty, black-eyed brunette who had moved to Morgan
City on the Atchafalaya, it was all love with both of them,
and there was no thought of tragedy. Theirs was the love of
Evangeline—but with an even more tragic ending than Long-
fellow gave to his romantic heroine.

Jim and Ada were married and lived in Morgan City, where
Jim rose to the dignified position of Superintendent of the
Morgan City Light & Power Company. The years that
followed were happy years. Both loved The Teche, where

LOUISIANA

ENIGMA

they used to paddle a pirogue together over the limpid waters
that reached back under the trees, where the Spanish moss
hung in funereal drapes against the dark background of the
cypress and live oaks. Five children came to bless their union.

Then, gradually and without warning, grim tragedy stalked
into the life of Jim and Ada Le Bocuf. There had come to
Morgan City one Thomas E. Dreher, a medical graduate
from Baton Rouge. In partnership with another, he opened
up the Standard Drug Company, and became the leading
practicing physician of Morgan City. He built up a lucrative
practice and was known as one of the most substantial citizens
of The Teche.

Doctor Dreher met Ada Le Boeuf and was attracted to her
—hbut he married another girl. Three children were born
to Doctor and Mrs. Thomas E. Dreher, two daughters and
a son. After their education in local schools Doctor Dreher
sent his son to Tulane University in New Orleans, as he was
financially able to give his children the best.

OR a period of nearly twenty-five years the family of Jim

and Ada Le Boeuf mingled with the Drehers in perfect
harmony---then the inevitable small-town gossip began to
make the rounds of social circles in Morgan City, linking the
names of Ada Le Boeuf and Doctor Thomas EF. Dreher in an
illicit love affair. This gossip persisted for two years but, as
usual, the last to hear it were the two who were most. vitally
eoncerned—the husband and wife who were being cheated
of the love that was rightfully theirs.

But eventually the ievitable tale-bearer appeared. A
mysterious woman who lived “across the tracks’’ in Morgan
City wrote a letter to Doctor Dreher’s wife informing her o

By CHARLES L. PECOT

Sheriff of St. Mary Parish, Louisiana
As told to EDGAR FOREST WOLFE

51

~«


DREHER-LeBOEE

| THE BIZARRE

MYSTERY of

The strange tragedy of “The Teche”. A crimson story of an
illicit love that famed with tropic fierceness, and brought its

‘romantic participants to a gallows’ end

(Below) Mrs. Ada Bon-
ner Le Boevf, the woman
who playea the major
r6le in this crimson
enigma, as she looked in
her wedding gown

(Right) Scene on Lake
Palourde, near Morgan
City, Louisiana, where
the body of the murder
victim was found by

e o t = ’ ae. or frog-hunters

SOO | TT TE

TRUE DETECTIVE 9
July, 1934

«*

HEN
from
lande:

count
flows into the
and languid wv
breathe the tr
love of Longfi
in the descend
rated from the
querors.

What myste
remote recesse
mised—but. th:
of The Teche
the heritage o
authorities to
did on the nig!

To Jim Le
who were exile:
ana, and who }
love came as
a pretty, blac
City on the At
and there was
Fyvangeline—hi
fellow gave to

Jim and Ada
Jim rose to fl
Morgan City
tollowed were

B


age or not,
to Doctor

vithout be-
id Doetor
a fool and
keep away

. Le Boeuf

The Bizarre Mystery. of the Bayou

wasn’t to be found at his place of business. To those who
wanted to see him on matters of business, and who called
up his house, it was explained that he had “gone out of town”’.
Ax his duties required him to visit f requently the headquarters
of his company at Lafayette, nothing was thought of this at
first.

But when Jim failed to come back within a few days, people
in Morgan City began to wonder. Still his wife exhibited no
concern, But there were those in Morgan City who did, and
these made inquiries at the headquarters of the Morgan City
Power & Light Company at Lafayette, where they were in-
formed that Jim Le Boeuf hadn’t been there. Quietly, an
investigation was started to find out what had become of
Jim Le Boeuf; but Ada Le Boeuf took no part in the search,
showing no interest in the matter whatever, and to those who
broached the subject of Jim’s whereabouts to her she explained
that she “expected him back soon.”

Then on the night of July 6th, five days after Jim Le Boeuf
had disappeared from Morgan City, John and Cleveland
Beadle and Alcide Mayon were out on Lake Palourde in a
motor boat hunting frogs. There had been high water due
to the Mississippi floods, but the waters had subsided. Dur-
ing flood time on the Mississippi, the waters of these bayous,
which nearly all connected with each other and with the great
river a hundred miles to the east by canals and other connect-
ing waterways, rise appreciably. Due to the flatness of the
surrounding country in this particular section, the influx of

(Right) The
pirogue in which
Jim Le Boeuf
was murdered
and his bcdy
rowed to the
spot in the Lake
where it was
found

ty, mystery

(Left) James
Beadle, trap-
per in The
Teche coun-
try, whose
destiny was
woven into
this bizarre

cm
wn

(Above)
Sheriff Charles
L. Pecot, of
St. Mary
Parish, who
has given the
story of this
strange case to
readers of
TRUE DETEC-
TIVE

water spreads out over a considerable territory in places.

On this night of July 6th, the two Beadle boys and Alcide
Mayon were cruising in a shallow bay of Lake Palourde
in front of an old-abandoned boathouse, keeping a sharp
lookout along the margin of the lowered waters for the
frogs they were hunting, when suddenly the prow of their
motor boat bumped against an obstruction. They turned
the beams of their flashlights into the water to see what
it was—and there, just under the surface, they saw the
body of a man, face down in the water, evidently being
held there by some weight that was attached to the head
and feet, as the boys could see ropes tied to these portions
of the body, and only the central part of the submerged
man was close to the surface.

The three boys quickly abandoned further pursuit of
the frogs and telephoned Doctor ©. M. Horton, coroner
of St. Mary Parish, at Franklin, Doctor Horton imme-
diately got into his car and raced to Morgan City, where,
in the early hours of July 7th, he boarded a gasoline launch,
and went to the scene of the gruesome discovery.

The body was recovered from the water with difficulty,
due to heavy railroad angle-irons that were found tied
with ropes to the feet and head. It was without a coat,
and the shirt was powder-burned where two loads of buck-
shot had torn away a part of the left side. The features
were bloated and discolored, making immediate indenti-
fication impossible.

At the inquest, held in Morgan (Continued on page ST)

52
the illicit love affair between her husband and Ada Le Boeuf.
They had been seen together at a Negro habitation out “near
the schoolhouse’, which they had entered separately and
where they had remained together for some time. On the
frequent occasions when Jim Le Boeuf had visited the head-
quarters of the Morgan City Light & Power Company at
Lafayette, Louisiana, Doctor Dreher was alleged to have
visited the Le Boeuf home and remained there “far into the
night”? when his wife supposed him to be out calling on his
patients. Clandestine meetings in the woods along the ro-
mantic shores of beautiful Lake Palourde and other places
in The Teche were reported to Mrs. Dreher, who took this
letter from the mysterious woman “across the tracks’ to
Jim Le Boeuf—and Jim, filled with the love that Ada had
always given him, professed unbelief.

Nevertheless, Jim asked Ada about those visits of Doctor
Dreher to his home during his absence.

“He came here as a doctor attending a patient,’’ explained
Ada.

“I didn’t know you were sick,’’ said Jim, skeptically.

“Well, I was,’”’ replied Ada. “I had one-of the terrific head-
aches I am subjected to I never told you because I didn’t
want to worry you. That’s why I often call in Doctor Dreher
when you are away.”

After that, Jim Le Boeuf turned a deaf ear to the gossip
that had become common knowledge in Morgan City. ‘Then,
one day in 1927, he learned something he couldn’t ignore.
He learned from a source that he could no longer doubt that
a woman of Morgan City was serving as a sort of liaison to
carry notes between his wife and Doctor Dreher. When Jim
had convinced himself that this was a fact, he became a changed
man. Al] the peace-loving attributes he had inherited from
his Acadian forefathers were submerged in a growing rage
against the man who had desecrated his home and robbed
him of the love that had always been his.

“Tll give vou a message to send to this man, one that he
won’t forget,’ Jim told his wife, Ada. “Tell him that if he
doesn’t keep away from my wife and my home Pll kill him.”

Deputy-Sheriff E. J.
Champagne, of St. Mary
Parish, shown with the
murder weapon and the
railroad angle-irons used
*o weight down the vic-
tim’s body

True Detective Mysteries

Jim never knew whether Ada delivered this message or not,
but to make certain it would be delivered he went to Doctor
Dreher himself.

“T’ve listened to this gossip for two years now without be-
lieving it, or paying any attention to it,” he told Doctor
Dreher. ‘But now I know I’ve been somewhat of a fool and
I'll tell you what I’m going to do. If you don’t keep away
from Ada, I’m going to kill you.”

Then, suddenly, on Friday, July 1st, 1927, Jim Le Boeuf

The bloodstained knife
that played such a
ghastly part in this
murder that had its
inception in jealousy

Wasnt to
wanted to
up hus hous
As his duti:
of his com
first.

But whe)
in Morgan
concern. |
these made
Power «& |
formed th:
investigatii
Jim Le Bo
showing no
broached t]
that she “«

Then on
had disapy
Beadle and
motor boat
to the Mis-
ing flood tu
which near]
river a hun
ing waterw
surrounding

(Right)
pirogue in w
Jim Le B:
was murde
and his b
rowed to
spot in the L
where it
found

“A determined

”

meddle’
_ “In the

investigation is being pushed for-" i \
said 4 sternly. “Tf it develops i calmly
i hi d, the police i i ith < task of finding th
ais ae in. g, one f
will!” was the
1f ill by staring

angry reto
ting corpse:

at that
Fortunately,

forestall
dentist stated

identification of ;
issi porrowed ap

jose he ha

wife’s adamant
thing. One

irogue

wiedge- Bea

positively
stolen the

tures were
al clothier i
(0)

A loc

the deftnes

question
clared sco

SCENE OF CRIME:
the body of a man

sii!

e ca
hot-temper

jally declared to be , t en
s a reckless,
on had g°

i
one occasi'

re particularly intrigued by
men

hich the dead m ;

wi .

ij re * ._
eon in his direct

on discove

Pecot so

stly resisted attempts to
are bun ers,” she de-
sband will

Lake Palourde. near M
, mu

boys fished ™P


Crimson 4

PASSIONATE |

, oA dai

ward, ]

DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES, BUT MURDERERS | that th

; ; remem

SOMETIMES WRITE THEIR OWN TICKETS TO ETERNITY— iar

: _ at thai

AS IN THIS GORY, SHIVERY SHOCKER Fort

foresta

. dentist
. , tures

by Lawrence Criner es

* : 160-p:
my - beg oddly

HE two kids were terrified. Dr. C. M. Horton, ofan odd shape, stumpy and crooked at the nail tips. Boeuf

T ccacnet at Franklin, La.. tried to calm them. The pockets were empty except for six dollars in _The
"Take it easy now,” he said, “and tell me again. bills and some small change. : Jim 1
where is this body you fished out of the water?” An inquest was held in Morgan City in the Pol
Teeth chattering. the two teen-age frog hunters. morning. A verdict of ‘homicide by person OF the d
told how they were nosing their tiny skiff along the = persons unknown” was returned. : . had |
treacherous shallows of Lake Palourde, deep in the © As news of the grisly discovery spread, informa~ nume
Bayou Teche country, when the boat struck a bo tion began filtering through to the sheriff’s office. 4 a hw
bing obstruction. Their flashlights revealed the Several residents came forward to say that only one t expel
body of a man. Only his arched back was above man in the whole hayou country had deformed f Mr
water: his feet and face were immersed. fingers like the dead man’s—Jim Le Boeuf—42-year- a - quest
“We rowed here as fast as we could to get help,” old superintendent of the Morgan City Light and F clare

one of the youths cried. Power Company. :
Sheriff Pecot ‘went to the Le Boeuf home. He had

Reluctantly, the boys. were persuaded to direct )
Dr. Horton, Chief Louis R. Blakeman of Morgan a talk with Jim Le Boeuf’s wife, Ada, a slim, intense,
dark-eyed woman in her middle thirties.

City, the sheriff of the parish, Charles L. Pecot and

several deputies to the scene. : “This is ridiculous!” said the wife sharply after - pr’

For three hours the half dozen sweating men Pecot had explained his errand. “Jim is alive and

toiled on that turgid July 6 night to lift the bloated well.” ; f

corpse from the water without mangling it. At last “In that case, I'd like to talk to him.” {
“You shall. As soon as he returns from a business

they stretched the body out on dry ground; and the
evil smell of _putrified flesh mingled with the trip to Lafayette. He left on July first.”

fragrance of hyacinths and lillies that grew so lushly It was on or about July 1st, in, the coroner’s
within the bayou. opinion, that the dead man had been slain.

“Murdered,” Sheriff Pecot murmured. “A blind “Have you heard from -your husband?” | .
man can see it.” “No, Jim hates to write. Besides, he’ll be back

The victim was trussed with railroad angle-irons soon.”
and heavy wire. Buckshot had torn away the left “Just the same,” the sheriff persisted, “Pd like
side of his body below the ribs: _A knife had been you to try and identify the body we found.”
used to slash open the abdomen. “J refuse!” Mrs. Le Boeuf said imperiously.
“A neat trick to prevent the accumulation of gas “But for what reason?”
inside the body so it wouldn’t rise to the water’s ‘“Because that. - - that awful looking corpse they
surface,” the coroner said. . ; : dragged out of the water can’t possibly be my
The murder victim’s face was all but unrecogniz- husband.” : ;
able. However, the officers observed two details that Pecot studied her carefully. There was no fear in °
might aid in identification—there was an elaborate the strong-willed woman’s manner—only bold con- —_
oys

false denture in the upper jaw, and the thumbs were viction.

(pn PLETE Derecr VE (Asés
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Sheriff Pecot secured first degree murder
indictments against all three suspects on
July 18th. They were all held without bail.
And they all pleaded, “Not Guilty.”

Jim Beadle signed a statement confirming
the confession he had, made shortly after his
arrest. “I have engaged Rene H. Himel to
defend me,” he said. “And he has advised
me to aid the state’s case all I can. That
course will be taken.”

R. F. Walker, former Speaker of the
Louisiana House of Representatives was re-
tained to defend Dr. Dreher and Mrs.
LeBoeuf. ‘We are innocent of any wrong-
doing except aiding a killer to hide a body,”
the doctor stated. “That fact will be proven
in court.”

The trial that followed was one of the most
sensational in all the history of the South.
No woman had ever been sent to the gallows
in Louisiana. People of prominence rallied
to Mrs. LeBoeuf’s aid. Dr. Dreher’s friends
of long standing testified to’his good name.
And the lake people came to Jim Beadle’s

_ defense. It was the upper crust against the

lower; a class conflict that rocked the delta
land,

It took a full week for the many defense
witnesses to testify. Then, at last, the prosecu-
tion’s turn came. Judge James D. Simon
and the jury listened to details of the ugly
rumors of illicit love, clandestine meetings
in Palourde Lake cabins, threats and grow-
ing hate. :

Finally Jim Beadle was put on the stand.
He looked into the faces of the accused
doctor and Mrs. LeBoeyf and sneered. Then
he told his story all over again. How he
had been employed to protect Dr. Dreher.
The details about the gun and the quick
shooting. Of Mrs. LeBoeuf’s coolness; and
her question, “Is Jim dead?”

Defense Attorney Walker submitted him
to the most bitter cross-examination any
court had ever witnessed. Mrs. LeBoeuf
collapsed and had to be taken to a hospital.
For the remainder of the trial Ada LeBoeuf
appeared before the court in a hospital bed
which was wheeled in by an attendant.

Prosecutor Gilmore read the stories Mrs.
LeBoeuf and Dr. Dreher had made. Then

he tore them apart bit by bit.’ The defense
objected strenuously.

“My clients were under duress and emo-
tional strain,” Attorney Walker shouted. “I
object—”

The prosecution continued with the
judge’s permission, Jim Beadle’s story was

repeated. It sounded incredible; but no one —

had succeeded in tearing it down.

Then when all those gathered in the court-
room believed: they had heard everything
possible the prosecution played its trump
card.

“There is one final statement,” Gilmore
shouted. “A confession made by Mrs.
LeBoeuf and. corroborated by Dr. Dreher.
The clerk will now read it.”

Judge Simon rapped for order,
threatened to clear the court unless complete
order was maintained, -

“I, Ada LeBoeuf,” the clerk droned, “make
this confession of my own free will because
I believe it to be for the best. On the after-
noon of July Ist, I sent a note to Doctor
‘Thomas Dreher and told him that I had
arranged to go boat riding down toward
the schoolhouse at Lake Palourde, with my
husband, James LeBoeuf. Dr. Dreher sent
word that he would meet us there.

“My husband and I went to the home of
my brother, near Morgan City, and I bor-
rowed his boat. Mr. LeBoeuf took his own.
I had told him that I wanted to row, too,
I took the other boat because I didn’t want
to be in the boat when my husband was
killeds'.8).

The prosecutor stopped the reading.

“1 didn’t want to be in the boat when my
husband was killed!” he shouted.

Gilmore waited a long moment. Then he
signalled for the clerk to continue.

“When we got to the schoolhouse I saw
another boat coming around the corner. I

‘heard Dr. Dreher say, ‘Is that you, Jim?’

and my husband answered, ‘Yes, is that you,
Doctor?’ Then there were two shots. I think
James Beadle fired them because Dr. Dreher
was standing up... .”

The most sensational trial in all Louisiana
history lasted the better part of a month,

On the 25th day of August the judge charged
the jury.

A verdict was reached in less than four
hours.

“We find the defendants guilty of murder
in the first degree,” the foreman stated, “with
recommendation of life imprisonment for
James Beadle.”

Everyone present knew what that meant—
death on the gallows for Dr. Thomas Dreher
and Mrs. Ada LeBouef, the first woman to
be executed.in Louisiana!

_ Two days later Judge James D. Simon
pronounced the sentence: To be hanged by
the neck until you are dead, and may God
have mercy on your souls. James Beadle, in

.compliance with the jury's recommendation,

was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Counsel for the defense fought the verdict
all the way to the United States Supreme
Court. Several stays were granted. ‘The de-
fendants did not abandon hope. Most
Louisiana people did not believe that Gov-
ernor Huey Long would allow a woman to
be hanged in that traditionally chivalrous
southern state. But they. were wrong. He
publicly asserted that the efforts of pressure
groups to keep Ada LeBoeuf from the gal-
lows was “a mockery on decency and order
in Louisiana.” When the Supreme Court
ruled that the trial had been, conducted
according to the statutes and that state law
made no distinction between exacting the
life of a man or woman the last hope
vanished.

At daybreak, on the grim gray morning
of February Ist, 1929, Mrs. Ada LeBoeuf
was taken from her cell and led through the
silent prison yard to the gallaws. The black
hood was placed over her head and the rope
tightened. Minutes later she dropped through
the trap to her doom.

Dr. Thomas Dreher mounted the thirteen
steps soon afterward. Their bodies rested
side of side in baskets provided by the state:
mortal evidence that illicit love and murder
can only end in tragedy for all participants.

Thus ended the mystery of the mutilated
corpse in Lake Palourde—a crime that even
today is spoken of only in whispers by the
natives of Louisiana’s delta country.

At Passion’s End

(Continued from page 47]

with a married man 1 know she’s been see-
ing—Dr. Snook.”

“You don’t mean Dr. James Howard
Snook?” Phillips asked incredulously.

“That's right. The same.”

The astonishment apparent in Phillip’s
voice was shared by the other detectives. All
three knew the doctor well, if not personally,
at least by reputation. Dr. Snook had long
been a professor in the School of Veterinary
Medicine at Ohio State, and was generally
thought of in Columbus as a respectable and
responsible citizen, and as a. good husband.
He was familiar to many members of the
city’s police department, however, for another
reason. A crack shot, he had once: been the
world’s champion rapid-and slow-fire pistol

shot, six times the American champion, and_

in 1920 had been a member of the American
Olympic Team.

Startlingly pertinent to the investigation
at hand, however, was the recollection. the
detectives had of hearing and reading about
a pistol meet at the New York Central Rifle
Range only three days before Theora Hix’s
body had been found there. At the meet,
held on Tuesday, June 11, as a member of
the Columbus Revolver Club, a_ civilian
organization which was competing with the
Columbus Police Revolver Club, Dr. Snook

had given a remarkable display of marks-
manship. His team won hands down, and the
doctor’s individual score of 264 points was 44
points above the highest score ok gay individ-
ual policeman. At the conclusion of the meet,
the police team had asked Snook for his
expert advice in the handling of Colt revol-
vers, a type of weapon they had not been
shooting with, but which they presentl

expected to acquire. Snook willingly obliged,
and out of his vast knowledge of firearms,
delivered a helpful and cogent dissertation
on the subject.

But here now was Dr. Snook mentioned in
an unsavory manner, in a most unsavory
investigation!

Phillips, McCall and Van Skaik, of course,
immediately obtained the veterinarian’s
address which was 349 West Tenth Avenue,
and sped there post-haste. The doctor, a
tall, balding man, of about 50, wearing horn-
rimmed glasses, met them at the door. The
detectives were immediately struck by the
fact that his left arm, the hand and wrist of
which were bandaged and confined between
splints, was in a sling. In view of the delicate
nature of their mission, and the fact that
Mrs. Snook was at home, the officers re-
quested the doctor to accompany, them to
police headquarters.

During the ride back, the conversation
was confined principally to the subject. of
Snook’s arm injury. The doctor explained
that on Wednesday, a wrench with which
he’d been tightening a bolt on his car had
slipped and he’d hurt himself.

“What kind of car do you drive, Doc?”
Van Skaik asked him.

“A Ford coupe,” Snook replied.

“Oh, yes,” the detective went on casually.
“I think I’ve seen you in it—out at the target
range, maybe. A blue job?” i

“That's right,” said the doctor. “It’s blue.”

At headquarters, seated in Chief Shellen-
barger’s office, the detectives plunged to the
heart of the matter, “Dr. Snook,” Phillips
addressed him, “we have reason to helieve
that you have had some sort of association
with Theora Hix. Is that true?”

Imperturbably, the doctor regarded his
questioners, who sensed strongly the man’s
acile and complex mental machinery. “Of
course I knew Theora,” he acknowledged,
“_well—for three years.’ Then he went on
to say that he had first met the girl when she
was employed as a stenographer in the
School of Veterinary Medicine. He had
taken an interest in her and her carecr, and
had even helped her financially from time
to time. In some measure, the association
between them had been cemented by, her
interest in his hobby of pistol shooting. To-
gether, they'd gone to various ranges and
practiced. Because of her enthusiasm, he'd
given her a .41 derringer, and she’d learned
to use it proficiently. “But that’s as far as
our relationship went,” concluded the doctor,
“and if you think it was otherwise, you've
been woefully misinformed.”

The detective slid over this portion’ of the
veterinarian’s testimony and went on to his
movements on ‘Thursday night. The doctor

79


22

ADA LE BOEUF, insolent and indifferent, told investigators,
"You police are bunglers. My husband will one day soon
walk in and show you all to be stupid, meddlesome fools!"

lake-dweller of French-Arcadian descent had tried to
sell an almost new Winchester .20-gauge double-barrel
shotgun for. fifteen dollars. His neighbors, their sus-
picions aroused, had refused to buy the gun.

Jim Le Boeuf had been killed by a blast of .20-gauge
shot. ,

_On that same day the husband was murdered, Beadle
had told his friends he was going on a trapping ex-
pedition up-country. He packed his gear and traps,
but he never left his cabin. He was seen sneaking
around trying to keep from being observed.

‘Nor was that all. Beadle, known to have an avid and

morbid interest in the terrible Harpe brothers— _
- Micajah and Wiley—who terrorized helpless residents

along the old Natchez Trace and whose particular
trademark after murdering a victim was to rip open
the belly, remove the entrails and weight the cavity
with stones so that the body would remain under
water, once remarked that “all that work was un-
necessary.”

“All they had to do,” Beadle said, “was to slit open
the abdomen. Just one long slit in the right place.”

A determined manhunt was launched for the suspect
Beadle who was unaccountably missing from his usual
haunts. His cabin was searched and showed signs of a
hasty and precipitate departure.

“While the hunt was on full cry, Ada Le Boeuf sent
a message to the sheriff asking him to come to her
house. Pecot lost no time in heeding the summons.

He found the young widow’s manner remarkably
changed. She was contrite and eager to co-operate.

“JT didn’t tell you the truth,” she said unhappily: “Jim
did not go to Lafayette. He and I started out on that
awful July first night for a trip to Sabre Landing.
We took the Lake route up there because it’s shorter
and we went in separate canoes as usual.

“My canoe was about 20 feet behind Jim’s when it
all happened.

“We were. about halfway there when a pirogue
suddenly appeared out of the darkness from the op-
posite direction. A man’s voice- called out ‘Is that
you, Jim?’ My husband answered, but before he
could finish his words he was shot down by a shotgun
blast from the pirogue.

“J was terrified. All I could think about was that
I was going to be killed next. I turned the canoe
around and raced home. 1... I never even looked

IN CUSTODY of two unidentified officers, DR. THOMAS E.
DREHER (center) is shown on his way to jail. His descrip-
tion of a gruesome murder shocked even hardened police.

back.” She started to weep softly, sobbing bitterly.

Pecot leaned forward. “Who was the man whose
voice you heard?” he asked.

“It was Jim Beadle’s.”

“Will you swear to that?”

“I will, absolutely.”

Sheriff Pecot stared coldly at the sobbing woman.
“You are aware, of course, that the police are hunting
for James Beadle as a suspect in your husband’s
slaying?”

“Ves.”

“Otherwise you never would have come forward to

tell what
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oy fois 08, black, hanged Amite, Tangipahoa Paris, Las, on May 10, 1878

ian MA tara &:

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"Amite, May 10, 1878-Isaiah Evans, black, hanged for the mrder of Edward Bowen at Manchac

of July 25, 1877. (The fpllowing account of crime taken, from New Orleans PICAYUNE, 5-10-1878):
Bowen was the son of, Dr.-J, Bowen of Brookhaven, Miss., and the crime occurred on July, 25,
1877. . On July 25 a large negro picnic was held at. Manchac, Among the excubsionists from
Manchac was’ Evans, {He appears to have, imbibed: freely during the day and when the excursion
train was about to depart, in the evening the gaterhing became very noisy and very demonstra-=
tive, Young Bowen was among the spectators of the scene, and, with his companions, was in-
dulging, in some jocularity. Evans happened to take offense. with Bowen, and with an oppro-
bious allusion, pushed him off the track, Bowen then evidenced a disposition to resent when
a frierd remarked: 'You don't want tp fight.’ .'No,' was the reply, 'but I mst not be shoved
off the'track.' Very little, further parley was held, when Evans drew a pistol and shot

Bowen through the eyes, causing death in five minutes. The murderer was immediately arrested
and some of his fellow excursionists desired to, lynch him; but this was prevented, and he was
conveyed to Amite jail, He was indicted on Jan. 1, 1878, tried on the 21st and sentenced

to death on the 22nd. On April 22 the death warrant was signed, and on the 25th the Shetiff
read it to the prisoner. ‘he prisoneSr was baptized on the lth of April and on the 28th ;
took the sacrament, Evans isa black man, about 23 yars of age, a native of. Alabama, Ke is
about’ 5 feet 11 inches in height,") sf [> : re ‘

"For two days previous to execution, gallows had been erected just behind the prison and -
facing west. Crowds of morbidly curious people flocked to the deadly structure to examine
its works and to criticize its efficiency, The Sheriff of the Parish, P, H, Mix, with a
humane regard for the feelings and sufferings of the prisoner, had invented a plan for
dropping the scaffold, which, while being rapid and thorough in its operations, did aday

with with much of the horror usually attendant upon such scenes by concealing from the .

_ Bpectators the manner of letting the frop fall. a

"All during night precending execution, Evans attended by Rev. John Brickin and two. elders
of AME Zion Church, Jones and Johnson, Praying, singing of hymns and reading of Bible was
kept up until ) o'clock AM when visitors withdrewe Condemned man slept but little but his
slumber, was calm and undisturbed, Ate no breakfast but drank a cup of coffee, During...
morning Evans confessed to Picayune reporter that previous to the killing of young Bowen, he
had stabbed no less than three men, and wounded one man by an accidental pistol shot,.. None
of them died and no punishment was inflicted on him, Was entirely cool and collected in
manner and scarcely seemed to realize impending fate, A barber shaved and cut hair and
immediately, afterward he was locked up with spiritual advisers and religious services con-
ducted in cell, At 10:30 he was taken down stairs and bathed and donned funeral clothes con-
sisting of white cotton shirt and pants arid white gloves, A few days prior he had requested
that funeral services, instead of beling held after death, 'be conducted immediately prior to
execution and in presence of all spectators, Request grated by Sheriff Mix and one hour,

- from 11 to 12 allowed for eeremonies, When time came for services to begin at least 2,000.

persons there, pressed against ropes surrounding: scaffolds eet ee

"At -11 o'clock, precession mounted scaffold. “heriff led way, followed by prisoner, the
Sheriff'zs assistant and four spiritual advisers of prisoner, Rev. Bricken read lesson

from Gospel of Ste John, Hymn' 587 then given out line by line by Elder Johnson and the
colored people sang. Elder Johnson then offered up another prayer, another hymn sang and
Rey, Bricken delivered funeral sermon, taking for text 13th chapter of Isaiah, 16h verse,
Preacher reviewed life of Evans from.early wicked youth up to the day. Warned all persons,
more especially young men, to abstain from whisky, gambling and fighting. In closhis stated
he had full faith in conversion of doomed man, During serman; Eyans calmly chewed a ouid

of tobacco and eyes remained immovably fixed on form of Dr, Bowen, father of murdered boy,
During sermon, loud lamenting wails rose from some. of more impressionable negroes. Women
went’ into hysterics and-convulsions and became so excited that the armed guards, 0 in
number, prepared rifles for action, Another hymn read, Elder Johnson spoke to crowd.. Sheriff
then read death warrantHe then gave Evans 15 minutes to make any remarks he cared to makes

5 minutes of this:consumed.by yolunteer speaker named Fungundas who advised Evans to trust‘
in God and not mind judgement of men. e
"Evans' farewell speech: "My friends, take an awful warning from my pos ition, and let
whisky and gambling alone, The brought me to what I am. J amstanding on the scaffold
prepartory to my soul going to God. I have been carried from darkness to light, and have

been baptized in the River Jordan, I have put my trust in God and will go tp Reavers

i but simply to have my
owder or whisky there. I do not expect to die, : _
Pecsércsal die anny to Seaver Then addressing Dr, Bowen, he said: "DR, Bowen, I murdere

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your son without any cause, and I am sorry:for it, and I hope I will meet him in Heaven,

It is just that I should die. It is better for me to die this way, for I would be killed
in, some other way. God knew how wicked I was and to save my: soul he allows me to be hanged
here, ~Onte i thought there was no God, but now I believe in God. Oh, God, have mercy on
my soulj I feel there is a starry crown awaiting me in the sky. Farewell, all my friends,

I am going to meet angels in Heaven. I am a soldier of the cross, and I will fight to the
last for the cross. Pray, pray, my friends, all of you, that my soulxshall enter into Hea+
ven, 0, Jesus Chrust, our Lord, who said 'the wages of sin is death,' receive my soul,"

He tehn took leave of everyone on platform and immediately legs tied and hands cuffed, Black
cap drawn over head an d face and a minute or two of suspences ensued before trap fell.
During this time Evans, who had previously presented. appearance of stolid indifference
gave way to emotions and was trembling like. an' aspen leaf, The awfulness of position over-
whelmed him and moaned piteously (Oh Lord: Jesus, have mercy on me,! Drop fell at 12 o'clock
and body cut down and placed in plain black pine coffin at 12:25, Buried in cemetery two
miles from twon, That afternoon a’ baseball match took place between a group from Amite
and one from Greensburg, a large crowd, intending on enjoying to the fullest their holiday,
attended. A horse race, expected to put finishing toughes on day's entertainment, was cane
celled, to the disappointment of mgny. ! figs

On night before execution, Evans, a 23eyear-old, tall, slim black of darkest hue gave inter}
view to PICAYUNE reporter, saying: I formerly belonged to a man named Evans who lived in
Choctaw County, Alabama, After the war I moved to Crystal, Springs, Misse, and have been
engaged in farming and working on railroads, The trouble occurred on last July 25th. On-
that day there was. an. excursion from Crystal Springs to Manchac, While waiting for the
train to start I went into Crawley's grocery and got a drink of whisky.

"I returned-to the depot and left my things, and then went back to the grocery and had three
mor drinks, fhe train was due at 6 o'clock and I went to station to await for it, I got
tired of waiting and returned to the grocery where I bought a flask of whisky. 1 went fnto
a back yard and drank half the flask with another fellow, Someone told me I would get tight
if I drank too much and would get into trouble; as I had often got drunk before, I was known
as a pretty bad man, being a 'jackleg' gambler, a right smark drunkard and fighter. The
excurgion train -came along, md I went as far as Hazelhurst before taking another drank, At
Magnolia I bought two bits worth of whisky and drank it, At Manchac, I got some more whisky
at Alexander's; I went to the cars and was pretty drunk; stood on theplatform ten or fifteen
minutes and then went to the west side of the platform One fellow commenced dancing and
when I started, he quit. After I danced .a little I said I could beat any nigger on the:
platform dancing, Directly, Edward Bowen, a white man, came along and spoke to me, I got
insulted at what he said and gave him a short answer and Ireckon that made him vexed, We
spoke afterwards and I°commenced quarreling, I don't recollect what he said to me except

he said 'you can't bluff me, I won't be bluffed by you," I was then mad and cursed him and
told chim he couldn't bluff me, When I said that he ran his hand back in his breeches

pocket ‘as if trying to get a pistol; I did the same; I fetched mine up, and as I quick as

I got it I ftred on him, I had on a black frpcl cpat and shot from under the coat tail, I
shot him above the left eye and he died immediately, After he fell I walked off 15 steps
and started to run, but changed my mind, as I thought they could not arrest me as I was.
keeping him from me, I turned around and walked back to the crowd which had gathered. [re
erowed-—whieh-had The crowd asked who had shot him, Someone pointed at me saying 'that tall
man*shot him,' :I said, 'none of you can say I shot him,.-I have no pistol, He had a pistol
trying to shoot me, and-liked a damned fool shot himself,' I had slipped my revolver, a navy
six, Smith and Wesson, to another negro man. I had my belt around me, I could not slip it
to him, and just let it fall, 4hen Iwas arrested by a negro policeman from Hazelhurst, Adam
Sanford, They carried me up to the main and asked if I did it and I said 'no,' They said
they'd hold*an inquest before I moved but they didn't, Ihey put me in a box car and brought
me to Amite where I was hanged over to the sheriff who put me in jail. I had a square ttial,
Everything the witnesses said was pretty much true, I felt at the time I ought to have done
it,’and afterwards I felt I did wrong, I tell you its a hard thing when a man brings iton
himself, but whisky did it. NE'Y ORLEANS PICAYUNE, New Orleans, bLa., May 11, 1878

e


EVANS, QMHEXHX Charles, hanged Covington, Lae, August 19, 1892,

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clothing, the sheriff
rubble, a startling

mm anywhere about!
trange, he thought.
‘lown into such in-
Some tiny fragment

e became convinced
prior to the explo-
in whose footprints

he had:
at almost identica!
nom never came out
it gasoline had been
of flames
s before for illega!
d been blasted inta:
e was already dead.
eerest aspects of all.
which the old man
likely that Dowdy
e blast. for this was
| check if he became
now definitely was
ther know about it”
king to farmers whe
ring damage caused
of them had seen a
before. and if they

Vi Nae

were absolutely sure that young Dowdy was actually there.

Because of the late: hour of the explosion, few of the hard-
working farmers had been up. But those who had been, told Hes-
ter they had seen only lights in the Dowdy place and had not been
able to tell who was there.

On the chance that Dowdy Sr. had done some talking either be-
fore or after the blast, Hester called on the neighbors who had put
him up overnight. He quickly discovered that the farmer had
made a strange statement after his son’s death.

“I hope the sheriff doesn’t nose around too much,” was his re-
mark, according to the neighbors. “I want to get busy and collect
that insurance.”

Shocked, Hester hurried back to Tallulah. Was this the key
behind the riddle of the blast? Had G. F. Dowdy hatched a plot
to kill his son for the $10,000 G.I. policy which Hester suspected
young Dowdy was carrying?

If so, how could he have accomplished the deed and, at the same
time, been in Tallulah?

Hester didn’t pretend to know any of the answers, but he did
have on hand the means of bolstering some of the probabilities.
The first of these were the casts he had made of the footprints.

Going to Dowdy’s cell and obtaining his shoes, the sheriff com-
pared them with the plaster of Paris molds. He was not too sur-
prised when he found they didn’t fit. His next move was to hurry
down to Joe’s Bar & Grill and talk to the man who was on duty.

He learned that G. F. Dowdy’s alibi stood up. The old farmer
was in the place at 9:30 Friday night and, except for about fifteen
minutes around ten o'clock, had stayed there until the blast was
felt.

“Do you know where he went during that quarter hour?” Hester
asked the barman.

“Not far.” the other replied. “In fact, I saw him talking to
some other fellow right out on the sidewalk. Don’t ask me who
the other fellow was; it was too dark to see.”

The sheriff felt his pulse quicken. Was this second man in-
volved with G. F. Dowdy in the plot? Had he been the one to
touch off the blast while the old man remained in town to set up
an alibi?

Hester had to admit to himself that this was only a hunch, but
he remembered that Dowdy hadn’t said anything about leaving the
cafe during the evening. Nor had he spoken about a talk with
another man.

G. F. Dowdy, who was angry rather than sorrowful; Dorman, the

The sheriff regarded this omission as significant, since the farmer
could have referred to this person to support his alibi.

Hester also recalled something Dowdy had said, which now grew
in importance. He put it up to the bartender.

“When that blast went off, did anyone here know what it was?”
he asked.

“No,” the bartender said. “Someone said it must be an earth-
quake, but old Dowdy said it sounded like an explosion to him.”

“You certain it was Dowdy who said that?”

“I'm positive. His exact words were, ‘Something blew up.’”

Hester knew this was a reversal of what Dowdy had told him.
But more than that, it tended, in the sheriff's mind, to indicate that

the farmer was more or less expecting an explosion. Otherwise
he would not have been so quick to decide on the cause of the
tremor.

The sheriff checked a few business men near the cafe, all of
whom had been open Friday night, but none recalled having seen
Dowdy with anyone.

The thought of Jim Dowdy’s insurance now popped into Hes-
ter’s mind, and he called a local insurance man. To his surprise,
the agent said that he had been trying to reach him.

“[ just wanted to ask your opinion about that explosion last
night,” the agent said. “I’ve been wondering if it really was an
accident.”

Hester stiffened. “Why do. you ask that?” he demanded.

“Well, I issued two policies on young Jim’s life this summer,”
the insurance man replied, “and they call for the payment of
$26,000, in case of death by accident. If you add that to the
$10,000 G.I. policy he already held, it runs into quite a large sum.”

A total of $36,000 for a dead man! The sheriff loosed a low
whistle. “Are you suggesting I look into it?”

“I certainly am,” the agent came back. “Old Dowdy was paying
the premiums and they're mighty stiff. I don’t see how he could
afford it.”

Because he had the information he had called for, the sheriff
hung up without carrying the conversation further. He didn’t
want the insurance man to know he was on the right track.

But he most certainly was, Hester now believed. The ex-soldier,
who had been jobless and almost penniless for months, would have
been a drain on the father’s resources. Alive, he was worth nothing
to the old man. Dead, he was worth a fortune.

HE sheriff now thought the pieces were falling in place. Dowdy

had bought the dynamite for a purpose, had taken out the in-
surance on his son's life, had probably hired a killer to do the job.
If he could get away with the crime, he would be set for the rest
of his life.

Then the sheriff began wondering exactly what he had, outside
of suspicions and a series of unproved events. Nothing, he real-
ized. Definite evidence that the old man had committed the mur-
der would have to be found. But where? And how?

There was only one thing he could do immediately, and this he
did. That same Saturday afternoon Hester.arraigned G. F. Dowdy
before a justice of the peace on the dynamite possession charge,

«al ‘

mysterious stranger; and Jim, the “careless” son

whisperéd in the judge’s ear and had bail set at $5,000. Since
Dowdy was unable to furnish this amount, he went back to jail.

The old man had only one worry. “Now that Jim’s dead,” he
said, “our relatives ouglit to be notified.”

Hester said he would take care of this if Dowdy made out a
list. “By the way,” he asked, “who gets his army insurance ?”

The question didn’t seem to faze the old man. “He made his
policy out to me.”

Hester noted that Dowdy said nothing about the two new poli-
cies. Perhaps he figured the sheriff wouldn't find out about them.

What the sheriff knew, he kept to himself, except that he told
Coroner Edgerton about the progress he (Continued on page 54)

3

wan


r\\

s look around,”

omplete absence
ve have burned
rong about the

ig, and Hester,

They seemed
had approached
n inspecting the

he prints of one
rt tracks merely

Dowdy had had
Maybe there
€.
nts over. Then
lence of a body.
d bits of human
eep down under
Both limbs had

Posed by: Professional Model

been severed at almost the same point. The two men both stared.

Examination showed a number of circular red marks on each
leg. The coroner got the idea the limbs might have been tied up
and the string or rope had burned away. ;

“But you said there was no fire of any kind,” he shrugged, “so
I must be wrong.” .

: The sheriff nodded, but there was a troubled expression on his
ace.

In the darkness, it was difficult to see, so Hester decided to leave
matters until morning. Before leaving, however, he picked up a
fragment of paper which disturbed him still further.

This was part of a note addressed to “Dear Jim,” and dated
Ringling, Okla. Written in a feminine hand, it said:

“IT am happy to hear you bought the ring. I hope we can be
married this winter. When you come down—” .

The rest, apparently, had been blown into oblivion, along with
the man to whom it was indited, :

While the coroner was looking for something in which to wrap
the stumps of legs, Hester drifted back to G. F. Dowdy. The
sheriff drew him aside.

“Tell me,” he-said, “did your son have a visitor tonight?”

Dowdy straightened up. “A visitor?” he repeated. “I wouldn't
know. I wasn’t home, I was in town. What makes you ask?”

“Two people went into the house and only
one came out,” Hester replied, watching his
reactions.

The farmer merely grunted. | “Maybe
that was the boy and me, before I went
downtown.”

“That could be,” the sheriff conceded.

One of the sheriff’s deputies lived nearby.
The sheriff found him talking to the local
police, so he called him over. “Fred,” he
said, “I’m giving you an all-night job. I
want you to guard those ruins and not let
anybody near them. I’ll be back here soon
after breakfast.”

The officer, Fred Welkin, understood.
“T’'ll keep a close watch.”

Early the next morning, Dr. Edgerton
called Hester. “Stop around to the morgue,”
he said. “I’ve discovered something else
about those legs.”

When the sheriff appeared, the coroner
led him into the mortuary. “Those marks
are definitely burns,” he said, “so we've got
to presume something was wrapped around
the legs. But that puzzles me. How could
that young fellow throw gasoline in the
stove if he was tied up?”

Hester saw there was a peculiar glint in
the doctor’s eye. Without answering the
question directly, he said, “You’re keeping
something back.”

Edgerton nodded. “The fellow couldn’t
have moved even if he wasn’t tied,” he said.
“He was dead before the dynamite ex-
ploded.”

The sheriff's face showed his astonish-
ment.. “Murdered first, eh?” he managed to get out.

“He might have died of natural causes.”

“Do you think so?”

“Frankly, no.”

Hester cautioned the coroner to keep this information secret.
“If it gets about,” he said, “we might be handicapped. I’m going
to eliminate one of the hazards immediately, though.”

“What's that?”

“I’m going to toss old G. F. Dowdy in the clink on that dyna-
mite charge. It might be a good place to have him, too, in case
we develop something.”

Edgerton showed his surprise. “Do you think he did it?”

“I don’t know that anybody did anything,” the sheriff said. “But
in view of what you've just told me, I’m going to get ready for
any eventuality.”

The coroner thought a moment. “It might be a good idea,” he
said, “to have some outside opinion on those legs. I'll work some-
thing up.”

pep the coroner, Hester went to his office, procured some
plaster of Paris and drove back to Talla Bena. Deputy Wel-
kins was still on the job.

The sheriff told him about the prints, and they fell to work

51


DOWDY, J. D., Wh, elec. Tallulah, LA January 12, 1951

Sheriff Hester of Madison Parish,
this month’s winner of the Famous
Police award; he was elected to his
first term as sheriff in 1943, and
reelected to a second term in 1947

tered about and the smell of some kind of explosive in the air
“B® when Sheriff C. E. Hester of Madison Parish, La., reached
the Talla Bena plantation, nine miles north of Tallulah, the parish
seat, a few minutes after eleven o'clock on the night of October
22, 1948.

A man pushed his way through the crowd being held back by
the police and greeted Hester. “Bad, sheriff,” said Dr. Otis
Edgerton, the coroner. “A case of dynamite went off and blew a
farmhouse to bits. As near as we can figure out, only a young
fellow was in the place—Jim Dowdy, son of G. F. The old man
went to town earlier this evening and left the lad alone.”

The sheriff was shocked, since he knew both the persons named.
“Any idea how it might have happened ?”

Edgerton shook his head. “Old G. F. drove back from Tallulah
a couple of minutes before you got here. He may be able to tell us.”
| They walked over to a gray and grizzled man, about sixty-eight
ih or so, who stood looking at the ruins of what had been his home.
A “Tough luck, G.F.,” Hester said, shaking his hand. “What
fl; could the boy have been doing to set off such a blast?”

A Dowdy’s eyes flashed. ‘What the danged fool was always do-
iH! ing,” he snapped. ‘“Tossin’ gasoline in the fire to make it go.”

“That wouldn’t blow the house apart.”

“No. It was the dynamite. I had,a case of it in the-place for
fishin’. Bought it some time ago, but never even opened the box.
i The stove explosion probably threw Jim back on the case and the
iy | whole thing went off.” ,

‘| Hester eyed the old man, whose manner indicated anger rather
| | than sorrow for the boy who had died. Strange conduct for a

Toei was a big hole in the ground, a lot of wreckage scat-

} father, the sheriff thought, though he- realized sharecroppers were
usually undemonstrative about the vicissitudes of fate.
| “You sure Jim was in there?”
i} Dowdy thrust his chin out. “Sure, I’m sure!” he barked. “He
was goin’ to bed when I left for town.”
fl) Hester pursed his lips. “Of course you know it’s against the
| | law to fish with dynamite or even keep it around without a permit.”

ry

“T ain’t hidin’ nothin

in if you want to.”
The sheriff ignored this. Dowdy, he felt, had enough trouble.
| Then he wondered whether young Jim Dowdy had left the farm-
| house for some unknown reason and the dynamite had exploded in
|

the farmer snapped. “You kin take me

his absence. He went to his car, took two flashlights out of the

50

FAMOUS POLICE CASES,

May, 1951

DEAD!

BY WALTER TERRELL

compartment, and came back to Edgerton. “Let’s look around,”
he suggested. :

HE first thing that met Hester’s eye was the complete absence

of fire damage. Wouldn’t an exploding stove have burned
something’? Perhaps G. F. Dowdy had been wrong about the
gasoline.

The front steps of the shack were still standing, and Hester,
flashing his torch about, saw there were footprints. They seemed
freshly made. After ascertaining that no outsider had approached

‘ that closely to the wrecked house, the sheriff began inspecting the
tracks.

These apparently had been made by two men. The prints of one
man went into the house and out again. The other tracks merely
went in.

Hester frowned. Perhaps, he reasoned, young Dowdy had had
a visitor, someone the old man didn’t know about. Maybe there
was more to this seeming accident than met the eye. ‘

He procured several boards and covered the prints over. Then
he began poking among the debris, looking for evidence of a body.

It wasn’t long before he and Edgerton discovered bits of human
flesh, then a human leg with the foot attached. Deep down under
the rubble, they found the second leg and foot. . Both limbs had

FORTUNE

been severe:

Examinat
leg. The c
and the stri

“But you
I must be w

The sheri
face.

In the dar
matters unti
fragment of

This was
Ringling, O

“T am ha
married this

The rest,
the man to \

While the
the stumps
sheriff drew

“Tell me,’

Dowdy st:
know. I wa


at making casts. When this was done, Hester went to a nearby
farmhouse, where G. F. Dowdy was staying overnight, and ques-
tioned him about his movements the night before.

The farmer said he left home around 7:30, driving his jalopy.
He stopped off to see friends and then proceeded to Tallulah,
reaching the town around 9 ;30.

“From then on, sheriff,” he said, “I was in Joe’s Bar & Grill.
Never left there until we felt the place rock and knew something
had blown up.”

Hester nodded. “I thought, myself, it might be an earthquake.”

“The boys in the bar said it was an explosion,” Dowdy returned.
“That’s how I knew what it was.”

Asked about the dynamite, the farmer said he had gotten it in
July from a man who lived near the river bank. He gave the
sheriff the name of the man.

The sheriff made a note of this. Then he raised his eyes to the
old man’s. “George,” he said, “the folks whose houses were dam-
aged by the blast are grumbling about you being to blame. They’re
going to get sore at me if I don’t do something. I’ve got to take
you in.”

Dowdy made no protest. When Hester turned him over to
Deputy Welkin, he nodded a curt goodbye and strode to the offi-
cer’s car ;

The sheriff then went back to the wreckage, where some of Dr.
Edgerton’s assistants were gathering up fragments of Jim Dowdy's
body. None of them would have been recognized as having once
been part of a man.

The grisly exhibit tightened Hester's determination to get at
the truth of the matter. In the daylight he was able to see clearly
the remains of what had been in the two-room shack. Not much
he decided .

Hoping that Jim Dowdy might have been carrying the engage-

£2

Ls

AMiLa Be

ment ring mentioned in the letter around in his clothing, the sheriff
began looking for it. As he poked among the rubble, a startling
fact struck him.

There was nothing resembling clothing strewn anywhere about!

Hester’s forehead crinkled in perplexity. Strange, he thought.
that the victim’s wearing apparel had been blown into such in-
finitesimal bits that none of it could be found. Some tiny fragment
of his clothing must be in evidence somewhere!

But the more the sheriff looked, the more he became convinced
that someone had removed the victim’s clothing prior to the explo-
sion. But who? Could it have been the man whose footprints
were pointed away from the farmhouse?

HE sheriff stopped and took stock of what he had:

Two feet and stumps of legs severed at almost identica}
places. Footprints by a pair of men, one of whom never came out
of the house. A story told by an old man that gasoline had been
tossed on a fire, though there was no evidence of flames

A case of dynamite purchased three months before for illegal
fishing but never opened. A youth who had been blasted intc
eternity—although there was a good chance:he was already dead.
And missing clothing. which was one of the queerest aspects of all.

Hester thought about G. F. Dowdy’s alibi, which the old man
had given. unhesitatingly. It seemed entirely likely that Dowdy
had been in the bar and grill at the time of the blast. for this was
something he would have known Hester would check if he became
suspicious of the explosion. And the sheriff now definitely wa:
suspicious. How much, if anything, did the father know about it:

The sheriff walked around the plantation talking to farmers whe
were replacing windows and otherwise repairing damage caused
by the blast. He wanted to know whether any of them had seen a
stranger around the Dowdy shack the night before. and if they

Sho
behinc
to kill
young

If sé
time, |

Hes
have «
The fi

Goir
pared
prised
down °

He
was in
minute
felt.

“Do
asked

“No:
some
the oth

The
volved
touch «
an alib

Hest
he rem
cafe di
another

in impor
“Whe
he askec
“NO.
quake, |
“You
“Pm |
Heste
But mor


;

By MARJORIE

ROEHL) 8
After.Jim LeBoeuf, murdered and .
mutilated, was found in Lake Palourde,

..., the case was solved within three days,

~ Pecot, sheriff of St. Mary Parish for 11,
years, who had run the three to earth so”

\ #8

The feeling in Morgan City was that .
his slayers should be hanged — and the’.

sooneg, the better. The people of Mor-.-
gan City had high praise for Charles ;

quickly, ” Oe ae
Certainly no one thought of asking
mercy for those involved. Certainly not
Pecot,.who, although he was knoxwn to
be kind, conscientious and even court-
ly, said there was enough evidence to:
hang them, and that they, deserved:
hanging. . Be sg
James LeBoeuf, Morgan City’s
power plant superintendent, disappear-.
ed Friday night, July 1, 1927. Ada, his
wife and mother of their four children,

said he had probably gone to Lafayette -

to confer with the utility company’s
general manager. She did not report his
disappearance to police.

ta @ ?

A WEEK LATER, two frog hunters
in a boat rammed the body of Jim Le-
Boeuf about 3 feet below the surface of
18-square-mile Lake Palourde, near
Morgan: | ty, It was torn with two

a ae es 8)

reled shotgun, was slit from gullet to

weighted with railroad angle irons,
presumably so it would not rise again.

Had it been dumped 50 feet farther out .
in the water, it never would have been ¢

found, authorities said. '

1 Charlie Pecot went at once to the .

modest LeBoeuf home to interview
Ada. Whatever her other attributes (a
newspaper would say later that at age
38, she was a handsome woman who
“had borne the cares of motherhood
lightly”), Ada was less than a success

as a sinister conspirator. She told Pecot
she had not reported Jim missing be- ’

cause the community “would put two
and two together and blame the Doc.” %

Everyone knew who he was — Dr. .

Thomas Dreher, civic leader, promi-
nent physician and part owner of Mor-
gan City’s major drug store. Town
gossip said the attraction between Ada ,
and Dreher had broken up the friend-
ship between the two families.

After three hours of gentle but
insistent grilling by Pecot, Ada’s re-
serve began to crack. She confessed
first that she and Jim had gone boating
in separate pirogues that Friday night;

that two men in another craft. whom

a oN
ral ‘

rireery
eeeeon og CSS SESR SS

ue
groin, presumably to make it sink, and

“tonight.”)

_ Jail takes its toll — ¢

3

U ‘e ; : & ge :
she did fot know, called over the:
water, “I¢ that you, Jim?” Then two°
shots rang out — she told the sheriff —

killing her husband. In terror, she fled ,

home and said nothing. Ph EL

THEN SHE CHANGED her story..
Sometime before, she said, Jim had re-
ceived an anonymous letter about her
and Dreher. After the letter, her hus-
band, Jim, had jealously made her life;
a hell and threatened Dreher, she said.’
She had sent a note telling the doctor
that she and Jim would be on the lake

. that night. (The missive, which Sheriff

Pecot later found among eee pre- ;
scriptions, also said in effett, “If we”
are to do'anything, we must do it ©

Dreher, with his handyman and
friend, Jim Beadle, who was hunter, -
trapper and jackleg carpenter, met the
LeBoeufs on the lake where Beadle:
shot her husband. PR Eres |

Dr. Thomas Dreher as he
looked before, his trial, left.
‘ At center, a hatless Dreher

@

eR

and wore a threadbare svit, As the couple wopt, the judge r

» it out:of friendship ig
feared for my life.” Described in the’. turned murder:
press as a “simple man of the bayous.. «

%

4

a

aF 2 fie

PG §

the doctor as, Pecot believed, Dreher |
was trying to commit suicide. Said .
Dreher, “Jim didn’t take a cent: He did

and swamps of the Teche region,” Bea-., :
dle, who had once exchanged harsh.
words with LeBoeuf over a boat

proved himself perhaps the most.
shrewd in the case. Although Dreher,
and other witnesses placed him at the -
scene of the killing, Beadle insisted he .
had been at home with his wife and:
children that fatal night. Looking Pecot

full in the face, he said he had no idea

‘ why people would tell such lies about’

him. Then he said nothing.

Pecot clapped all three in jail, where
Ada once more changed her story —
this time to say that the meeting on the

Swampy waters was for a reconcilia- *~

Hy Jan. 4, 1929. A sanity hearing. An attempt to stave off the hangman.
couch, pallid and saying her beads. Dr, Thomas Dreher, at the corner of the inattress: with h
fused the ¥ A pa

ah COR

AY ayer gee Boi ee aes nee

At the Drehers’ far more imposing «.. tion between Dreher
residence, Pecot wrested a gun from, “who had shot first, only to be cut do
An self-defense by Beadle.

ff THE GRAND JURY, called into spe-"? ache.” Someone said he feared {Hié'two

fe

~ their dates, “Let's go piroguing.”

\

doctor and the housewife. But its most Dreher had demanded from
. dramatic moment came when Beadle _ been given, a cell to himself,

asked to be tried separately from Ada exercise in the corridor and

‘LeBoeuf and Dreher, his co-defendants. ed

he aging of the accused ——————s

Reports said he. decided on the move":

t
ene
¥

‘Ada LoBoeuf was brought into the

courtroom on a.
din hand, was unshaven:,’:

plea

Bre gi ghe

a.

i 3 f 1 ‘at eg
and her husband, ‘};when, complaining of a headache he
wn overheard Ada remark succinctly that:

‘he “wouldn't have to worry abott’that
‘S¢ much. longer. Soon, he’d have a neck-

¥

for me because I .:cial session, did not believe her. It re- were “trying to airplane this bougalee
indictments against ‘all.’ to eA eg?
ete "<<" Tt took the jury an hour and a half to

Tegal

vaie

death in, Louisiana:
Louisiana youths sardonically invited history: © *° i OS
"~The storm that followed the"¥erdict .
The trial was dotted with spicy accu-’ might have also made Pecot :wish. he
sations about the amour between the had never solved the case. Already, .
him, and
room to
food cater-
a restaurant. Ada had a rocking
‘b )  ) Turn to Page B2 -

oe
Werte

by

Seah AS Lame

the start of her 1927 trial.

Above left, 38-year-old Ada
a LeBoeuf as she looked at

ai

eg

>

H g yoo _

CP

is escorted from jail by Sheriff Charles Pecot in 1927. At right, a haggard eg ; Center, as she looked on her way to court, probably in late 1928, Right, as she |” cs sathees
Dreher on his way to a hearing one month before his execution in 1929. fer | ' eee * looked in a photo taken as she walked to the gallows. as, ae


. The: term, “classic crime,” may
mean different things to different.
people. :

“tt may be the “perfect murder’

health $e
eliat Sat
a
By MARJORIE ROEHL
After: Jim LeBoeuf, murdered and:
mutilated, was found in Lake Palourde,

. the case.was solved within three days.

The feeling in Morgan City was that .
his slayers should be hanged — and the:
sooner, the better. The people of Mor-
gan City had high praise for Charles »

’ Pecot, sheriff of St. Mary Parish for 11,

years, who had run the three to earth so
quickly: -

Certainly no’one thought of asking
mercy for those involved. Certainly not
Pecot,:who, although he was knoxwn to
be kind, conscientious and even court-
ly, said there was enough evidence to.
hang them, and that they deserved:

- hanging.

James LeBoeuf, Morgan City’s
power plant superintendent, disappear-
ed Friday night, July 1, 1927. Ada, his
wife and mother of their four children,

' said he had probably gone to Lafayette

to confer with the utility company 8

fidia not sanart ht

RoMAeAL man seor

or one of historical significance. It
may involve famous people er be
surrounded by bizarre circum-

- stances. It may be that rare case

where good comes from un-
_ speakable evil. Or it may, for rea-

| sons hard to analyze, capture the

public interest.
This is the first of a five-part
series on murders which, in their

time, were considered among. ;

 Lovisiana’s ‘‘classie crimes.’’
‘Subsequent: stories will appea)
each Friday.

“‘Voads of buckshot from a double-bar-""*"

reled shotgun, was slit from gullet to

: presumably so it would not rise again.
. Had it been dumped 50 feet farther out’

in the water, it never would have been *

found, authorities said.

; Charlie Pecot went at once to the
modest LeBoeuf home to interview
Ada. Whatever her other attributes (a
newspaper would say later that at age
38, she was a handsome woman who
“had borne the cares of motherhood
lightly”), Ada was less than a success

as a sinister conspirator. She told Pecot’ .
she had not reported Jim missing be- —

cause the community “would put two
and two together and blame the Doc.”
Everyone knew who he was — Dr.
Thomas Dreher, civic leader, promi-
nent physician and part owner of Mor-
gan City’s major drug store. Town
gossip said the attraction between Ada

amd TNenkhar bad bh

groin, presumably to make it sink, and >
weighted with railroad angle irons, ~

¢

she did hot know, called over ies ve

water, “Is that you, Jim?” Then two
shots rang out — she told the sheriff —
killing her husband. In terror, she fled

home and said nothing. ~ a

THEN SHE CHANGED her story.
Sometime before, she said, Jim had re-
ceived an anonymous letter about her
and Dreher. After the letter, her hus-

band, Jim, had jealously made her life.

a hell and threatened Dreher, she said.
She had sent a note telling the doctor
that she and Jim would be on the lake
that night. (The missive, which Sheriff
Pecot later found among Dreher’s pre-

t

residence, Pecot wrested a gun from
the doctor as, Pecot believed, Dreher
was trying to commit suicide.
Dreher, “Jim didn’t take a cent.

it out of friendship for me because I.
feared for my life.” Described in the
press as a “simple man of the bayous

aid.
e did.

ig}

uf

; three.

and swamps of the Teche region,” Bea- ~

dle, who had once exchanged harsh
words with LeBoeuf over a boat,
proved himself perhaps the most
shrewd in the case, Although Dreher
and other witnesses placed him at the
scene of the killing, Beadle insisted he
had been at home with his wife and

At the Drehers’ far more imposing tion between Dreher and her husband, «

who had shot first, only to be cut down
ijn self-defense by Beadle. Mey

’ ‘THE GRAND JURY, called into spe-*?
iclal session, did not, believe her. It. re-
. turned murder indictments against: all

Ada, Dreher and Beadle came to trial

_late in July in Franklin, the parish seat. *
-In the simmering heat, as many as 800 *
. jammed the courthouse, in the atmos-

. phere of a Roman circus. The parish
» was singing, “Sweet piroguing mama,

‘don’t you angle-iron me,” and South

Louisiana youths sardonically invited

?

(BT pue- Uae.

- Jan, 4, 1929. A sanity hearing. An attempt to stave off the hangman. Ada LeBoeuf was brought into the courtroom on a
couch, pallid and saying her beads. Dr. Thomas Dreher, at the corner of the mattress with head i in hand, was. 5 peanaven
and wore a ected suit. As the couple wept, the judge refused the plea. (ae

' when, complaining of a headache= he

overheard Ada remark succinctly “that
he “wouldn’t have to worry abott’that
much longer. Soon, he’d have a neck-
ache.” Someone said he feared {tie'two

yatta

*and the doctor to be hanged. Ada’s con-
‘ fession to Pecot and subsequent contra-
dictions, ‘it was said, had weighed
‘heavily. 0° > RPS: Meet se
The verdict set off the most fierce

battle to the death in Louisiana’ tegal
history.

6 ST Asenigey

OE

Lil

f
a5

ysue Sa

¢

Pp

uc

were “‘trying to airplane this, ‘bougalee

“to the gallows,” . ae
* It took the jury an hour and ahatf'to

. sentence him to life in prison, and Ada

8

On March 2, 1949 the defendants filed: (1) a prayer for
oyer of admissions or confessions of the defendants, (2) a
motion for severance and (3) a motion to examine the rem-
nants of the dynamite caps and the fuse and the clothing
of Walter Dorman.

The defendant’s attorneys were permitted to see a state-
ment signed by J. D. Dowdy. The motion for severance was
overruled. The motion to examine the remnants of the dy-
namite caps, fuse and clothing was denied.

The jury was selected for the trial of the case during
the week of May 10th, 1949. The introduction of testimony
began during the week of May 16, 1949, and a verdict was
returned May 20th, 1949, convicting J. D. Dowdy as charged
and George R. Dowdy without capital punishment.

A motion for new trial was filed on May 24th, 1949,
and the same was set for trial, on October 5, 1949. A con-
tinuance was asked for on October 3rd, 1949, and granted.

On September 27, 1949, a second motion for new trial
was filed setting forth forty-seven bills of exception.

On October 18, 1949, a third motion for new trial was
filed setting forth that the only defense counsel with five
years practice was not present in the courtroom during the
night sessions. On that day a bill of exception was signed by
the judge setting forth the facts in this matter.

That on November 16, 1949 a motion was filed to cor-
rect the minutes to show the absence of Alwine L. Mul-
hearn for defense from the courtroom during the trial.

Another motion was filed by the defense to correct the
record in other respects and a stipulation was entered into
between counsel for the State and Defense which is of rec-
ord making the necessary changes. The trial of the motion
for new trial was set for November 22nd, 1949, on which
day the motion was overruled and forty-seven bills of ex-
ception were signed by the judge.

On the same day a fourth motion for new trial was
filed setting forth three bills of exceptions. This motion was
overruled and three bills of exceptions were signed.

Then a motion in arrest of judgment was filed and
overruled and finally sentence was passed on November
29th, 1949, and on the same day an order of appeal was
entered.

Subsequently, per curiam opinions were filed with the
Clerk of the District Court by the Judge of the District
Court. Counsel for defendants understand that some of said

9

opinions if not all were filed while the transcript was be-
ing typed to be forwarded to the Supreme Court.
Counsel for defense filed a motion to strike the said

- D> Coe X
ofet reer PENT

The motion to strike is based:on Code of Criminal Pro-
cedure, Article 545 which provides “after an appeal has been
granted no further action in the case can be taken by the
trial judge; provided, that as to matters of ministerial or

_not in controversy on appeal, the trial court may render
interlocutory orders and definitive judgments.”

In State vs. Constanza, 157 La. 411, 421, 102 So. 507 (1925),
it was held that per curiams by the trial judge could not
be considered although they were filed and were sent up in
response to writ of certiorari, since the said per curiams
were signed after an order of appeal was granted. Similar-
ly it was held, in State vs. Early, 183 La. 71, 162 So. 805
(1935), that bills of exception filed after an appeal should
not be considered, but in that particular case the court re-

' manded the case for more evidence to determine whether
there was a custom of filing a bill after an appeal. Chief
Justice O’Neal concurred in the decree because it was in
the interest of justice but he stated that if it was the cus-
tom to sign bills of exceptions after an appeal has been
taken and after the court has lost jurisdiction of the case

the custom ought to be abolished.

In the instant case appearers know of only one other
appeal in this parish and the attorneys for defendant do
not know how that appeal was handled or of any custom.
That subsequently in the case of State vs. Calvin, 209 La.
257, A#So. 2nd. 467 (1945), the Supreme Court upheld the

/ _—~ trial udge’s refusal to sign bills of exceptions presented
six days after the granting of an appeal. See also State vs.

, Owens, 210 La. 808, 28 So. 2nd, 337 (1946). State vs. Brown,
) 505 214 La. 18, 36 So. 2nd, 624 1948.
gol | ____, The case of State vs. Borde, 25 So. 2nd, 736 (1946) is di-
rectly in point. The following is quoted from the opinion
_ written by Justice Fournet:

“Since this case was submitted and this opinion
written the trial judge at the request of the district
attorney sought to supplement his per curiam to bill

of exceptions No. 4.”

Under the expressed provisions of the Code of


6

Article 381 of the Louisiana Code. of
Criminal Procedure;

State v. Sinigal, 138 La. 469, 70 So.
478, (1916);

State v. Glauson, 165 La. 270, 115 So.
484, (1928);

State v. Richardson, 175 La. 823, 144
So. 587, (1932);

State v. High, 122 La. 521, 47 So. 878,
(1908);

State v. Smith, 196 La. 652, 199 So.
791, (1941);

21. Is it possible to try a case involving a capital of-
fense in the absence of defense counsel having five years ex-

‘ erience where associate council is present?
ATEMENTOO oe P

TOFRC ASE Article 143 of the Louisiana Code of
7 OPO Ce ce) riminal Procedure.

- On the 22nd day of October, 1948, an explosion occurred
at the home of J. D. Dowdy and George R. Dowdy, at about
11:30 P. M. Neighbors gathered at the scene of the explosion

~ and summoned officers.

The explosion caused a fire which almost completely
demolished the house.

‘The officers, on their’ arrival searched the debris and
discovered two human legs and feet intact. The legs were
raggedly severed between the hips and knee.

It was assumed that the legs were the remants of one
of the occupants of the house, either George R. Dowdy or
J. D. Dowdy, and on learning that George R. Dowdy was
alive in town playing poker it was assumed that his son
J. D. Dowdy had been killed by the explosion and George
R. Dowdy was informed that his son had been so killed by
a member of the local police force.

George R. Dowdy called at the funeral home and identi-
fied the feet and legs as those of his son and Geo. R. Dowdy
suggested that the explosion had occurred through J. D.
Dowdy carelessly handling gasoline in making a fire near
dynamite used for dynamiting fish.

J. D. Dowdy’s sister, a Mrs. Richardson from Texas,
also identified the legs as those of her brother.

The Sheriff’s Office dug into the depressions in the
ground at the scene of the accident and discovered small
pieces of bone, shred of pants material, flesh and teeth.

7

In the meanwhile an itinerant painter, Walter N. Dor-
man, was reported missing by his family and L. L. Stillwell.
It was known that Walter Dorman was with J. D. Dowdy
the night of the explosion and was to spend the night with
J. D. Dowdy.

The coroner’s jury delayed its report to find out whether
the legs and feet belonged to J. D. Dowdy or Walter N.
Dorman.

L. L. Stillwell, who was Walter Dorman’s brother-in-
law, and who was also the divorced husband of J. D. Dow-
dy’s sister, contacted the Sheriff’s Office and got permission
to view the legs and identified them as the legs of Walter
N. Dorman.

In the meanwhile George R. Dowdy, who could not
write, was making an effort to collect on several insurance
policies. © Gm Te ye oe
George R. Dowdy was placed in jail and on Sunday,
October 31, 1948, J. D. Dowdy was reported by his sister
to be in Caddo Parish and was apprehended in the State of
Texas and brought back to Tallulah where J. D. Dowdy
and George R. Dowdy were charged with murder.

Mr. Frank A. Blanchard was employed to defend J. D.
Dowdy and George R. Dowdy and he filed (1) a plea of in-
sanity, (2) motion for severance and (3) motion for change
of venue.

The court appointed Dr. E. Otis Edgerton, the coroner,
and Dr. D. H. Allen to examine the defendant J. D. Dowdy
and report as to his sanity.

These two physicians made a report to the court.

Frank A. Blanchard filed a motion to withdraw as coun-
sel on the lst day of February, 1949. On the Ist day of Feb-
ruary, 1949, Alwine L. Mulhearn, Rufus T. Yerger, Edgar
H. Lancaster, Jr. and Jack H. Folk were appointed by the
court to defend J. D. Dowdy and George R. Dowdy.

February 15th, 1949, a plea of. insanity at the time of
the alleged offense and at the present time was filed on
behalf of J. D. Dowdy.

An order was issued appointing Dr. E. Otis Edgerton,
coroner, and Dr. Emmett Wilkerson to examine J. D. Dowdy
as to his sanity at the present time and appointing Dr. E.
Otis Edgerton, coroner, Dr. D. H. Allen and Dr. Emmett
Wilkerson to examine J. D. Dowdy as to his sanity at the

- time of the alleged offense. The doctors made a return to the

court that J. D. Dowdy was sane and a judgment was enter-
ed on the said report.

e
- .—— {
- eed 7 ‘ae a 4 ~ : A 4 »
ti AG § A Yiyt 1 i ak ehtoase w»
= arr “ mr : ‘ ay + he we ‘ i
Be er ees ae tren ne mse very

jay, March 9, 1979

matt

4 he
‘ ee AS Sele et
@ Ae Fi fae hae Ww

we TS be a Se
Continjjed frami Page B-l) 9) ®
chair apd unlimited visitors.

Theif defense battery, including Rob-
ert Walker, former'speaker of the
Louisifha Legislature; former Sen.
James'Parkersdn, with Walter B.'Ham-°.
lin (laker a Louisiana Supreme Court’ jurors, that the death verdict was undu-
chief justice) and Ben Daly, two of ‘ly influenced by bitter community
New Qrleans’ foremost criminal law- &-pressure.
yers, sfyung into action. Twice, they ap-#?"Ada and Dreher

~ pealedeto the Louisiana Supreme '

§

; : ii ada |
** The States-ltem | r

wt

H t
© RA x oS i.
r of-mur
In November 1928, Hamlin and Daly
" appealed to the State Board of Pardons
for commutation, backed, in a real
about-face, by a petition signed by 75
percent of St. Mary Parish voters and a
statement from 11. of the 12 trial

P|
8 pesPesasdss

their appeal for mercy partly on the
fact that “not only is Mrs. LeBoeuf a
mother, but then, too, she HAS a moth-
er.”

» HUEY LONG'S reaction to the board
recommendation was not reassuring.
He said it looked like ‘‘a mockery

State.” ay
; waited through a ‘Jan. 4 began as a black day for Ada
urt'” bleak ‘Thanksgiving, only to have par-
~ — in Iecémber 1927 and in April 1928. don'board members Attorney General
on the*grounds that witnesses had hott) Per¢y Saint and Judge James D.
been ailowad to testify to the “danger-!.Simoh, the trial judge, vote “no” to
ous cHaracter of Jim LeBoeuf,”*and ‘| what ‘had’ been an impassioned, eight-
that Beadle’s‘attorneys ‘should not have . hour plea. Lt. Gov. Paul M. Cyr strong-
been ajJowed to cross-examine his two\,ly favored clemency.
former‘co-defendants, Dreher and Ada.** And then Gov. Huey P. Long set the
Twice, Hamlin and Daly were re-» execution date for Dec. 21. .
fused"but three judges dissented in The doomed pair received the news
April, ncluding Chief Justice Charles with sobs and borderline hysteria.
O’Nielf' who had attended some of the ' Hamlin ‘begged for a reprieve “in the
trial sessions. Mrs. O’Niell headed club- name of Christian decency. It is un- '
womert, opposed to the first execution. thinkable to send a man and woman to
of a whtte- woman in Louisiana. a horrible death on the very eve of
‘ x Christmas.” :
~ Long pushed the date back to Jan. 5,
‘and the pardons board reversed itself
to recommend clemency. Members
were influenced by the finding of Le-
Boeuf’s gun, with one chamber dis-
charged; by a report that Beadle had
confessed the shooting to an Angola
official — and perhaps even more bya
delegation of 80 New Orleans club-
women, mostly middle-aged and

24 hours. That morning, Long refused
clemency. That afternoon, Judge
Simon agreed to hear a defense request
for a sanity hearing for the two. Ada

Dreher, unshaven and wearing a
threadbare suit, looked as if he had

Simon refused the plea, ;

That night, the Louisiana Supreme
Court met to review a defense motion
for a week's stay, to study Simon’s ac-

'.$ociate justices denied the application.
It was the signal to Sheriff Pecot to go
ahead with the hanging the next day.

THAT SUMMER, the U.S. Supreme:
Court refused. to‘réview the case. By!
then, Dreher had stopped exercising in
the jail corridor but devoured news-
paperg.seeking any ray of hope. Ada no
longer eared about the freshly ironed
summer dres8es on which she had at
first insiteted.* *07 2°00 ft ot thw

Sherif Gharlie Pecot’s nerves’ also
had begitto fray. He,had grown to

with his long-

Justice O’Niell. From his overcoat
pocket, he took two typed papers and
began to read. “Under Sections II and
‘X of the state constitution, any judge of

issue a stay of execution. I issue the

‘order and command you, Mr. Clerk to

prominent, spearheaded by the Orleans notify Sheriff Pecot at Franklin that

term pii@herg, League of Women Voters. They based there can be no execution until the
tau ,i ? . ‘ ,

S—_:-—— r

3 hid ‘
+)
oT

Pe TON
aw. s .

both Hike end’ sympathize

$

s

S
‘m 4

By JAMES A. PERRY -*
Television editor

Television producer Norman Lear
yesterday withdrew his newest series,
“Mr. Dugan,” from Sunday’s lineup fol-
lowing complaints from the 17-mem-
ber Congressional Black Caucus that
the project was detrimental to black
politicians.

In a note to CBS, Lear said: “This is
to notify you that we have stopped
production on ‘Mr. Dugan’ and we do
not intend to deliver any of the three
episodes which have been completed.”

“Mr. Dugan” was to have made its
debut at 7:30 p.m. Sunday on Ch. 4, with

y pt

eRe Pe ye)
ff
Ries
eet -4¢ ‘ea
a
18, Sts
ee

CRIES IY 1") a:$tates-ttem photo by Ronald LeBoeuf

{ba want he a regio ge Ae 4 Cleavon Little starring in the role of a
Et'Haupt, left, and Gordon Peterson out on the links, with their |] new black congressman who gets more
caddies Clem and Tonys (8 Saanstves, ccicee . {] advice than he needs from Capitol Hill

prs <A nadyt Ween 98 BT yah colleagues. CBS says it will substitute

a a'é is " an episode of “Alice,” which means

was carried into the courtroom on a,
couch, pallid and saying her beads. |”

aged 10 years. As they wept, Judge

tion. The hours ticked away. Four as-.

the Supreme Court has the right to.

der: A fatal lov

against decency and civil order in the\;;.snatched the phone from his hand: ie Skee pals 14
t a v.times receiving visitors with anima-' ” She asked Gerpezately,,, The Gourtol 1 4
sometimes with glazed eyes un- .. Appeals?” ie See 5

and Dreher, sentenced to hang within ° to recognize even the priest who oi “Turned you down,” he said. “i nay ai

(

at

order can be properly carried out.”
To a stunned silence, O’Niell

placably, “Read the sheriff my order.”) had become a shadow, and not the real-

ped at Pecot in Franklin. “Majority, able
* opinion is binding.”

4

O’Niell grabbed the receiver. “Sher-':

< iff Pecot,” he said, “you will obey, my.

Then — “Just a minute,” said Chief <

’

order no matter what anybody.else,
may tell you.” He hung up. i :

could see from.

jeg By now, Dreher had become a whin- nad Liss ees
ying voice begging for mercy; Ada, a‘. had to break the news = first to Ada.’

“Sviseministered to her,’ :
“Again, on Jan. 11, with the hanging ~

Scheduled forthe next day, the Su-
-preme Court lengthened the stay until

Brunot glared at him. “Only one man gi In the waning days of January 1929,

on this court would have done that,” he

replied, “Sir, I will not tolerate anyone”

addressing me in this manner.”

eg
5 ,

Pecot heard that Beadlg:was hysteri-
said, tight-lipped. To which O’Niell cally begging to confess"to him. With ;

~ Lt. Gov, Cyr, he hurried to Angola, only
to be told that Gov. Long had given

Bg :

ee, stag 4

Ay

*

. The doctor; the one who had-éor’

Pecot was frantic. The governor; orders no one was to talk to the prison- :

phoned a reprieve that night, phoned
again at 9:30 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 5
withdraw. it. Pecot shut himself in

office and began, desperately, to tele- ’

phone every authority he could think
of.
Finally, he said grimly, “I'll take..

Chief Justice O’Niell’s order,” and sent

the hangman, imported from New. Or-
leans, back on the train in a huff.
THE HIGH COURT reconvened and
reluctantly ordered a week’s stay of
execution. Long confirmed the re- «
prieve at 11:10 a.m., 50 minutes before
the scheduled hanging. The condemned

Phe

out on that show too), and later by Lou
Gossett, a star of “Roots.” The action
of these actors reportedly evoked con-
cern among the black Congressmen in =
the first place. ii ae

The dissension grew out of the
blacks’ feeling that ‘“‘Mr. Uugan”
showed black elected officials as silly
and stupid, according to Clay. “Dugan !
is a high-living politician who is.com-
pletely at the mercy of his white staff,
which includes an open bigot,” he said.

Lear could not be contacted for com-
ment, but it appears that “Mr. Dugan”
has been laid to rest permanently,

WYES-TV (Ch. 12) reported viewer
pledges of $30,493 through Wednesday
night, representing about a third of
what the station hopes to take in during '
its 16-day fund-raising campaign.

SESE SEE EERE ARSE © OES RESIST Re ee eee ae ee Fe Re en Se eS ee a Se ee eee

Ais y
y} ne

‘Perryscope
An early death for ‘Mr. Dugan’

er. Pecot and Cyr raced the breakneck
to.’ miles to Baton Rouge, hunting without
his © success for Long, for two days. -.
kidnapped the governor, he, as acting
governor, would pardon not only the
pair waiting execution, but the kidnap-
‘pers as well. Smoothly, Long praised
Cyr’s “wonderful, sympathetic heart.
His feelings go so far that it would be
hard for him to keep the penitentiary
doors closed on anyone.”

LONG’S ENEMIES whispered that

’ Cyr let it be known that if someone .

}Say goodbye? “No,” she

%

he had vowed to be the first governor

in the state to hang both a Mason and a
. white woman. Tht aaa a pe LEE
14h SEES 4 ;
Fi etiwing tan tones et Be Feed
cr Sw as: Carteret

en

mete at cit (are sh or a Sa

eries

station spokesman. “And we’ve man-

aged to get about $6,000 per night since
the campaign began. We consider that
to be as good or better than previous

ye

fund-raising campaigns.” ‘The total’
number of pledges from Saturday
through Wednesday was 256, not a’

record but exceptionally good.
Public television stations around the

country reported total pledges of about °

$2.48 million over last weekend. The
Public Broadcasting Service said that
$1.5 million of resulted from the Grand
Ole Opry show Saturday. '
I'd like to commend Ch. 12, not onl:
for the excellent programming it has
provided the area this past week, but
also for the professional manner in
“which station personnel and volunteers
have conducted themselves. The lack
‘of high-pressure sales pitches during

4

pa
)

Oo, ‘
P% Fs
Yas ih
Ro é
t® 24
"vie t

Se day OER!

7
i

ae CA

“The governor?” she cried, ‘2 '/S3.i %*
\“Says he’s. through,” said\Pécot "= 4
heavily. Wy Gwe ak

% Ne

She begged him to do something, ahy-"

» Feb. 1, 1929, to study the case further.“ thing. Said Pecot as steadily.as ihe”.

Re
bs!

could, “There is nothing I,can do.-You *?

must be calm.” “'' * me “worn

She shrieked, “You always bring me,
bad news,” and collapsed. | ‘®”” 9° te¥;
44

on

weeks cowered in his cell, was ndw'the _

collected one. “I have made my*peace , ,. . |

said, and spoke“of-his |,

MOEN

with God,” he.
innocence. ; Pov ak ia
On the morning of the execution, hs
Feb. 1, 1929, Ada was asked ‘If Sife >.
would like to see Dreher, “He’s net my. rat
family doctor any more,” she siia~’To ts
Said. NOt WOW. in
Not any, any more.” tare
On a day of cold and drizzling taih, <,.
the doctor was buried at Clinton, his Seat
boyhood home; Ada ina country...

churchyard near Morgan City., +=!

Jim Beadle was released from Ango- a
la in April 1939, and died a few years ‘0!
later, Fig SAN qk g 8S raid

a
*

¥

hosts be ah Se SAVORS.’
DTS ial Bi te ne Ee bo +e aa”
. “OR HS Ae ant b bin a

programs with wit and style. That’s “~”
especially true of the incomparable iff
Mel Leavitt. Isn’t there some way the: “iw
station could get this man to anchor all’?
of those in-between sessions?:He's
never at a loss for the right thing, to :
say. And that voice would make the ° N
late Edward R. Murrow jealous... avant:

I’m looking forward to tuning in’ Ch.
12 during the remainder of thé fufid-:~>
raising period. That series of late-night ro
(heginning at 10:30 p.m.) movié§ ‘éldiie |.
would make me shout the station's |...
praises. To be able to see the Original : . ‘i
‘A Star Is Born” with Janet Gayhor . ”
and Fredric March, with onty-one.. ..,
interruption, was quite a treat, Mnte8a,-\.»
and the night before, what a pleasureit .°
was to sit through the 1940 verqom of °, -

“Our Town,” with a younger-thama-


, in, La. Febe 1, 1929.
DPSHER “and TeBORUF, whites, hanged Franklin, la., on Fe 9

td ‘Press Rice Service ) ‘ : t She wba = Pert ead oe fp re . a
is a Rh mane PRICE 2 cays 3
YEAGER AND LOWRY PAY¢-p)i2)

ENALTY: LOUISIANA = q

,__ HANG pees ND DOCTO. t
WRS:EBOEUE [tes "
VAWALKS TO TRAP | zs

IN PARISH INL

iDr. Thochal ED E.. Decheli Her,

Accomplice in Killing of :
| Husbarel i in 1927, Is Bie

es ere

Small Group Sees Slayers §
Go ‘te Gallows, Former:
for Killing Policeman,‘
|. Other for Holdup Murder ie

cuted Soon After. | | # :
IR HAD RECEIVED | | BOTH REFUSED fre ‘ie
THREE REPRIE f a TO EAT BREAKFAST :

Faecal Said in in Cell Be.
' fore Sentence Is Carried -
Out—Phyiician Shakes |
_ Sheriff's Hand. |

Trap Sprung at 6:19 ‘ M. |
—Last Minute Efforts eR ee
See Gov. Caulfield Are Ee

Unsuccessful. a

{
| b
;
aca ae oe. ae
lp. the Aesectated Peens, f i 1. vonard If. Yeos ser, a] Sieh cia!
PRANKEIN,, Yas, ep, 1-| Irs. ,

oes Thomas kL. Lowry, coe
hanged tn the City) Jan berg
duwn toduy, Y oulger for the MU Fags

der of an uldérty' tailor during a.
scloon holdyp,! and Lowry tor a:
murdef on. a ideas nid va

: Thyy, went), te. ’ thefe Saat
pwith/ tittle outtrand! din hho? ty

Ad’ Bonner Lely, ug a: dh Dr, |

Thotaus BL Dreher were hangeht taj

Quick sugession tn the parisit! J, iN
here dey lor purtiqipation 4 he!

murder of James cal the}

Woman's husband,

The woman led the way t the |
Ballows, accompanied by the (Kev. t
J.J. Nossean, Franklin priest: lithe |

Sr ~ tees eee = twee, * .
Sr ne ate tis

tlons waiving oe; OC @ aac: ; eS

man followed Wigh his xpirituad: ud- pee lt T ty ie uate | be
Vinere the Hew J. A, bean ‘Ae wna mulancousy| a O\Ns z
Methodtst niinister, beside eho ‘ | ny wa ae hed dead at 6; ne :

bh borul Ikea om! the pleager at oe
iat hie cert APR qe at | } A pmall groyp ob-ppac: ‘Lior of br
Uds18. ies yy att Hited tu exsentint angi si oe

“O Mother, my God,” niohined | favutatives @f Lae . ‘f a - ot
Mrs, Levocul “fant this a temyidble , DR. T, ¥. puMMEs. “GG ms ie ! ;
thing? : } i

“Oh, done let me suffer, i 4, | See ¥. . Rist “dy He i
“~ Whe can do that? > “rneamat de. fa


ze

writs 14 murder Niselt.” 1 Robe
i Jesue can love m& soul. Thejrope |
‘Aa tight uround my neck.” ‘ ly is rik TENCE 4
She struggled before the drop.) 7 ; Nd? _—
She hid Te bts praying bghind Btiseseeg tt Ada tee fifth: floor seed whieh, 41 qf ce
Vieuther Kossan. ft Bay igen ose FAR me Bott OO ed wa es hye
‘ ‘ 3 oa. b@ ceeere n mw A * a :
5, Weare Plain sith Sinocks ee miliits if if na ' oe Seas] Crowd Optaude,| LAN
Re a at ached B he eat ae moiiins J py> ‘The umber of apectators GHEE
Jabs riff asked hur 10’ come Trem Be ee a 4 bw. oo de A ee -oulside tam. mTayh Weer
Veda fhe bangman-sat on a ench ipegtenday's high, 34 (Fa. mastloe, Di canso cf the hear-acro see
,uesido tho trap walling. Ima. | (PR ae eae More than 196 meh pod wemen
olded, the wornan walked o¥f 00 fcon we pone! Official fore | had gathered grep
j che trop dresred tna platit silk ON 16 DOING] cast for St. Louis | ang pushed intot
| gmiuch. bd meee THE TURKEY | and vicinityt Fat? | ce the building
“She atruggte] us the black ¢loth | TROTZKY oaigabe
Was placed over hee heat | Hee foe * row - Ntllo during t
hands werr tleds The pricgt ut-| (=~ cloudiness; lives’ incjud
'tered a final prayer and shq@ was ly rising tc two inen ad av. Lartey B iss.
' hanged. ' : . ture; the: heart; Weg. ep thd death.
Dreher shook hands with om tonight w . 5
’ Sheriff and walked strongly Up ihe about 16 | rae
) 10 winding steps : . Missou:t: | Mogte
| As he reached the fatal trap he ly cloudy, | probe ee
jratd: “Door Nias Ada, & nes ably cnow th w eat | . Yoase apd
gone.” : and north; pore b the ¢inf os:
Then looking at Meigs O. st, i

H tiona = beg{nning em fren ‘
AA tonight or tomar a divide ell

a New Gricane newspaper m he i!

said: "Mr. Frost, you Knot pea row, an ‘ia their viattone tg t

didn't do it." Li voutheast jfort[ee | advigers. The + hcl,
As the rope waa adjuste! hq sud, tomorrow, plow! refjman t ed fy.

“Oh, God. bave mercy on my soul. cining = LemAD Erbe pc alm 4

Just don’t let ne chol® to dgath.” ture, during the
He went through the trapy and Uijnote: Mostly | dance @ fey
Med instantly. : cloudy. prpbably | heart, :
The Rev. Mr. McCormacké auld | 820w jn est portion beglaning to ,
Dreher went to his death grieving night or tomiortow, and In! emt: Yeager
that his grown son, Ted, way un- portion tomarrow; slowly rising | acter being.
j able to cone from the Texgs ol} temperatuye, mn: | | Vincent Pteffady ey es-oemvics whaig
'fielda for a farewell. ‘ Arganesd~ Increasing p) eUnigg ks 4
- | Ue pray st all morning, tne pas-| fot ro ‘cold to north and w pemig
itor suid, and wos praying w inn he| tons tonight; tomorrow,
died. He prayed far Mrs. Lefwoeut, warmer.” wie
the Sheriff. and particular ‘ St of the Nississifp! 8.

familly. . , bm fal) of 0.6
“tL told him he was now the |, Ammeet 5:22. sunriso (tom rrow)
prevence of Gad and ho shourd na Mee ple es
die without the truth pn his fipa,! oo. ase < am (ra Tonnor oe
the miniater maid, “ nd he t sted TERRE HAUTE (148. ) ; i ¥ | med
{ithat both he and we :
|Iwere tnaoeent”™ i y ; FOR NEWSGIRL C : iat, »|%
Doctue Hida Worm y. Rewards Totaling 32 ‘ aq Une Speneatesa -s00-
At 11:50 Sheriff Heoot yleified 0) Sack Found Boncett polo, diptriat :
| Dreher's pleas to béd Bre rut! Only Chew. es h about Cie.
i

FOUL] By the Associates Reem |
hope} TiRNk HAUTE, Ind. ep 1
| i L& few. peralatent. nearchers ) today
t her pagain teamped the dreary.|; coal }

farewell. lle wes led te, h
shook her hand d gaid: °
I will ineet you in Heaven.”

Mrs. Leboeaf requested ¢t

oo. Ste)

yj Rody be * buried th *. ream) country to. the e@ujfr of; this. chy a
"| Clty cemetery beaide t the peeking Kajih: May Dte w3Q- ay
A husband for whose murder Ws | year-old girl whe has been missing 24
sentenced. Dr. Dreher gill bur- }aince Munguy. She .teft Net 4
died in North’ Loutwana of, CMzt29- | home west Terre Hauta, Sper 4
the family burial etodad: . \to nell Pewspa pers. Her na® Sg Aigee %
This inorning Ips. { of | nack with biged siains oft. yas} SS Hi
fered’a pruycr tor Abe Cormi¥eness | round Monday, beneath a Driiay 40 Mh, 3
of Gov., Lorg for ‘Rie refendl [0) mrfes sonth of here but n@ tee 4
spare her lfe.. Es Rae the child wns been feend.™-} ; oe
Dr. Dreher clung §9 hia & ty of! On Wednesday and Tha } 2
song decinning 2:79 — Intensive Rearah: wed ‘mik@tt pg ‘5
eadie. the trapper. aarving e rite ‘whie eee a
term in the State Pomttept fer rl mn whiten ban i onad it

eres

dha Peta Mond

"| hia part in the grin. the
Killing and Us ol ‘
poeut’a body!) > 7 ry
Reprieved three thinbs,
‘| legal Diove wed oyna

day when Judge Wayria 4.

of Federal Diatrict Cevrt Hinges iii 3 ,
4 ava { 3
wah th AAHTSOmON, bth

Pty’,
i

Sy

United States Circus Co Pesky 64
Toyse Military. prope *

peais declined t¢ isterfere
wp {odas* voted, tt ve t, 0: rT

pxecutions,
Defense attorneys tngn & * '
hope but the four'chitdren @fj Mes t masses Rpt 19. "
ati carried on the f y 1a to the

ee ee

tire en le to

—

Co. primarily for the -twadul a

fF ir oa i “i 3 4. of" fertilizer. px : 4
. i. Adar ’ fee u Lay? ’


se rs %/ A] )54 A Day to Remembérs: = roe = ead

GENTLEMEN, have you reached a verdict?” =

asked Judge James D. Simon. ‘‘We have,” re-
plied jury foreman L. S. Alleman as hé arose,
piece of paper in hand.
_ Alleman handed the paper to the clerk, as
passed it on to the judge. The latter, his face be-
traying no emotion, read what was written there-

on. Not a sound broke the tense stillness in that -

hot, crowded courtroom in Franklin, La.
The judge returned the paper to the clerk, in-

structing him to read it aloud. “Thomas E. Dre-

her,’”’ intoned the clerk, ‘guilty as charged. Ada

Bonner LeBoeuf, guilty as charged. James Beadle, ~

guilty without capital punishment.. eas

A woman screamed. Then a deep-throated mur- .

mur swept through the courtroom, swelled to a
roar among the multitude thronged on the lawn
outside, and the judge’s gavel banged in vain.

Thus was sealed—at 10:15 a. m. Saturday, Aug.
6, 1927—the fate of the first woman ever to be
executed by the state of Louisiana, a pasty- -faced,.
overpowdered matron who seemed utterly miscast

in her role as the central figure in a murder for

ae

love.

Ada LeBouef, 40, Morgan City housewife and
mother of five children, and Dr. Thomas E. Dre-
her, 48, prominent Morgan City physician and fa-

ther of three, were to hang for the murder of |

Ada’s husband, James J. LeBoeuf.

The latter’s shotgunned and disemboweled body,

weighted down with 150 pounds of railrcad angle
iron, had been found by happenstance in Lake Pa-
lourde, north of Morgan City.

The jury apparently believed the ovibecution® s
contention that Mrs. LeBoeuf, using a boat outing
as bait, had lured her husband to a remote spot
where the middle-aged physician—described as
her paramour—had fired on him in the gathering

to lessen any possi-

had™ executed _ its

DREHER-LE BOEUF, Franklin, La. 2-1-1929
(Assorted articles from vertical Files, State Library, Baton Rouge.)

iimMmMes ica yune
Aug . Bil IS 7 Seat

darkness from se ther at ie ee ott
blasts through LeBoeuf’s left — aa ae the |

heart.

Then, the prosecution hareed. the ecchor had |
tied the iron to the body’ s head and feet, caliced 4

~~,

open the abdomen -

bility of floating
and dumped the
corpse into the lake.-

Beadle, the de--
fendant who was .
given a life’ sen-
tence, was in the
boat with the doc-
tor.

So, at 12:10 p. m.,
Feb. 1, 1929, Ada ~f
LeBoeuf walked
blindfolded from
her cell to the gal-
lows in the small &
jail that still stands
next to the Frank-
lin ccurthouse. As
she wept and
prayed, ‘‘Oh, Jesus,
I offer my life to
save my soul,” a
red - masked hang-
man pulled the
trapdoor lever. The
state of Louisiana

first* woman.
Moments later,

Dr. Dreher died on

the same gallows.

Mrs. wer Bonner LeBoeuf


Din

DEATH oF poctor at ADA COMES AT =D oF HARD-FOUOHE | BATTLES OVER PERIOD OF.
a : bc stew Ra BIGHTZEN eres S ; Th mas hE

be Se ay ae 4 ry
r rN : 4 + : * pe

“state ¥ Vos “Yorer stirred Before a8 rG ies Boon w This rine.

a acrtiy iy ‘Ia. oat “gs oe A seein toca rele ors his Nee led ye See
love, who chose to take te Snyder-Gray murder case as a ‘model of action when . Fea oaks
\ their mixed lives came to a tanthed were 6 anges & an ‘the senerese of the redq eat *

prac person jail here. “today. wee og . er an oem

"eee

Ca | :s a

The ran was Dr, Those Z. Dr cher of Morgan otty - —a vaiadieaneds reopoctetle B

aes leader of the aristocracy of that small town. The woman was Mre. Ada Bonner

S JeBoput vite. of 8 power. Piast Severin beaten. and mother of six oni asenss

Piel thea it he
Som hy * *

ne ange | a as 2
ark we BT yeti,
*

She was the ‘first white woman “hanged ‘in Louisiana. : ot even ‘in the ‘sts of
Spanish and French dominion has a white woman syer been executed. : in the state,
although in colonial days one Melly, Glass, an \ optorgen vas paneye in geessa
Square, Hev Orleans.» BP PLS ; ieee ta ea eat.

The double Se evitten bar attired aes
for Decenber 2hy, but saat was postponed on ‘account. of, Ghristase. eae ‘
‘ A: eee} ne yg Peer cae Bo es oe
Since the Serrleve ‘wes  eanted the state set oy board. hes ereresl a ‘former
decisions and recomsended life imprisonment for ene. Bact Govemnor Long refused
this recommanis tipo .

Copied eiaoe ey 3 :

‘Dr. Dreher, was ‘one of the leading citizens of Morgan City. Mre. LeBoeuf wes i
the wife of James LeBoeuf, city power pian} superintendent, They had been intimate
for some time, it was said, and LeBoeuf's suspicions had been aroused -- so much _
Bo ah he is said to have ‘threatened the life of the doctor.

At that time the Snyder-Oray case was wach in the newspapers. “these small “4
town people read about it. They arranged a meeting with leBoeuf for one night on
Lake Palourde, just outside of the town, “to talk things over." With them ane,
took James Beadle, a treprer. and ai80 a hired man for Drs Dreher. |

aS +. ae RE aed é * ; } “
When LeBoeuf 's peat Sexbhel. the  cmdaseous ois was raheh ‘to icakh, Pits slash-
ed his body with a knife, weighted 4% down with a Fas egen iron, Fowes.. bet hunired
fest out into the lake and tossed 4% overboard, - 7

Iuck was against them. lake Palourde was in flood at pt time, and they had
rowed in the wrong direction. LeBoeuf's body fell in shallow water, and when the
flood receded it was exposed to view. Had they rowed an equal distance in another
direction the body would have gone down 00 feet and the crime might have escaped
detections

Trial Was Sensational

Their trial was ‘the songation of the state, The little courtroom was » janned;
Located in the middle of the Bayou Teche country, exile land of the old Acadians,
it is a region of beautiful plantations houses, where for two centuries; pners has
been an ordered social life based on breeding amd culture. Sons and 4 nters of
the most distinguished families in the state “aktended the trial.


‘ ‘ sg hese, a iil is .
siccs, ee Ne R a n> Be RS Ai ta i: ORR onset
ee ar re Ph PY a ne eee ae ee —"
eT EE Bi eg eae: @ran,* * 4 ‘ _— cs TO si
: ‘ a

oat
Seg. ae

~ - Dreher Case cont'd 4 ont eek | Page 3

ee ute, s
: ligt ps

a bead Se
+o 4
ae

pat Na

omission to examine their sanity, Judge Simon |

_ gefused and, after hearing testimony, ruled that they were sane.

Ee! ae " BPs sete ¢
pS Mactan 67 0s sity Vee" Bere
ert Pk Xe

‘
, eam wens

the state supreme court vas Asked to pass on Judge Simon's decision, “he =
hearing was held January 4, one day hefore the prisoners were echeduled to hang.

"They had originally been esntenced to hang Decenber 22, bat the governor granted
.& reprieve until January 5, so the execution would not cast a cloud over the state —

| eaeg Justice Charles A, ONet1 ruled that the prisoners vore entitled to a
+ gtay of execution and instructed Sheriff Pecot not to proceed with the hanging.

2, = rm ’ %% ‘ 4

“Four associate justices, however, held that there were no grounds for a stay of — i,

|, execution and ordered the sheriff to hang the woman and. physicien, The chief
"> $astice wanted the execution postponed so the cour} could have an additional hear-
we ing on the mathere ae oe Revonah aes icy oe US

‘

Fen Se gah Sar. ad

ah

r

Sheriff Pecot did not kmow which order to follow and was greatly perplexed,
Barly the nex} morning, however, Governor Long relieved the sheriff's mind by an-
nouncing he would grant a reprieve. This was followed a few hours later by the
announcement that he would not grant the reprieve. The supreme court then asked
him to reprieve the prisoners until the court could decide whether the chief justice
i was right in issuing hig order over the majority of the court... The governor then
| grented a reprieve until Jamary 12, one week off, . \ ae

The supreme court ‘then decided that the chief justice hed no right to issue his
orders but granted defense attorneys permission to ask for a rehearing on the
decision. Governor Long granted another reprieve until today. ie

This availed nothing, however, for the court yuled again that the chief justice -
was wrong and denied a lunacy commission. The fight was carried again to the —-
United States Suprema court but the attorneys were unsuccessful in obtaining a stay
to permit the cours to pass on the action of the Lougaiena supreme cours. a

With only one hope left, the attorneys sought a habeas corpus writ. in federal
court on the ground that Mrs. LeBoeuf and Dr. Dreher had not been granted a faly
and impartial trial as guaranteed by the Constitution. They presented affidavits
from two jurors saying they were intimidated during the triel, OR eae eae

Judge Borah in district court and the United States court of appeals both re-
fused the writ yosterday and that coneigned the two to the gallows in view of the
governor's attitude. : :


De. Dreher, broad-shouldsred and handsome, sat At the trial tadle with his
pale, suffering wife, his sok, a medical collers stutent, and his two taurhters,
both of whom are colleze girls. Close beside him sat Mra, LeBoeuf, her face
heavily plastered in powder and touched up sharply with rougs. Her children were

too small to be presant.

The story that developed at the trial was sordid enough. It was told that the
doctor and his paramour had a system of signals, If Mrs. LeBoouf hunga pillow” — §
_ slip on a window sill, as if to air it, 1% meant that her husband was at home,

GET Beek nea Mae BS Ae aoa eS be a tate 5 apare eabe menos ae Si st A eer ten ae . 2G sae

ee

PTD i oe Bae ae aa ‘i Rae wile
aes, apt ccag 8g t

Sires Lieut ick arty os. Seen ieee VAN Mane ens cay ae eee
It was told that LeBoeuf, driven frantic by suspicion and jealousy, dressed in

eg ye

neeting to mrder Dr, Breher and bees|

|

: and Supreme court ves
asked for its opinion in the matter but it refused to review the case. —

Tha supreme court supported Judge Simon and the United States

Next, the attorneys eppealed to the state pardon board to recommend commtation
of the death sentence to. life imprisonment but the board refused by a two to one
vote. 2 : 7 |

Some more "new evidence" then was found and another appeal wag made to the
pardon board. A gatekeeper at Angola prison farm where Beadle 4s serving his sen-
tence told the board that Beadle had informed him that he killed LeBocuf. —

This tine the board recommended commtation to life imprisonnent by a two to

one vote, one member of the board changing his vote. The gatekeeper soon eaftar
was dismissed from Angola. , ae pee

Confronted by the pardon board recommendation, Governor Leng announced that he
would not commte the sentences. Under the law he can execute or ignore the board's
recommendations, He said if there had been any miscarriage of justice it ley in
not hanging Beadle, too. .

Insanity Plea Made,
An insanity plea then was resorted to by defense attorneys. They claimed Mra,
LeBoeuf and Dr. Dreher had become insane during their long confinement and asked


2/|%/5 |!

The first woman te be executed
in the state of Louisiana, and the
25th in the United States, was a
Morgan City housewife named Ada
LeBoeuf,

She and tier alleged paramour,
Dr. Thomas “. Dreher, walked to
the sceaffoid the early aflernoon
ot eb 1. 1929, for the slaying
of bec husband almost two years
before.

CARA

Snyder Case
The said to parallel
closely the celebrated Snyder case,
in which Mis Ruth sSnydec and

her Jover, ileary Judd Gray, con-

Cane Wad

spiced to muruer Mrs Snyder's
hiusband, Vhe state of New York,
after 2 sensational court battie,
demanded the death penaity for
the crue

The Suavder murder preceded
the JaBoeuf muider by only a
few morths and ws was said that
Ada TeBocui and Dr. Dreher, sup.
posedly involved ina sordid affair,
patternea there crime aflec the

Caliser Oe

Dubious Prominence.

Whether they did oc did not,
thei role as principals in’ the
LeBoeuf case brought them =a
dubious prominence. Their pte-
tures were displayed on front
pages across the country. The un-
predictable jargon of newspaper
headlines linked them as “Ada
and the Doc” There was even
a coarse ballad making the rounds,
which never quite achieved
the popularity of “Frankie and
Johnny.”

By Charles East

Yu. Ada

Dreher

maironly

of six children.

LeBoeuf

seemed miscast
melodramatic
housewife,

roles,

seribed as beautiful,

she walked

plain pink dress
Respected Leader

The doctor ess a respected lead-
er of small ts *n aristocracy.

and Dr.
in such
She was a
the mother
By no stretch of
the rmmagination could she be de-
During the
trial she kept her face “heavily
pasted in powder”; two years later
ty the gallows

=e TS

in a

He,

too, was married, and had chil
dren of his own. He was middle-
aged.

The great lovers of history, we
are told, arranged trysts by means
of candles as signals; Ada LeBoeuf
hung a pillow case on her window
sill when her husband was at
home. To the end she_ insisted
that the man accused of being
her paramour was just “the old
family doctor,” and he called her
“Miss Ada.”

No One Knows

How did these very ordinary
people become embroiled in so
sensational a crime? No one will
ever know the real beginning. It
was sometime, perhaps a_ long
time, before the death of James
J. TeBoeuf.

LeBoeuf was superintendent of
public utilities in Morgan City. He
was insanely jealous of his wife
and had twice driven her from
home. Once, it was related at the
trial, he dressed in her clothes
and drove about town in the dusk,

a shotgun at his side, hoping thet
Dr. Dreher would see him, mis
take him for Ada and incriminate
himself enough to justify deing
shot.

Death Blast

A few months later LeBoeuf
himself was blasted to death with
a shotgun on nearby Lake Pa-
lourde. He and his wife rowed
out into the lake the night of
July 1, 1927, and only his wife
came back. Dr. Dreher and a
trapper named Jim Beadle rowed
out into the lake the same night,

Later, on the witness stand, the
doctor testified that a rendezvous
had been arranged so that he and
the suspicious husband might “talk
things over.” The two skiffs met
in the middle of Lake Palourde,
TeBoeuf, he said, fired upon him
first, and then Beadle answered
his fire. He said the trapper
slashed the body with a knife and
weighted it down with angle irons,

At

:

(Continued on Next Page)
Fee & PP. 9s, % geo Singh


4 to Leake
arged that ihe jeal-
ad been jured out
o be murdered, and
t been for a piece
s body might never
nd.
rowed 200 feet out
thought was the
dropping the body,
at flood stage, how-
it turned out he
‘rong direction. The
shallow water and,
r receded, was dis-
avs jater.

tecommended
{, Dr. Dreher and
ved as the doctor’s
Friday,” were ail
the crime and
al in August. 1927.
ind guilty after the
edi only ence. Mercy
ded for the trapper,
subsequently sem
in prison.
wo were given the
> =6 A oJengthy court
1. When the jucge
int a new trial, an
aken to the state
It rujed in favor
dge. An appeal was
» the US Supreme
efused to review the

g Reversed

rnevs next appealed
irdon board for com-
e death sentence to
ent, but that appeal
d. They appesied te
cond time on a bonis
‘pce. however, and
rsed the earlier rul-

ucry P. Long refused
ward's recommenda-
me rupming out, 4

Ada LeBoeuf, the first woman to be executed im
Lovisiana and the 25th in the United States, was apparently ill-fitted
for the sensational rele she was to play. The state charged that she and
her husband rowed out onto a loke neor Morgan City one July night
in 1927, but that only she came back. Several days later hia body
wes found in the lake, weighted down with angle irons.

fenity commission hearimg was
souglil. ‘he attorneys claimed that
aince conviction the pair had be-
come insane Irom neryous sirein
over the spectacular and pro
longed begal conflict.

the state of

Heliday Pall

Gev. Lang had set Dec. 22, 1928,
for the date of execution, but be >
granted a reprieve until Jan. 5,
1929, because the deabie hanging
might cast a pall over

eR Hemme

N\

cs

—
y
*
Fal aS tae ng
Aa ae a Go ear
ae ant 4 i 4s
Bn ea eRe is ah at ‘
= gaiedss jasckaa SO

ail eae eae ey |

ee

e

pla a aE Bit ey ek laa ee ts

during the holidays. Meanwhile,
the sanity hearing was denied and
the state supreme court reviewed
the case to see whether the denial
was in order,

Chief dustee Charles O'Niell
ruled that the two were entitled
to a stay of execution, Four as
sociate justices ruled that there
were no grounds for a stay, and
the fight was on The governor
had ordered the execution for Jan.
5; now the chief justice ordered
it postponed. Which order was the
sheriff of St. Mary parish to fol-
low?

Another Reprieve

Gov. Long stepped in and grant-
ed another reprieve, until Jan. 12,
and a third one until Feb. 1, both
to give the supreme court time

‘fo reach a decision, It finally ruled

that the chief justice was oul of

"order in overruling the majority

opinion, and supported the trial
judge in denying a sanity hear-
ing.
On Jan. 31. 1929. the day be-
fore the execulion, the US circuit
court of appeals heard the Jast
appeal in the case and ruled there
were no grounds for a stay of ex-

| ecution. The sheriff of St. Mary

went to the prisoners. both lodged
in the parish jail at Franklin, and
brought them the news.

Do Something!

Mrs. LeBoeuf broke down. “Can't
you do something”’” she sobbed.
“Can't you get the governor to do
something’”

“There is no hope.” the sheriff
nak’ Gov Long had abready an
nounced (hat he had reviewed the
case carefully and that the doomed
pair would get no move reprieves.

Yielded to Pleas

A cold, biting wind blew over
the Teche country at dawn on the
day of execution, The doomed were
not to be permitted to see each
other on that day. but the shen
finally vielded to Vr. Drehers

One hour before the sppomted
time, he walked into her ceil «od
said calmly, “Goodbye, Miss Acla
I hope ] will meet you in heaven.”

“Goodbye, doctor,’ she replied
with a sinile.

Repe's Too Tight

She was to die first. When the
sheriff came to lead her to the
gallows,, she held back, erying,
“Out there? Out there?” The
hangman sat on a bench beside
the trap, waiting. Blindfolded now,
Ada LeBoeu! walked onto the trap.
Clinging frantically to the shoul
ders of the sheriff, she cried: “My
mother! My mother’ Oh, my Gow!
Isn't this a terrible thing? This is
murder itself’ That cope is tos
tight around my neck. Yes, i 08,
Oh, my God' My God! She strug.
gled. At 1205 p. m. she plunged
to her death.

Twenty minutes Jater, the dee-
tor walked out ento the trap He
looked about him oe little sadly
and said, “Poor Miss Ada has
gone.” Then he followed her.

Next to Husband

‘They buried Ada LeBoeuf next
to her husband in a Mergan Cily
cemeiery. She had wanted them
to. Wt owas drizzling ram and a
small band of friends, Joval fo her
to the last. followed the casket io
the grave. At about the same time,
the body of Dr. Dreher was beiox
buried a hundred miles tu the
north, in Clinton, his boyhood
home.

Jim Beadle. the “Good Mun Fit
day,” was already serving his hie
sentence on the penitentiary at An-
gela, ° Did they tell the truth
before they died?” he asked w 1e
porter. “I ain't complaining. They
tried me and found me guilty and
I] am here doing my best se I
can get out some time.” Ten years
juter he was set free for good
behavior.

Ada's aged mother war at the
cemetery, in We rem. Oinere os
an innocent gitl, she seid. OAn


ae

a

: PES ef A ‘ Sey mri
Pe ‘ vy eed Soke eh be a a a aa id sear: ae

"but, for. the loss ae the third angle irony ‘Le. Bouef's mudder
mt ght have. ,hever beon., discovereds ,. .byen the, most. careful scbemes ©
cannot guard against chancée But even if ‘Dreher!s plan to conceal

_, the body bad succeeded, he and «da were still dependent upon the

silence of the bired assassin, ‘Beadlee Sooner or later the three

‘conspirators would) have fallen out and the murder revealede"

THE MEDICAL MURDERER, Ly Rupprt Furhoads Published by Blek Looks,
Limited, 14 Sreat James Street, London, els ey OM ENGLAND. Copyrights,
1957. by Rupe rt Furncauxe on "age es Gl-d56,

ao oe Sa j ‘ £ »

ras Fgh hed a FELL

h¢

he bos ie ‘ bi ‘ ‘ hi x


TOM DREHER, ADA LE BOUEF AND JAMES BEADLE (Louisiana)

"Tom Dreher, a qualified doctor, used his medical knowledge onh
to try to conceal the murder of Jim Le Bouef. For the actual killin
he employed a method bingularly lacking in finesse,

"A doctor of mature years, Dreher, caught in the tangle of a
middlewaged love affair, was swept by his edulterous passion into
the murder of a man who had been his friend for twenty years. ie
WAS aS much a victim of Ada Le lsouef as her -husbande

"Dreher may have been persuaded to plan the murder for fear
that, unless he kilied first, he himself might be the victim; the
Le Bouefs and Drehers lived in the American Deep South where the
satisfaction of honour is seldom termed 'murdere! Jie knew that if
Jim Le Houéf came to Suspect that the rumours about his wife and the
doctor were true, by local custom he would be expected to kill the
fother!--man,

"While this custom arpears to leave the ‘other man!'in a diffie
cult position it does not seen to discourage adultery. It is doubt-
ful, however, if Dr. Dreher had very much choice in the matter for
Ada Le Boeuf was a very determined Womane

"The Le Bouefs and Drehers lived at Mason City on Lake Palourde
in the swampy bayou country of Louisiana, a land of dark, Slow-govirm
waters inhabited by people of fierce passions inherited from their
French ancestors. Jim Le Bouef was the chicf of the local power and
light company, the leading man of the town, Tom preher the community
doctor, well liked and respected. Both were fathers of grown-up
families,

"In December 1926 Aga Le Bouef began to suffer from Sick head=
abhes. after the first attack, Jim Le Bouef telepboned on arrival at
his office asking Dre Dreher to call on his Wifeée ‘#hen he returned
home Ada was much better but the headaches occurred with great regue
larity, with the result that Dre Dreher had to inake frequent calls at
the housee

"Jim Le bouef was fond of the bayou country and he frequently
went out fishing, hiring a pirogue from a fisberman named James bea-
Gees On one occasions finding beadle out, Le Bouef took a boat
intending to pay on his returne Returning in the evening he was met
by Beadle who in drunken fury accused him of Stealing the boat,
adding, 'Just because you are careless with your property, you can't
be free with minee! Asked what he meant, beadle replied, ‘I am
talking of your wifee If you are careless about her doings, I don't
Suppose you're careful whose pirogue fou take,!

"hen he told a friend of Wis wife about this remark, Le Boeuf
learned that there was considerable 890S8Sip in the town about Dreher'ts
frequent calls at his house, He wxplained that Dreher was calling
professionallye He was his best firned and tie gossip was absurde

When he told Ada she laughed at the storye %henever she had a mi gran:

all Dreher could do was to give her an injectione It could not be
cured, but only relived,e |

"But the gossip went on and it took a curious turne Both Jim
and ida Le Bouef were told that the other had been seen bathing naked
in the bayou, Ada with Dre Dreher and Jim with a red-headed woman of
the bayous., When the story about Ada and Dreher was repeated to Jim
Le Bouef by someone else he declaered that he did not believe ite iF
it were true, he swore he would kill Tom Dreber even though he was
his best Friende We can now turn from gossip to events,


(DREHER, Tom, L® ECUEF, Ada, &@ BEADLE, James = Continued)

"On the 29th of June, 1927, a youth walking by the shore of
Lake Paloufde noticed three, railway angle irons in the cleft of a
thee. Thinking oné ould niake a ‘fine Splash he’ threw it into the
lake. ‘When he camp by’ tho’, tree threo days later he noticed that the

other two irons had fonee a

nt "On the first of July. Jim and ada Fowed' across’ the lake to visi
Adats brother. They, Lert: 4pott* midnight for theit’ row home, Jim say
ing he bad’ to he up “eatly s& he was”, godt to New Orléans 6n business

"Five gays Jater.a party out on the lake feund the bal€-submer,
body of a mans They-tould hot ‘pull it‘out of the water as it was
wired down. When the Police’ camé” they found that the Lody tas Secu
to two railway angle tron3} which tftAad not been quite heavy enobgh tc
prevent 1t from floating to the surfacee The man was unrecognizable
he had been shot to death with a shotguns Slashes on tue stomach
Showed that an attempt had been mace to reduce the bupyancy by ree
leasing body gasas.e

"Asked about her husband Ada Le Douef scid at first that he was
away on business, and then that he had run away with tie red-headed
woman from the bayoue. Dut the presence of that Lady in ber hut
Sugrested her story was untruee ada declared that the body found ir
the lake could not be that bf her husband end she refused to view it
for purposes of identificatione

"However, the body was definitely identified as Jim Le bouef by
his dentist. The police, hearing of the gossip that lad been going
around, visited James Readle to whom they traced ths tory of Jim Le
Liouef and the redeheaded woman bathing in the nudee Ue said he had
been paid by Ada Le Bouef to say so when he saw her and Dr. Dreher
in the water.

"To the police Ada Le Wouef said that Dre Breer had been calli
only to give her prescriptions for her headaches but they proved she
was lying by checking at chemists! shops, none of which had made up
Such a prescription for her, She then changed ver story to say that
when She and Jim were returning across tne lake from the visit to he
bwother's house, he had been ambushed and shot by two unknown men in
a piroguee It was too dark to see who they were. Fearing that it
would be said that Dre Dreher was the killer she kept silente

"When one Suspect starts telling stories the game is upe The
police have something to ga on or to disprovee The next step is
sheok tactics, The police visit the other suspect and accuse him of
murder saying, perhaps, that the other conspirator hus confessede

"When the police accuSed Dr, Vreher of tie murder of Jim Le Lou
he confessed at oncee He had planned the murder but James Lexdle
had done the Shootings. «ida had sent him a note telling bim to act
that night. They had already placed the angle irons reedy to concea
the crimee Beadle, who hated Jim Le wouef, readily iegreed to do the
shooting, and he and the doctor bad lain in wait on the lakee «as
Le Pouef's priozue glided past, Leadle fired tivo stots into Jim's he

"At the trial of the three alleged murderers, (eadle i eekeeed
that preher did the shooting. Iie had no knowledge of tie doctor's
intention and was morely rowing the boat. #11 three were found
gsuilty of murder in the first degreg,and u.da wid ure Lbreher were
sentenced to be hangede Asked to grant a reprieve to Mrse Le isouef,
on the grounds that no woman bad ever been executed in Louisiana,
Gover Huey Long taptares that a reprieve would bLe'a mockery against
decency and order,!' and the two were hanged together ou the Ist of

February 1929.


ae
*
4

#3 IN SERIES:

beneath a canopy of huge trees Silently strangling
in the grip of gray Spanish moss. The stream, dark as
sin, unruffled as a mirror, moves as sluggishly as the alli-

T= WATERS of the Bayou Teche run black and deep

8 gators which infest it, flows imperceptibly into the Atcha-

falaya River, thence to the Gulf of Mexico.

-In 1926, Morgan City, in St. Mary’s Parish, Louisiana, was

a somnolent community, slow-moving, humid and emi-
nently respectable: It is situated on the swampy edge of
Lake Palourde, which is part of the bayou itself. :
- The inhabitants of Morgan City were quiet folk, solid and
contented. They attended to their various businesses com-
petently, yet without frenzied bustle. They had no intention
of wearing themselves out amassing fortunes they couldn’t
take with them.

- They loved their wives, respected their parents, sent their

‘children to school and attended church regularly. If they

were addicted to the major vices, it was not apparent to the

' naked eye. If they drank, in this era of prohibition, they

did so discreetly. __

. Their immediate neighbors, the dwellers in the bayou,
possessed almost none of the virtues of the denizens of Mor-
gan City. The Bayou Teche was populated by trappers, alli-
gator hunters, fishermen, moonshiners : and those whose
occupation was not at: once apparent, not even to Sheriff
Charles L. Pecot who checked up on them from time to
time, :

»The people of the bayou were rough, tough, with little
respect for the law and none whatever for the 18th Amend-
ment, the Prohibition Law. They were heavy drinkers and
crack shots, They had quick tempers and profane tongues
and their opinion of the Morgan City folk was equaled only
by Morgan City’s opinion of them. All were colorful, hard-
bitten characters. Two of them were unique.

-James Beadle was a fisherman, a trapper and an alligator
hunter, who sometimes engaged his prey with his bare
hands. He was 45 years old, with a wiry body and a com-
plexion the color of leather.

He lived in a shack at the black water’s edge, drank

THE

CORPSE

COULD SWIM

by D. L. CHAMPION

19


1e had
Yo one
formed

iughing

nvened
nen he
ed for-
if Sel-
{ within
n would
fifth of
‘ict At-
‘st went

was in
yeir hair

ye in his
r to dis-

enough,
h always
yney. But
-e banks,
ants. He

g a route
00 «miles.
Arkansas,
-ssee, they
y dumped
and went

Seltenrich
wrote his

In fact, it
juatrain of
rary world
» the police

wife,

yr this trib-
t he was fe
are. And by
en plastered
; and it was
cided to go

e conclusion
1 themselves
‘iginally had
- could easily
ay.
tev drove the
‘ery store of
parked it at
' There Sel-
said, “I want
of stuff and
forty dollars
sh it?”
ck. Then he
He said, “I
recks only for
the pair more
I've seen you

picture of the
er, but Kerry
nent. However,
inerve Selten-

iid hastily. “?’

t mild, became
pair ignore the
ved and hail a
k him as most
number of the
th the Mobile

i car drove up.
-- story, then
he found

|

|
H
|

‘\“Look,” he said at last,

a card with Seltenrich’s poem written on
it. He squinted at the title. He said, “Carol
is the name of the wife of this jail-break
guy from Louisiana, this Seltenrich.”

He obtained the taxicab number from
Kerry and got in touch with the cab com-
pany. He learned, a half-hour later, that the
taxi had taken the pair to Mobile’s airport:
However, since there were no planes
scheduled to leave within the next two
hours, they had ordered the driver to take
them to the railroad station instead.

A swift check at the station brought to
light the fact that a young couple answer-
ing the Seltenrichs’ descriptions had board-
ed a-crack train headed for Miami. The
Mobile police checked the timetable, then
telephoned to Atmore, Alabama, some fifty
miles away. There the train was stopped
while two state troopers boarded it.

With no trouble at all, they found the
Seltenrichs, clad in fine new raiment, in
possession of gleaming new luggage. They
were held in the Atmore jail while Alex-
andria was notified. Stanley Seltenrich
waived extradition and the handcuffed pair
was returned to the courthouse from which
Stanley had rescued his wife exactly ten
days before.

The authorities brought the pair to im-
mediate but separate trials. Seltenrich was
arraigned first before Judge A. V. Hund-

ley, He was charged with 25 counts of for-
gery and one of aggravated jail break. In
a subdued voice he pleaded guilty.

Judge Hundley sentenced him to one year
in jail on each count, a total sentence of
“twenty-six years, Seltenrich didn’t wince
at this, but he entered a tearful plea on
behalf of his wife. , ia

“I took her out of jail at gunpoint, just

like I held up the jailer,” he said. “She!

wrote me a letter, telling me not to do it
and it was my influence that got her mixed
up with these bad checks,”

He wept when the judge indicated that
Carol could expect little mercy at the
hands of the court.

She was charged only with aggravated
jail break. But she now was 17 years old
and had been 17 at the time Seltenrich had
taken her from her cell. She now discov-
ered what her ten days’ freedom had cost
her.

As a juvenile charged with forgery she
could at most have served 60 days. Now,
she no longer was a juvenile in the eyes of
the law. She stood at the bar charged with
a felony.

She pleaded guilty and was promptly
sentenced to serve 10 years at the state
penitentiary at Angola.

It is the locksmiths who are laughing

last.< 5 i le a i OO®

The Corpse
Could Swim

(Continued from page 21)

But not for lack of trying. It gnawed at
his mind. Finally he paid a visit to Philo-
mena Brown. Mrs. Brown was a woman
who had known Ada Le Boeuf almost all
of her life. They were intimate friends.

Le Boeuf put his problem in Philomena
Brown’s lap. He told her of the clash with
Beadle and, on this occasion, he omitted
no detail. “It’s probably nonsense,” he
said, “but I can’t get Beadle’s remark out
of my mind. I’m really worried. Is there
anything you can tell me?”

Mrs. Brown looked grave. “Jim,” she’
said, “I’ve heard some gossip about Ada
lately. But, of course, it’s a lie. And I’ve
been doing my best to put a stop to it.”

“But who’s the man?” Le Boeuf asked.

“There isn’t any man, naturally. It’s
only malicious small-town gossip. Some
of these women are saying that Tom Dreher
is visiting your house too often.”

Le Boeuf was stunned. “But Ada’s been

| having migraine headaches,” he said. “‘Tom’s
| treating her. Besides, he’s the best friend
‘I have in all Morgan City,”

Mrs. Brown nodded: “I know. But you
| 2an’t stop gossip. It’s vicious and wicked.”
| Le Boeuf paced the floor thoughtfully.
“IT don’t want to
talk to Ada about this, but I think she
should know. Will you mention it? Ask
lher to be discreet, Warn her of what’s
joeing said.”

This Philomena Brown agreed to do.

Ada Le Boeuf took the matter lightly.
She said, “Of course, Tom’s been here
when Jim was away. He’s been treating
my headaches. Tom and I have grown
children. This gossip is the silliest thing
I've ever heard. I’m just going to ignore
it completely.”

Mrs. Brown duly reported this conver-
sation to Jim Le Boeuf. Le Boeuf, con-
sidering that the affair now was out in the
jpen, spoke of it to Ada.

“You know,” he said, “these headaches
if yours seem quite serious. I think I’ll get

a
asus

patiently. “I’ve told you that before.”

@ specialist up from New. Orleans. If he
can cure you, Tom Dreher won’t have to
make so many calls. Maybe we can stop
gossip and headache at the same time.”

Ada Le Boeuf. did not consider this a
good idea. “It’s migraine,” she said. “Tom
says it can’t be cured. . Only relieved. He
gives me these prescriptions and comes here
personally to give me a hypodermic when
it’s very bad. You could hardly have a
man come up from New Orleans each time
I needed a shot.” ;

That argument appeared to be reason-
able. James Le Boeuf shrugged his shoul-
ders. “All right,” he said, “we'll forget it.
The people who really matter in town will
recognize the malicious talk for what it is.
We'll forget the whole thing.”

Unfortunately, it wouldn’t stay forgotten.

A month went by. Jim Le Boeuf attended
to his business. Mrs. Le Boeut suffered
from headaches. And Dr. Dreher attended
her. Morgan City was serene as always.
Then one hot morning Le Boeuf received
a telephone call in his office. Mrs. Thomas
Dreher was on the other end of the wire.”

“Jim,” she said urgently, “can you come
over to Tom’s office right away?”

It was inconvenient, but the woman
sounded distressed. Le Boeuf left his desk
and drove to the doctor’s office

Dr. Dreher was sitting at his desk, an ex-
pression of grave concern on his face. Mrs.
Dreher was standing by the window, hold-
ing a sheet of yellow Paper in her hand.

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As she turned to greet Le Boeuf, he noticed
that she had been crying.

She said, “Jim, read this!’ She thrust
the sheet of paper into his hand. It was
lined paper which had been torn from a
pad. The handwriting was a childish scrawl.
The message was unsigned. : :

It read: “Two nights ago there was a lady

bayou. One of them was Ada Le Boeuf. One
of them was your husband. What kind of
treatments is he giving her out there?”

Jim Le Boeuf put the note down on the
desk. There was a blind and bitter rage
within him.
they’re at it again.”

Mrs. Dreher snapped, “Again? You mean
this happened before?”

“Nothing has happened,” Dr. Dreher said

If you have trouble with plates that
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yr?

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“He's right,” Le Boeuf agreed. “Don’t

im

re emehin pwc me mA MA ce Act tr

79

20

Ada’‘s beauty had flowered with time, but she began to suffer headaches,

prodigious quantities of corn whiskey and was a crack shot,
quick to resent an insult. Although he owned few worldly
goods, his sense of possession was that of a parsimonious
magpie. ; : :

- At the other end of the bayou, six miles from the un-
painted shanty occupied by James Beadle, lived the witch.
Of course, Emmy Mae Hawks wasn’t a genuine witch... How-
ever, among the bayou people, she had that reputation.

Externally, she didn’t resemble a witch. She was neither _
old nor grizzled. She wasn’t ugly and her customary method

of transportation was a pirogue, not a broom. She was in
her early 30s. Her hair was red, her features regular. Her

temper was violent and when she was in its grip her vo- -

cabulary was as shocking as her voice was loud.

Three years before, she had married a trapper almost
twice her age who had been reputed to have several thou-
sand dollars hoarded in his cabin. It also was alleged. that
old Ephraim Hawks wasn’t quite all there. eee

Six months after marrying Emmy Mae, he wasn’t there
at all.

He was found, one dank winter morning, ‘on the-bank of.
the Atchafalaya River with a huge hole in his head, a shot-
gun grasped firmly in his right hand, Two deputy sheriffs
called upon the widow and informed her that she was under
arrest for murder. i :

‘Emmy Mae announced her opinion of sheriffs’ deputies in.

ear-splitting, obscene language. She was taken off, never-
theless, to the parish jail in Franklin, where she swore that
her elderly husband: had been brooding and doubtless had
taken his own life. The coroner was compelled to admit that
such was possible, Emmy Mae was released.

She returned to the bayou, where she lived in poverty .

and loneliness. She drank heavily and permitted no.one to
come near her cabin, save a few thirsty cronies, One of these
was James Beadle. She never worked, but she always ap-
peared to have enough cash to pay her bills. Perhaps she

had come upon the hidden fortune her husband was reputed ,

to have accumulated.

She still was an attractive girl. Her body was slim, her
figure. good. Her face was pretty, although there was a cer-
tain hardness about it. é

She had few friends among the bayou people and none in
Morgan City. The Morgan City folk considered her eccen-

increased by each new rumor of scandal

,

tric and deft her alone, as they did all the bayou
people, ‘

--Then, in December, 1926, Ada Le Boeuf began to suffer

a series of sick headaches, a development destined to un-
settle the even lives of both the Morgan City and the bayou
folks, i

” -Ada’s husband, James Le Boeuf, a descendant of the
French Acadians who had been exiled to Louisiana two cen-
turies before, was perhaps the most successful man in Mor-

.- an City. He was superintendent of the Morgan City Light
and Power Company, a utility which owned. subsidiary es-
tablishments all across the state.

Le Boeuf, a handsome, powerful man, accustomed to au-
thority, had married Ada 25 years befére. They had five
attractive children of various ages. Ada now was approach-
ing 50, a chronological fact not at all visible to the naked

_ eye. She was extremely géod-looking, tall and of graceful
bearing. Her eyes were dark and her lips full. She spoke
softly, with a caressing southern drawl. : :

The married life of the Le Boeufs had been uneventful
and serene as a summer day. They were the social leaders
‘of Morgan City, There had been no ugly moments in their
lives. No breath of scandal ever had touched them. é

It was a. week before Christmas when Ada Le Boeuf suf-
fered her first attack of migraine. It struck as she sat at the
‘breakfast table with her husband. It was almost 9 in the
morning and he. gulped his coffee with one eye on the
ormolu clock which ticked on the mantelpiece.

Ada uttered_a little ‘gasp, blinked her eyes and put her
hands to her temples. :

-Jim Le Boeuf. put down his cup. “What’s the matter,
honey?” 4

““A headache. I’ve suddenly. got a terrible sick headache.
It hurts very badly.” :

Jim Le Boeuf expressed sympathy. He offered to stay
home from the office and minister to his wife.

_ This suggestion she emphatically turned down. “I don’t
need you. I’ll call Tom Dreher. He'll give me something to
stop it,” she said.

'- Dr. Thomas E. Dreher, a medical graduate of Tulane Uni-
‘versity, had come to Morgan City, where he had set up his
practice, more than 20 years before. He had married, raised
two girls and a boy and had prospered. Both the doctor and

28

1or of scandal

the bayou

vegan to suffer
estined to un-
and the bayou

endant gf the
slana two cen-
1 man in Mor-
gan City Light
subsidiary es-

stomed to au-
They had five
Vas approach-
to the naked
id of graceful
ill. She spoke

en uneventful
social leaders
nents in their
hem.
Le Boeuf suf-
she sat at the
most 9 in the
e eye on the
ce.

and put her

5 the matter,
ick headache.
fered to stay

wn. “I don’t
something to

’ Tulane Uni-
ad set up his
“-~‘ad, raised

octor and

SSO eee

his wife, prominent in local society, were intimate friends -

of the Le Boeufs.

Jim Le Boeuf rose from the table. ‘Sure,’ he said. “Tom’ ll
give you some pills to stop it. I'll call him up as soon as I
get to the office.”

Ada Le Boeuf, her head still in her hands, uttered a faint
groan which her husband took to be an expression of min-
gled pain and assent.

He said,: “Goodbye, then. And I hope you'll feel better.”

As he strode from the house, Ada Le Boeuf lifted her
head. Perhaps her head still ached, but there was.a smile
on her red lips.

That evening, Le Boeuf was pleased to find that his wife’s
headache had vanished.

“Tom Dreher gave me a prescription,” she said, “and. it
worked like magic. I’ve felt fine all day.”’.

But as the weeks went by, it became evident that the cure
was not permanent. Ada Le Boeuf underwent several pain-
ful attacks of migraine. Sometimes they occyrred when her
husband wasn’t at home, either during the day, when he was
at the office, or at night on occasions when he was out of
town on power company business.

This was something which James Le Boeuf never dude
It later became apparent that someone else did.

Now Jim Le Boeuf was fond not only of his wife and
children. He also was fond of the dark waters of the bayou.
As a child he had played on the swampy banks of Lake Pa-
lourde and the black, mysterious water exercised a ‘strong
fascination for him.

Whenever it was possible he ignored his car. and trav-
eled by-pirogue. A pirogue, the principal.means of transpor-
tation for the bayou folk, is a heavy affair, shaped like an
elongated, symmetrical leaf and hewn from the trunk of
a single tree. It is clumsy, difficult to maneuver, even when
handled by an expert. Jim Le Boeuf liked nothing better
than to set out through the bayou.in a hired pirogue.

Spring comes early in the Bayou Teche country and late
on a February afternoon, when the air was languorous, the
sun warm and the butterflies trying their fragile wings, Jim
Le Boeuf strode along the bank of Lake Palourde. He. fol-
lowed a narrow trail among the thick tree trunks until he
came to the shanty of James Beadle.

In the past Le Boeuf often:had hired one of Beadle’s pi-
rogues for a trip through the darkness of the bayou. Now he
knocked at the door of the shack, expecting to do so again.
There was no answer. Beadle apparently wasn’t at home.

Le Boeuf walked down to the shore where two of Beadle’s
pirogues were pulled up on the bank, their oars shipped. He
shoved one of them into the still water and hopped in. After

all, he was a regular customer. He could pay Beadle for the .

boat’s hire when he returned. It never occurred to him that
there was anything irregular in his action. .

Le Boeuf rowed lazily through the ebony stream. Spanish
moss brushed against his face. An indolent alligator stirred
in the mud and yawned toothily. Wild orchids grew between
the huge tree boles at the water’s edge.

Two hours later, Le Boeuf returned to Beadle’s shanty.
He sprang from the pirogue and pulled the boat up on shore.
He turned and faced the shack. “Jim,” he yelled. “Jim
Beadle, are you there?”

‘Jim Beadle was there. The door of the cabin opened and

Beadle emerged. He was carrying a shotgun, its black
muzzle aimed at Le Boeuf’s heart.
“Put that gun down,” said Le Boeuf. “It might go off.” «
“It will go off,” Beadle said loudly, “unless you can give a
damned good explanation -of why you took my pirogué
without permission.”

Le Boeuf shrugged in surprise. “Why, you -weren’t here,

Jim. So I just took it. I figured I’d pay you for its use when
I got back. What’s wrong with that? Tell me what I owe
you for it?”

Beadle came closer. He did not lower the gun. Le Boeuf
could see that the trapper’s eyes were bloodshot, his face
unshaven. There was a powerful, sour odor of bad whiskey
on his breath, but he held the shotgun with a steady hand.

“If anyone touches,my property without permission,”
Beadle said, “I’ll kill them.” ;

“You're drunk,” Le Boeuf said. ‘“Put-down that gun. I’m
willing to pay you. I’ve done no harm.”

Beadle squinted along the gun barrel. He said, “It ain’t
a matter of doing harm. It’s a matter of respecting prop-
erty. Just because you’re careless with yours, you can’t
make free with mine.”

“Youre talking like a fool. And what do you mean by
saying I’m careless with my property?”

“I’m. talking about your wife,” Beadle retorted. “If you’re
careless about her doings, I don’t expect you’d be careful
whose pirogue you take. I’ll let it go this time. But touch
my_ stuff again and I swear I’ll kill you. Now, get off my
land.”

“Wait a naistute, What do you mean about my, wife?”

But Jim: Beadle had dropped that subject. “Get,” he

- said again. “Get off my land while you're still alive.”

Le Boeuf turned and walked along the dark trail which
lead away from the bayou. By the time he arrived home

-he was a most disturbed man. It is upsetting enough to

engage in inane argument with a drunk and infinitely more
so to spend’ ten minutes staring at the wrong end of a
shotgun. But it was ‘Beadle’s cryptic remark about Ada
which worried Le Boeuf most of all.

",Le Boeuf’s first inclination was to dismiss the ‘matter

from his mind. If Beadlé had intended to hint that Ada had
been unfaithful to her marriage vows—well, that was un-
thinkable. Even if the utterly impossible had somehow
happened, how would an ignorant swamp rat like Beadle
know it?

Le Boeuf made no mention of the affair to his wife. The
following morning he told his colleagues at the power com-
pany of his run-in with Beadle and the trapper’s threat to
kill him. He did not repeat Beadle’s remark concerning
Ada.

He did not forget it, either. (Continued on page 79)

A young man’s casual prank frustrated his evil plan


were un-
sential de-

Pecot was
-Boeuf was

ne same jail
Ss. LeBoeuf,
line of in-
long before
igly rumors
ice between
ye murdered

- jn a case of
-ook a fiend-
her and Mrs.
y the entire
possible that
such a butch-

ve years old,
wealthy; Mrs.
notherly soul.
stood Beadle.
ty, unreliable.
g definite
_ suspected
isgressions.
gical murderer.
Dreher that his
; the saving of
n, explained his

Pecot discussed
For still longer
Jeadle, cross-eX-
_ But his story

were confronted
on. Someone was
- Dr. Dreher and
d man. At Pecot’s
ynted the doctor
, the swamp rat's
, return still an-
ire, to be exact.
LeBoeuf, she had
Dreher on Poulard
house that night.
husband with her.
pected her and the
and she wanted to
he malicious gossip
-. However, she ad-
not told her hus-
the nocturnal boat
1a chance when Dr.
another boat.
out to them: “That

| replied: “What are
, dirty ——!”
it warning, he fired at
two more pistol
hed over in the
|. Mrs. LeBoeuf
happened after that.
ry was identically the
major detail. It was
at it. was Beadle who
ting—that the swamp

rat had told him he was going to get
LeBoeuf at the first opportunity.

In his first story he denied that he was
in the same boat with Beadle. But under
severe cross-examination he finally ad-
mitted that he was.

Pecot and Gilmore had but one alter-
native. They sought.and secured indict-
ments against their three suspects. On
July 18th they were held without bail
cn a charge of first degree murder. And
alj three pleaded Not Guilty.

Shortly afterwards, Beadle intensified
and still further complicated’ the case.
He employed his own counsel, Rene H.
Himel, of Morgan City and announced
that he would aid the prosecution against
Doctor Dreher and Mrs. LeBoeuf.

For the defense of the other accused
couple there was arrayed the finest legal
talent in Louisiana, headed by R. F.
Walker, former Speaker of the Louisiana
House of Representatives.

For the full twenty days of the sensa-
tional trial the courtroom was stormed
by curious, morbid, emotional throngs.
On the one side were arrayed the repre-
sentatives of wealth and position; on the
other the common people massed in de-
fense of the swamp rat.

A hundred witnesses testified to the
good name, character and reputation of
Dr. Dreher and Mrs. LeBoeuf. For two
days these witnesses paraded before Judge
James D. Simon and the jury. And then
came the prosecution’s turn, |

They brought the ugly rumors con-
cerning the doctor and Mrs.” LeBoeuf
into the cold, pitiless light of that court-
room; revealed the tawdry details of
their clandestine meetings in the hovel of
a Negress on the fringe of Poulard
swamps.

The testimony created a sensation and
it was only with difficulty and under the
threat that he would clear court, that.
Judge Simon ‘maintained order.

The prosecution then gambled all on
a-daring move. They put Beadle on the
stand. The swamp rat was emaciated and
worn. But he faced his one-time confed-
erates with a contemptuous sneer. At the
first question put to him, a minor sensa-
tion was created in the crowded court-

room when Mrs. Beadle fainted.

The swamp rat told his story, swiftly,
compellingly, as he had told it to Pecot
and Gilmore so marty times before. And
then: he submitted to the most ruthless
and bitter cross-examination in the crim-
inal annals of the State of Louisiana.

But his story held up. Attorney Walk-
er, for the defense, was unable to shake
him or to shatter his testimony.

The prosecution proceeded with their
case, started by reading the first con-
fession of Dr. Dreher and Mrs. LeBoeuf.
The defense objected, claiming that it
was obtained under duress and emotional
strain.

District Attorney Gagan, who was:in
charge of the prosecution, snorted.

} wy eb Ala #4 3 Aa he ute SS a ciate a
‘ § 2 that WA >

$s oe Gara na
Ee ielags Ste ea ie aa

tS Aged

‘American Detective

“Emotional , stress?” he exploded. “A

’ woman of intelligence and sound mind,

confessing to something they didn’t do?
Bosh!”

The defense objection was over-ruled.

At a signal from Gagan, the clerk
read into the records the confessions the
couple had given, with their meander-
ings, their retractions, their changes.
And then in contrast to the conflicting

statements of the pair, Beadle’s state-;

ment was read. It was fantastic, unreal,
but yet no one had been able to shatter
it. ;

At this stage of the trial District At-
torney Gagan threw his final bombshell
—a bombshell that exploded in the court-
room like the stroke of doom. “I have a
confession taken after all these,” he said.
“The confession was made by Mrs.
LeBoeuf and corroborated by Dr. Dre-
her.”” He started to read:

“J, Ada LeBoeuf, make this confession
of my. own free ‘will and because I be-
lieve it to be for the best. On the evening
of. July first, I called Doctor. Thomas
Dreher and told him that I had arranged
to go boat riding down toward the
Negro schoolhouse, north of Morgan
City, with my husband, James LeBoeuf.
Dr. Dreher said he would meet us, for me
to send him a note confirming every-
thing. I sent him the note.

“My husband and I Went to the home
of my brother, Emory Bonner, near Mor-
gan City. I borrowed my brother’s boat.
Mr. LeBoeuf took his own. [had told him
that I wanted to row, too. I took the
other boat because I didn’t want to be
in the boat when my husband was
killed... .”

The District Attorney paused dra-
matically. There was not a sound from
the ‘crowded courtroom. Then Gagan
pounded the desk before him, repeated

‘the last sentence.

“I didn’t want to be in the boat when
my husband was killed!”

Gagan flung his arm at the jury, at
Judge Simon, at the courtroom, in a
passionate gesture, picked up the con-
fession once more and continued to read.

“When we got to the schoolhouse I
saw another boat coming around the cor-
ner of the building. I heard Dr. Dreher
say: “That you, Jim?’ and my husband

85

said: ‘Yes, is that you, Doctor?’ Then
there were two shots from Doctor Dre-
her’s boat. I think Jim Beadle fired them,
because Dr. Dreher was standing up and
he told me that he had gotten Beadle
to shoot Jim.”

District Attorney Gagan paused, put
down: the confession. He continued in a
hard voice: ‘““When-Doctor Dreher saw
this, he.said that it was all correct, that
Beadle had fired the shots but that
LeBoeuf had fired first.” He waved his
arms dramatically again. “This woman’s
confession, heartless and cruel as it is
and unbelievable—must be true. She
said she went to see her husband killed.
How can you deny it?”

For a full minute an ominous silence
hung heavy in the courtroom. Then the
silence was broken by a sinister hum that
rose into a fierce rumble. Judge Simon
rapped for order, ordered the courtroom
cleared. The defendants were hurried
out under the escort of police officers.

This point in the trial was reached on
August the twenty-third. For the suc-
ceeding two days the defense tried vainly
to have the confessions thrown out. And
after they had failed they rested their
case, Their attorney, R. F. Walker, en-
tered denials. However, he did not call
his clients to the stand for this ordeal.

On August the twenty-fifth, the jury
retired. Their deliberations were com-
paratively short, considering the impor-
tance of the trial. Four hours later, late

- in the afternoon, the foreman knocked

on the door, announced that a verdict
had been reached.

Bailiffs hurried out for the defend-
ants, waiting in jail cells. Dr. Dreher was
the first to enter. He was pale and his
hands trembled. Leaning heavily on the
arm of a matron, Mrs. LeBoeuf followed
him. And last came Beadle, his furtive
eyes half-closed.

A few moments later, Judge Simon en-
tered, his fine face clearly showing the
strain of the trial.

“Gentlemen, have you reached -a ver-

dict?” he asked.
“We have.”
“What is that verdict?”

An electric tension vibrated in the
courtroom as the foreman edged forward

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86

ir. the jury box. His face was ashen, his
lips quivered and his voice shook.

“We find the defendants guilty of
murder in the first degree, with a recom-
mendation of life imprisonment for
James Beadle.”

Two days later, on August the
twenty-seventh, they were sentenced.
Mrs. LeBoeuf and Dr. Dreher first;
Beadle later.

“To be hanged by the neck until you
are dead, and may God have mercy on
your souls.”

There was absolutely no emotion on
Mrs. LeBoeuf’s face when she heard her
sentence.. Her head was up, her eyes
stared straight ahead. The doctor, also,
kept his chin up. Only a faraway, in-
scrutable smile that played over his worn

features told that he had heard.

James Beadle, according to the recom-
mendation of the jury, was sentenced to

American Detective

life imprisonment. He took his sentence
quietly, triumphantly, as if he had vin-
dicated himself.

And thus ended what was perhaps the
most famous criminal trial in the history
of Louisiana. But that was not the end
of the drama. The fact that the first
white woman in Louisiana’s history had
been sentenced to death, coupled with
her social prominence, attracted nation-
wide attention. Though the trial had

gone against him, Attorney Walker did

not give up. He appealed the verdict, but

- failed. Still fighting for the lives of his

clients, he made an attempt to reach the
United States Supreme Court. And on
January the eleventh, 1929, after a year
and a half of bickering, Govertior Huey
P, Long, now United States Senator,
granted the lovers a reprieve on the very
day that they were to have been hanged.

But the stay was only temporary. On

‘January the twenty-eighth, the United

States Supreme Court announced that it
had no jurisdiction in the case; that the
trial had been conducted according to
the statutes and that these statutes made

‘no distinction between exacting the life

of a woman or exacting the life of a man.

Three days later, on January 3lst,
1929, Governor Long received a plea for
a stay of execution, scheduled for Febru-
ary Ist, at daybreak. This time, how-
ever, he refused to intervene. Walker
still did not give up hope. At the last
minute he petitioned the Federal Court
ot Louisiana but without success.

The last hope had vanished.

At dawn the following morning, Mrs.
Ada LeBoeuf stepped into the drizzle of
a bleak prison yard and marched to the
gallows. Seven minutes later Dr. Dreher
followed her.

And with the springing of the gallows’
trap for the second time that morning,
the LeBoeuf.case was closed!

The Case of the Barking Dog

in my mind, and I wanted time to think
things over.

Beck brought me in the grip of a shot-
gun the next morning. It had been found
in the lane, right near where the killer’s
car had stood, and it was the right
weapon all right, but there was no use
trying for finger-prints. It had been
found by a German laborer and turned
over to Voshell before Beck got it, so
it had been handled by nearly every-
one. It was an additional check on the
murderer’s nervousness that he dropped
it when he broke the gun after killing
Brunen. ;

Cain came in a little bit later with
what he had collected, which was plenty.
He reported, that the neighbors across
the road said Brunen had broken up
Hazel’s marriage, which checked with
the old lady’s story, and also that there
had been a good many violent quarrels
in the family. On Christmas Day they
had had a particularly tough time; some-
one had fired shots in the house and the
police came, The dog ordinarily did a lot
of barking, but they hadn’t heard him

bark the previous night, nor had they '

heard the shot that killed Brunen. I
called Beck at Burlington right away;
he confirmed the story of the shots.
Brunen had accused his wife of infidelity
with this Ward, the lot superintendent.
There had been a red-hot quarrel, both
of them pulled guns and blazed away
at each other. She missed, and one of his
bullets had been deflected by a corset
steel, and then the other two women had
separated them.

There was a lot of meat in that. In

(Continued from page 19)

the first place the family across the road
had-evidently kept in close touch with
the Brunen’s affairs, as witness their
knowledge of the shooting and the dog.
Therefore their testimony on the night
before was fairly reliable. But they
hadn’t heard the shot that killed Brunen,
though it was fired outside the house
and came from the shotgun, a much
louder noise than the revolver shots in-
side the house on Christmas Day, which
they had heard. The only answer must
be that some other sound had covered
the report of the shotgun, and the only
sound adequate for the purpose was that
of a train on the railroad a few hundred
yards from the house. I got out a time-
table and studied it; there were trains
about every half-hour. I had been called
just after eight. Allowing time for the
doctor to be summoned and for him to
call me, that would make the 7:35 train
the one that had furnished the con-
venient noise, and gave me a lead on
the inquiry for the murderer’s car.

But if the shot had been covered by
a passing train, then the murderer had
known of the train schedule in advance,
for it was absurd to suppose that he
stood there outside that kitchen win-
dow with a shotgun, waiting for some-
thing like that to happen.

But the most curious incident was
about the dog. The dog did not bark,
though it was a dog who habitually
barked. There could be only one reason
for that. The dog -had recognized the
caller. The killer, then, was someone
who knew Brunen well, knew him well
enough to know his dog, and well enough

to know when and where he would be
sitting in the evening.

When I got this far, I pulled up, re-
membering Doris Brunen and her eva-
sions. She had brought the dog into the
house; she had been nervous when ques-
tioned about who might owe her hus-
band a grudge; she had tried to lead me
off on the track of some New York
gangsters; she had quarrelled with her
husband and shot at him on Christmas
day; and they were so bitter over it that
John Brunen had written to his sister
that Doris was trying to kill him. Most
important of all, though the train might
cover the sound of the shot from the
neighbors, it could not possibly have cov-
ered it for the woman in the same house;
‘and the woman in the house had taken
Hazel and her mother off to the movies
so they wouldn’t hear it. It began to
look as though Doris might have ar-
ranged things in some way.

Before you can accept anything like
that as conclusive, however, all the other
possibilities must be eliminated. I began
to look around to see whether there were
any facts that would not fit in with such
a theory, and whether there were any
other theories that would fit the same
set of facts. And somewhat to my dis-
may I found both.

The fact of Hazel’s attitude didn’t
fit the theory at all. Here she was sup-
porting Doris in everything she had said
and trying to help Doris chase me off on
a false trail. If Doris Brunen had planned
the murder with Hazel’s help, that would
be the thing to expect, but if that was
the case, there was .no reason why Doris


The boys, whose names were John —
Cleveland Beadle and A

pecu+* “perienced : in recovering the corpse

triangle horror
PANEER the ‘othe: slittin

wiped out .~
merged many of the ...
d its towns into little -

an City in ‘St. Mary’s’.
undated, except for its *
ues, which ran along’:

. Parish was in
Wo central aven
~a ridge of high
streets, the water
andas of the hous

was up to the ver-
At the end of :
le were still doing their ©
iting friends by boat, .~
The roads leadin e town were
impassable to automobiles. >’ oN
' The night of July 6, two boys went é
ake Palourde just —
ity, in ‘the section
known as the Bayou Teche. ‘The flood «
ginning to recede; it was -
e odors of slime and’
caying refuse. AMA, ou
ys cruised in the shallows. -
e debris of a ruin
they played their flash’
surface of th

outside Morgan C

e back approach
‘the ‘head and feet were ‘
and ropes were

‘surface’ while
invisible. Cl
knotted about it. Th
to be weighted, but
submerged bush, -
ifting into the

had caught on a.
which prevented it ‘

without mangling it astonished them:
But the explanation was simple. At-
tached: to:the head and the feet were

cted, one across th
y end to end. This, of

Ge

. The undeveloped child’s face of
Ada Le Boeuf was the clew to
what led to her collapse when.
she went ‘on. trial.:for. murder. eu

a

4

. E inquest took
City the morning

name him, .

But why the gashed stomach?
Bayou Teche is a great hunting re-
gion, and Horton and his men were
well aware that dead alligators are
opened thus to prevent natural gases
from collecting and bringing the body.
to the surface. This human victim
had been slashed as a hunter would
do it. Apparently a large jack-knife
had been used. .

Le

eS isa ah tle Livnc pA

ee

8

it was observed that the body had ;

slightly crooked, Squared off at the
ends. Three persons swor
one man in the parish :
like those. They did not hesitate to

~ Another witness said that he recog-
\ nized the new tan shoes, with prac-
tically unworn rubber heels. But the
dead face was a blank, and there


Endocrino-Criminology Could Have
Tipped the Police That a Tragedy

of Sultry Tropical Love Could Not
Be Avoided in This Case. But—

pill ie
Cad. Be

3

nothing in the pockets except a little
money An open verdict of lunstette
of “an unidentified man” was ren-
dered, and a certifiente issued author
Gedeepe Voces dard Chie pseunnne lay

Chief of Police Louis I, Blakeman
and Sheriff Charles L. Pecot, however,
did not regard the case as closed. Both

of them—and Blakeman in particular
—knew perfectly well who had stubby
thumbs. It was Jim Le Bocuf, man-
ager of the Morgan City Light and
Power Company, Blakeman's own

brother-in-law,

The Chief added that he had known
Jim for 23 years and could hardly
be mistaken. Jim had not been seen
around town for six days. Jim and
his wife, Ada, had been on bad terms

- for a long time. There was ugly gos-
sip connecting Ada’s name with that
of a prominent citizen, but for the
moment Blakeman said nothing about
that. It was agreed, instead, that
Sheriff Pecot should question the wo-
man, who had flatly refused to look
at the body taken from the bayou on
the score that “it could not possibly
be Jim.”

»PECOT went to the Le Boeuf home,
Instantly, he told Ada that he had
come to investigate the murder of her
husband. “I got the impression that
“he was killed in this house and I’ want
to search the premises,” he said.

Ada revealed no surprise.

“He was not killed here. I don’t
even believe he is dead,” she declared.
‘She helped the Sheriff go over the
house. Coolly, she showed him Le
Boeuf’s shotguns.

“Jim. is in Lafayette on business,”
she went on., “He’s often been away

from home for several days, without -

telling me where he was going. I’ve
mentioned to several people that I
thought he was in Lafayette.”

“The body at the .undertaker’s is
im Le Boeuf,” retorted Pecot: dog-

Jim Le  Boeuf;
He threatened the
man who shared
his wife, and was
found in the Ba-
you Teche, below

edly. “Are you going to the fun-
erabe

“If you prove it is really my hus-
band, TH po”

The Sheri fatled to dincover any
evidence in’ the house. But he es-
corted Ada Te Roeuf to Headquarters,
and ordered that she be held until he
and Blakeman were ready to question
her.

Ada made no protest.

A wire to Lafayette, Louisiana, es-
tablished that Jim had not been there
for many weeks. Pecot and Blake-
man went by boat to the Lake Pal-
ourde shore where the body had been
found.

Picknickers told them that eight or
nine days previously an eleven-year-
old boy had noticed three railroad
angle-irons resting in the crotch of a
tree. An older member of the party
tossed one of the irons into the lake.
The next time they looked at the tree
they saw that the other two irons were
gone. .

Premeditated murder?

Who but the murderer would take
heavy ahgle-irons to that lonely spot?

Back in town, they learned that Jim °
and. Ada had visited her brother,
Emory Bonner, on July 1....They had:
plowed their way to his home in a
car, through shallow water. They
had two small canoes lashed to the
car, a common sight in that part of
the State. After a short visit, they
had gone for a row on the lake, each
in a separate canoe. At 11 p.m., Ada
returned alone to the Bonners’ to pick
up the automobile.

“Whefe’s Jim?” Bonner asked.

“Waiting for me at the corner,” Ada
replied.

No one had seen Jim Le Boeuf alive
since he left to go for that boat ride.

Ada told her children the next morn-
ing that he had gone to Lafayette dur-
ing the night because of a quarrel he

(Continued on Page 38)

Loyalty was the
prime character-
istic of primitive
James Beadle


Sey ee TNS EEN er ridin ° a
white,

DURANT, Louis,/hanged Centreville, Louisiana, on May 27, 1898.
"CENTREVILLE,/LOUIS DURANT MET DRATH WITHOUT A TREMOR. /Centreville, Lee,

May 27. - Louis Durant, who murdered Mrs, Lobdell, his sister-in-law, on

the 3#4 July, 1897, to-day paid the penalty of his crime, He rested

very well last night, and up to the time of the execution did not look
like he cared whether he died or not, FEsrly this moming the crowd be-

inside of the walls, At 12 o'clock Sheriff Allen brought the prisoner

XHE XABXKIXEKEXWHAAXAY out of his cell, and he stepped upon the scaffold

with a firm and steady step, looking very much unconcerned and was

calm and collected, as though nothing was going to happen. When asked

if he had anything to say, he answered no, and without even a tremble of
the lips, he took his place upon the drop and did not move. At seventeen
minutes past 12 o'clock the drop fell and his neck was broken . He

died instantly. Drs. Singletary and Odom pronounced him dead: he was then
cut down and put in a nice coffin and buried near the jail yard. Sheriff
L. D. Allen has carried out the mandates of the lew in a manner which re-
flects credit to him as an officer ever ready to do his duty. This is

the first hanging in the parish since 1867," PICAYUNE, New Orleans,

¥OXXEX # Louisiana, May 28, 1898.

a ia i

contended at the trial. Duhon and Collins, armed with search warrants to seek illicit
liquor and a still on the Dunn place, where the two brothers with a third, Eustice,
lived, left Lake Charles late on the afternoon of March 6, accompanied by a third
officer, Deputy Rodrigues. At Vinton Deputy Rodrigues left the car to get another
deputy to accompany:them to the Dunn place. Duhon and Collins, going abbad, .setting

a place where Rodrigues should join them a*short distance from the Dunn house, This
was the Last time friends of the two men saw them alive, .When they failed to return.
to Lake Charles, a search was instituted, and late inthe afternoon of March 7 the

‘bodies were found crammed in the tonneau of Duhon's car, which was parked by a ceme=

tary about a mile and a half from Starke, Las y and eight miles fromthe Dunn place, On

“their bodies were found their pistols, still in their holsters,

"During the search for-the bodies, the three Dunn brothers were arrested on suspicion
and two days later formal charges of murder were made against them. and they were held
without bail, They were subsequently indicted on two spearate charges of murder, one for’
the slaying of Duhon and the other for slaying “ollins, The trial began within a month
after the:killings, Byron and Robert being placed on trial on the charge of slaying Du-'
hon, Eustice was not-placed on trial and was subsequently rbleased from custody, The
trial was bitterly fought, a number of technical experts being introduced on both sides,
The state's case was largely circumstantial, but the efforts of the defense to establish
an alibi for the two men ontrial failed, During the Dunn trial, for.the first time in
the history of Calcasieu Parish, fingerprints were introduced as testimony, enlarged
photagnaphs of a bloody palm print found on the door of Duhon's car ahd the print of
Robert Duhon being declared idential by two experts," a New Orleans, La.,
January 28, 1928 (1-8) . .

Robert Dunn's sentence had been commuted by Governor Simpson on recommendation of Board
of Pardons, The state had maintained that Duhon and Collins were shot at the Dunn house
which was later burned to obliterate evidence of the crime, TIMES-PICAYUNE, 1-27-1928 (1)

DUNN, Byron, white, hanged Lake Charles, LA on
| 1.2741928

: 14 Byron Dunn, hanged 1/27/28. One of the mast complex and

sensational of all Calcasie@u cases was the murder of Deputy
Sheriff Sam E... Duhon and Officer W. E. Collins. On the day that
they were killed, the two officers told several people Cincluding
their families and the sheriff’s office? that they were qoing ta
make a raid on the Dunn heme in an effort tea enfearce the
proehibition regulations of the commeanwealth against the
manufacture of illicit liquor. They had precured warrants to
enable them toa make their raid. They were found the next day in
the back seat of a Ford owned by Duhon which had been left or
parked near a cemetery. Duhon had been shat 10 or 15 times in
the region of the heart. Collings was killed with one shet toa the
head fired at close yrange, as powder burns attested. Half a
dozen ar more members of the Dunn family were rounded up and
arrested. Three brothers were indicted; twa stand trial ¢Byran
and Fobert) and were given the death penalty. Eabert’s sentence
was commuted ta life on 6/23/27, one day before he was scheduled
to hang. Byron was given five reprieves before being hanged
1/27/28. (Note: This researcher has been unable so far to find
the newspaper account of the actual hanging, but assumes it tock

futéin Syo,
a

him

us Lenumutahin would have meal

15/33 Cfaudor # 367) to 4 term y be
lt, ils ISsuaute.

OTE: Kobent Dunne Stuferie. Wao Lmmuted &

Place as scheduled in the absence of a commutation.)

What camplicates this case was the Defense's contention—--in
accord with widespread speculation at the time--that the twe
officers were actually murdered not by the Dunns but by the
area’s mast infamous desperade of the time, Josh Griffith, and
his gang from "Little Juarez." As it happens, Josh Griffith and

the Juarez gang were saan toa stand trial and these same twm
officers were scheduled te ee against them. In light of
the murder of the two office rs, it was clear that the desperadoes

would never goa to trial or a brought boa justice for their
crimes. Also complicating the Dunn case was the fact that there
was very little evidence upon which to convict the Dunns and a
strong suqgestioan that same of the phyaoiecal evidence-—blood
stains and such--had been "planted" to make the case come out
aoa" Mis er ime tite white-an-white. (Lake Charles American Press,

y auch,
Lata “py li ae gor “ Kicc J


Ee em rae eee LATE ee Me es ee Cee ee ae ee ee eR eee ey eee ae

109 SOUTHERN 56
h7 U. Ss SUPREME COURT 3h

DUNN, Byron, white, hanged at bake Charles, ba,, on Jamary 27, 1928,

"Lake Charles, .La., Jan. 27, 1928=Protesting his innocence £6 THE last, Byron Dunn mounted
the scaffold.this afternoon and was hanged at 2:52 o'clock, being pronounced dead at 2:58 by
Dr. W% L. Fisher, parish coroner, .His neck was broken in the fall, He paid the extreme pen-
alty exacted by the state of Louisiana following his trial and conviction on a charge of
seen i Deputy Sheriff Sam E, Duhon at the Dunn home near Vinton on the night of March 6;
19256  . _ ;

"The execution marked the dramatic climax of a long series of court actions taken by attor-
neys for the condemned man and lasting over a period of three yearse Dunn was on the sca-
folld but a few minutes. He held up stoically to the very end. His last words were that:
'T am innocent, but I am willing to die if someone mst die and if it will help to protect
others from dying as I will.' The death march from the cell to the scaffold began at 2:0
o'elock with the condemned man leading the solemn procession and with the Rev, R. H, Wynn,
sho spent,the entire day with Dunn, following immediately behind him, The lever which.
opened the trap door through which Dunn fell to his death was sprung by a professional
hangman from New Orleans who executed the six slayers of Dallas Calmin in the then nationally}
known case in Amitie,. (On, 5-9-192)) .

"A large crowd thronged the rear of the courthouse which is mmmediately in front of the jail
and the spectators advanced as far as the rope which was stretched around the jail building
to. ke@.the public at a distance from the place of execution, The crowd was orderly and
there was no demonstration, It scattered when word was received that the execution had
taken place inside the gallows which had been covered with a canvass to conceal the hanging
from public viewe Bob Dunn, who was jointly tried and convicted with his brother, and whose
sentence was commuted several months ago from death to lifeimprisonment, was allowed to enter
the death cell. and talk-with his brother a few minutes before the condemned man was removede
Standing beside the steel cage, Bob spoke privately am quietly with Byron, They talked in
low tones, which could not be heard a few feet away where the official witnesses were sta-
tioned , After telling his brother a final "goodbye,' Bob was returned to his cell across
the corridor from the death cage where he has been incarcerated for three years,

"Bob appeared to be broken in spirit - an apparant contrast to that of Byron who held up
strong to the very last. ‘With the exeeption of the simple declaration that he was ‘not
guilty and innocent,' Byron never made public any statement before, during or since his |
trial, Bob also continued silent. The beginning of the end came at 1:30 when Sheriff Horace
Lyons, accompanied by the witnesses, arrived at the prison with the death warrant, a lengthy
document which included papers of four previous reprieves and which required nearly 30 min-
utes of reading in the presence of the condemned man, As is customary in capital cases,

new wearing apparel, including black suit, slippers, socks, underwear and tie, was given

to the condemned prisoner,

"The last glimmer of hope to save Dunn's life faded at 1 o'clock this afternoon when Judge
Percy Cline, trial judge, refused to grant a last minute application for an injunction to
stay the execution, Judge Cline announced his decision shortly after arriving grom Jennings
where he was presented with the papers, His written opinion, briefly expressed, was as
follows: 'The governor had the right and it was his duty to order the sheriff to delay
execution until a later date, in order that the federal jurisdiction could be protected and
exercised. Having such right and duty, the grounds for the above application are not well
taken and the application is therefore refused.' The application asked for a rule to be isss
ued directing Sheriff Horace Lions to show cause why a temporary injunction should not be
ordered, restraining him from executing Dunn, The petition is based on allegations that
'the action of Governor Simpson, Decf// 15, 1927, and the order for execution of Dunn dated on
or about Dac. 15 for the execution of Dunn on Jan, 27, 1928, is null and void for the rea=
son that the governor was without jurisdiction to act in ordering said execution,' It is
further stated in the application that 'an appeal when granted by the United States District
Court to the United States Circuit Court of Appeals, whene an application for writ of habeas
corpus has been denied, all state officers are divested of authority and until the decree

of the appellate court becomes final each and every act of the state officers and authori-
ties is absolutely null and void,' The arrest, trial and subsequent legal battle to prevent
the execution of the two Dunn brothers constituted one of the hardest fought legal battles

: i hi bd ° a * ° .
wDenaty Sheriff Duhon and W. E Collins, federal prohibition agent, were slain the night

of March 6, 1925, at the Dunn place, two miles from Vinton in Calcasieu Parish, the state

“yes, about two hours ago. That's
what I was coming to tell you. I
begged him to give himself up but he
wouldn’t do it. He claimed it was an
accident and he wasn’t to blame.”

She started tocry. “He told me he’d
never give himself up. He said the only
way he’d be taken would be dead. And
he said, ‘I might just as well be dead
anyhow.’ He gave me &@ diamond ring
and kissed me and the children goodby
and said we would never see him again.”

“Which way did he go?” Bains
asked.

“He cut across the field to the road.
He said he was going to visit our sister
in Ringling, Oklahoma.”

Bains hurried to the nearest tele-
phone and called Sheriff Flournoy.
That official and his deputies, sure that
Dowdy had not gone very far, phoned
to sheriffs and chiefs of police in Caddo
and adjoining parishes and arranged

to have all highways watched and the
occupants of all cars questioned.

Less than an hour later a Louisiana
Highway Patrolman, on duty at a road
block near the Texas border, stopped a
car containing three people. He ex-
plained the reason courteously and
asked for the names of the two men
and one woman occupants.

“My name’s R. F. Maxwell,” the older
man stated. “This is my wife. We've
been visiting relatives in Vivian and
we're on our way back home to Bivens,
Texas. I don’t know the young man
in the back. He just hitched a ride
with us.”

[NSTANTLY the -officer was on the
alert. His hand slid back toward his
hip as he glanced inquiringly at the
third passenger.

“I’m Jack R. Allen,” the other said
promptly. “I’m from Dallas, Texas.”

The patrolman’s interest deepened.
“what street and number in Dallas?”
he asked. He stepped with apparent
casualness on to the running-board of
the car.

“why—uh, it’s Cedar Street.”

“J lived in Dallas for ten years,” the
officer declared. “There’s no Cedar
Street in the city.”

He shot out his hand and gripped the
youth’s right wrist. ‘“You sure your
name isn’t J. D. Dowdy?” the patrol-
man demanded.

“No, it’s Jack Allen.” >

“Well, you'll have to come along with
me. If you can prove it, okay. If not,
we'll have to hold you.”

“Hold me for what?”

“If you're Dowdy, I guess I don’t have
to tell you. For the murder of, Walter
Dorman.” ; ‘

“I didn’t kill him,” the man pro-
tested. “It was an accident.”

~

“So you are Dowdy?” :

“Yes, I might as well admit it.”

The patrolman searched him but
found no weapons. At the Caddo jail
he talked freely to reporters, insisting
that the death of Dorman was an acci-
dent. He admitted, as had his father,
that he knew Dorman was in the cabin
at the time of the explosion.

HE TOLD the newsmen that im-
mediately following the blast, he
had gone to Tyler, Texas. From there,
after spending a few hours at motion-
picture theaters, he had gone to Vivian,
spent a night ina hotel and then visited
his sister, Mrs. Townsend. He con-
firmed her statement that he had in-
tended going from Vivian to Ringling,
Oklahoma.

On November 5, 1948, he and his
father were indicted for murder. At
this writing their trial is pending.

Read It First In

These Lilies Are Not for Tears (Continued from Page 43) OFFICIAL DETECTIVE STORIES

modest bungalow where she was living.
“We'd like to get some information
from you about a fellow by the name
of Bill Taylor,” Goosen started out.
She came back with a look that was
either completely innocent pr com-
pletely cunning in its utter blankness.
“Bill Taylor? I don’t think I know
anybody by that name.”
Goosen tried another tack. ‘Were
you home all day today?”
“Oh, no,” she replied. “I was work-
ing. I got in just a little while ago.”
“And where: were you working?”
Weaver asked.

GHE took a quick breath, then ex-
plained that she was employed as a
maid at the house of @ well-known
screen actor.

“J would like to talk to his wife. Do
you have a phone here?” Goosen asked.

“No, I’m sorry.”

While his partner stayed with the
woman, Goosen made for the nearest
phone booth. To get the actor’s un-
listed number required some diplomacy
and police-department connections.
When he had the actor’s wife on the
line, he asked her if Joanne Main
worked for her.

“That’s right,” she twittered. “why
do you want to know, Honey?”

“Dearie,” Goosen retorted, “it helps
my ego to know a lot of things. Did
she work today?”

“Like a busy bee.”

“She make any phone calls?”

“On my time?” the woman asked. “I
should say. not!”

“Lady,” Goosen said dryly, “we're
trying to catch a killer. Skip those
cocktail party cracks and just answer
questions straight. Did this woman
make a phone call from your house be-
tween twelve and half-past?”

“T told you—definitely not.”

“Could she have made a call without
your knowledge?”

“JT doubt it. She was preparing lunch
in the kitchen at the time.”

Goosen trudged back to the house to
join his partner. ‘‘It’s all off,” he said.
“Let’s go.”

“Go where?”

“Back to the Decca place. There
must be somebody who knows some-
thing about Taylor.”

Driving along with the stream of
traffic, they talked and tried to add up
the little they had on this case.

The earring, the lace-bordered hand-
kerchief, the bus transfer ticket—three
items found at the scene.

The name Shirley in Bill’s notebook
with a phone number that didn’t
match. The caller who had identified
herself as “Mrs. Main.” The middle-
aged, attractive woman Bill Taylor had
been seeing.

It all pointed to a woman being
mixed up in this, or so it seemed.

The detectives made another stab at
the parking-lot man before trying their
luck elsewhere. ‘Do you know any of
Taylor’s friends?” Weaver asked.

Ayres screwed up his face in a frown.

“He didn’t have any friends in particu-
lar. -But talk to Mr. Spiller. Taylor
mentioned him several times in con-
versation. He runs a grocery store
around here somewhere.”

An hour later the detectives were
talking to Spiller. .

“Yes, I knew Bill well,” he said, swal-
lowing a lump in his throat. ‘““Haven’t
seen him in months. He was & good
guy—he never did anybody any harm.
I hope you catch that—that—”

“Do you have any suspicions who
killed him?” Goosen asked.

He thought it over. “No, I don’t.”

“We think there’s a woman mixed up
in this,” Weaver said.

Spiller looked blank, then shook his
head. “I don’t see how.”

“A woman whose name could be Shir-
ley,’ Weaver hammered away.

“Shirley!” Spiller cried. “Wait a
minute! Shirley—I think that was her
name!”

“Whose name?”

“She was the wife of a former ten-
ant of mine by the name of Thaddeus
Campbell. Shirley Campbell—yeah, I
think that’s it. Shirley Campbell!”

“She been mixed up with Taylor?”

“jor to my knowledge. But you see,
the last I heard Campbell and his
wife had separated. And Bill and Mrs.
Campbel! were always friendly. Bill met
the Campbells at my place.”

The detectives had their next job
all cut out for them. Spiller had
informed ‘them that at one time Thad-
deus Campbell had owned a combina-
tion service-station and used-car lot
somewhere around Western and Jef-
ferson Avenues. .

So they checked around in the vicin-
ity, and after talking to half a dozen
people they learned that Campbell had
transferred his business to an Avalon
Boulevard address.

They drove out there and had no

trouble locating Campbell, a bulky, wor-

ried-looking man.

“We would like some information
from you,” Weaver told him.

“Sure, sure,” the man said, peering
at them with restless eyes.

“Know a fellow by the name of
Taylor?”

. “Taylor?” He looked puzzled. “No, I
don’t.”

“He was the fellow who worked for
the Decca Recording Studios. Bill was
his first name.”

The restless eyes kept roving. “No, I
dunno the fellow.”

“you're married, Campbell, aren’t
you?” Goosen put in.

“Yes, I’m married.”

“You and your wife are separated,
I understand.”

He smiled suddenly. “No, we’re not.
Who told you that?”

“Never mind,” Weaver said. “You are
not and you never were separated?”

“No, Sir. Somebody must have the
wrong idea. We had spats like all mar-
ried people, but Sadie and I are very

happy.”

It was a first-rate bum steer. The
woman they were after was named
Shirley and was separated from her
husband.

“Got anything with your wife’s name
on it?” Goosen asked.

He had—some letters and odd papers.
The name was Sadie. ; :

They were driving back toward the
Hollywood station, tired and sweaty
after a day of backbreaking, unreward-
ing work, both muttering to themselves.

“I don’t get all these mixups,” Weaver
finally said. “Spiller may have been
mistaken about her first name—it was
us who asked him if he knew a Shir-
ley. But he volunteered the informa-
tion that they were separated.”

Goosen, who was at the wheel,
nodded. “Spiller also said the Camp-
bells and Taylor knew each other. But
Campbell denied that.”

“There’s something behind all this.”

“Maybe no more than people just not
remembering things right after
awhile,” Goosen said, shrugging.
“Some guys have a memory like a
sieve.”

“Why don’t we find out how much
Mrs. .Campbell is able to recall?”
Weaver suggested.

“Okay, last try.” Goosen swung his
car around and started back to Camp-
bell’s station to get his home address.

But halfway he had a change of
mind. Instead of obtaining the
address directly they made inquiries in
the vicinity. Finally they got the
address from a storekeeper who had
made deliveries to Campbell’s home.

The place turned out to be a two-
story gleaming-white apartment house.

Goosen’s broad thumb jabbed at the
doorbell which had Campbell’s name
on it. Once, twice—no answer.

B Ds reobd looked up the landlord, who
lived in the same building.

“Why, I saw Mrs. Campbell about a
half hour ago,” he said. “She told me
she was going out to do her shopping.
If you wait around awhile I’m sure
she’ll be back.”

The detectives parked the car in the
alley and strolled around the rear of
the house. They struck up a conver-
sation with some tenants, mostly about
the weather, when somebody told them
that Mrs. Sadie Campbell had come
home.

So they went upstairs and rang the
bell.

A pleasant-faced woman answered.

‘Weaver spoke. “Mrs. Campbell?”

“J'm not Mrs. Campbell. Mrs. Camp-
bell just left.”

“Left?” Goosen asked. “We've been ©

here for quite awhile. She couldn’t
have left.”

“She must have gone out the back,”
the woman insisted.

“That’s where we came from.”

“we'd like to come in and talk to
you,” Weaver said.

“Sure, come right in,” she said.

“Who are you?” Weaver took up the
questioning when they were inside.

i

“a friend of Sadie’s.”

Goosen and Weaver exchanged brief
cial Something didn’t seem right

ere.

“Since you're a friend of Sadie’s, tell
us about her,” Weaver said. “What
kind of a woman is she?”

“Oh, very nice. She’s a very nice
woman.”

“About your age?”

“Yes.”

“She and her husband get along
fine?”

“Why, of course.”

Weaver lighted a cigarette with de-
liberate slowness. ‘Does Sadie wear
earrings?”

The woman quickly touched both
her ears in a sort of automatic gesture.
“No, she don’t wear earrings. She
don’t like earrings, she told me.”

“That's interesting,” . Weaver said.
“Very interesting.” He was eyeing a
woman’s black patent-leather pocket-
book that was lying on a small side
table. He got up; Goosen took over
the questioning.

“The Campbells used to live in some
other part of town,” he said. “In a
place belonging to a fellow named
Spiller.”

“T know,” she said.

Goosen noticed Weaver halting in

front of the small side table for a,

moment, then turning and pacing the
floor again. He stopped in front of the
woman,

“you know everything about Sadie
Campbell. Everything. Right? Do
you know if she is two-timing her
husband?”

“Sadie never would do that,” the.

woman protested.

“Does Sadie know a fellow by the
name of Bill Taylor?”

Suddenly tears glistened in the
-woman’s eyes. Her face took on a
pained expression.

“you seem to know everything about
Sadie,” Weaver said. “You ought to
know if she went around with Bill—”

The woman broke into convulsive
sobs. “Leave me alone!” she cried.
“JT can’t stand this! Stop it! Stop it!”

“Stop what?’’ Weaver asked quietly.

“You have nothing to be worried
about, so relax,” Goosen told her.

She halted in her hysterical sobbing
and shortly tried to smile.

“That's better,” Weaver said. “Get
a handkerchief and dry your tears.”

SHE got up, hustled about the room
looking for places where she might
have put a handkerchief, then finally
reached into the purse that was lying
on the small side table and extracted
one. Then she sat down again, dabbed
her eyes and cheeks and blew her nose.

By then the woman had regained
some of her lost composure.

“Why don’t you go now?” she asked.
“Police always scare me. I didn’t want
to get excited like that but I just
couldn’t help it.”

“That’s all right,” Weaver said.

She was pulling at her handkerchief.

61

attend af

te.

=

yy?

22

DOWDY, J. De, white, elec. EXSXXK Talullah, LA January 12, 1951.

By Harry Church

HERE THE house had stood there remained only the debris of splin-

tered boards and a twisted iron bed. The rest had been blown to bits,
including the man that was in it. In the middle of this litter lay two
human legs, severed just above the knees. A cluster of farm folk stood
silently beside the wreckage, too stunned to speak.

It was upon this scene that Sheriff C. E. Hester and Coroner Otis
Edgerton of Madison Parish, La., walked this foggy, cold day of October
23, 1948. Summoned by frantic neighbors whose homes were shaken by
the explosion, the officers had hastened to the Talla Bene home of G. R.
Dowdy, fragments of which now lay scattered over a ten-acre area.

The blast had occurred shortly before midnight, but it was breaking
dawn when Hester and Edgerton reached the scene some ten miles north
of the county seat town of Tallulah.

“Reckon it was old G. R. Dowdy who was killed?” asked a farmer.

Hester didn’t answer. He made his way through the debris and bent
and peered at the legs closely. A heavy growth of black hair covered
them from ankle to knee and above. The foot was that of a man wearing
about a No. 10 shoe, and had heavy callouses underneath, especially on
the ball of the big toe. The leg was well muscled and obviously that of
a man who did much heavy work. Hester noted, however, no sagging
or wrinkling of the skin such as would mark that of an aged man, and

home of G.
officers fow
ess the night

2m Ay) s

SHERIFF C. E. HESTER of Madison Parish,
La., is shown in his office. scanning one of
the large policies on a young man who sup-
posedly perished in the dynamite explosion.

G. R. Dowdy was 60 or older.

Sy a if
Zs a3

€
“; ae

=
bead
re
te

WALTER DORMAN was a comparative stran-
ger in the community. Investigators learned he
made a mysterious trip in a taxicab only
a few hours before the dynamite explosion.

ine, no wider than a pencil, leading from the ankle to the point of break

He turned the.legs over and saw on one of them a thin, powder-burned

six inches above the knee. The hair had been singed and the flesh black-
ened, but there was no blister beneath the burn.

Sheriff Hester motioned for Edgerton to join him. “Live flesh would
have blistered,” he said. “This man’ was killed before the blast.”

Coroner Edgerton looked puzzled. Then he blurted, “So it was no
accident! It was murder! But how do you explain the burn?”

“The fuse did it. The killer wired the body with dynamite, and the
fuse lay against his leg. I don’t believe the victim is old man Dowdy.”

“Then it must’ve been his son, J. D. Dowdy,” the coroner said. “The
boy is only 23. He and his father lived alone here. They worked on the
plantation and the boy did some commercial fishing.” -

Sheriff Hester poked about the debris. Beneath some galvanized sheet
iron which had covered the roof of the shack, he found a pair of shoes,
too small to fit the dead man’s feet. It was apparent the blast victim was
barefoot at the time of the explosion, but neither his shoes nor clothing
could be found. There were a few tattered remnants of a shirt and
trousers he could have worn, but Sheriff Hester was doubtful that they
were his.

About 20 yards from the litter, Hester found a large coil of dynamite
fuses. -He got a shovel and began to dig beneath the twisted bed springs.
At length he unearthed fragments of skull bones, some the size of a
dime, others as large as a dollar.

“The blast must have been terrific,’ commented Edgerton, noting that
some of the bones had been driven six inches into the ground.

Hester continued his digging in a widening circle, but found nothing
else of significance. He turned to a lean, overall-clad farmer in the fore-
ground of the circle of people watching him and asked, “Have you seen
anyone you didn’t know about this neighborhood lately ?”

The man shook his head. The others looked on silently.

Hester then inquired if anyone in the group had seen either G. R.
Dowdy or his son on the previous afternoon or night. None had. One
man said he had passed the Dowdy home at about 4 p.m. the previous day
and had seen no one about the place. Dowdy’s auto was out of his garage,
he said, and he presumed the old man had gone to Tallulah. :

There was nothing about the house to give the sheriff any clue. The
ground was too well trampled to get footprints (Continued on page 69)

aT Sue take er is bi

INSIDE DETECTIVE, August, 1949

Clue of the Talking Toe (Continued from Page 39)

suming he got rid of his clothes first
for some reason, and then went into
the cabin raw, as you put it, in order to
prevent identification of his body, he

certainly must have known that, since ©

he himself would be missing, there
would be no question of his identity.

“No, the suicide theory doesn’t make
sense. And in some ways the accident
theory doesn’t either. There’s some-
thing smelly about the whole set-up.
Maybe all those docs will dig up some-
thing.”

H's hope was only partially fulfilled.

Doctor Otis Edger, the Coroner, and
the five physicians forming the special
jury submitted their report. It was full
of the usual and entirely justifiable
medical caution.

They had found indications, the re-
port stated, that the man to whom the
legs had been attached had been dead
before the explosion took place. And
there were other indications that he
was considerably older han 23, the age
of young Dowdy. Beyond that the
physicians would not go, admitting that
there was a 50-50 chance that these
indications might not be accurate.

Notwithstanding the doubts which
remained in the medicos minds, their
report intensified the Sheriff’s grow-
ing suspicions.

“Were going to proceed on the
theory that the dead man wasn’t young
Dowdy,” he told his deputies at a con-
ference in his office. “It might have
been a body dug up for the purpose.
Or the man might have been killed
before the blast. Either way, someone
went to a lot of trouble for some
purpose. And of course there’s the
possibility that he might have wanted
to disappear and start life over some-
where else, leaving relatives and
friends to think he’s dead. There’s
been plenty of cases like that.”

“Do you think this is one of them?”

“No, I don’t. I’m beginning to think
this one involves a far more sinister
motive.”

“Like what?”

“Money,” Hester answered tersely.
“Insurance. I want you men to find
out, and pronto, if young Dowdy
carried any. And if so, how much, and
when was it taken out, and who the
beneficiary is.”

While his men were carrying out this
phase of the investigation, the Sheriff
tried to locate still others who had seen
the two Dowdys together on the after-
noon preceding the explosion.

T= inquiries developed that father
and son, when in_ town, fre-
quently stopped overnight at the local
hotel. And this, inevitably, led Hester
to question the proprietor and the.em-
ployes. ‘

“I saw young Dowdy that afternoon
at four o’clock,” a woman clerk in-
formed him.

“With his father?”

“No, with Walter Dorman.”

“Who's Walter Dorman?”

“Fe’s one of our guests. Been here
for a couple of months. He’s a painter,
I think.” .

“were he and the Dowdys particular
friends?”

“Well, young Dowdy was with him a
good deal.”

“where’s Dorman from?
seem to recall him.”

“He’s only been here five or six
weeks. He’s from Hattiesburg, Missis-
prt 9 At least, he’s registered from

ere.”
rg like to talk with him-now. Is he
r 9” .

“No, I’m sure he isn’t.”

“Phone me at my office when he re-
turns, will you, please?”

The clerk promised tocomply. When
a day passed and the Sheriff had not
heard from her, he assumed she had
overlooked the matter. He stopped in
to see her. :

“Tt didn’t forget,” she assured him.
“He hasn’t been in.”

“you mean he didn’t occupy his
room last night?”

60

I don’t

“No, he didn’t. I thought maybe he
had come in without my seeing him, so
I asked the maid and she told me his
bed hadn't been slept in.”

The Sheriff looked thoughtful for a
moment, then said, “I’d like to talk to
the maid.”

When she was brought in he asked
her, “You been tending to Mr. Dor-
man’s room all the time?”

“Yes, Sir, Sheriff, ever since he’s
been here.”

“what's the last time you saw him?”

“Last Friday afternoon, Sir.”

“His bed hasn’t been slept in since?” :

“No, Sir.”

“You know Mr. Dowdy, J. D. Dowdy,
the young man?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“when’s the last time you saw him?”

“On Friday, Sir. He was with Mr.
Dorman in his room for a little while.
I saw them come out and go down-
stairs together.”

[ESTER looked over Dorman’s room,
prying -particularly into the closet
and bureau drawers and examining the
clothes he found there. Then he went
downstairs, told the clerk not to forget
to inform him the moment Mr. Dor-
man came in, and went to the telephone
and called the Chief of Police at
Hattiesburg.

“You got a Walter Dorman living in.

your town?” he queried.

“Sure. He’s a painter. Did some
work on the Headquarters building
here.”

“Check up on him, will you?” Hester
requested. ‘Does he have a family?”

“Only a wife, I think.”

“See if she’s heard from him in the
past few days. If she hasn't, tell her

‘there’s a possibility her husband met

with an accident, and ask her to come
over here to see me.”

“All right,” the chief promised. “If
you don’t hear from me you'll know
she’s on her way.

Mrs. Dorman, distraught and ner-
vous, arrived in Tallulah the following
morning. ©

“I’m terribly worried,” she said.
“Usually Walter phones me every day
or so when he’s away from home. I
haven’t heard from him in three days.
I phoned his hotel just a short time be-
fore I got your message and they told
me he hadn’t been in for three or four
days.”

“J'm afraid something may have
happened,” Hester told her gently.
“Did your husband have any dis-
tinguishing marks or peculiarities
about his legs and feet?”

Mrs. Dorman closed her eyes and
clenched her fists as a paroxysm of fear
shook her. The Sheriff brought her a
glass of water and waited patiently for
her to recover.

a He KNOW his feet anywhere,” she

asserted. ‘He had two corns, one on
each foot. And they were both at the
same place, between the little toe and
the one next to it. And he had a
crushed nail on the right big toe which
never grew out straight. I could tell in
a second if they’re his.”

It was a difficult task for the Sheriff
to explain about the, explosion and to
tell Mrs. Dorman that the mangled
feet and legs were the only human re-
mains found after the explosion. Again
he had to wait for her to absorb this
shock.

Then he asked, “Do you think you
could stand seeing them?” :

“T’}1—T'l try.” *-

It was a terrible ordeal for her. She
clung to the arm of a deputy as she
glimpsed the ghastly.relics, forcing her-
self to look while Hester performed the
disagreeable job of separating the toes.

He didn’t need her nod to tell him
that the man to whom the mutilated
legs had belonged at last had been
identified. For between the toes were
the soft corns, and on the right big toe
the misshapen nail.

The officer followed the sobbing»

woman out of the chamber of horrors.
He had no further doubts that the

“accident” at the lonely little fisher-
Tr shack was in reality no. accident
at all.

When he returned to his office he
heard the report of one of his deputies
concerning the result of the insurance
investigation.

Young Dowdy had carried three
policies’ on his life,. amounting to
$26,000. :

One was his Army sef'vice policy for
$10,000, of which a sister, later found
to be living in California, was the
beneficiary. .

But the remaining two, one for
$6,000 and the other for $7,000, had
been taken out in September and
October, 1948—just about & month
prior to the date of the explosion. Both
were in favor of his father, and both
carried double indemnity in case of
accidental death.

Hester realized that the next step
would be to interview the elder Dowdy
again. But he also knew the character
of the Mississippi fishermen. For the
most part they are unemotional, un-
imaginative men who maintain a stolid,
unyielding front no matter what the
emergency with which they are faced.

Something surprising and discon-
certing, some crashing and unexpected
shock, would be necessary to shake
Dowdy out of his poise and shatter the
stubborn denials which, Hester knew,
would meet a simple accusation.

The Sheriff went again to Dorman’s
room in the hotel, got a shirt, a pair of
trousers and a leather windbreaker be-

longing to the dead man, wrapped them |

in a bundle and took them to his office.

T= he cut, ripped and tore them
in various places, without, however,
destroying their obvious size and
general appearance. Then he went to
the scene of the explosion and rubbed
the clothing thoroughly into the dirt
and debris.

A short time later George Dowdy was
brought in to see him.

“We've been doing some further dig-
ging through the ruins,” Hester told
him, “and we found these.”

He pointed dramatically to the torn,
greasy, dirt-covered garments, while he
focused his gaze on the face of the
ordinarily phlegmatic fisherman.

But there was nothing phlegmatic
about the fisherman now. His lean
body straightened into rigidity.

“In—in the shack? “he asked finally.

“Yes, in there. What’s so surprising
about that? You had some clothes in-
side, didn’t you?”

“Why—uh, yes, of course.
did.”

“Do you recognize these things?”

“Those things? Yes, sure I do.
They’re—they’re J. D.’s.”

“You certain?”

“Of course I am.”

“Just as certain as you were about
the explosion coming from gasoline,
and about not having any dynamite in
the house?”

“Well, that was—you know why I
told you that. I didn’t want to get into
trouble about shooting the river.”

“Do Walter Dorman’s clothes in your
shack also have something to do with
shooting the river?”

“Walter Dorman’s!”

Sure we

T= old man’s glance was shooting
this way and that.

What little poise he had left after
being shown the garments disappeared
completely at the mention of the dead
man’s name.

“Sure, Walter Dorman’s,” the Sher-

iff went on relentlessly. ‘The shirt has °

his laundry mark. And the wind-
breaker has his name sewn inside on
the lining. What was he doing in your
cabin?”

“He was—a friend of J. D.’s,” the old
man mumbled. “There must’a been
two of them in there. Or else—oh,
yeah, I remember now. J. D. told me
he had borrowed some of Walter’s
clothes.”

“Did he? Did he also tell you that
he borrowed his legs?”

Read It First In

OFFICIAL DETECTIVE STORIES

“What do you mean?”

“J mean those legs have been posi-
tively identified as Walter Dorman’s
by his wife.”

The old man’s gaze shifted. He was
unable to meet the look of the Sheriff.
“J uh—I don’t know what to make of
it,” he stammered.

“Yes, you do.”

“What are you getting at?” Dowdy
demanded, seemingly regaining some of
his poise. ‘“‘Are you saying. that me
and J. D. had anything to do with that
explosion?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,”
Hester retorted. ‘I’m arresting you for
the murder of Walter Dorman.”

Dowdy was searched and in his pock-
ets the Sheriff found the two insur-
ance policies.on his son’s life.

“What reason have you got for charg-
ing me with anything like that?” Dowdy
demanded.

“Two reasons,” the Sheriff replied.
“One’s the policy on the boy’s life for
seven thousand and the other is this
one for six thousand, both in your fa-
vor. Where’s the boy?” .

“Find him—if you think he’s still
alive,’ Dowdy retorted.

“Okay, we'll find him,” Hester came
back confidently.

The next few hours were scenes of
frantic activity in the Sheriff's office.
A three-state alarm went out to every
peace Officer in Louisiana, Texas and
Arkansas, giving a full description of
J.D. Dowdy and asking for his appre-
hension. At the same time Hester
arranged with near-by broadcasting
stations to send similar information out
over the air at frequent intervals. Offi-
cers were warned that the missing
young man might be armed and that
they should take no chances in arrest-
ing him.

Further questioning of the father got
from him the admission that he knew
all along the dead man wasn’t his son,
J.D. But, on the advice of an attorney,
George Dowdy refused to say anything
further.

LETTER which had been taken

from his pockets, however, Was
signed, ‘‘With love, your daughter,” and
it bore the return address of Mrs. W. E.
Townsend in Vivian, Louisiana.

“Have you any other children?”
Hester asked his prisoner.

“Maybe you can find that out like
you did all those other things,” the old
man retorted.

“Okay, if you insist,” Sheriff Hester
replied.

He telephoned Sheriff Flournoy in
Shreveport, Caddo Parish, in which
Vivian is situated. He asked Flournoy
to have Mrs. Townsend come to Tallu-
lah immediately to see her father
Hester wanted to learn from her, if he
could, the names and addresses of othe
relatives.

Sheriff Flournoy immediately relayec
the message to Deputy Cal Bains, whe
was stationed at Vivian.

Mrs. Townsend opened her door t
Bains’ ring a short while later.

“Why, Cal!” she exclaimed. “I wa
just coming to see you!”

“You were? What about?”

“About my brother J. D.”

“What about your brother?” Bain
asked.

Mrs. Townsend hesitated. “I feel ter
rible doing this,” she said in an un
steady voice, “but I think it’s best. He
my brother but he’s very young and h
hasn’t as good judgment as he ougk
to have.”

SHE hesitated, then blurted out, ‘
know all about that—that explosio
at Tallulah. I’m sure it’s what yc
want to see me about, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is,” Bains responded frank]
“Sheriff Hester, at Tallulah, wants y<
to come to see him. I’m sorry to t«
you but your father has been arrest:
because of that explosion.”

“TI knew he would be,” the wom:
said resignedly. ‘J. D. told me he w
sure of it.”

“J, D.! Was he here?”

TER of Madison Parish,
office scanning one of
a young man who sup-
the dynamite explosion.

a thin, powder-burned
to the point of break
-d and the flesh black-

n. “Live flesh would
ore the blast.”
urted, “So it was no
n the burn?”
ith dynamite, and the
s old man Dowdy.”
ie coroner said. “The
They worked on the
some galvanized sheet
found a pair of shoes,
nt the blast victim was
his shoes nor clothing
nnants of a shirt and
was doubtful that they

large coil of dynamite
the twisted bed springs.
»s, some the size of a

| Edgerton, noting that
» the ground.

rele, but found nothing
clad farmer in the fore-
asked, “Have you seen
lately ?”

n silently.

had seen either G. R.
night. None had. One
4 p.m. the previous day
to was out of his garage,
Tallulah.

e sheriff any clue. The
(Continued on page 6)

‘ONLY DEBRIS...

“home of G. R. Dowdy and his son. Sh ‘st
eriff

§ officers found that Dowdy was not at vie

the night the dwelling was blown to bits. B!

a ad

OF Mtaye janes

} « i!
bx 4}

EGS

TOLD A GRISLY
Hi ie

dh dif

FOR several weeks, the youthful sus-
nabbed after a relative turned
He is shown here with A. D. Tree-
detective assigned to case.


ii a

peg ances ees

oso

get yourself upset. Nothing has happened
except this gossip. We’ve got to stop it.”

Mrs. Dreher said miserably, ‘“There’s
nothing in it, Jim? You're sure?”

“Of course not,” Le Boeuf declared. “Ir
there were, do you think I’d be taking it
so calmly? If it was true, I swear I'd kill
Tom, even though he’s my best friend.”

Mrs. Dreher smiled at that. “The letter.
upset me so,” she sighed. “I suppose I was
silly. Of course, it can’t be true.”

Dreher cleared his throat. “Jim, I think
you'd better get a doctor in from Franklin
to look after Ada. I don’t want you folks
upset. I don’t want my wife upset. And I
can’t afford this sort of thing. It’s bad for
my practice and I’ve a family to support.
I won’t visit Ada any more.”

Both Le Boeuf and Mrs. Dreher thought
this a foolish course to take. They argued
that, as a physician, Dreher was obligated
to go where he was called. It was absurd
that he should lose a patient and that Mrs.
Le Boeuf lose a good doctor, just because
of these malicious rumors.

At last Dreher permitted himself to be
persuaded. Painful as the lying tongues
were, it was agreed to ignore them.

Another two months went by and if more
scandalous tales of the doctor and Mrs. Le
Boeuf were being told, they did not reach
the ears of the principals. At least, not until
the middle of June when James Le Boeuf
once again called upon Philomena Brown.

He came directly to the point. “Philo-
mena,” he said, ‘an employee of mine at
the power company told me today that
she’d heard something she thought I should
know. She’d been told that Ada and Tom
Dreher were seen bathing together in the
bayou near Emmy Mae Hawks’ cabin. Ac-
cording to this tale, they hadn’t bothered to
put on bathing suits.”

“You still don’t believe it, do you, Jim?”
Mrs. Brown asked.

Le Boeuf turned an agonized face to her.
“No, I don’t believe it. But it’s driving me
crazy. Suppose everyone in town calls you
a thief. You may know you're not, but the
gossip could upset you just as much as if it
were true.”

Mrs. Brown nodded sympathetically.
“What do you want me to do?”

“I'd like you to run down the source of
this rumor. Let’s find out who started it.
Then we'll know whom to deal with.”

Mrs. Brown pointed out that the source
of a rumor is difficult to find. Nevertheless,
she agreed to try.

On the following day, before she had
acted in the matter, she was visited by Ada
Le Boeuf. What Ada had to say amazed her.

“Philomena,” Ada said, “I’m worried
about Jim. More than that, I’m worried
about our marriage. I just heard that Jim
was swimming naked with that woman
they call a witch, that Emmy Mae Hawks.”

Mrs. Brown blinked. Then she laughed.
“Ada,” she said, “this just proves that one
never should listen to gossip. Jim heard
the very same tale, but in his case the
principals were you and Tom Dreher. Now
you hear it and the people involved are
Jim and Emmy Mae Hawks. The whole
story’s obviously untrue.”

But Ada Le Boeuf wasn’t so sure. She re-
fused to tell Mrs. Brown where she had
heard her version of the nude swimming
tale. “But,” she said, “I understand the wife
of a frog hunter who lives near the Hawks’
cabin actually saw them. I wish you would
go into the bayou_.and ask her about it.
Her name, I’m told, is Mrs. Ork Ardon.”

“All right,” Philomena Brown agreed.
“Yl kill this rumor once and for all. ’ll
talk to Mrs. Ardon. I’ll go there this after-
noon.”

Mrs. Brown: went down to the shore of
Lake Palourde, walked along the same
trail that Le Boeuf had followed on the
night he had quarreled with Jim Beadle.

She came to Beadle’s cabin and rented a
pirogue from him.

She rowed slowly through the dark
waters, beneath the overhanging tree
branches toward the cabin of Emmy Mae
Hawks. Half a mile from that cabin and
on the other side of the bayou stood the
wooden shanty occupied by the frog hunter,
Ork Ardon.

Mrs. Brown beached her pirogue directly
before the Ardon cabin and walked up to
the open door. She was greeted with
marked hostility:

Mrs. Ardon, an ancient crone with wispy
gray hair, a yellow skin and a protruding
jaw, eyed Philomena Brown ‘and said,
“You’re from Morgan City, ain’t you? We
don’t want you folks in the bayou.”

Mrs. Brown amiably stated her business.
She impressed upon Mrs. Ardon that she
meant no harm. She merely wished to save
innocent people from the result of vicious
scandal. She, Mrs. Brown, was certain that
Mrs. Ardon had not seen anyone bathing
naked in the bayou, she said. But she had
come to make sure.

Mrs. Ardon looked at Mrs. Brown and her
expression was not one of geniality. “I ain’t
going to get mixed up in these affairs,” she
said. “But I ain’t going to tell no lies,
neither. Sure, I seen a couple carrying on
out there in the water. One was that red-
headed witch woman. The man was Jim
Le Boeuf. They was carrying on, with no

GIVE—
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clothes on at all. Why don’t all you Morgan
City folk keep away from the bayou?
We're respectable people here.”

Mrs. Brown was surprised and shocked.
She questioned Mrs. Ardon closely, but the
woman did not change her story. She had
seen two nude bathers with her own eyes
and there could be no-mistake about it,
she insisted.

Baffled, Mrs. Brown returned to the pi-
rogue. She paddled slowly home, her brow
wrinkled in thought. The gossip, if it really
was gossip, now was quite out of hand.
Originally, only Ada and the doctor had
been involved. Now it also involved Jim Le
Boeuf and the red-headed swamp woman.

Yet it had been Le Boeuf who first had
come to Philomena Brown asking her to
check on the nude bathing story. Was it
possible that he was guilty of infidelity and
was covering up by asking Mrs. Brown to
investigate? Was it possible that he was
behind all the talk of his wife’s affair with
the doctor?

After several hours’ thought, Mrs. Brown
removed herself from the entire affair.
She kept to herself what Mrs. Ardon had
told her and notified Jim and Ada Le Boeuf
that she didn’t want to have anything fur-
ther to do with the scandalous rumors.
Gossip, she said with finality, can do no
one any good.

That was true. Murder can do no one
any good, either. And although Philomena
Brown was unaware of it, a murder plot
was at the moment afoot in St. Mary’s Par-
ish. A plot as dark and treacherous as the
waters of the Bayou Teche.

On Wednesday, June 29th, 1927, Alcide
Mayon, a youth who lived in the bayou,
walked idly along’the shore of Lake Pal-
ourde. He came upon a gnarled cypress tree
whose ancient branches stretched out over
the water. The tree was dying and Spanish
moss draped it like a shroud.

Mayon leaned against its. trunk and
lighted a cigarette. Then he noticed some-
thing black and solid resting in a crotch

between two branches. He pushed aside
the Spanish moss and investigated. He
found three railroad angle irons. An angle
iron is a rolled iron bar with an L-shaped
cross section, used in construction work.

Alcide Mayon had seen angle irons, but
never in the notch of a dying cypress tree.
He looked at them for a puzzled moment.
Then, because he still was in his teens, the
notion occurred to him that an angle iron
tossed into the lake would make a splendid
and resounding splash.

He lifted one of the irons from its resting
place and hurled it into the water. The
splash quite came up to his expectations.
Mayon finished his cigarette, walked away.

On the face of things, he merely had
tossed an angle iron into the water. Un-
wittingly, he had done much more. He had
become the instrument by which a black
crime would come to light eight days later.

On July 1st, Jim and Ada Le Boeuf de-
cided to visit the latter’s brother, whose
home was on the other side of Lake Pal-
ourde. The Le Boeufs borrowed a pirogue
and made the journey by water.

In the course of the evening, Le Boeuf
remarked to his brother-in-law that on the
following day he was scheduled to take a
business trip to Franklin, thence to New

Orleans. Shortly before midnight, the Le .

Boeufs said their goodbyes, climbed into
the pirogue and began to paddle toward
Morgan City.

It was a dark, moonless night. A whip-
poorwill sang eerily from a cypress limb, a
water moccasin swam silently, tracing a
slender wake in the water. The atmosphere
was black and evil, a fitting background
for the horror about to occur.

But the following morning was bright:
and hot and if evil had stalked the bayou
on the previous evening, Morgan City was
completely unaware of it. Business went on
as usual. Jim Le Boeuf was away, a com-

mon enough occurrence, although this time |

there were whispers that he had left to get
a divorce. Ada Le Boeuf was stricken with
migraine, also quite usual. And Dr. Dreher
attended her, which was normal procedure.

On July 6th, Alcide Mayon, along with

Paul and Norbert Didier set out on Lake ©
Palourde in a motorboat for an evening of |
frog hunting. Recently, due to floods, there |
had been extremely high water in the

bayou and the lake. Now, however, the
flood had abated and the waters were re-
ceding.

Paul Didier stood in the bow of the boat,
a flashlight in his hand. His brother, Nor-
bert, was at the tiller. Alcide Mayon leaned
over the side of the boat. He, too, held a
flashlight, which he used to illumine the
black water while he looked for frogs.

Suddenly he saw something dark, moving

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slowly through the water ahead on the por

side of the motorboat. “Hey,” he yelled to#

Norbert, “there’s a guy swimming up there.”

Paul Didier blinked. “You’re crazy
Who’d be swimming in the bayou at thi
time of night?”

Norbert Didier leaned forward in th
bow, holding his flashlight at arm’s length
He uttered a startled cry. “Reverse th
motor!” he yelled to his brother.

The propeller bit deep into the wate
The boat slowed down. Norbert bent ove
the bow and stretched out his hand. “A
cide’s right,” he said in an awed ton
“There’s someone swimming, all right. Onl
it’s a corpse!”

The trio leaned white faces toward t
black water. A man’s body swayed gent
on the surface. Strands of heavy wire, aff
tached to his feet and hands, apparent
anchored him to the muddy bottom.
middle floated on the surface.

“Let’s get out of here,” Mayon said. “W
better call the cops.”

Paul Didier opened the throttle and t!
motorboat plunged toward a landing. N

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1 me, Louis, why
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ld possibly care.
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who could gain
.ange her story.
Pecot said, “Doc
istantly for head-
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m going to check.
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ne, three drugstores
je sheriff canvassed
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rvous, but she still
had been buried

this argument with
Mrs. Le Boeuf, he
‘hat there has been
sip about yourself

all nonsense. He was
ry my headaches.
rescriptions?

”
Alled here in town?
helped me.
5» breath.

“Mrs. Le

Boeuf,” he said, “‘you’re lying. Within the
past year you have filled but one prescrip-
tion in Morgan City and that was for your
daughter who had the flu. That argues that
Dr. Dreher was visiting you for some other
purpose than medical treatment.”

Ada Le Boeuf lost her calm. She began
to weep uncontrollably into her handker-
chief. Finally she said, “What do you want
to know?”

“I want to know how your husband died.”

There was a long silence. At last Ada
Le Boeuf spoke in a voice which broke.

“We had left my brother’s and were al-
most home when we saw another boat with
two men in it. One man yelled out, ‘Is that
you, Jim?’ The other man fired two shots.
I heard my husband cry out. Then he fell
to the bottom of the pirogue. I came home
and said nothing about it,”

“Why not?” :

“Because I was afraid the gossipers would
say that Tom Dreher had something to do
with the murder.”

“And wasn’t Dr. Dreher one of the men
in that boat?”

“No. I mean it was too dark to see who
they were.” .

“Was Jim Beadle in that boat?”

“T don’t think so.”

“Did you ever ask Beadle to give money
to a woman named Ardon?”

Ada Le Boeuf shook her head. She was
through talking for the day.

Pecot addressed Blakeman. “Hold her ‘on
an open charge, while I go over to Doc
Dreher’s office.”

Dr. Thomas Dreher paced his office floor.
His face was pale and there were black
circles beneath his eyes. As the sheriff en-
tered he looked up and it immediately be-
came clear that Pecot was not the first to
tax him with the murder of James Le
Boeuf. His conscience already had done so.

Dreher said, ‘Hello, Sheriff. I’ve been
expecting you. I should have done what I
intended to do—shot myself.”

“You killed Le Boeuf?”

“Virtually, yes. Actually, no. I was there
when it happened and I planned it. Jim
Beadle fired the two shots.”

Dreher was placed under arrest and es-
corted to Chief Blakeman’s office by the
sheriff. There he made a confession.

“I was afraid Jim Le Boeuf would kill
me, when he found out about Ada and me,”
he stated. “I spoke about it to Jim Beadle.
He’s an old friend of mine. We've hunted
and fished together for years. Beadle
offered to get rid of Le Beouf for me.”

On July 1st, Dreher disclosed, Ada had
sent him a note, telling him that now was
the time to act. She said that she and Le
Boeuf would be on the lake late that night.
She advised Dreher and Beadle to intercept
them.

“We met Le Boeuf’s pirogue,” the doctor
said. “Jim Beadle fired two shots at him.
You can find the gun at my home. Beadle
took nothing for the job. He liked me and
he disliked Le Boeuf.”

Ada Le Beouf, confronted with the doc-
tor’s story, changed hers, But it still didn’t
jibe with Dreher’s.

Ada claimed that Dreher called out in
the night, “Is that you, Jim?” And her hus-
band answered, “Yes. I see you’ve got that
rat, Beadle, with you.” Whereupon Le
Boeuf fired two shots at Dreher’s pirogue,
Ada said. Two answering shots were fired
and Le Boeuf dropped dead. Ada Le Boeuf
swore that she did not know who had fired
the shots which slew her husband.

Jim Beadle, when he was brought in,
made no confession at all. Neither did he
say he was innocent. He glared at the
sheriff and Blakeman and kept his mouth
shut. The trio was taken to the parish seat
at Franklin and charged with the murder
of James Le Boeuf.

The sheriff was fully convinced of their

_ of the United States, where it was referred

guilt. He also was quite convinced that-Ada
Le Boeuf had arranged for Beadle to give
the twenty dollars to Mrs. Ardon to change
her story. Ada obviously hoped that, by
starting gossip about her husband, she
could still the rumors: about herself.

The women of the state of Louisiana ap-
parently did not feel Ada’s guilt as strongly
as did the sheriff. Petitions poured in from
every corner of the state, demanding that
Ada be freed. This occurred even before
she actually was brought to trial.

The trial began in Franklin on J uly 25th,
before Judge James D. Simon. The trio was
tried together. On the fourth day Ada Le
Boeuf collapsed on the witness stand, ne-
cessitating an adjournment. On the sixth
day, as Jim Beadle listened to Dreher’s tes-
timony that the alligator hunter had fired
the lethal shots, he apparently decided the
time had come to say something in his own
defense,

He formally demanded a separate lawyer.
The request was granted by Judge Simon.

When this was done, Jim Beadle made
his own confession. It differed from those
of Ada Le Boeuf and Dr. Dreher.

Beadle claimed that after he and Dreher
had set out in the pirogue, the doctor had
said, “Jim, ’m going to kill that damned
Le Boeuf.”

“Don’t do that, doctor,” Beadle had re-
plied.

“Yes,” Dreher said, “I’m going to do it
and if you open your mouth about it, I’m
going to kill you, too.”

When they met Le Boeuf out on the lake,
Beadle swore, Dreher lifted his shotgun and
fired twice. Dreher then said, “I’ve got some
angle irons hidden in that cypress. We'll use
them to weight down the body.”

After the corpse had been attached to the
angle irons Dreher had slit the stomach
open, announcing that it then would be im-
possible for the corpse to float.

On August 8th, the jury found the trio
guilty of first-degree murder. Two days
later Beadle was sentenced to life impris-
onment at the state penitentiary at Baton
Rouge. Two days after that Ada Le Boeuf
and Dr. Dreher were sentenced to be
hanged.

Up to this point no woman ever had been
executed in the state of Louisiana. A tre-
mendous legal battle ensued to save Ada
Le Boeuf from the gallows. Her appeal
went all the way up to the Supreme Court

back to the state courts which originally
had denied it.

Her lawyers then addressed themselves
to the State Board of Pardons. The Board
of Pardons voted two to one to grant clem-
ency to Ada Le Boeuf. Governor Huey
Long, a man who knew quite a little about
murder himself, remarked that the board’s
action looked like “a mockery against de-
cency and order in the state of Louisiana.”

However, Ada’s lawyers managed to draw
out the legal Proceedings for more than a
year and a half. On Friday, February 1st,
1929, Ada Le Boeuf and Thomas Dreher
were hanged in a double execution in the
parish jail in Franklin.

Morgan City thereupon returned to its
customary tranquility. The bayou folk re-
sumed their humdrum lives, The waters of
Bayou Teche still run deep and black. On
occasion the evil currents in the heart of
man run even deeper and blacker. o¢¢

Eprtor’s Note:

The names, Philomena Brown, Paul
and Norbert Didier, Emmy Mae Hawks
and Mrs. Ork Ardon, as used in the fore-
going story, are not the real names of
the persons concerned, These persons

have been given fictitious names to pro-
tect their identities,

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information and an hour later set off for
the bayou, accompanied by Police Chief
Blakeman.

Jim Beadle, whom they saw first, was
sullen and uncommunicative. “I ain’t seen
Jim Le Boeuf for over.a month,” he said.
“And now he’s dead, I ain’t crying about
it. I never liked him much anyway.”

“Maybe,” Pecot suggested, ‘you disliked
him enough to kill him. I hear that on one
occasion you threatened him.”

“I was drunk that night. And lately I’ve
been too busy hunting ’gators to kill any-
one. I sure didn’t kill Jim Le Boeuf,”
Beadle declared.

“Can you prove it?” Blakeman asked.

“I don’t have to prove it. It’s up to you
to prove I did.”

It was an unsatisfactory interview, but
under the circumstances the officers didn’t
pursue the matter. There was no direct
evidence against Beadle, save the fact that
he’d quarreled with Le Boeuf about a
pirogue some five months earlier.

Blakeman and Pecot climbed back into
their boat and paddled through the bayou.
As they approached Emmy Mae Hawks’
cabin they saw smoke rising from the chim-
ney.

“Apparently, she’s home,” the sheriff
commented. “In spite of what folks said.”

Blakeman nodded. “I expected she would
be. It’s a cinch she hasn’t run off with Le
Boeuf. He’s in his grave.”

They beached the boat, walked up the
shore and knocked on the door of -the
cabin.

Emmy Mae Hawks opened the door. She
was wearing a tattered pair of blue jeans,
a man’s shirt and heavy work boots. In
spite of her garb, she was not unattractive.
Her hair was flaming red, her lips full and
her eyes sparkling. Her manner, however,
was hostile.

“What do you want?” she demanded.

“Hello, Emmy Mae,” Blakeman said. “We
just want to ask you a few questions.”

“I got no use for the law since you guys
tried to frame me for killing my husband,”
she stated. ‘What do you want now? Are
you trying to pin Jim Le Boeuf’s murder
on me, too?”

“Not pin it on you,” Pecot said. “We'd just
like to ask you what you know about it.”

“I know nothing about it. I don’t even
know Le Boeuf, except by sight.”

“No?” Pecot said. “Then how was it that
you were swimming with him in the
bayou? I understand you weren’t wearing
swim suits, either.”

The redhead’s eyes narrowed. She took
a deep breath and said, “Cops are real

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dumb. They’ll believe any lie they’re told.”

“A lie?” Pecot asked. “You mean Mrs.
Ardon lied about it?”

“Sure she did. She saw Ada Le Boeuf and
Doc Dreher swimming together.”

“Then why did she tell Mrs. Brown that
it was Jim Le Boeuf and you?”

“Because Jim Beadle made her. Either he
gave her money or he scared her into
changing her story. First, she said she saw
Mrs, Le Boeuf and the doctor. When Jim
Beadle heard about it, he said he was going
to make her change her story. And he did,
too.”

The sheriff and Blakeman exchanged
glances, Blakeman said quietly, “We'll run
along now and talk with Mrs. Ardon. Maybe
we'll be back to see you later.”

Mrs. Ardon was drunk and defiant. She
made it clear immediately that she shared
Emmy Mae’s opinion of policemen. At first
she flatly refused to answer questions.

Pecot said, ‘Do you know you could go
to jail for slander? If your story of Le
Boeuf and Emmy Mae swimming together
is a malicious lie, you can go to prison.”

“Who'd testify against me? Emmy Mae
won’t, and Jim Le Boeuf’s dead,” the wom-
an countered.

“Mrs. Le Boeuf could prosecute you.”

This statement sent Mrs. Ardon into
paroxyms of bitter mirth. “Her? Fat chance!
She wouldn’t dare!”

Blakeman pounced on that. “Why not?”
he asked sharply.

It took a solid hour to obtain the answer
to that question. The officers conducted a
skilled and ruthless interrogation, inter-
spersed with warnings that Mrs. Ardon
still could be charged with slander.

At last, somewhat more sober, she told
the truth. “All right,” she said, “I really
did see Ada Le Boeuf and Doc swimming
in the nude. I told some folks about it. Then
Jim Beadle came and gave me twenty dol-
lars to say it was Jim Le Boeuf and the
witch woman, Emmy Mae Hawks.”

“Why,” Pecot asked, “should Jim Beadle
do that?”

Mrs. Ardon shrugged her thin shoulders.
“How do I know? He gave me the cash and

I did as he asked. That’s all I know. I can’t
tell you any more than that.”

“It’s enough,” Pecot said. ‘“‘Let’s go.”

Back in Blakeman’s office, Pecot sighed
thoughtfully. He said, “Tell me, Louis, why
should Jim Beadle care a hang who was
swimming in the bayou?”

“He shouldn't.”

The sheriff nodded. “As I see it, there are
only two people who could possibly care.”

“Right. Ada Le Boeuf and Doc Dreher.
They’re the only people who could gain
by having Mrs. Ardon change her story.”

“As I understand it,” Pecot said, “Doc
Dreher treated Ada constantly for head-
aches. I take it, he prescribed various rem-
edies.

“So Ada has said. Why?”

“There’s something I’m going to check.

But in the meantime, let’s talk to Mrs. Le:

Boeuf.”

There were, at that time, three drugstores
in Morgan City. After the sheriff canvassed
each of them, Blakeman went to bring in
Mrs. Le Boeuf.

Ada Le Boeuf was nervous, but she still
insisted that the man who had been buried
was not her husband.

The sheriff dismissed this argument with @
a wave of his hand. “Mrs. Le Boeuf,” he §
said, “you are aware that there has been &
a great deal of local gossip about yourself §

and Dr. Dreher?”

“Of course. But it’s all nonsense. He was §

merely attending me for my headaches.”
“And he gave you prescriptions?”
“Naturally.”

“And you had them filled here in town?”

“Certainly. And they helped me.”

Pecot drew a deep breath. “Mrs. Ley

Nit Na ter

to wee;

{

to kno

‘Iwa

There

Le Boeu
“We hz

most hon

two men

you, Jim‘
I heard n
to the bot

and Said r
“Why ne
“Becaus:

Say that 7
With the n
“And w:
in that bo:
“No. I m
they were.’
“Was Jin
“I don’t t

“Did you
toa woman
Ada Le I
through ta]
Pecot add

8nN open ch
Dreher's of;
Dr. Thom:
His face wa
Circles bene;
tered he loo}
came clear ;
tax him wit
Boeut. His ox
Dreher sai
exp&cting Yol
intended to ,
“You killed
peittually,
when it happ
Beadle fired t
reher was
corted to Chir
sheriff. There
“IT was atfra;
me, when he f,
he stated, “] st
He’s an old fri
and fished ito
offered to get r
On July ist,
Sent him a note
the time to act
Boeuf would be
She adviseg Dre

them.

ae

“We met Le B
Said. “Jim Bead]
You can find the
took nothing for
he disliked Le Bc

Ada Le Beout
tor’s Story, chang;
jibe with Dreher’

Ada Claimed th
the night, “Is that

band answered, «\
rat, Beadle, with
Boeut fired two it
Ada said. Tio ans
and Le Boeut drop
did
sle
whe

Blakem
at Franklin and cn,

Oeuf,
he sherift Was f


ii “ i

4

ished aside
tigated. He
ys. An angle
an L-shaped
iction work.
le irons, but
cypress tree.
led moment.
his teens, the
n angle iron
ke a splendid

om its resting
> water. The
expectations.

walked away.
» merely had
,e water. Un-
more. He had

which a black
ight days later.
. Le Boeuf de-
brother, whose
e of Lake Pal- |
wed a pirogue |
}

ater.

ning, Le Boeuf
jaw that on the
duled to take a
thence to New |
iidnight, the Le §
1s, climbed into
paddle toward

night. A whip-
a cypress limb, @
jlently, tracing 4
. The atmosphere
tting background
“ning was bright” |
stalked the bayou |
Morgan City was |
Business went on —
was away 2 com=")
although this time |
- he had left to get |
“was stricken with
al. And Dr. Dreher
normal procedure.
Mayon, along with
e et out on
it for an evering ri
| ; ds, the
due to f00 in the

bow of the boat,

i tis brother, ee
Alcide Mayon leaned)
joat. He, too, Bee
used to pag oer Og the

ked for frogs. |

wething dark, movies
ter ahead on the por
. “Hey,” he yelled to!
y swimming up there. ;
ked. “You're crazy:
in the bayou at this

vaned forward in bees
hlight at arms length.
ed cry. “Reverse the
nis brother.

the water

white faces toward a
n’'s body swayed Ben
ands of heavy wire,

tl

hands, apparent?

oe nuddy bottom. Hi
the surface.

$ “ 4
here,” Mayon said. “We

ned
ad toward a

landing. No

the throttle and tt

-bert put through the telephone. call..The
‘boys waited at the landing until Morgan

City’s Chief of Police, Louis R. Blakeman,
arrived with Dr. C. M. Horton, the coroner.

They climbed into the motor boat and
sped back to the point where the corpse
had been seen. The heavy wire which
bound the dead man was too strong to be
broken and the sheriff had brought no tools
with him for that purpose.

Arduously, the five men tugged at it,
eventually dragging up a heavy angle iron
to which it was attached. One angle iron
had anchored the corpse’s hands, the other
his feet.

Dr. Horton examined the dead man by
flashlight. He obviously had been killed by
two blasts from a double-barreled shotgun.
Half his left shoulder had been torn away.
The features were bloated and completely
unrecognizable and there were three deep
knife slashes across the dead man’s belly.
There were no identifying marks on the
sodden clothing, no identifying items in the
pockets. ;

It was almost dawn when the body was
carried to Morgan City, where Dr. Horton
proceeded to perform an autopsy. Sheriff
Charles L. Pecot was summoned from
Franklin and took charge of the investiga-
tion.

Alcide Mayon told the sheriff that a week
previously he had found three angle irons,
similar to those which had anchored the
corpse, in a tree crotch at the side of the
lake. He mentioned the fact that he had
thrown one of them into the water.

“T guess,” he added, “that the other two
were tied to the body to hold it down.”

Sheriff Pecot agreed. “It indicates pre-
meditated murder,” he said. “Someone put
those angle irons in the tree, against the
night he intended to use them. Three angle
irons would have held that body on the
bottom of the lake forever. Two weren’t
enough. If you hadn’t tossed an angle iron
into the water, we might have never known
that a murder had been committed.”

Dr. Horton reported that the slashes on
the stomach of the dead man apparently
had been made in order that gases could
escape, thus reducing the buoyancy of the
body. Obviously, it had been the killer’s
intention to make certain that his victim
would not float to the surface of the lake.

Sheriff Pecot realized that his investiga-
tion would not get off the ground until the
dead man had been identified. To that end
he called upon Ada Le Boeuf.

“Mrs. Le Boeuf,” he said, “I understand
your husband has been out of town for
about a week.”

Ada Le Boeuf said that was true.

“Has he communicated with you at all?
By either telephone or letter?” !

“No. But then he rarely does, unless
there’s some emergency. Why?”

“I don’t want to alarm. you, Mrs. Le
Boeuf. But it has occurred to me that the
body found in the lake may be that of your
husband.” ‘

Ada Le Boeuf didn’t seem alarmed. She
seemed amused. She cried, “That’s im-

possible! Who would want to kill him?”

The sheriff couldn’t answer that. Never-
theless, he persisted, “Can you tell me what
your husband was wearing when he left
home?” ;

“He wore a brown suit and a pair of
black shoes, a white shirt and a polkadot
bow tie,” Ada said.

The sheriff frowned. The dead man had
worn tan shoes and a pair of gray trous-
ers and a plaid shirt.

Pecot returned to local police head-
quarters. There he talked again to Dr. Hor-
ton, who assured him that the body had
been in the water for six or eight days.

In reply to Pecot’s question, Horton
agreed that, in general, the body resembled
. that of Jim Le Boeuf. “But,” he added,

. “that> doesn “There are

bom : re. arev al.
hundred men in this patish built like Jim
Le Boeuf.”

Forty-eight ‘hours. after the swimming
corpse had been discovered, it still was
unidentified. ‘And on that day; July 8th,
Ada’ Le Boeuf paid a visit to the family
confidante, Philomena Brown., .

“Philomena,” she said, “I have something
to tell you. The sheriff seems to think that
the body they found in the lake is Jim’s.
I know it isn’t, He’s ruri away with that
woman.”

“What woman?”

“That redhead. The witch who lives in
the bayou.” ’

To Mrs. Brown, who reéalled the story
of the Ardon woman, this didn’t appear sur-
prising. : ‘

“I thought you told the sheriff that he
was away on a business.trip,” Mrs. Brown
said. ;

“I want to tell you what happened on that
last night I saw Jim,” Ada Le Boeuf went
on. “We started back from my brother’s
house in the pirogue. During the trip we
began to quarrel.”

Le Beouf, it appeared, had grown in-
creasingly angry as they bickered. He
swung the pirogue around and headed back
to shore. There, he ordered his wife out of
the boat, remarking that he knew someone
who would treat him more lovingly than
she did. Then he paddled out into the bayou
again. pra Oot

Mrs. Le Boeuf had taken a pirogue be-
longing to her brother and rowed home
alone. She had not heard from her husband
since. She was ‘sure that he had run off
with the redheaded witch, she said.

“Are you sure,” Mrs. Brown asked, “that
the dead man isn’t Jim?”

“Positive.”

“Have you. seen the body?”

“No. Why should I? I’m certain it isn’t
Jim.” ;

This struck Mrs. Brown as peculiar. A
man was dead ard Jim Le Boeuf was miss-
ing. It seemed reasonable that an anxious
wife would at least view the corpse, to
make certain it was not her husband. Yet
Ada Le Boeuf seemed quite unconcerned.

In the meantime, Sheriff Pecot had not
been idle. He, too, thought Mrs. Le Boeuf’s
attitude curious. He was by no means con-
vinced that the swimming corpse -was not
Jim Le Boeuf. He called in Le. Boeuf’s
dentist to settle the matter.

The dentist examined the upper plate
found in the dead man’s mouth, compared
it with his charts and stated flatly that this
was the body of James Le Boeuf.

This news was promptly communicated
to Ada Le Boeuf. She received it calmly.
“The dentist is mistaken,” she said. “My
husband is alive. I know it.”

The funeral Was held that afternoon. Ada
Le Boeuf attended, but she did not weep.
She stoutly maintained that the man they
buried was not her husband.

When Mrs. Philomena Brown heard of
the body’s identification, she decided that
she must see the sheriff. She must tell him
of the stories she had heard about both
Jim and his wife. Reluctantly, for the Le
Boeufs had been her lifelong friends, she
sought out Pecot. '

She told the sheriff all the gossip she had
heard since the inception of the affair. She
told him of Mrs. Ardon’s report of the nude
bathing party.

Pecot listened intently. He said, “I’ll talk
to Mrs, Ardon today. I’m going out to the
bayou, anyway. I’d already heard that Jim
Beadle threatened Le Boeuf during an ar-
gument over the pirogue. I’ll also talk to
Emmy Mae Hawks.”  _

“Ada Le Boeuf says that Jim’s run away
with the Hawks woman,” Mrs. Brown said.

“It'll be easy enough to find that out,”

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Pecot said. He thanked Mrs. Brown for the

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When he was taken back to the Clayton
jail to await trial for murder in Union
County, Sheriff Garcia stopped by one after-
noon to talk to his prisoner.

“Anything you want, Tom?” he asked.

“Sure is, Sheriff,” said he. “How did you
happen to have so many deputies on that
train, and what became of Conchita?” -

Garcia laughed uproariously. “You sure
fell for the trick good, didn’t you? You see
I put out all that stuff about your being
afraid to come back to Union County, hop-
ing you would hear about it and try and put
over a fast one right under my nose. When
you didn’t take the bait, I planted a girl
in practically every saloon in New Mexico
where you might show up. Conchita finally
found you and lured you back. We were
ready for you.”

Black Jack sneered contemptuously. “Seems
like a lot of trouble you went to when the
gal could have plugged me a hundred times

when I was asleep during the weeks she
was with me.”

“I didn’t want it that-away,” the sheriff
replied. “First place, I wanted you back in
Union County. Then I wanted to catch
you red-handed robbing a train so there
could be no mistake about it.”

He paused as though considering a weighty
problem. “Most of all, though,” he con-
tinued, “I wanted to take you alive so the
folks around here could have the pleasure
of seeing you hanged.”

Before the month was over Tom Ketchum
went to trial for the murder of Sheriff Farr,
before Circuit Judge W. J. Mills. He was.
quickly convicted by a jury and as speedily
sentenced to die on the gibbet.

They lost no time putting the last of
the “Ketchum Boys” in a place from which
he never would escape, for presently the
gallows was erected and the doomed man
walked up the thirteen steps unassisted and

stood quietly and fearlessly while Sheriff
Garcia adjusted the noose around his neck,
While he waited, Ketchwm looked over the
huge crowd assembled for the execution.
Turning to Garcia, he remarked:

“We got a good bunch for the show,

haven't we?”

There was a brief delay as the black hood
was being made ready and the man spoke
again;

“Hurry up, let’s have the last act!”

A moment later Garcia sprung the trap
and Tom Ketchum dropped like a plummet.
But even at the end, Black Jack had to
go out a little differently from other out-
laws. The rope had not been adjusted prop-
erly, the drop was too far for his weight and
when the body snapped at the bottom of
the fall his head was torn off and flipped
back grotesquely to the gallows platform
while the headless corpse lay motionless on’
the ground beneath. ;

Secret Crime at
Lake Palourde

(Continued from page 43]

“A maniac must have done this,” he said at
last. “It wasn't enough to shoot Jim. The
killer had to slash him to ribbons.”

“Dr Horton thinks the slashes were made
to keep the body from bloating and rising to
the surface,” the sheriff interjected.

“That’s entirely possible,” Dreher agreed.
“But why the weights on the body?”

Sheriff Pecot looked at Chief Blakeman
quickly, Then he said, “How did you know
the corpse was wei hted down?”

Dr. Dreher looked at one officer and then
the other. His expression was heavy with
scorn, “Look at the ankles and neck,” he
said, “Do you think a doctor has to be
told that ropes haye cut into that flesh;
and that heavy weights were attached to
those ropes?”

Pecot and Blakeman felt ashamed.

“T apologize,” the sheriff said. “It’s just that
this whole thing had unnerved us all, I
must be like a drowning man grasping at a
straw, You're right, of course.”

News of the positive identification spread
through the little Louisiana parish as only
bad tidings can. Jim LeBoeuf was one of
the most respected men in Morgan City.
Citizens asked why he should be singled out
for murder. Was anybody safe? Tight little
groups formed to discuss the situation.
Sheriff Pecot and Chief Blakeman realized
how serious this could be. They went to
Thomas Gilmore, assistant district attorney
in Franklin, and outlined all known details
of the crime.

“This murder was obviously premedi-
tated,” Gilmore said when they finished.
“The place to start the investigation is out
at Lake Palourde. It’s mighty hard to shoot
a man twice, slash him, weight his body
down with angle-irons and dump him in the
water without leaving some physical evi-
dence behind—or without being seen by
somebody. Let's go out there and look
around. Neighbors will have to be ques-
tioned. Boats must be checked... .”

One clue was turned up more quickly than
even the investigators thought possible.
People living near the spot where the body
had been found remembered seeing three
railroad angle-irons at the base of a tree
during the last days of June. One youth
said that he had tried to lift one and, having
failed, turned it end over end until he had
it in the water.

“I played there the next day,” this boy
told the officers,.“and the other two were
gone.” He took Pecot, Blakeman and Gil-
more to the spot and showed them the third
iron in the shallow water,

“Do you remember the exact day you
put this one in the water?” the district
attorney asked,

The boy thought a few minutes and then
answered, “Yes, I do. That would have been

the first day of July, Friday. I remember .

because it was so close to the holiday. When
I went back on Saturday the other two irons
were missing.”

Gilmore thanked him. And when the
three officers were alone again he said,
“Maybe that gives us the date of our crime.
The weights must have been laced in a
convenient spot several days before they
were used, Whoever did this job planned it
well in advance.”

Sheriff Pecot and Chief Blakeman agreed.

“The idea must have been to rope one
weight onto the feet, one around the neck

and a third to the body,” the district

attorney added. ‘Then this kid came along
and removed one. That disrupted the plans
and made the slashing of the stomach
necessary.”

All three realized this wasn't much to go
on, but it did indicate that the actual shoot-
ing had taken place at Lake Palourde.

“1 doubt robbery was the motive,” Chief
Blakeman said, “despite the fact there was
little money found in the dead man’s

ockets. I think it was a crime of vengeance.

aybe it grew out of a local feud.”

“But a man like Jim LeBoeuf?” Sheriff
Pecot protested. “Who in Morgan City
would want him out of the way so desper-
ately that he'd kill to see it through?”

“That's the question we've got to answer,”
Gilmore stated firmly.

All the rest of that day was spent inter-
viewing people who lived in the Lake
Palourde vicinity. When the three investi-
gators met back in Morgan City that night
each one had something vital to tell the
others.

“You both know Jim Beadle,” District
Attorney Gilmore began. “He lives about
two miles from the spot where the body was
found. He’s a bad actor. You've had him in
custody many times; but we've never had
anything serious against him before. Maybe
that’s all changed now.”

Sheriff Pecot interrupted. He's no rela-
tion of the Beadle boy who found the body
is he?” iri

“No,” the prosecutor answered. “But one
of his neighbors told me today that he
heard Jim Beadle swear he was going to
‘get’ Jim LeBoeuf, It seems LeBoeuf used
one of Beadle’s boats without permission.
He wanted to do some hunting, You know

how those lake people are about their pri-
vate property.”

Chief Blakeman waited until he was sure
Gilmore had finishéd his story. “I’ve got
something too,” he said, “You will remem-
ber that Mrs, LeBoeuf said that: Jim left for
Lafayette in the late afternoon of July Ist.
Well, I talked with one of her relatives who
lives near the lake. He says he saw Jim and
his wife boating on Lake Palourde around 8
o’clock that same Friday night! He even
called his son in to verify the statement.”

Sheriff Pecot was the next to speak. “What
I’ve got to say makes it look bad for three

eople,” he began. “I didn’t mention it be-
ore, but I’ve heard rumors about the Le-
Boeuf and Dreher families long before this
murder took place, They were close friends
for many years. Their children grew up
together. But Ada was the tempestuous sort.
She liked parties and the company of other
men, I’ve heard whispers along that line
for some time.”

The parish officer lit his pipe before
continuing. “I checked on those rumors
today,” he said finally. “And Dr. Dreher
seems to have been the man she centered
most of her attention on. One person claims
Jim LeBoeuf knew something about the
affair and threatened Dr. Dreher. One thing
is certain. Dr. Dreher was not the close
friend of Jim LeBoeuf’s that he claimed to
be when this thing happened.”

Chief Blakeman stood up and snapped his
fingers. “Say,” he exclaimed, “I just remem-
ber something. Jim Beadle does a lot of
work for Doctor Dreher. Can that tie in?”

District Attorney Gilmore said that it cer-
tainly could. “We'll have to bring Beadle in
for questioning,” he said. “And we'll also
examine all his boats. Dr. Dreher and Mrs.
LeBoeuf will have to be handled with kid
gloves. The odds are the woman knows noth-
ing about this mess. Maybe Dr. Dreher is
innocent too. If Beadle will talk or if we're
lucky enough to find some evidence of the
crime in his boat this investigation will be
getting somewhere.”

The three officers decided to question
Beadle that same night. They went out to
his shack near Lake Palourde and ‘knocked

on the door. A sleepy-eyed man that they:

all recognized as Jim Beadle answered,
“What do you men want?” he asked.
Sheriff Pecot said, “We'd like you to come

back into Morgan City with us, There's a.

few questions concerning the LeBoeuf mur-
der that we want answered,”

Jim Beadle glared at the officers. “You're
barking up the wrong tree,” he said. “I don't
know a thing about it.”

Sheriff Pecot decided to take a chance.
“Pr. Dreher tells a different story,” he ven-
tured,

.

*

73

lly him since. He always either writes or telephones. I can’t “We'll see Dr. Dreher together,” the latter man said.
se imagine what's happened.” “Certainly he should be able to make an identification if
be Chief Blakeman broke the news of the discovery of the anybody can.”
body in Lake Palourde and the identification of the teeth Dr. Thomas Dreher was one of the most popular phy-
nd as gently as he could. Mrs. LeBoeuf stood up well until the _ sicians in St. Mary's Parish. He was a family man, in his
1€ very end of the story. Then she broke into a spasm of early 50s, successful, respected.
rk violent sobbing. The news of a possible tie-up between the murder victim
“It can’t be Jim,” she managed. “He did gamble more and Jim LeBoeut shocked him deeply. “Certainly I'll come.
ur than he should; but he wasn’t in that kind of trouble, It to the morgue with you,” he tol the investigators. “I'll
he can’t be true. I’ll hear from him any day now.” tell you in a minute whether you're on the right track or
The officer shook his head. “We've got to be brave,” he wrong.”
th said. “We've got to accept the facts.” As the two officers and the doctor drove to the mortuary
ne He waited a few minutes before asking Mrs. LeBoeuf Pecot said, “You've known the LeBoeuf family a long time
if she would be able to accompany him to the morgue and haven't you, Doctor?”
make a positive identification. “Twenty-five years,” Dreher answered. “And if Jim is
nt “No! No!” she exclaimed. “Jim isn’t dead. He’s coming dead I've lost the best friend I’ve ever had.”
isi- back. I couldn’t stand to look at a dead man stretched out The morgue was not new to the physician. He had been
on a morgue slab. I'd diel” there on many occasions. Therefore he stepped up to the
he Blakeman knew that it was no use trying to persuade the gray slab as Sheriff Pecot threw back the shroud, and looked
he wife. “Who is your family physician?” he asked. at the dead man’s face without hesitation.
n’s The woman looked up abate “Dr, Dreher,” she said.
ut “Dr. Thomas Dreher. He'll go with you. He'll tell you it Then he stepped back Howly. “You're right,” he said.
isn’t Jim.” “Jim LeBoeuf is ead—murdered!” There was a tenseness
The police chief got up to leave. He thought that per- to his words that almost amounted to anger. “I'll do any-
ke haps he had asked too much of Mrs. LeBoeuf. “I’m sorry thing I can to help you,” he added grimly. “Anything!”
ge I had to be the one to break this news,” he said softly, Sheriff Pecot said, “I know how you feel. Will you take
“but murder investigations aren’t easy on anyone. I'll con- a look at those gashes in the stomach and give us an
Id tact Dr. Dreher. And I hope we're wrong and that your opinion?”
mt husband will be home soon.” Dr. Dreher hesitated momentarily, rubbed his hand over
am Blakeman didn’t believe those last words. He wished he | his forehead in an effort to regain his composure. “Cer-
righ | could; but some inner sense told him that the dead man __ tainly,” he answered. “It’s just that looking at an old friend
on the morgue slab and Jim LeBoeuf were one and the isn’t the same as dealing with someone you don’t know.”
aa same. Sheriff Pecot heard his story of the visit with Mrs. Then he Maat te closer. His professional manner re-
iti LeBoeuf. turned as he probed the wounds. [Continued on page 73}
Cs.
mi- :
in
an-
was
ind
ild
ol
Id
ind
1ere
He
1aNt
sme |
|
told
Mrs. |
a be The lake man, above, was
ant overheard saying that he
“would get Jim LeBoeuf.”
hiet
e he
Mr.
later
Ada
n to
$O
ully. Broken in health, Ada LeBoeuf, above, collapsed in court.
and and was rushed for medical attention. For the remainder
of her trial she was wheeled into court on a hospital cot.
yw?" The convicted pair, right, were sentenced to the gallows.
ess,

rom

re

-

42

presence of two heavy rail-
road angle-irons: oné*bped
around the feet and an-
other around the neck, .

Four men held lights
while Dr. Horton made a
preliminary examination
of the corpse. Two vist
holes in the dead man’s left
side showed that death had
come before the body was
submerged in the lake.

“Shotgun wounds,” the
coroner stated flatly, “fired
from close range. And the
stomach’s been slashed
open. This corpse has been
in the water several days.”

The dead man wore a
white shirt and dark
trousers. When Horton examined the pockets he found
nothing but some small change. “Identification is going
to be tough,” he said. Then he pried the locked jaws open.
“False teeth,” the coroner added. “And that’s the first en-
couraging thing we've found.”

The grim cargo of death was taken into, Morgan City;
and none of the officers got any more sleep that night. John
Beadle and Alcide Mayon told about their frog hunting
expedition and the accidental discovery of the corpse. Sher-
iff Pecot and Chief Blakeman knew they had a murder
case on their hands, the kind that obviously provided a
challenge to any detective.

Gov. Huey Long termed
the efforts to keep the pair
from the gallows “a mock-
ery on decency and order.”

By 10 o'clock that morning Dr. Horton had a more com- ,

plete report ready. “The dead man has been in the water
between three and six days,” he said.
“The gunshot wounds were the cause of
death. They were fired at such close range
that I found powder burns on the shirt.
Death was. instantaneous. The abdomen
was slashed afterwards, That was doubt-
less done to prevent the accumulation
of gas inside the body. Whoever did it
realized sometimes bodies, even when
they're weighted down, have a way of
rising to the surface. "This one didn’t
for two reasons: the slashes kept it from
bloating and the two angle-irons were
heavy enough to keep it submerged. The
victim was about 45 years old, weighed
around 160, stood 5 feet 10 inches... .”
Sheriff Pecot asked, “What about an
identification? Did you find anything be-
sides the teeth we can work on?”
“Only one other thing,” the coroner
answered, “The victim’s thumbs are ab-

After this man looked the victim's plates over carefully
he said, “I didn’t do the work, but I can tell you these false
teeth are manufactured by only one outfit. That would be
the Acme Dental Supply Company in Baton Rouge.”

Sheriff Pecot thanked the dentist, took the plates and
hurried to the Louisiana state capital, When the Acme

eople were contacted the manager recognized the work
immediately.

“These are ours all right,” he told Pecot. “I'll check our
files. There should be a card there that will identify the
person who purchased them.”

In a matter of minutes this man returned. “Those teeth
were made two years ago,” the manager said, “for one
James LeBoeuf of Morgan City.”

Sheriff Pecot whistled softly.

“Jim LeBoeuf is one of that town’s most prominent
citizens,” he said. “Why, he’s superintendent of the Louisi-
ana Utilities Corporation! It seems incredible—”

The manager who had checked the records showed the
parish officer the LeBoeuf card and explained just how he
could be sure of his statement. “I don’t say the dead man’s
name is James LeBoeuf,” he stated, “but I'm positive about
the teeth.”

When the sheriff returned home he found Chief Blake-
man waiting for him. After the facts of the Baton Rouge
trip had been related the police chief smiled.

“Looks like we've hit on something definite,” he told
Pecot. “What I found ties right in. Three people who knew
Jim LeBoeuf a lot better than I did say he is the only man
in the parish with stumpy, deformed thumbs such as the
victim had.”

The two officers knew that if this identification stood
up, the murder they were investigating would be a sensa-
tion throughout the Southern - states.

Jim LeBoeuf was a French Acadian, a
direct descendant of the people who mi-
grated to Louisiana from Nova Scotia in
the days of Longfellow’s heroine, Evan-
geline. Everybody knew him. He was
married, the father of five children, and
by all worldly standards a success.

“We can't afford to let any wild
rumors get around’ until we're sure of
the identification,” Sheriff Pecot told
Blakeman. “I'll call LeBoeuf’s office and
see if he’s there.”

This was done at once. Associates there
said that Jim LeBoeuf was absent. “He
hasn’t been in for a week,” the informant
said. “We're not sure whether he's home
ill or away on a trip.”

Pecot put the receiver down and told
the chief. “We'll have to contact Mrs.
LeBoeuf,” he said. “That's not going to

normally short, stumpy and crooked at
the ends, Maybe that will be a clue.”
“My guess,” Chief Blakeman_ inter-

The victim, a prominent and
wealthy citizen of Louisiana,
was found in a watery grave.

be an easy job, but it should tell us what
we want to know for sure.”
The parish officer decided to let Chief

jected, “is that some racketeer from New

Orleans got himself taken for a ride; and

the body was transported to that lonely spot in the lake for
safe hiding. Only gangsters would know about cutting the
abdomen open to keep gas from accumulating.”

Dr. Horton nodded agreement. “Gangsters,” he said, “and
people who know about anatomy. Medical men.”

Sheriff Pecot issued a bulletin giving as full a description
of the victim as he could and ordered this broadcast to all
Louisiana and nearby states. :

“I'll take the dentistry angle,” he told Blakeman, “You
try to find somebody who's heard about a man with short,
stumpy and crooked thumbs.”

Every dentist in Morgan City, Franklin and St. Mary's
Parish was summoned to examine the dead man’s false
teeth. They all shook their heads negatively until Dr. Wal-
ter de Rivera arrived at police headquarters.

Blakeman see the woman alone since he
knew her slightly.

A maid answered the doorbell ring and said that Mr.
LeBoeuf was not at home.

“Could I speak with his wife?” the officer asked.

The maid disappeared only to return a moment later
and ask the chief to come into the living room. Mrs, Ada
LeBoeuf managed a weak smile and asked Blakeman to
take a seat.

“I hope this isn’t about Jim,” she began. “I’ve been so
worried I haven't slept for nights.”

Chief Blakeman studied the dark-eyed woman carefully.
She was of the same French Acadian stock as her husband;
stately, reserved, and still an attractive woman. .

“tm afraid it is,” he answered gently. “Where is he now?”

“Jim told me he was going to LaFayette on business,”
the wife said, “That was last Friday. I haven’t heard from

ee tee

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ar
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The suspect was silent a long moment.
Then he said, “He does, does he? Come
along. I'll tell you a story that'll curl your
hair.”

They all got in Pecot's car and headed
for Morgan City. Beadle didn’t wait to get
there before he began.

“I've worked for Doc Dreher for a long
time,” he said. “Odd jobs and stuff like that.
Two weeks ago he called me to his office
and asked me if I wanted to earn some real
money. TI said I did providing it was on the
up and up. He swore me to secrecy; and
then he told me about some trouble he had
been having with Jim LeBoeuf. A meeting
had been arranged at Lake Palourde and
Dreher wanted me to come along to pro-
tect him.

“T'll admit T knew what that trouble was
about,” Beadle told the officers, “but I didn’t
think it would amount to anything. I said
I'd be there. The meeting was for the night
of July Ist at 8 o'clock, back of the school-
house north of Morgan City.”

The man went on to say that he had
kept the appointment and met the doctor
where he said he would. Dreher was nervous
and asked Beadle if he were armed.

“Tt asked him what for?” the informant
related, ‘and he said he was afraid Le-
Boeuf would cause trouble. The Doc got
in my boat and told me to row over near
the railroad enbankment. He got out there,
walked around a little and climbed back in.
He had something wrapped up. I was told
to row over near the schoolhouse, About
that time I heard another boat coming from
the south. Pretty soon I saw it was Mrs.
LeBoeuf. The moment the Doc recognized
her he muttered an oath, Then we saw still
another boat coming through the under-
growth, Jim LeBoeuf was in that one, I
noticed Dreher was fingering something he
had covered on his lap. He said, ‘Pull over
nearer those boats.’ I didn’t know what was
going to happen, but I'm used to following
orders. Mrs. LeBoeuf had stopped rowing.
Dr. Dreher called out, ‘Is that you, Jim?’
Then right on top of that LeBoeuf must have
seen something because he shouted, ‘For
God's sakes, what's the matter? What are
you going to do?’”

Jim Beadle paused as though hesitating
to tell more. Finally he said, “I knew we
were in for it then because I saw Doc
Dreher uncover a gun, raise it quickly and
fire twice. I would have stopped him if I
could, but he was too fast for me, LeBoeuf
grabbed his side, slumped down in the boat
without a word, I knew he was dead_ be-
cause the shots were fired at such close
range.”

The witness said that Mrs, LeBoeuf °

rowed over nearer and asked if Jim was dead.
The doctor, who had climbed in LeBoeuf's
boat, examined him and said, ‘"Yes.”

“Mrs. LeBoeuf didn’t speak after that,”
Beadle continued. “She swung her boat
around and headed back for the shore. I
was as scared as a man ever gets. Dreher
still had the gun. He turned to me and said,
‘You're in this up to your neck. Play ball
with me or I'll see that you swing on the
gallows.’ He pulled LeBoeuf’s boat along-
side ours and we paddled to shore. ‘Then he
made me help him rope the angle-irons onto
the feet and head. He was mad because one
was missing. I watched him take out his
knife and rip the dead man’s stomach. Then
we rowed out into the Jake and Dreher
dumped the corpse overboard.”

Jim Beadle uttered a sigh of relief as he
finished. “We separated at the schoolhouse,”
he said. “Dreher told me that if 1 went-to the
police it would be my word against his and*
Mrs. LeBoeuf’s. 1 didn’tethink I’d have a
chance.” "

When the officers and their captive arrived
back at headquarters Pecot, Blakeman and

«

74

FP itysyeas-na Curtis Lee was busy
with a glass cutter, trying to work his
way into a parked auto, when a voice
interrupted, “Here, let me help you.”
The startled Lee turned around, only
to see Lt. Rupert Fallon, of Chicago
Police Headquarters, unlock the car,
and offer him a ride—straight to a near-
by police station. ‘

Traffic Officer Roland Banville was
only doing his duty when he wrote out
a ticket and attached it to the wind-
shield of a brand new car. Banville was
also doing his duty when he appeared
in a Macon, Ga., courtroom to pay a
fine for overparking. His red-faced ex-
planation? He didn’t recognize his own
new car. :

Ina Philadelphia courtroom, a police-
man was testifying in an accident case.
He admitted being a block away at the
time the accident occurred. Then the
defense attorney fired this question at
him, “Do you know how long a city
block is? How could you see the accident
from a block away?”

“Can you see the moon at night?” re-
plied the policeman, “How far away is
that? Yet, I can see it!”

There is a policeman on the Hono-
lulu force with a sardonic sense of
humor. On a recent afternoon, two sail-
ors from the aircraft carrier Valley
Forge, rented a plane for a bit of aerial
sightseeing. As the plane soared over
Mauri Island, they ran out of gas and
had to make an emergency landing on
a busy highway. Within a few seconds,
a local policeman arrived on the scene.
The sailors explained their plight. The
officer told the sailors to stand by the
plane, and then he marched off to a
nearby gas station where he bought a
five-gallon can of gasoline. The officer
soon returned, handed the sailors the
fuel—and then handed them a summons
for illegal parking.

In Sidney, Neb., 22-year-old Merle
Faulkner walked the entire length of
the main street with an uprooted park-
ing meter slung over his shoulder.
Stopped by a curious policeman, he ex-
plained he couldn't force the meter open
to get the money, so he was taking the
whole thing home to work on it. The
policeman persuaded Faulkner to tell
his story to the judge.—Ben Schneider ©

me abs

Gilmore all took turns trying to break down
the man’s confession. They failed. Jim
Beadle told the same story over and over.

“You men must know that Doc Dreher and
Ada LeBoeuf have been in love a long time,”
Beadle pleaded. “They've been meeting in
deserted cabins along the lake for months.
LeBoeuf found out about this and warned
the Doc to stay away from his wife. I knew
all that. Yet I was crazy enough to fall for
that ‘big money’ gag.”

Gilmore was satisfied that nothing more

- could be learned that night. “Lock Beadle

oF he told Pecot. ‘And let’s get a couple
of hours sleep. We'll bring Dreher and Mrs.
LeBoeuf in for questioning in the morning.
It'll be a long day.”

The arrests were made shortly after 8
o’clock. Dr. Dreher was outraged. “This is
ridiculous,” he shouted. “Any officer who
would take stock in a swamp rat's (trumped
up charge has no business wearing a badge.
You'll regret this day as long as you live.”

Mrs. LeBoeuf proved to be less adamant.
Questioned separately she said, “Part of that
story is true, I should have come to you
before and told you what I knew. Doctor
Dreher is innocent, ue Beadle killed my
husband. I saw him fre the shots.”

The widow went on to say that Beadle
had threatened her husband's life because of
the boat incident. “We were out boating
with Doctor Dreher when that man sneaked
up on us from the underbrush,” she said.
“I screamed when I saw the gun in his hand.
Doctor Dreher tried to get to him. I thought
sure he would be killed too,”

Gilmore asked, ‘“‘What about the slashes in
your husband's stomach?’ Beadle wouldn't
have known about doing that to keep gas
from forming.” :

Mrs. LeBoeuf bit her lip. “I know,” she
said at last. ‘That's where Doctor Dreher
made his big mistake. Jim Beadle said that
plenty of people knew I was in love with
the doctor. He swore he’d go straight to the
police and tell them Dreher shot my husband
to get him out of the way unless the doctor
helped him get rid of the body. There wasn’t
anything else to do.”

“What happened to the gun?” sheriff
Pecot asked.

Mrs. LeBoeuf said she didn’t know.
“Please,” she begged, “bring Dr. Dreher in.
He'll tell you the same things I have.”

When this was done Mrs. LeBoeuf looked
at him through tear-stained eyes. “Tell them
the truth, Doctor. Tell them Jim Beadle
shot my husband.” ;

The weary suspect shrugged his shoulders.
“T should have known the truth would come
out,” he said. “Beadle did the shooting. I
tried to cover up for him because I was
afraid of the scandal that would come out
of it all. I was a foalish man to help him.”

District Attorney Gilmore wasn’t so sure
that Dr. Dreher was as foolish as he’d have
them believe. ‘‘How did you happen to be
out on the lake at the same time Mr. and
Mrs. LeBoeuf were?” he asked.

The- suspect smiled faintly. “We often
went boating together,” he pleaded. “Jim
LeBoeuf was my closest friend.”

“Not according to my information,” Sheriff
Pecot snapped. “I'll admit he used to be.
But that was before he found out about you
and Mrs. LeBoeuf.”

An ominous silence fell upon the room.
Finally Doctor Dreher said, “We've told you
the whole truth. There’s nothing more to
say. You can prefer charges, but any jury
in Louisiana will laugh you out of court if
you're foolish enough to take us to trial.”

The investigators could be positive of only
one thing—somebody was lying. They had
identified the body. They had three sus-
pects in custody. The final hurdle—who fired
the fatal shots?—would doubtless be the most
difficult of all.

Sheriff Pecot se
indictments again

July 18th. They

And they all ple:

Jim Beadle sigr
the confession he
arrest. “I have e1
defend me,” he s
me to aid the sti
course will be tak:

Ree Walker,
Louisiana House
tained to defen
LeBoeuf. “We a
doing except aidir
the doctor stated.
in court.”

The trial that f¢
sensational in all
No woman had _e\
in Louisiana. Pe
to’ Mrs. LeBoeuf’:
of long standing
And the lake pe
defense. It was t
lower; a class co.
land.

It took a full :
witnesses to testify
tion’s turn caine
and the jury list:
rumors of illicit
in Palourde La}
ing hate.

Finally Jim Be
He looked inti
doctor and Mrs.
he told his stor
had been emp!
The details atx
shooting. Of M
her question, ‘Is

Defense Attor
to the most b
court had eve:
collapsed and h:
For the remaind
appeared before
which was whe:

Prosecutor Gi
LeBoeuf and [I

At Pas

[Cont

with a married
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The astonis}
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} Search of
|

“Our Natlve Governor’
Was without Heault,

Capt HS. Conner, who was ape -
eilly commissioned by Governor
Hampton to nrrest ex-Governor BL J,
Moses, Jr in New York, on a requi
sition upou the Governor of New York,
j charging him with swindling Mr. Jas,
} Allan, jeweller of this city, by means
| of a forged note of Josephus Woodraff
lin January, 1477, returned to this city
| frou New York, on ‘Tuesday morning,
(by the steamship Atanta, but failed
fto bring with him the native young
| Governor,

During an interview yesterday Capt.
Conver informed a Reporter for the
News and Courier of all the interesting
circumstances of his trip, aud the ‘rea-
sons why Moses was not brought. to
Charleston in his custody.

He says thathe went to New York
on purely finaneiad business connected
with the purchase of a steamboat.
When-be reached New York, Sheriff
Bowen, who went on the same train
with bim from Charleston, handed
hing the requisition from Governor
HLampton, and fer the first time oot

has been living for some time in New
York City. Tle;saya that the legal
wints having all been sotued, it will
fe an easy qoatter for any ove who is
furnished with the means by the State
to go to New York now and tak
res as the requisition is jn
the warrant of the Gover

York 18 a\ poli tea Ts in
is The cost wat
ind ho jimof tho opinion

City Pf Na
he ye iT)

oses Would be 1 to get back.
e case ADp-

th
ypole ddicultyi

peltrs tb hy ve i rom the fact that
the Stat(of Sduth Qarciina furnished
MO meando execu eyown warrants,
and the pXrtics defytifed to make the
arrest. very naturaRhy refused to un-
dergo the expense themselves, with the
ungertainty of ever being, refunded.

“-> ¢

The Black Cap.

”
Ze

—Jack

Praxkies, La, April

Peon Edwards, Westley Turner and
' Alex Brown, all colored men, have

suffered the extreme penalty of the
Inw. At di.10 a. m., the solenin pro-
cession, led by the priest and the sher
iff, moved from the jail and ascended

fied him of hia apportment as special
aventof the State of South Carvlina |
tognake the arrest,

Shorty aftcr receiving bis conmits |
sion nnd the warrant of arrest from
Sherif! Bowen, be was met by Detec |
tive Larrigan, who for several weeks |
had been spewintly detailed to wateh
| Moses and who had him spottedsand
bkuew bis every movement. After a
consultation with Sherif Bowen Capt.

|
|

|
|

‘onmer Wats placed in possession of all |
ecessary dafornicition, and on Sanday
light two weeks aye Detective Larr

|!
|! \
|.
|
pcohveyed him to the central police sta
tign, and handed to the requisition: to
Superintend at: Walling.

On Monday morning on returning
from Jersey City, where he had spent!

anoseathis hotel from Loarrigan teh.
ing him te yoat ouece to the Central
Station. Te reached there about 1 |
o'eloek PL M., and foun) that Moses:
had Gripieved counsel, had secured as

writ Of ubeas corpus, and was to be |

brovght before Judge Donahue the
next morning at PH oo'elock, Finding

that affairs had taken this turn, Capt. | fone was cut and the drop fell.

Conner that evening left New York | wards and Turner bargy dangling
fir Albany, and anw the Governor the ‘the air, but Brown's kuot became un

next morning, and secured from him
a owarrant of arrest In recognition of
the requisition from Gyvernor Hamp
ton. Before 10 o'clock A. ML, he
telegraphed the superintendent of po
lice in New York to hold) Mosea, and
that he bad secured the Governor's
warrant. ‘Phe nest day (Tuesday) he
reached New York again, and found
that the superintendent of police had
received his dispatch in (ime, and that
the hedring of Moses's case had been
postponed until 1 o'ctock P. M., of
that day. At that hour the case came
yp, but was postponed until the fol
lowing Friday. “At that time it way
postponed until the following Monday,
dnd then there Was another poatpone
menton Tuesday aweek ago. -Atthat
time the case came up topetiier with,
‘na similar ease of aman named White
from Massachusetts before Judge Law:
renee, Who announced that he would
render his decision ou ‘Tuesday last,
the 25d inatant. ,

In the meantime Moses was turned
over to Cupt, Conner upon Governor

Robinson's warrant, but prot i titve fo
tuke the Charleston gtg ther. of that

the seatlold.

np arrested Moses oo the street Vind |

the previous night, Capt, Conner found |

The sheriff then add rexs-
ed a few words tb the by-stauders, who
were very numerous, requesting them
to bebavecin fu orderly manngr. Then
the three condemned mev knelt with
the priest. ‘The pan offered up a
prayer, to which the condemned listen
ed attentively. After this the prison
ors were cach gives ten minutes’ tine
to address the multitude. Jackson
Edwards spoke first, acknowledging
that whisky was the cause of his crime,
and advised his hearers to avoid whir
key. He expressed his willingness to
dic, his hope of heaven, Brown xpoke
next. Ele said that he had killed the
mau for his money ; that he was about

ty die for his crime, aud he believed

'God would) forgive him, Turner
«poke last, He said ihat he was as
‘innocent asx the man that never saw

Mr. Mrhardt or as the child unborn ;
that Basil Smith killed Mr Virhardt ;
that, beiny innnoceut, he was willing
to die to meet his God, where angels
would™*ftrry bim in triumph to
Heaven. Nooses were adjusted, the
black caps drawn over their faces,
and at 25 minutes after 11 dae
“s-

ited and his body fell to the yromnd,
The deputy sheriffs carried the body
back into the jail, re fixed) the scat
fold, and at fifteer minutes to twelve
‘clock Brown, assisted by the sher-
seaflold

i
i

|

\
|
id

if!'s deputies, reascended the

vand was swung off a second time. Af:
| ter the boriey had hung about forty
pminutes, they were taken down and

placed in votling, Edwards’ body wat
claimed by his relatives.
‘claimed the bodies of Turner and
Brown. ‘The throng of people in town
was tinmense, but’ good order prevail
jed throughout, Tt is feared the ne-
i eroes Will lynch. Basil Smith, whom
Turner seceuscd ot killing Rebardt.
The negroes believe that: ‘Turner yas
mnocenl, |

. ° - > .
Opposed to the Liberian Schemes

Senator Bruce, of Missippi, whois
the tonly colored member of the Sen
ate, and by far the ablest momber of

Bred. Pouylass, earnestly eecommends

the colored peuple of the South, to stay

where thev are and not to emigrate to

\Aftrien, Lis reasons for this advice
: 1

Nobody |

his tace in the country. not excepting |

not Mall in the Azores THE BOKOGIN A hew
soclation Mtirring {th Mtumaps te Mave

and ldrene-The Cry in stlll They

Mow'that the ac has satled, at

‘hg now probably some hundred miles

--

her departure has somewhat abated,
the most natural question that arises
is, What is to become of the unfortu:
vate emigrants who have been left be-
hind and must remain in the city un
ti] her return for the next voyage ?
‘Associntion devel

Liberian Hxodus

and intend waiting to take passage ou
the next trip. Of this number twenty

fects to Monrovia by the Azor, ahenid
of them, while the remaiming one bun
dred and fifty dave ther poods and

of the building, in) luxehange street,
occupied by the L. i.
These unfortupate men
with their little children, are nearly
all from the upper portion of this State
and Georgia, snd have left homes and

Association,

vears in their effurt to reach the prom-
ined Jand.  Tinaving made these sacri

fices upon the assurances and induce-
ments beld ont, the Iexodus Associa

tion ia Of course directly responsible
for their welfare until the Azor re
turns. Feeling this responsibility and
knowing that the eyes of the commu

nity were upon them, the officers of the
Asayciation bave acted with commen
dable promptness, Yesterday — they
completed the purchase of a planta
tion of 270 neres on the west: side ot
the Wando River, in tue Parish of
St. Thomas and St. Dewnis, about ten
miles from the city, where they propose
to place a number of the emigrants
and furnish them with occupatipy and
a living until the return of the Azor.
They propose also to purchase other
property in the vicinity so as to be
ready for all emergencies.
erty purchased yesterday.
ly owned hy ex Coroner

was dormer:
Jyogan, and

in | the price paid was 8700, -

The Association have
here.

to work or to secure Work. ‘The for
; mation of this society will very short
| |
nature'in all the colored churches, anid
ifthe right spirit is displayed, it) is to
|any that the destitute cmigrants syl
| be spared any serious suffering.

Assoclatjon from aj} parts of tha South-
ern Stares, the indications are that the

returns oer and Conrier,

“7 «

The Sister.

| No houscholdsis complete without a
| sister, She gives the finish to the fun:
lily. A sister's love, no sister’s watch:
ful enre--can anything be more hal-

lowed? A sister's kindness—dves the

‘world show us anything purer?) Who |
Pwould live without n sister’? AU sister

r

| js sort ots

ae from Want- The Colored |
urhes thi yored in the Charitable
Work of Providing for the Women

away, and the excitement ‘attending |

Careful gay at the oflice of the;

ops the fact that one hundred and |
seventy five emigrants, mep, women
and children, have been deft) behind |

five bave sent their baggage and ef:

chattels stored away in the lower rooms |

and women, |

friends and ‘spent? the hoardigs of |

The prop-

‘not stopped
A Society has been already
formed by the members of the Morris ;
Street Baptist Chureh for the purpose ; hearted boy away  froyn h
hef extending aid tothe women and
children emigrants, who were unable

y be followedyby societies Of a stnoilar |

From the Iarge number of letters |
which @re pouring in daily upon the |

Paki, emigrants will be very.
largely in@reased by the time the Azor |

reardian angel inthe home |

, DTOW , Eta of
| conrse shroud, “Phe
i laid decently baek te
Perimped cap with ie et,
j the lili The sulli per Mane e
erty smiled in’ her “alag!
found bread, reat aml jeatthy
I want to see my mother:
| poor child, os the undertaker
on the top. ae
_ Yoo can't; got ont dt t
| Why don't somebody take th
‘Only ds ce ace her otk
| cried the helpless orphan, cli?
side of the box, as he gaze
rough fuce, agonized. tears ©
‘down the cheek on, wel
| bloom ever lingered, ay a
Oh! it was painfif
Ob let me
once! et ie
Quickly and lyarenet ie
[hearted monster ste@en she 7
so that he reeled withe tire Li
ha moment ‘the hoy. ghey:
iwith grief and: auger, he te
srended, his lips: Spe WANES, Sete
vlistening throtyh bis:
web watts

‘

ORYD EROS ERT Fe

red

i ergs
cratsed big puny arn, a
unchildish vowee, Cries |
When | ama man, | wild
i for this. sagan

| ‘There was a coli deyyil ay
earth between the nether an
forsaken. child. Astmoninie
{ stronver than rE WY My
Hboy's heart to the matory ot
"tows deed.

k

s

+ *
| ‘
'

‘Phe Courthouse was eras

 foeation. a i
1 Doo any one Appa y AG
council? asked the dude 4
There was a silence whet
i finished, until, with lips tighs
ttogether--a look ol strat
Pyence blended with hatugh
upon his handsome fentur
Stman stepped forward with a
and hint eyes to plod for
d friendless.
Tle was a stranger, bat fre
isentence there was vik
xplendor of his genie etre
| vineed.,
| ‘The man who could got fi
| Wils acquitted,
“Towant no thanks

oer
yer,

i}

'

|
}
|

‘hae

sf

ga
Ale

— believe yout are u

’ - ho? °

| me. a
| Aton! Po will rettesh you
Pwenty years ago you stroeh
‘

Peowlin, To owas that boy.
Phe man turned livid.
“Have you rexened me {i
hilo"

Lhbave sn styeefer 4
‘have saveek the Tite ofa nH
p brutal deed haw rotted in
jfor twenty yeare..
| ber the tears of aftendle
| ‘The man biwedshia heat
and went from the peeeere
panimity as Grand debit a
comprehensible, |

oo” =
' 7 Senator Hatters fe
A Washington srerial ft
York ‘Pines anys [ottets ba
ceived in. that ctty from S
pron, of Nevada, in whieh h
Hto assume his Senatarial: dt
April 20. Mr. Shatol’s u
vice us ay United Sigtes Set
March 4, 1876, but otitis) ti
mast a Stranver to he Sey
personally unknown fo, a4
its members, Dts said tha
Sharon, AVI VER Ue Con

> ettt ‘

Cri

|
|
|

e

'
|

EARLES, Gardner Re
(Don't khow whether hanged or not)
"Gardner R. Earles, convicted of the mrder of his

wife, is to. be hung at Jacksonborough, Campbell Co.,
Tennessee, on Dec. 7, 1855."

TIMES-PICAYUNE, New Orleans, Lae, Oct. 23, 1855,

EXECUTED — 12/7/55

NOF IC, (2/17/55 2°A
quoring tinoxville HegisTer


ae eo wt
re an

ar

ey was eae
Oke
gee
eo

emt! 1 aie ; 12

OR ence ceralenag tien

_ EDWARDS,

‘Ronald jin, black, electrocuted Louisiana SP. (Caddo) on 9-6-1957. ne :

‘Ike Tells Fav

ArOrees Smash |Areveport
ror me in
_ ae a7 |
aes 4.1951 N : 2 ae
OP opt u,19 57 N€ero is c 2s .
wp ee | UORSTUUTIORN -
am +9) 9 39 ic | hf OLA .
{2 Fi NE ne
t 18] iz iH xecuted By MARVIN L. ARROWSMI
* iad NEWPORT, RL, Sept. 5 (®—Pres
eR. ga op yop eS E 1 aiinehi Cun’ .loday advised Arkansas Gov. Orval E. Fa
" Seren atk Poe ee | Constitution will be upheld by me by eve
FLORIDA MIAMI ELEUTNERA Death Claiming _my command” in dealing with the Litt!
/ ‘ tegration case, ae Scopes meappeaae i
Gulf of hd Aes. He Is Innocent | And the President's head- to preserve p
uate a “8 M4 % | a, ‘MOND MeDANIFI ‘quarters here announced he night he wire
meceline ANDROS % We CAT.¥ pial The Times Star {Will interrupt his vacation | had been
“4 : : nd da, % * : : ‘Saturday to return to Wash el incall
HAVANA _— Motaoras “Sy * - ANGOLA, Sept. 6—Donald Rufus ington for a White House ig him into
ee ee eee S Close 9 i) Edwards, who once vawed he would /conference then with Atty. | Paulus doa
ae NG oe » Santa “2 5 never die in the electric chair, was |” UREN {j he! ‘
- i i Y SNe A lectrocuted here carly this morn- Gen. Brownell regarding the steps to prev
prate Ried Co") RA Mdbvies:.< ing ee = eigae tense picture in Little Rock. j and he called
qi~ Lye \ ig er The muscular ex-convict, the, Eisenhower also plans to con: | eter aay:
dT) tle of “Contec »  &Camagoey Sa Antilles third Shreveporter to be executed fer there with other Offi cians | The covocal
ih elec a inte this year, died for the brutal rape'on other matters—including |
Pines Scrmmaseairame em . Guantanamo ‘ : ' é i B ident he -susi
g ‘e@. @ of a South Highlands housewife on the situation in Syria—and laments antiece
CUBA hw Hee ee intends to fly back to New- . jecal
i Suntiaga _ He was only 23, but had been a port Saturday evening. | of
H y Nie de Cuba Criminal Since the age of 11, Earlier this week Gov. Faubus In his rept:
i CAYMAN 15. pi hapbatn Edwards, a Negro, was convicted ordered National Guardsmen to hower noted ti
i tes HATEL of aggravated rape Nov. 17, 1956) Little Rock's Central High School. ; for cooperati
1 } : after a tive-day trial and received The result was halting of racial course of acti
Cmaps JAMAICA Kingston the mandatory death sentence from Integration which has been ordered “When |
a) the Lite Judge James U. Galloway by 2 federal district court in line “Eisenhower. ti
\ ‘Lo SINNOCEA CE ‘with the Supreme Court desegra- an vath ta suz
t + 0) 200 Caribbean ‘Sea n ae Sijeiorh tae gation decision Constitution «6
oe j perery; AAHEES x | Fe} Edwards went to his death stil} The governor said he was acting The only? assist
: EM hs : | fad Professing his innocence i : sai nape tiahes Las bg dk is
FSR pr rerar ecm a 4 rr "

When asked if he hiad any last
‘words, he said:

* LOCATES Cienfuegos in central Cuba where a
“I did not attack that woman”

vacked by some naval units erupted yesterday. The

Suspect Held OMLvot.

soul : ie ite: . Edwards was brought inte the | 1 > if m,
nent rushed troops and Roney ae city Boil death chamber at 1210 a m He: In Sta yine of | is : &
vels seized the police headquarters In fierce fig Waa. given two thiirves nt | eloet s Ro
the revolt was crushed after heavy fighting. (AP tricity before the coroner pro i

nounced him dead gt 12 20

The Negro sat quietly while he
Was strapped ante the chatr.
honly complaint was that
quite bit me.”

.cphoto Map) ,

INTED FOR HOLDUPS

a tab Two Etex F ugitives

“2 08.

ules before saying he was ready
t
lo die ; .

'

After -Prochiiming his innocence
for the dgst time. he said hee did

4 Natchitoches Manhunt ¢ Siete Sete

and then to ga

Protestant minister and a Catholic
NATCHITOCHES, Sept. 5 (Special\—Two fugitive Fast fog Nt Professed a beliet in
fis brothers, wanted on armed robbery charges in two “I never .planned to: cause any
eqs, Were captured by a 100-man posse in dense swamps ‘trouble down here.” Edwards said
“apt 30 miles south of here early today to climax one of in reterence to presious threats to
biggest manhunts in central Louisiana in years,

Le@acape,
7 as Sheriff — Fart Morris of — The reason he broke oul of the
a. Natchitoches identified the Caddo Parish Jail, he said. was
"5. because “they treated me hike an

escapees as Charles R. Dow-
den, 22, and Billy Dowden, Anvola had been very ood
19, both of Orange, Tex. The: The Negro was smiling during his
brothers reportedly bolted to last tive minutes. The smile faded
freedom while being brought when they put the black mask on
|up for trial in the courthouse. ee pe elope the -exceutioner
al Orange last Friday. weeded
; snee arden Maurice Sigler read the

They escaped into Louisiana in death warrant to Edwards at 9-30
a stolen car after exchanging gun- i pan, He said that Edwards listened
lire with an Orange deputy, Of | Unemotionally, He said that. Fad.
cers charge they

financed their | wards has been “extremely nervy.
trip into central Louisiana by hald- Ou" for the Last couple of days

Ing up a motel clerk in DeRidder | yy), last meal consisted of roast
last Saturday, z ‘beef, fried potatoes, and tried okra.
| The Texans, wer, mudd y and) However, he did not eat Very much
lexhausted, were spotled up in a’ of the meal, the warden «nid.
ltree near an abandoned Army | Edwards was considered to be an
guardshack in’ Kisatchie National | extremely danyerous posoner, and
Forest about 1 a. m. today,
UNARMED

Morris said they were unarmed
and gave up without a struggle
after bloodhounds led officers to the |
tree, |

About 100 lawmen from Louisiana i
and East Texas participated in:
the 18-hour long manhunt, Morris, |

animal.” He said his treatment at

‘}inmissioners—

Aommissioners and deputies
4 served in the Democratic
gary. Aug. 13 are reminded
gf they will automatically, ac-
“oeing to law, serve in Tues-
“4s runoff and should report
jduty then. The Times asks
pe commissioners who were
ated to call in returns to the
‘room’ Aug. 13 to duplicate
efforts Tuesday . . ,

ds Blood~

ree or four pints of blood,
(ype, are needed for Mrs,
Sf RA SCHUMANN of Shreve-
74. who is to undergo’ surgery
-4 onfederate Memorial Hospi-
“#4 Donors are asked to give in
qj tame at the Confederate

:] bank,

101—

Me URdSY Ie A Very ensnted se

j ty guard by Warden Sigler untal the;
i last. j

He had already escaped once;
since his sentence, and although re. '
(Continurd on Page Nine-A)

|

XQS |

oe
fom

N. La.. Te

His /

Edwards talked about tive mine,

| Was kept under a maximum SCCUTI: |

‘was found floating in. two steel |

Chicago Girl |
eee ; Wea

i Admits, Refuses
'

To Talk About WASHIN
to Ominous
Brutal Murder airlift defer
deliveries to
: CHICAGO. Sept. § [Police to- All these

MRM revealed they were holding .
aman who first admitted under neighbors of
Questioning of two officers that he Syria. The
killed Judith Mae Andersen. and' Was describe
then retical to talk when taken to serious veste
; pohot headquarters, j Henderson, d
The'man was not identitied. other ‘retary of stat
than heiny about 31 years vid and} In g series ot
i from Northport, Ala. ithe State Depar!
He was picked up, police said, United States
by Officers Frank Greenwich and. President Riser
Ted Pappas on Chicago's north i East policy with
side when they were investigating! Secretary of
the report of a Suspicious man ranged to conte
. lurking around some children. , AS SOON asx pass:
When the officers arrived at the: a the dibde jc.
address of the complainant, the! Newport, Re
man had disappeared, and Green.) The fp idle Hs,
wich and Pappas cruised about the ‘ta the friendly: ¢
‘neighborhood and spotted the man bi hoo ag disclo
» vt Clals.
bee held. At the Pentags
ADMITS SLAYING pivlels:. ta Janka
| The officers stid the man told Week, with the \
them he had spent two or three port: Service. ad
davs with Judith Mae hefore he Ait Force, bein;
killed her with an ax and knife responsibility for
and dumped her body into the wa.! The bit esis
ter. No mention, the officers said, of 10 milhon del!
was ever made ot shooting the try aid) promis;
girl, Hussein under ¢
Judith Mae was shot four times Polley adopted la
in the head. Her dissected body | MILITAR®

drums in a harbor on Lake Michi- |. Defense Depart:
van. : they would draw

Greenwich and Pappas said the Stocks in pbs E
man told them he had been in Chie |" the ita
cago about three weeks, The An. livery. Some \¢ :
dersen girl disappeared the ment be tapped tab

Pad,

t and northern Rockies
Wa. Ontinue cool in north-
will turn warmer in the
gion. (AP Wirephoto Map)

wbeiae ete

 suagaus

captured,

of the time he
hut one Caddo

thorities said, was
plan on the part of Ec:
law officers off their A
when brought to “Anzola. Sigler ;
“as warned of this.

{(Contineed From Page Ona)

no time."

3

verdict. He eluded of
most an hour before

tured in the First Baptist Church, | 1-200.000 guests who bought Soods
Travis and McNeil treets..

ents and ordinances adopted by; B
2 Police Jury in creating the hos. ;
| Beer i Jait to relatives telling
‘al district and the Papers relat. bring guns to the courihe
£uns were to be haule
{jail by Edwards by
and rope.

In the notés,

: to the commission.

it could not be ascertained. last
tht whether the possible suit ‘is!
stemplated to enjoin the Police
ry from paying the cost of the
«lion, enjoin the commission
im holding the election, or to!
est the election in the event of

favorable vote.

Soon afterwards, Ed
ush and Jdgeph Washington, at.
; tempted to send out no

‘i SPOKE
O00 SOON

BERLIN, Sept. 5 (P—Police.
jan Gerhard Rachiger climbed
»e R2-foot steeple of a ruined
erlin church, defused two
inch artillery shells lodzed
oy n Worid War II, and
3 nidly ;

“It was the hardest job I've
ad in 12 years.’*

But iis Sweal is not over. A
34 get! Fy rey toe ui

LS

made afill ancther at.
tempt to get out ofthe Caddo Jail
along with two o

ther prisoners,
Caddo authoritieq considered Ed-

wes before it reture cd the guilty :¢

wards one of the most vicicus ever | Verdict. Edwards at the time ap.

lo, be jailed in Shreveport. Most, peared reconciled to his fate, but

appeared docile, when being led back to his cell

deputy said hej shook off two ‘vars ita ceputies
“could turn into a raving animal in, and dived through a window.

he | _ Landing om thé third floor roof

‘ Ab Cac Some 25 feet. below, he scrambled

The docile attitude, pres dvr t his feet and seampered away,

a ‘only to be recaptured in the church

“ards to put; alter he was seen entering it by a:

Suard, and

Edwards pulled off his daring "
break when he was bei

electrocuted Aug. 16 for slaying a!
to tis cell after heating the jury's;

hg led back | Franklin Parish deputy sheriff.

the chair far murder, were later
electrocuted.

Edward’s electrocution was the
fifth -to take place since Jan. 1,
whens 1986 act of the legisiature
went into effect requiring all execu
tiona to be held at Angola.

Before his death, he confessed to |

several burglaries tn the South
Highlands area, &:

He was linked to the rape through

fingerprints and footprints left at.
the scene of the crime sand through |
larticles from the victim's house
‘found in his possession. '

The jury deliberated caly 13 min-

etective.
The last man to die in the chair
Jesgoh Sheffield, who was

me be.

Wicers for al- |
) being recap-!

| Worth $19,090,000,

Tokyo's 1857. Trade Fair had

*
‘ards, James

‘88 trom the
them to
use. The
dup to the
Means of a bag

Berrew “i ost |
Capital and Surplus Over :

Edwards swore he
would never be electrocuted. He ex-
pressed the belief that he would
die in the second break, but said
he would take some o
'cers with him. :
| The plot was broken
ithe e

the law offi.

up before
Scape could be started Bush

2nd Washington, also Waiting for! ;

60.60

$3,000,6

he ie
, Ghana has beesme |
member of the Internst!
Aviation Organizs 3

Friday By

Things the
Carnegia «
| Will Haip You D
4 @ Spesd Eltectively
3 O Coagees Fess

| @ tneresse Your tac:
: 3 #88 505°"
: @ tmorove Yeur Atex

f © ineroste Your Abi!
5 Handia Peosle

a @ Win Mara Friends
§ 9 heoreve Yous Por:-
: & Prepare for isader-
> DSTORE ae.

$aih-Ceni
eursel? sx


Edwarde, after the frat few moments, calmly
took a survey of the surroundings, aud then cast
bis eyes to. the ground.and uever changed ‘a
muscle of hie fave or upliited bie eyes thereafier
except to speak. Turnet stared Bireetly in front
of him, with bis eyes ized. >:

* Sheriff Gordy thes addressed ‘the crowas “He
spoke with much emotion, yet. with frmness,.
The sheriff then stepped aside, and Father
Revelon: knelt with the condemued:me
sherifi and bis depatics, and offered up s fetvent
prayer. -Atthe conclusion of the prayer a fervent
amen Went ap from the crowd, :-when Sheriff
Gordy stepped forward from « platfurm erected
behind the drop and esid, “ Now, friends, these
unfortanates aball have ten minutes” wheres to
eddrese you.”
“Then, turning to, Edwarde, ‘eaid, ” Jeckeon
Edwards, if you have anything to say, speak wd

in’ + Ogg & WAN/AND & CHRIBTIAS,”

Edwards aroee from his seat and said, Friends,
whisky drought mé to this ; for whieky I em to
be Bxéctited to-day ; let “whioky alone ; it causes
me to be hung by the neck. I killed my brother,
but did not intend to do it. “I say to all of you,

dave whieky alone. Thanks be to God, be hes
| forgiven me for all my sine, I atm prepered and
ready to gu. Lam wailing. tu

Cnet of * Amen,” “There, wn; sid Bless the

greeted his last worde.:
Alexander Brown pext rose. Beniliog: aod
looking aroand ae fer ae bie eye could reach, be
then fixed hie gaze on those near him and, said:
* Gentlemen and ladies, I beve killed this map
fur bis money...\] see what it brought-thé to—to
die with # rope around my neck. Death ie aoth-
ing ; Lbope in the Lord Jesus Christ. When my
‘breath tewvres my soutit wilh @y$o my heavenly
home. Lhave friends here, aud to them I say,
remember Alexander Brown. : Have faith in the
Lord ;. He: will furgive every thing bat self.
marder, Thet's al Ihave tw say. Fare thee

well.”
Wesley ‘Tarner, who facsnynile had been

a eoeiemesieneae a

being 60 bound es to permit bim to "claap his
hands in front of him; next eroee, end bpoty ‘a
follows:

-#* Gentlemen” and ladies, one and ell,: 7 aw
innocent of the charge for what I'm accused of.
I’m as innocent of the charge ae & new-born
babe. . I know no more of the killing ‘of the man |
than's man that never scen him. I'm innocent;
of the charge. When I leavo thie world I'm
going home to Jesus to lead the life of happiness. |

| Keep aut of bad company, Had company got me
| in thie trouble, I'm innocent of the charge of
which I'm. accusedi- ‘I’m a8 innocent of the
charge asa new-born babe. Brasil Smith killed

hie man. Him aad Biles Smith threw itall on me.
All I'm. @aiting for te to take the breath ont of
my old body. Angele are waiting for me. Gen-
lemen and ladies, farewell to you.” -
At the concloaion ‘of Wesley's. fomarke the
rowd appeared vers much excited, and threats
to lyuch Brazil were beard onli sides. - Sheriff
Gordy then rcad the death warrante, and’ had
them stand up and ordered the cbeirs, removed
by bie-deputies.: He thea adjusted the. ropes,
pulled the black caps over their eyesand retired
within the prison. yard, where, with hatchet in
bend, he waited the signal to sever the rope eus-
taining the trap which .waa to burl. them inte
eternity, . The deputies. atood bebind the con-
Pdemned men ons stationary platform.”
H At the last moment Brown asid to Deputy Tom
Gardy, *' Give me plenty of drop, 1 don’t want to

suffer.” Father Revelon descended in front.of

trep fell. Tupner and Edwards bronght tip with
8 quick jerk, but despite af! precautions the Kuot
elipped loose in the reine érouad Brown’ ) beck,

and.
He FELE, TO THE citer Nf,

There he lay motionless on his face.
A.cry of horror went op from the crowd, the
| deputy stil a great many of the marshala audibly
eobbed. The women ‘screamed, while many of
the men turned and fled ac if pureued by death,
while Edwarde and Wesley writhed and con.
torted in theiragony.. Brown was picked up snd
carried into the prison, where he wae laid on the
floor, still piaionéd and with bis cap on. At
firat it was thought that he was dead; bat efter a
fow minutes he groaned, and then, ina low voice,
chanted a few words ofa hymn., Father Reveloo
knelt beside him. and encouraged him; when,
on hearing the eonnd of the priest's voice ex-
bortiog bim to believe ia God, and to.call on
Him for mercy, Brown ‘tarned to tho reverend
father and said : ‘Father, how long have 1 got
to euffer thie way ?”

' Bheriff Gordy entered, when Brown eid: “3

don’t blame you Mr. Gordy; it: waa not your
fault.” After that he lay motionless fur a while,
and but for bis labored respiration did not ap-'
pear to be alive then, and until the drop was r-
arranged he at short intervals, said, * Lord,

Bavioe of man; Lord, y Foemgmnbet eae 2 me: de! merei--


ded bed VV SALLI ed @

eS ton t

|

_ NEOK-TIES FOR THREE, °

Remarkable Scenes: .at. the
"=; Homicidal... Loulsis...::
+. ana Negroes. ine

& GHASTLY BIT OF BUSINESS.

prea 2 ve lini Bea ctamer : array

9 {Subject of Mantration 1: 905 7°.
New Onxaass; Le, April 22.—Three negroes,
Jacheon Edwarda, Alexander Hrown and Wesley
Turner, werd hanged in the town of Franklin, in
the parieh of 88. Mary, to-day, between the hours
| {ween “5,900 and ¢,000 ‘peante prose
ajority of whom were black.

LT cade ORL Pati faa) n iT: r ’
Was surrounded by @ curtous maltitude, peering
within the fence, vager tor @ Rlimpee of the con-
demned, and although nothing but the gloomy
walle mot their gaze, yet withal they found eome-
thing to interest them-—familier objects acquired
hew interest, every thing hed its’ significance.
The trench dug in the. shape of a crose in: front

} OF the wherein ‘the gallows wae to be
stictud ven turtmatet and many were the con-
jocturee a t0:ite exact coustraction. |;

About two o'clock Monday morning the con-
demoed extinguished the candle in their cell,
aad apparently resigned themselves to sleep, as
until deylight not « sound was heatd from them,
At daylightsheg awoke, when their shackles
were removed, and they were freed from. their
irons, whioh for over a year ands half have se-
cared them: --The men expressed themselves of
feeling light... Brown stretched bis limbe, and

took several mincing steps, so socustomed: was
he to the compuleary gait of the shackles. After
afew minute's exercise he sat down, and said
that he felt so light. that be couldn't walk. A |
tub of water was brought them in turn, and they |
bathed, after which their shirts were brought |
them. In short order they donned white shirts |
end white pants and scoks and slippers, and
seked cach other how they became them, '.,

Phe barber was next introduced, abd with evi-

‘dgatglonsugffhey submitted to hava their bait
Se, shaved.” When sll was finished,
they asked for and were given « good cup of

nt, the great

art (glare

strong coffe, and

@Execution of a Trio of

poossgal nklin, LA 4-22-1878

OR THES AEFUSED IT.
' Father: » Revelon

¢ , 7
rerponeon colored, entered, and gave pntonanl
demued men white gloves. F.iwarde and’ _

es thous on in silence ; Brown eaid they nn
r one too small, and wae 00 nervous we
| depaty sheriff had to aselst him. se en
1 ‘They were then conducted into the ae 7
i i were pintoned at the elbows with cot
ae nen end daring the operation they aida)
shos awend Turner, oe the deputy ayer a
i ion him, turned, aod, waving his ban Bid
Ir Sr taere who. wece huddled togethet A
sl at the far end of the hall, said, Seyret pa
aa Good-by, boys.” They reeponded, nee
pa well, fore you well,” Lebar Seige et
seewh asked for a che® of tobacoo, on is tou
ing it, chewed vigorously, bat ahow nee
poh oerpaste were ‘glazed, and he arte
vacantly before bim without. making . bea na
The black’ caps were then adjacted, | nd

ee
Th) Ws) wea.
“

wore ‘ ~ 3 ——- gt waa . a ” said Sheriff
“« Aye you ready, Father, Reveloo:
ary ae Bae
7 back on its binges, snd Father
qite swung ered arm of Sheriff Gordy,

seated on chairs, wi yon
tt behind them. ay ’
ay hon nese to the right, Rdwarde to the left

being seated,
’ in the middle. After be
ot a omnad men coolly looked around.

Brown recognized his friends in the sea of faces,


again placed about his neck. Again the hatchet
severed thé rope, and vat 116 o'clock Brown's
body ewung between heaven and earth. Ase ho
fell Brown atiffuned out, drew himeelf up twice,
end Occasionally twitched hie lege atid hands till
he died. ° hs ie Ie
Turner aod Edwards cessed tostraggie within
four minates after they fell: ‘At 12 o'clock the |
men were pronounced dead by Dre. C. M. Smith,
L. Smith, A. 8.'Gates, Ethan Allen and C: R.
Doval. 2 ee i aah Lita
‘The sheriff addressed the populace, saying
“Now, if the name of the State of Louteians, {
command you to disperse and retire to your
homes. My friende, you have seen all that gon
can see.”.. a ae “i. ies .
Notwithetanding the horrible attraction the
three bodice awaying ‘in the breeze, and atrange
to ay, all With their. faves tarned to the east
(they Were hang with their faces to the south},
the populace quietly dispersed. The bodice wer)
out down and placed in their coffins, :
Of the three Wealey

urner was the only one

vb. 8 gh :
~ Of St¥angulation:

miles below Franklin, where the execution took.
place. Wonley Turner ‘was the youngest of the
three. Hekilled a poor tailor by the name of
Willises Rarhards ia the year of 1876, by striking
him on the head withabrick.


(169 SOUTHERN. 17; 57 SUPREME BOURT 19.)
RALPH EISENHARD? & GLADSTONE JAMES, white, hanged at Gretna, La,, on l-9-1937,

"Vincent N, Bologna, 27, 203 St. Bernard Ave., member of the firm of A, Bologna and Co.,

wholesale grocers, 1233 North Peters Ste, was shot and critically wounded Saturday night by
one of two armed men who held up and robbed him at Monroe and Rupp Sts., McDonoughville, The
thugs escaped.on foot after leaving their victim lying helpless near the intersection with
gunshot wounds of the abdomen and pelvis, The bandits obtained $25, which Bologna had
collected a few moments before in the grocery store of Mrs, Josephine Fradella, 70) Monroe
St. Bologna was taken to Charity hospital, where. physicians, after a blood transfusion had
been effected, performed an emergency operation in a desperate effort to save his life,
"One version of the shooting indicated that the grocery executive was shot while resisting
a holdpp, sHowver, an account given by a man whose last name authorities obtained only as
Bond, residing doors, from the corner of Monroe and Rupp Sts., stated that Bologna was shot
after turning the money over to the bandits and pleading that they not fire upon him, Mr,
Bond said he heard a voice call 'Stick ‘em up!' The reply, he said, apparantly that of the
victim, was, 'Here's my money, don't shoot,' Almost simultaneous with this last statement,
Mr. Bond asserted, two shots were fired in rapid succession, ‘Then he heard the sound of
footsteps moving fast in the vicinity, He ran outside and with others attracted by the shots
found Bologna lying in the street, . :
"The wounded man was first taken to the home of Dr. M, M,. Odon, 1005. Monroe St., McDonough-
ville, Jefferson Parish coroner, for medical assistance. Dr. Vdom was not at home, however,
and a Charity hospital ambulancewas summoned to the Canal St. Ferry to meet theparty bringing
Bologna across the river to New Orleans, Salvadore, Bologna, 18-year-old brother of the
shooting victim, gave the blood for the transfusion after a call had been sent out by phy-
sicians, who found the man s condition too weak to withstand the shock of an operation, The
shooting occurred ab about 9 pem. Some 10 or 15 minutes prefious to this Mr, Bond said he
heard a noise on the front porch of his home and going to the door, saw two men standing
there. He ordered them away, he said, and one of the pair answered, 'Oh, all right, Mr,
Bond, A
"The groceries for which Mr, Bologna had gone to the Fradella store to collect had been de-
livered Saturday night in a truck of the wholesale concern, Babhgpna, leaving his automobile
parked outside, went in and remained a few minutes, As he returned to the car he was met by
the bandits, Chief of Police Beauregard Miller of Gretna and Night Policeman Andrew Braud
began an investigation of the case at once, They found on Rupp St., around the corner from
the spene of the holdup, a black raincoat which they believe was dropped by one of the flee-
ing pair. In a pocket of the coat, which contained no makrs of identification, was a smaal
black glove, apparently that of a child, Mr, Bond told the officers that he would be able
to identify the two men whom he ran from his front porch, One man was taken in custody by
Chief Miller late in the night and brought to Mr, Bond's house, but the latter expressed him-
self as certain that this was not one.of the fugitive bandits," .TIMES PICAYUNE, New Orleans,
bas, 31/31/1935 (1-8.) : . i
"Vincent Bologna, New Orleans wholesale grocer, who was shot Saturday night by 2 men who held
him up and robbed him in McDonoghville, died Sunday at 7:30 a.m in Charity hospital, Dr,
C. Grenes Cole, Orleans parish cpvroner who performed an autopsy,.announced that Bologna had
«been wounded in the abdomen by a pistol bullet and a shotgun charge,. He said they had been
fired at close range, as pieces of wadding from the shotgun cartridge were found imbedded
in the flesh and powder burns surrounded the wounds,.e...Detectives Thomas Harvey and Arthur
Regan questioned Bologna after he was brought to Charity Hospital following the shooting and
said Sunday that he had been unable to identify his assailants....The detectives quoted Boe»
logna as-saying that the men said no word to him, butshot him as he was getting into his
automobile at Monroe and Rupp Sts, in McDonoghville...e" TIMES-PICAYUNE, Bpril 1, '35 (1/h.)
"Murder charges will be filed in-the district court at Gretna this morning against Ralph
Eisenhardt, 21, of McDonoghville, in connection with the fatal wounding,.,of Vincent Ns Bo-
logna..eChief Miller said Tuesday night that directions to file the charges against Eisen-
hardt had been issued by Dist, Atty. John E, Fleury, Eisenhardt, he said, was arrested Mon-
day night at 10 o'clock and identified as one of two men seen together at Monroe and Rupp
Sts. at 8:5 p.me, Saturday, 15 minutes before the shooting, The person making the identifie
catiion, according to Chief Miller, gave Eisenhardt a cigarette at the time. The second of
the pair was not known by this man, the chief said. Miller indicated that another arrest in

connection with the crime is ead to be made within a short time, ree aszes in
the 800 block of America St., McDonoghville...," TIMES-PICAYUNE, New Orleans, /3/19 35. (7=8. )

™ %:

,

_

"Three youths confessed Saturday night at police headquarters, Det. Chief John J. Grosch
announced, that they participated in the fatal shooting of Vincent Bologna, 27,..Bhhogna, as
he walked to his autombile:after making a money collection the night of Mar. 39, was clubbed
on the head and shot-once in the abdom with a.pistol and twice in the left side with buckshot
from a sawed-off shotgun, The three young men, charged with murder, are Joseph Pumilla, 22,
710 Monroe St., Gretna; Ralph Otto Eisenhardt, 21, McDonoghvilles and Gladston James, 22,
121 De Armas St., Algiers, In signed confessions, according to Chief Grosch, Eisenhardt
and James admitted doing the shooting and Pumilla was named as the ‘finger mane'. «Although
arrested earlierin the week.,ethe youths made no confession until questioned Saturday night
by Chief of Detectives John Grosch at police headquarters, Each of them had been charged
earlier in the week with mrdereeeePumilla, who is father of a baby 7 months old, amd who.
Said he has not worked since he graduated from high school 2 years ago, told Chief Grosch
that several weeks ago Eisenhardt complained of being 'broke' and'-said'he would like to rob
a ‘drummer with moneys! Pumilla, Grosch said, told his companion that Bologna who made week-
ly collections from a store at- Monroe and Rupp, was a likely pnospect, Arrangements were made
for the'job* and Pumilla finally said he could not get the necessary pistol, Grosch said.
Last Saturday Eisenhardt went to James, told him the plan, and got an immediate agreement
to it, Eisenhardt made the preparations by buying a pistol in New Orleans and stealing his
father's shotgun and sawing off its barrel short, according to the detective chief, Thatnight,
Grosch said, Pumilla pointed out Bologna and the three men went to the store at Monore and
Rupp. Just as Bologna left the store, supposedly with about $,2000, thereceipts of the day's
collections,: Eisenhardt, with a stocking pulled over his head, is said to have run behind him
and thrust a pistol against the. grocer's back, In his signed confession Eisenhardt said, 'He
swung around, sxmeyiomexkm trying to get out his pistol, so I hit him a couple of times on
the head with my pistot to make him stop, Then I shot him, Yames shot him, too, with the
sawed-off shotgun I had given him! The two men left Bologna lying in the street and fled
without trying to take his money. Early dast Sumiay morning Eisenhardt threw the gun and
pisto in the river, near his home, to avoid any possible identification against the event
of his arrest, according to Chief Grosch. He was arrested Sunday by Chief Miller, released,
arrested again Monday and held in jail since that time, His companions were arrested later
in the week, each of them being subsequently charged with murder, James has served lS days
in the Parish Prison here for having a stolen automobile in his possession, Eisenhardt, a
year ago, was charged with trying to kill a man with a spade near Westwego, Pumilla, until
his arrest in t his case, has never been in trouble, Chief Miller said, None of the three is
employed, Eisenhardt and Pumilla werequestioned by Chief Grosch while James was allowed to
sit in an adjoining room +o listen to what they said, ‘When he heard the first two tell the
“story implicating him,' Chief Grosch said, "he yelled "So you two guys ratted on me, eh?
Okay. Now I'll finish tklling the story," And he did," . TIMES-PICAYUNE, New Orleans, April

7, 1935 (1/8) Photo page 18/36,

-"fs a Jefferson Par, Dist. Ct. jury was reporting a death verdict at Gretna Thurs, night
-agains Ralph Bisenhardt, 21, and Gladstone James, 22...“isenhardt dashed a glass of water
upon the clothing of Ernest M, Conzelmann, asst. dist, atty. Judge L, Robert Rivarde immee
diately ordered handcuffs placed on Eisenhardt, As he was led past Conzelmann, Eisenhardt
apologized and said he had lost his: temper. Later his father called on Conzelmann in his
office and expressed regrete.eJury deliberated five minutes less than one héur,,."finger-man
Pumilia was son of Mrs..Joseph Fradella, from whose store Bologna had emerged wien attacked,"
TIMES-PICAYUNE, New Orleans, 5/31/1935 (1/1. )

"! Thank you,' Ralph Bisenhardt, 2leyeareold convicted slayer said to Judge L, Robert Rivarde
Thursday afternoon when thejydge sentenced him to be hanged.,.."hen the sentence was passed
on James, hemmttered and grinned, Eisenhardt also grinned after thanking the judge, He
seemed in high spibits, but officials said he was suffering from a toothache and that a
dentist was on his way to theGretna jail to extract a molar,"

TIMES-PICAYUNE, Ney Yrleans, Lay, 6-28-1935 (11/1. )

was no slipping of the knot from the. back of the neck. When he reached the end of the
drop, Fisenhardt's head shot violently forward, indicating a clean fracture, There were
two or three convulsive heavings of the chest, described as nervous reaction, and then
the youth hung still, The trap was opened at 12:3) peme and Eisenhardt was pronounced
dead by Drs. “dom and Levy at 12:5 p.m. His body was carried out of the death chamber
by employees of the Teitz-Eagan undertaking establishment of New Orleans, ‘That is all,
men! Chief Deputy Cassagne announced as Eisenhardt's sheet-covered body disappeared
through a flap of canvas. 'Please leave quietly and orderly,'...Deputy Sheriff Victor
Massa of the death watch disclosed that James confessed to him Friday morning that he had
secreted a knife in his cell with which he intended to stab his executioner, James be-
lieved that the hangman would come to his cell to lead him to the gallows, according to
Neputy Sheriff Massa. Mistaken as to the identity of the executioner, James believed
that a man who he often saw in the jail would be the hangman, 'I am not revengeful any
more,’ Nepe Sh, Massa quoted James as saying, ‘but I meant to stab the hangman just before
he put the handcuffs on mee! The knife, James was quoted as having said, had been se-
creted in his cell for some time, and was taken out of the jail when relatives bid him a
last farewell Thursday nighte...When Fisenhardt went to his bunk early Thursday night,
on which he tossed for several hours before lapsing into sleep, James talked in his cell
until almost 2 a.m, when deputy sheriffs prevailed upon him to go to bed,..,.Both youths
awakened about 5:30 o'clock Firday moming, They attended early mass and received com-
munion, ames asked for a soft drink and Eisenhardt drank a cup of coffee, Neither ate
any breakfast. Attorney Harry F, Viering, attended by Eisenhardt's father, sister and
brother-in-law, entered the condemned man s cell early Friday morning and informed Fis-
enhardt that 'there is no more hope,' Taking the news stoically, Eisenhardt turned to
his father and held a whispered conversation with him, They embraced each other, and the
father said: 'Be brave, and hold up, son,' 'I will,' the youth replied, Eisenhardt
kissed his,sister goodbye and shook hands with his brother-in-law and attorney, At
about 10 o clock, an hour before the time set for the execution, a Jefferson parish ca-
terer asked James and Eisenhardt what they wanted to eat. James ceclined food, but Hi-
senhardt expressed a wish for chicken and potates, One of the nuts, the caterer reported,
reminded Eisenhardt that it was Friday. ‘'They are hanging me on Friday, aren't they??
Eisenhardt was quoted as repolying, Both fish and chickedn were sent to Risenhardt. He
sent the chicken to another prisoner and kept the fish in his Celleeee'' TIMES-PICAYUNE,
New Orleans, Las, April 10, 1937 (1-1.)


jobs,;' officials and spectators agreed, The necks-of both youths were broken and
strangulationwas avoided, it was officially pronounced by «Dr, M, M, Odom, coroner of
Jefferson Parish, and Dig Lewis Levy. ‘The death march for+dames bevan when Pavl Cassarn
chief deputy sheriff, was informed by Sheriff Clancy that Judee ‘ayne %, Borah, the U,
Dist. Jud, had -denir d writs of habeas corpus for the condemned youthss -Yames and
Hisenhardt had been paken from separate cell sand Nilicad in a room tovether, where
they were ministered to by the Rev, Henry T, Hayes of the Holy Name of Mary bhiirch of

EISENHARDT and JAMES, both white, hanged at. Gretna, La,, 1-9

937 - Continued.

ely we SHOE a Tee |
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# Nada Ay wy » ornate ok ‘ _* WA 3 a
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miling eceditett told of acquaintances among “the spectators, and with prayers om their lin:
Gladstone James and Ralph Bisenhardt,, .vwere executed shortly afternoon Friday at the Gret-

na jail of Jefferson Parish,.,the mannct in which James, 2h, and Eisenhardt by ol, mounted
the sallows steps and awaited.the adjusting of the rope and thé pulline o: " the lever that

opened the trap to plunge them to their deaths drew the approbation of the witnesses,
'They went game,' was the Loudly voiced comment of the spectators, who, numberine more
than 100, jammed the makeshift enclosure erected in the jail yard to shield the ribbet
from the additional hundreds who pressed against the hich wire fence surroundine the
prison, Likewise, the 'nevw' hangman brought from Noeth Tonisians oy Sheriff Frank d,

Clancy of Jefferson Parish, was praised for'the aptitude he showed at his trades 'Clean

Algiers and the Rav. Georce MacNamara of the Sacoed Heart Church of New Orleans and ?

4,

nunse Chief Deputy Cassagne entered and signaled to James 3, who arose and stood straight

as another deputy handcuffed his hands behind him, ‘ith Fathers Mehamara and Hayes
leading, the death march eens Eisenhardt tapped James lightly on the face, sayin:
"Steady, boy, take-it easy.' 'Oh, Itm«eall right,' James smilinely replied, ‘ith a
deputy sheriff at each side, Yames walked firmly through the corridor on the second
floor, down a short flight‘of steps to the eround floor, and thence to the yard, He

wore blue trousers and a blue shirt, open at the neck, As he took the few short steps
across the yard, to mount the -allows platforn, 1 feet Hieh, James visibly recornized

acquaintances and smiled at them, Half way up the steps to the pibhet he nensed, part-

ly turned toward the prison wall, and smiled asain, “hen the pletform was reachec, the
exécutioner took chatge*and worked fast but methodically, He motioned to James to ster

upon the metal trap and, with the aid of an assistant he brought vith himefromeNorth

Louisiana, the hangman rapidly lashed the youth’ s legs tovether at knees and ankles with

ropes. Then the hangman placed the black cap over ames ! head and reached for the noon:

with its large knot, and adjusted it around the youth's neck, Ceasing his repestine of

his prayers with the “PRAGSUE James complained that the rope was drawn too ticht. The

hangman loosened it a trifle and, as James again recited his prayer, caught hold of the
lever, jerked it hase him, danvis cushions subdued the clang of the me? 1 leaves of

the _trap_as they parted, and James' body fell like a plummet at 12:09 p.m The slichtly

A ”

CG) SESS

%,
toe may

an oe and which ‘he declared. had’ beer, pFOp

on ait *
£9 a orp y

s o +

i cbeeal ‘the “wertebpde: ‘and icatise | the! {widen on

ais) etches “iri. ‘écoue putea iq! reed: cates Sate at: aes
oy ae iseonea enteres: ‘the: Yard, * The: erected:aniacauainantq Sek a. théllo, ' but did not |
“the! ral Lows! ‘stairs {Stepping upoh jthe platforti, Eisenhardt looked

se et Loogened not? ‘slipped, ‘a: Litti¢e. Forward, bat remained In proper place enough to
icussion:: ‘that: producéd instant unconsciousnesse

te

‘M1though" ‘phefe! wassrot~ 8" “yisible: épemor dnithe:.body, “Drs. Odom: rand: Levy, who alternately

etphied stethoscopes: se) thie: heart,’ aid: not pronounce: James: dead. antil 12e2h, .a lapse of 15
ES ions THe’ émecutd orier lowered: “the: ‘rope, igonsiderable: preater. in cir ‘cumf erence than

stHat: austomarily, wéed- fox hangings’ Amibhis part: ‘of! the” states, ‘and the moose was cut from ,

SAcQAY ‘daines" neck.’ FP omrcetega “by: Drees Odsin and; ‘bevy: disclosgd fratured vertebrae, The body,

was takety ain. -charge'-b y: attaches: ‘af: Fetd.: Mothe,” ‘funeral ‘diréetor of Algiers, and immed=.

of; Shenae Ne os te ob: ‘have, sae Mae ene ine peompanel were. locked around

ni pause as. he’ strode
 Upwand: at the: ‘pate’ ‘of ‘blue ‘sky. above ims‘ auld: Phen. doym: rd to. ‘see’ the executioner

$ eo avery removed’ from ‘the: ‘prison’ ‘yards, Again knotting ‘the: rope, «which he had brought: with
erly ‘stretched, the hangman madé read for the arrival

sppaiinting » to, the: straps “ef. steps: “ook hig to: its picer Risenhardt looked skyward , as:

aa eine Vege, drew.'on. the Yack cap, atid pulled: ‘the lethal lever. There:
Se - IN Sapa) PE gota: ede

t

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- _ Tunspay Monnixoy Jorn. % 1831.3. AC eponebar Monmino, May Ble 1631.”
fe. LSoutieqeets a upgeoneun paaleh ~ ne ran : . ile

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' : . 7 . OREN Presecscnaraesincet wee eI : eh Mrs Mioton,
“.@An American woman, accused of having-mur- ba Bligh ae plavo; \the properly oe cre Csi
abe _ : oe +e . ° x 08 gig en tan Behe ere ee ; néd- e ore J .
dered her husband, in. this city, Was arre ted on {aynd yesterday. cua oe Hon.J. Pitot, under
* yesterday evening... | alvechpliders; presiie 7 ‘Mr. Paul Pandely with
ancar eoeiar — ng. jf-charge ofvassaulting Mr. Faw! © ancely 0
The Execution, and its fatal consequences, — feet heels Tho -prosecution was con
aa % 184 eae 5 . ae ' . 3 ws \ Oy ‘ " : ate ° hy ‘
+ Amerent,, which almost bears: the stamp of ro-: tne inte Qj Fustis and, Chs. Gayarré Esqres.,
EA hay . we od ° Q ‘ } : ° . ducted af Ay eT Nee % ; Pi hot Iesq. After a
., mance, “occurred on. Saturday, while the sen- | dthe defence ninds by A. Pichot lusq. Alter a
x tence of the law was being.executed,on the slave ae ; a deliberation the Jury returned with a ver-|
z “Elijah. - A “black boy, Whom. curiosity had‘ at- Tet of guilly; and sentence of ceath, according
’~ tracted to: witness the execution, fell into sudden Hs the:terms of the law, was passed on the ac-
: convulsions. This ‘occurrence would seem ve-| ji: ug a ,

“ry singular, were not its causes to be traced to pore

«Nother source’ than that of syinpathy in he fate |
‘cof the culprit, - It appears that the boy had been
‘sick for a ‘few weeks ‘previous; his physical de-
‘bility, the oppressive heat of the weather, added,-
perhaps, to the impression of the awful scene,
Hrought on fatal convulsions. | Dr, Ryan, who
had ‘hin transported to ‘his house, made use of
eyery thing that huasanity or skill could suggest;

but every exertion of artavas vain: che died in
violent spasms. An inquest, we are told, has
been ‘held over the buily, ’

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On June 27, 1883, Judge Wiliiam
T. Houston’s Civil District Court
was a beehive of activity. Lawyers
and citizens alike had gaihered to
witness the unique hearing of the
year.

Victor Eloi, age 38, already con-
victed of murdering his young wife
on Nardi Gras, Feb. 21, 1882, and
sentenced to ihe gallows, was to
appear in court at a hearing held to
cetermine whether or not he had
become insane since his convic-
tion.

Such hearings nowadays do not
command much attention, but
because this marked the first time
proceedings had been instituted in
New Orieans to have a condemned
man declared insane in order to
save him from the gallows, news-

papers awarded it prominent aiten- -

tion. if determined insane, Eloi
could not, according to law, be put
to death.

With the court jammed to
capacity, Eloi was brought in from
the parish prison. He had changed
noticeably since his trial. His hair,
_ how streaked grey, was longer and
_ kis beard was untrimmed. He

- Waiked shiftlessiy, his shoulders

slumped. He sat in a moody si-
lence, occasionaily falling asieep,
with hands clasped together and
head resting on his chest.

“Do you know the oath?” the
court official asked.

loi sat motionless and sullen.
The crowd stirred. '

The oath was repeated, this time
in French (Eloi could understand
French but not read or write it),
again without a response from the
prisoner. :

Judge Houston stepped down
from the bench and approached

Haven't you seen me in Parish
Prison?” Eloi sat still. Judge Hous-
ton, seeing that further question-
ing would be wasting everyone’s
time, ordered Eloi to be taken back
to his ceili while other witnesses
testified.

The State was represented by
District Attorney Finney and Dr. Y.
R. LeMonnier, coroner. Lucien
Marrero defended Eloi.

A grocery store owner, Julien ©

Lafori, was the first witness called.
He testified he had known Eloi for
a long time and “never thought
Eloi had full possession of his fac-
ulties.”

William David swore that Eloi
Was So easily persuaded that “he
could be made to believe that
every woman who passed him on
the street was in love with him. . .

He once followed a lady from here
~ tolowa.. .He doesn’t even know

Six streets in the neighborhood
that he has been living in all his
life.”

When Dr. LeMonnier took the
Stand, he testified that on the day
of the murder, out of curiosity, he
went to Eloi’s cell after performing
an autopsy on his murdered wife.
Eloi was lying on a cot and Le-
Wionnier asked: “Did you kill that
woman?” Eloi answered: “Yes, |
killed her because she was un-
faithful.” Dr. LeMonnier later said:
“This man (Eloi) was a slave to
jealousy. if he had been an educat-
ed person he would never have
committed the crime.”

The doctor, however, added that
a trio of physicians, including him-
self, had made extensive examina-
tions of Eloi and had come to the
conclusion that he was sane.

iG, Vi INGE IU LS
ad | Dente
toi. “Don’t you know who i am?

gl

ee.

CS BS 73 &

Judge Housion, who at times
also visited Eloi during his stay in
prison, rendered a verdict on the
third day of the hearing. His long
Statement noi only shocked the
citizens of New Orleans but drew
blistering attacks from the news-
Papers.

Judge Housion, in part, said:
“. . . Eloi’s character shows pretty
plainly that the defendant was
feigning insanity . . . | must con-
ciude that Eloi is conscious of his
existence ... his situation. . .
and of his imminent peril in which
he now stands.” :

He further stated: “. . . He is,
however, a man incapable of any
sustained reasoning and. . . | be-

‘lieve the cause of humanity wiil be

served by commuting his punish-
ment from the death penalty to a
term of years in the State Peniten-
tiary.. .”

Most lawyers, people, and
newspapers figured since Eloi was
judged to be sane, his death sen-
tence wouid be carried out. The
Judge’s leniency and use of execu-
tive clemency provoked a Pica-
yune editorial which stated: “. . . if
sane, he (Eloi) is a proper subject
for punishment ... Executive
clemency is something of which
we can get rid . . . the imbecility
and weakness of the Democratic
Administration of the State . . . in
carrying out the Criminal Code has
inflicted a blow uponsocietyfrom _
which it will take years to he

You are invited to submit unusual Deep South stories:
$20 will be paid for each one used. Manuscripts cannot be
returned uniess stamped, self-addressed envelopes are

nclosed. Indicate at least two separate sources—THESE
MUST BE AUTHORITATIVE REFERENCE
WORKS—-which verify the story. Page numbers must be
listed. DIXIE Roto will check all references before publish-
ing the story.

DIXIE. June 3. 1973

Le TCR RE RRC Reena n te eee te item teene pa

*“Tiggt ‘Se ATnge **eq fsuBeTag mony pesuey f6e feqtUuM fuog0TA SIONH

EVANS, Charles, black, hanged at Covington, LA, August 19, 1892,

"CHARLES EVANS HANGED. A CRWOD SEES HIM DIE WITHOUT FLINCHING, Covington, La., August 19,
- Charles Evans, the negro mbderer of Deputy Sheriff W. H, Cook was hanged in front of the
jail in the Court House yard at 12 o'clock today. Evans is the first murderer executed in
this parish since the war, The place of execution was a small square in front of the pri-
son, incloséd by high walls of pine boards, The mltitude had come to see the hanging, how-=
éver, and when the hour rolled around, an active youn fellow mimbly climbed a

willow growing near the @#B gate door and threw a rope over one end of the flat top to which
the boards of the front wall were naimed, The other end of the rope was thrown out

to the crowd. A hundred hands grabbed it and with a should and a jerk the high wall came
tumbling downe Just as the shout burst ffom the crowd, Evans, behind XMHXHHMA

the haneman JXMAMUMKAAXXMAXHHAK mounted the scaffold, The murderer showed grit. He

stood firmly, with his eyes cast to the rround, not a mscle of his body moving,

'Anthing to say?! asked the executioner, ‘Nothing to say,' replied Evans in a

resolute voice, In an instant the black cap was adjusted, the trap sprung, and the

body of Evans hung limp and lifeless, Fully a thousand people, including ladies and
children, witnessed the execution, M. Perry, a white man, with his wife, was re=

turhing from Covington last Mardi<ras Day, and stopped six miles from town, in

Jenes and Pickett's turpentine orghard, Evans drove up with his turpentine wagon

and 4?) Perry for blocking the picket road, That night, when Deputy Sheriff W,. H,

Cook attempted to put Evans under arrest, Evans shot him through the heart, kill-

ing him almost instantly, Evands was considered to be a desperate negro." TIMES,

New York, Ne. Y., 8-20-1892,

deel Sy i" 9 Neat

i MOUNTED THE SCaPFiny :
to his doom. The mnrterer showed :
crit; he stood tirmly Weil his eyes case |
to the ground, not a Wusi ie of his Doty
OMI. Any thigg © 5 B4¥ 7" asked |
the executicner. “Nothiag to sap," pe.

MCR comes eat : sponded Evaosina Tesolnta vuree. Ty

THE DEATH PENALTY. — jan instant the black Cap was adjnated.
the trap sprauy, and the bevdy of

nt

WON ow eer me ee

A Negro Hanged at Covington—an Ex.» Deputy Sher: ff look’ inurderer Dung
cited Crowd Tear Down the | Linap and life!en, below, Fally a thon. |
Fence to Witness the ' sand people, including ladies and eh:l- ;
Execution | dren, wituessad the execution. ,

: _ a The cause that lex Np to the murder |

Covixcron, La, AGE: 19.— (Special. | of Deputy Sheriff Cook WAS & Whita |

Chas. Evans, the negro murderer of
Deputy Sheriff WW. H. Cook, wag hung
in front of the jail in tse courthouse

yard at 13 o’slock to-day. Evans is the

first tharderer executed tn this Parisi: hett's turpentine orchard, they stopped
since the war. and the event create} | their wayon in the Toad and were con-
unusual excitement. Fariy in the | versing with Passing friend. At this ;

nau by the name of AL Perry, who. |
with hia wife, wag retnrning home in
their wagon from Covington last Mardi
Gras dav. After reachitiy a puint aboot
six miles from town, in Jones & Fick:

ee ee 8

; Morning buggies and vehicles of every oe ihe negro, Chas. Evans. oe UD:
scripti ed j With is turpeutine Wavonu ant evan |
wn. . :
Gemeel PHO ni. FAEt) ‘ato town. and bv abusing and cursing Perry for blucking
noon the whole place Was thronged, :

: the public Tuad. Evans was IN a great
and an immense crowd swarmed around passion, and Without # word Of warn-
tue jailyard.

Ing pulled his gun and emptied itg cou-
The place of execution Wasa smialt tents into the body of Perry, Intlicting H

place in front of the Prison inclosed by ‘such wounds ag Waa at the tine thought

high walla of rough pine boards. The ‘| wonld prove fatal: but erry bas since,

multitude had coma to sue the hanging, | however, FeCONECCH.

however, and When the hour Tolled [| Evanua Cootinucd on lis way home
- ground an &¢tive yunog fellow Dimdiy | UNMolested, ari that nihet, March 1,
, Climbed a Willow growin near the / when Deputy dherith Ww. H. Couvk ate .
' gate door and Gnickly threw 4 rope f Cempred te pas Lvang uncer arrest, :
over one end of the dar top, to which / Evans shot the deputy sherry
| the boards of the front wall were j THROUGH THE Wranr,
nailed. The other end ot the rope was | killing him almost ingtantly, Evang |
thrown out to the crowd, A huudred was considered a very desperate negro, |
pair of hands grabbed it, and with a | and made good bis escapes that uieht on
shout and »& jerk the high wail cane | the awamps. and was afterwards teard
tumbling to the earth. Jirst Ay ib sunt | Of in the piney woods uot Mispisstyga,
burst from the Yast throng, Evans, be- Hy was afterwariis Captured ano thy
bind the hangman, how nh. GF Purerg. Miss. ait brought
. back to Covington for trial, whieb bus
Tesmitend wi tie hanwing of to-abay.

|
H
;
j
’
‘
'
i
i
|

t
‘

er

Vmes- bichytea C-

Aequsl AO, /FG2

a a Be tere ee

me Coe eo,

TO erm wee ee

Louisiana —
Negress Elizabeth 4/1, S56

N.0.FtC. 4/a Y: S625 pnentOns CXECLTIO?.
Says she was condeuned tyr burning Jauts er
cuners ginhouse.

SUPREME COURT OF LOUISIANA

N

No. 39,788

STATE OF LOUISIANA,

Appellee,
VERSUS
GEORGE R. DOWDY AND J. D. DOWDY,
Appellants.

Appeal from the Sixth Judicial District Court for the Par.
ish of Madison, State of Louisiana, Docket No. 4005;
Honorable Frank Voelker, Judge.

ORIGINAL BRIEF ON BEHALF OF THE
’ STATE OF LOUISIANA, -

THE MURDER OF WALTER N. DORMAN

J. D. Dowdy has been indicted, tried, convicted and -

sentenced to death for the murder of a former Madison
Parish resident, Walter N. Dorman. George R. Dowdy,
who was charged jointly with J. D. Dowdy for the same
offense, was tried, convicted and sentenced to imprison-

ment at hard labor for the duration of his natural life. -

In this case, the State proved that J. D. Dowdy mur-
dered Walter N. Dorman on the night of October 22,
1948, at approximately 11:30 P. M., in a tenant cabin
‘ Situated on the Hugh Montgomery plantation, about


4:

\

a part time commercial fisherman. George R. Dowdy was’

employed as a day laborer on the Montgomery plantation.

Almost immediately upon his return to Madison Parish
in April, 1948, J. D. Dowdy commenced to formulate
fraudulent plans and schemes with certain acquaintances,

both white and colored, whereby the United States Govern-

ment, private corporations and insurance companies would |

be defrauded. ee Z ;

Upon J. D. Dowdy’s discharge from the Army in

October, 1945, he permitted his National Service Life In-
surance policy, in the ‘gnount of $10,000.00, to lapse; how-

ever, on June 14, 1948, this policy of insurance was re-
instated upon his application, with his sister, Audrey

x McDaniels, named as beneficiary. However, on the trial of

(a motion for a severance of his trial from that of his father,

J. D. Dowdy testified that from the date of reinstatement |

of this policy he had been under the impression that he had

named his father as beneficiary therein.

The first fraudulent scheme presented — J. D. Dowdy
to his acquanitances pertained to the collection of insurance
or damages to be collected as the result of a faked accident

_ to be worked out by J. D. Dowdy and an individual by the

name of Versie Stillwell. The nature of this scheme was

that J. D. Dowdy and-Versie Stillwell would leave Tallulah |

and go to Lake Providence, in East Carroll Parish, Loui-

5

siana, and there board the Delta Eagle, a passenger train
running between Tallulah, Louisiana, and Memphis, Tennes-

see, on the Missouri Pacific line. After boarding the train,

“Versie Stillwell, who is badly deformed, was to fake and

pretend he had accidentally fallen from the train and had
received certain injuries for which he would claim damages.
This same scheme was discussed by J. D. Dowdy with the

witnesses Luther Stillwell, Carsie D. Lott, and Versie Still-

‘well on several other occasions within a short time after

the conversation was had in which he had originaly dis-

cussed the scheme with Versie Stillwell.

The next scheme or plan to defraud concerned a pro-
position made by J. D. Dowdy to a negro boy named Henry
Page, who occasionally assisted him in commercial fishing

operations on the Mississippi River. While on one of their

| fishing expeditions on the Mississippi River. J. D. Dowdy

informed the negro that he had a large amount of insurance
on his life and that he would knock out the bottom of their
fishing boat, disappear, and the negro could then report
that he had seen J. D. Dowdy drown and disappear in the
river; that J. D. Dowdy would leave that section of the
country, meet his father at a distant point and split the
proceeds of the insurance policy with him. J. D. Dowdy
offered the negro the sum of $1,000.00 to broadcast his pre-
tended death. This identical scheme was discussed by J.

D. Dowdy with his acquaintances Carsie D. Lott and Versie


oo!

eight miles north of Tallulah, Madison Parish, Louisiana. -

_ After murdering Dorman, J. D. Dowdy covered the upper |

extremities of Dorman’s body with dynamite, detonated
same, and destroyed all of Dorman’s corpse except the legs.
After murdering Dorman and destroying hig remains, as

aforesaid, J . D. Dowdy fled to Texas and there lived under

an assumed name until he was apprehended and returned 3

to the Madison Parish Jail. George R. Dowdy entered into -

a conspiracy with J. ‘D. Dowdy for the murder of Walter |

‘Nz Dorman for the purpose of having Dorman’s remains

identified as those of J. D. Dowdy, whereupon he, George.
R, Dowdy, would collect at least $36,000.00 in life insur- .

ance, covering the life of J. D. Dawas” This life insurance |

had been purchased by J. D. Dowdy within a period of
several ‘months immediately prior to the murder of Dor-.
man. George R. Dowdy, the father, was ‘the beneficiary

under the terms and provisions of all of the policies, of.

_ insurance except the National Service Life Insurance Policy i i

. with the United States Government; but, ag was shown on

the trial of a motion for a severance filed es defendants,
both defendants were of the impréssion that George R.
Dowdy was also the beneficiary under that policy. In any
event, George R. Dowdy was the second beneficiary under
the terms and provisions of the National peryice Life In-

\

surance Policy. —

3
Inasmuch as a great portion of the State’s case is based

upon circumstantial evidence, it must necessarily follow

that the statement of facts given herein must be full, com-

plete and detailed in order that this Honorable Court may

realize the completeness of the chain of evidence which

_ was adduced and presented by the State in bringing about
the conviction of both party defendants. Especially is this

true since the period of time during which these facts and

circumstances arose covered a period of several months

‘and a wide geographical range. Therefore, the detailed

- facts of the case as disclosed by the testimony of witnesses

are as follows:

The defendant, George R. Dowdy, has lived and re-

sided in and near Madison Parish for the past ten (10)

_. years. The defendent, J. D. Dowdy, the son of George R..

Dowdy, moved to Madison Parish during the latter part

| of April, 1948, establishing his place of abode at his father’s
- residence. From the date that those parties established a

joint residency, both lived in a cabin situated on a cotton .

plantation operated by one Hugh Montgomery. The cabin
was situated about eight miles north of Tallulah, Louisiana, |
near the oil tank farm owned by the Sun Oil Company.
No other persons lived in this cabin with the two ia

fendants.

J.D. Dowdy had no other employment from the time he

_ returned to Madison Parish until his arrest than that of


6 hy eS

\ a
. er

Stillwell on several occasions, both prior to the time that

the proposition was Si cm aa Sd and also

ee
Subsequent thereto.
Tips

9 caren

~The next incident whereby os), Dowdy | sigpodctiod
his acquaintances | regarding schemes to defraud insurance
companies arose when he disclosed to his acquaintances,
Versie Stillwell and Luther Stillwell, the following Plan:.
that J. D. Dowdy would obtain employment on the Shotain'

Barge ‘Line operating on the Mississippi River, and that

some night he would don a life preserver, jump off the
boat and swim to shore. He would have a fellow employeé
on the boat report that he had fallen off. J. D. Dowdy would
then go across the border, and his father, the beneficiary.

_in the insurance Policies, would collect the proceeds there-

from and arrange to meet J.D. Dowdy ata sistant place, “ ¥

During the latter me of July, 1948, J. D. Dowdy, to- .

gether with his friends, Carsie D. Lott and Versie Stillwell,
drove to New Orleans for me purpose of J. D. Dowdy

making an application for an ‘insurance policy . on his life —

with the World Insurance Company, which company has its |

office located in the Maison Blanche building. On August

16, 1948, a policy| of insurance was issued to J. D. Dowdy |

by the World Insurance Company in the amount of
$7,000.00, with a double indemnity provision therein,

i
naming George R. Dowdy as beneficiary.

fA
‘1

7

During, the . month of. September, 1948, J. D. Temas

made sop lication to the ‘Pan American Life Insurance

) Company for another policy of insurance, and on October 1,

1948, said company did issue a policy of life insurance on

the life of J. D. Dowdy in the sum of $6,000.00, with a

| double indemnity clause contained therein, and naming

George R. Dowdy as beneficiary. E

There were several burial insurance policies obtained

by J. D. Dowdy on himself, one being with Fireside Mutual

Life Insurance Company, Alexandria, Louisiana, and the

other with Hall Funeral Service Insurance Company, Mon-

roe, Louisiana. ,

There. was evidence also that J. D. Dowdy had made

application with at least one other company for double |

indemnity life insurance, but that because of the fact he had
given his name as “J. D. Dowdy,” his application was re-

turned with the advice that he should give his full name

- rather than initials. Since J. D. Dowdy was his full name,

he delayed returning the application; consequently, so far
as could be learned, no other policy of insurance was issued
on the life of J . D. Dowdy prior to the date of the murder

|
i

of Walter Dorman.

At this point, the situation had developed to the extent
that the defendant, J. D. Dowdy, a poor river fisherman,

had acquired some $36,000.00 in life insurance, with George

!


Charles L. Pecot, Sheriff of St. Mary Parish and co-author of this story on the
Louisiana enigma, shown conducting Doctor Thomas E. Dreher, one of the principals
in the case, from the jail to the courtroom in Franklin, At the Sheriff's left a deputy
prepares to carry the murdered man’s wife, who had collapsed, into court on a cot

A great, long-drawn-out sigh came from
ier. “No—no I’m not!” she cried.

“You told your brother Jim was wait-
ing for you at the cornen—when you knew
he wasn’t, when you knew that Jim would
never again be waiting for you because
he was dead and you knew it. Why did
you do it? Who are you trying to pro-
tect?”

Then, after more than an hour of this
grilling, she could stand the strain no
longer. Suddenly collapsing, she made a
partial confession.

“My husband and I left home atter
supper to visit my sister-in-law. We
went in separate boats, as we always do.
After visiting awhile we left in separate
boats. On the lake we met another boat
containing two men.

“One of these men called out, ‘Is that
you, Jim?’ Then one of the men in the
other boat fired two shots, both of which
struck my husband. I wus in my own
boat about ten feet behind my husband
when he was shot. I then came back
home and said nothing about it, because
I was afraid that gossipers would connect
Doctor Dreher’s name with the killing of
my husband.”

HIS latter admission wasn’t even in-

genious on the part of the woman. I
<new now, as well as if she had told me,
‘hat Doctor Dreher was one of the men in
‘hat other boat. But who was the other
‘nan and which one had fired the shots?

In the meantime, what about Jim
Beadle, the trapper? But I dismissed this
man. from my mind immediately, as Ada
Le Boeuf had hidden her knowledge of
‘he killing of her own husband to protect
somebody and there was only one whom
she had any object in protecting—and that
han was evidently Doctor Thomas E.
Dreher, with whom she had been engaged
‘nan illicit Jove affair.

I held Ada Le Boeuf as a material wit-
ness and, getting into my car again, im-
mediately raced back to Morgan City.
There I deputized W. J. Blount, of Mor-
gan City, and with Chief of Police Louis
R. Blakeman we went to Doctor Dreher’s
howe, where we took the doctor into cus-
tody.

“T expected you,” he said, “and I guess
I should have done what I’ was going to
do in the first place—I should have shot
myself.”’

N the way back to the Parish Jail in

Franklin, Doctor Dreher made a verbal
confession of the killing of Jim Le Boeuf,
implicating Jim Beadle, the trapper, as
the man who had actually fired the fatal
shots. We then arrested Beadle and
brought him to the Parish Jail, where the
prisoners were confined in separate cells.

Next morning—July 8th—Doctor Dre-
her supplemented the verbal confession he
had already made with a complete state-
ment in the presence of witnesses, this
statement being transcribed by a stenog-
rapher.

With tears streaming down his face and
his hands opening and closing nervously,
he told the whole story of the shooting
that night on Lake Palourde, and again
named Jim Beadle as the man who had
fired two charges of buckshot into Le
Boeut’s body after the latter had been de-
caret to a lonely spot on the lake by his
wife.

“Le Boeuf had made several threats
against me,” he said. “I was afraid he
would kill me without giving me a chance.
Jim Beadle, a friend of mine with whom
I had often gone hunting and fishing,
volunteered to get rid of Le Boeuf. On
July first, Mrs. Le Boeuf sent me a note
stating that if I was going to do any-
thing now was the time, as she and her
hushand were going boat riding that night.

Beadle and I met the Le Boeufs at Lake
Palourde, and Beadle fired two shots into
Le Boeuf.

“It was my own double-barreled shot-
gun that Beadle used. and you can find
it at my home in Morgan City. I didn’t
promise him one cent for his work—he
did it through friendship for me.”

Jim Beadle was then brought in, main-
taining a stoical composure as he was
pointed out by Doctor Dreher as the
man who had fired the fatal shots into
Jim Le Boeuf, the man he had threatened
to kill a year before he had volunteered
to do the job for Doctor Dreher.

“You don’t know what you’re talking
about.” he growled, as he was accused by
Doctor Dreher as having acted the part
of his “man Friday.” “If you say I shot
Le Boeuf you lie!”

After that Beadle refused to talk, act-
ing the part of the stoic that he was and
keeping silent in the face of all the con-
flicting testimony that followed.

When brought into my office and faced
with Doctor Dreher’s confession and Jim
Beadle’s denial, Ada Le Boeuf denied
that she knew which one of the men had
shot her husband or that she had lured
him to the lake for the purpose of being
killed.

“A LLI wanted was to have my husband
meet Doctor Dreher and become
friends with him again,” she said, “for I
was afraid he might kill the Doctor as he
had often threatened to do. That’s why I
got him to go bout riding on the lake with
me that night, and I wrote a note to Doc-
tor Dreher telling him to meet us there.
“We went to Emory ‘Bonner’s and sat
around there for about ten’ miriutes, then
my husband said, ‘cone’ on. mamma, let’s
go.’ He then asked Johnny Bilger ‘the way
to Lake Palourde and ‘we rowed out the
old shell road. When we got out on the
lake another boat approached us with
two men in it. Then I heard Doctor Dre-
her calling to us from the other boat.

“Ts that you, Jim?’ he asked.

“My husband said, ‘yes, who is that?’

““This is me. This is Doc,’ Doctor
Dreher rephed. “Your wife told me to
meet you here and we would:be friends
again,’

“<Friends, hell!’ my’ husband said.
*You’ve got that damned Beadle with you.’

“Then my husband fired at them from
a gun he had in the boat. Two shots
came from the other boat, and my hus-
band fell dead.”

“Who fired those shots at your hus-
band?” IT inquired.

“I thought it: was Jim Beadle,” she re-
plied.

This differed from the first confession
she had made, and: it was apparent to me
that she was now trying to make out a
case of self-defense, and to do what she
could to exonerate Doctor Dreher from
any complicity in the shooting. This was
the first that anything hud been suid
about Le Boeuf having fired the first. shot.

Her story about only wanting Ductor
Dreher and her hushand to become friends
again was borne out, however, by a note
we found in Doctor Dreher’s home. This
was the note she had written to Doctor
Dreher on the day Jim Le Boeuf had dis-
appeared. and it bore the date of that day
—July Ist. It read:

July 1, 1927

Dear Doctor:

Jim and me will go boat riding to-
night on Lake Palourde. I talked to
him and I believe he will treat you
friendly, so meet us tonight and fix
this up friendly and we will be friends.
I am tired of living this way, hearing
Jim say he is going to kill us.

As ever,
ADA

WI
lic, ¢
swift
Mana, TJINU
conferred w
4 special ses
Jury was ¢
Before this
Franklin on
FE. Dreher,
Beudle were
first degree.
The day b:
found the pir
had been kj]
and then tran
alourde why
Y the frog-}
been hidden
Bayou Wax, n
the scene of |
Another bit
the Grand Jury
from Jim Beac
his knife shox
tor Dreher had
Beadle to open
Man so that
Within the bod
come to the sy
Then followe
criminal trial
“NOWN—a trix] |
the Supreme Cor
ana by involving
een without pr
cedure; in which
Judges challenged
at, a trial that
whole state into a
The trial] Was ca
nary session of ¢%
house at Franklin,
James D, Simon
same month in wh}
committed and Ju
the indictments. |
tle of legal wits
pressure wyr
that Judge ;
slons would
_ The select... wl
in three days, On
taking of testimony
trial for her life, coll;
Session had to ve a,
lowing morning.

OMEN all over
petitions demap

dates in a Political ea;
In progress incorpor;
form a Pledge of cl;
Boeuf and that she gs}
the gallows, Newspapr
United States poured
ents into the little tow
Marv Parish, which r:
aspect of & carnivul ¢
was being tried for he
With a love-miurder t
with human interest—g;
In the Country carried
flaming headlines.

In the midst of the
the stoica] Crapper wh
through jt all, sudden};
What he considered an
On the part of Doctor [)
Boeuf to fix the actual]
an attempt in Which be
defense Counsel was eo,
him the “pout,” Beadh;
proceedings by demandi;
se], Clairaing that he cou
from the same counse|
the interests of Ada Le |
reher. ‘This Separate cou
him by the court, and
then issued the first ¢t;
made beyond a mere de

On July first, late in

> raised his
; slashed at
released the

nder of the
silent room,
aight down.
ning, bruis-
of the trap

zeles investi-
gainst Hick-
int. A second
yet a third.
he foreheads
3 and news-
ore them.

hile the gro-
ingled there.
ling a stetho-
, pronounced

William Ed-
ot broken by
iad_strangled
little Marion

as that Chief
State Traffic
o had arrest-
. Oregon, re-
each, as their
that a horri-
d contributed
hat preceded
most fiendish

uinly re-

9 some
yt the money
ind Lieuallen
sersons whose
rorities aided
t.

ice was pro-
Tater Both
right,
Keyes.

True Detective Mysteries

87

The Bizarre Mystery of the Bayou—A Louisiana Enigma

City early on the morning of July 7th,
were those who knew every citizen of the
town. There were also many who had
uppermost in their mind the sudden and
unexplained disappearance of Jim Le
Boeuf, and who had known Jim all his
life—but none of these could identify the
body that had been found weighted down
in the waters of Lake Palourde as that of
Jim Le Boeuf.

Then to Doctor Horton came a few who
were more intimately acquainted with the
physical peculiarities of Jim Le Boeuf.
These mentioned the fact that they had
often joked with Jim about his short,
stumpy thumbs, peculiarly flat at the end
and crooked as though they had been
driven up into his hand with a hammer.
The body found in Lake Palourde had the
same crooked, stumpy thumbs. It also had
upper and lower sets of false teeth, and
these were identified by a local dentist of
Morgan City as some he had made for
Jim Le Boeuf. ;

Ada Le Boeuf didn’t go near the in-
quest, and she professed unbelief when in-
formed that the body had been identified
as that of her husband. She steadfastly
maintained that it was not her husband,
that Jim had gone away on a business
trip and would be back.

|B psete ss. HORTON then communi-
cated with me in my office at the
court house in Franklin, the county seat,
as Morgan City comes under my jurisdic-
tion as Sheriff of St. Mary Parish which
in Louisiana is similar to a county in other
states. I immediately got into my car

- and drove to Morgan City, eastward along

the old Spanish Trail from Franklin.

I found that the body the frog-hunters
on Lake Palourde had accidently bumped
into in their motor boat had been weighted
down in the water by heavy angle-irons
from the railroad that had been tied to
the neck and ankles, and that before it
had been consigned to the waters of
Lake Palourde the man had been mur-

“dered by the firing of two loads of buck:

shot into the body, from so short a dis-
tance that the shirt. was powder-burned.
To prevent the possible accumulation of
gas within the body, an accumulation that
would cause the body to rise to the sur-
face, the murderer or murderers had then
opened the abdomen with a sharp-bladed
knife. eee

Identification was not yet complete. But
whether this was the body of the missing
Jim Le Boeuf or not, a murder had been
committed and it.was my job as sheriff to
clear up the mystery and find the perpe-
trators of the deed if possible.

There was a funeral that same after-
noon, attended by an excited . populace
that was equally divided in its opinion—
but Ada Le Boeuf, dry-eyed and unemo-
tional, steadfastly maintained that -the
body they were laying away in the little
cemetery at Morgan City was not that
of her husband.

This attitude on the part of Ada Le
Boeuf .convinced many, but I was abso-
lutely sure the body recovered from the
waters of Lake Palourde was that of
Jim Le Boeuf, though not at all certain
that Ada knew this or that she had
any knowledge of the circumstances at-
tending his death. It occurred to me that
few women could: face such a situation
with that knowledge and show so little
emotion—and I knew the love that Ada
had had for Jim Le Boeuf.

I found Morgan City about equally di-
vided between those who thought that
Jim Le Boeuf had come to his death with

(Continued from page 53)

the full knowledge of his wife as a direct
result of the love affair between her and
Doctor Dreher, and those who thought
that Ada Le Boeuf was being made the
innocent victim of circumstances over
which she had had no control. In my
preliminary investigation of the case, in
which I was ably assisted b Louis R.
Blakeman, Chief of Police of Misean City,
I interviewed practically everybody who
had any knowledge of the relations of
Jim Le Boeuf and his family in that com-
munity.

I talked with the members of a picnic
party who a week before the body had
been discovered had found three heavy
railroad angle-irons hung in a crotch of
a tree on the shore of Lake Palourde.
One of the boys had taken one of these
Irons out, of the tree and thrown it into
the lake to see it splash—and the other
two were identified by all the members of
the Party as the same irons they had
found in the tree, these being the two
that had been taken from the head and
feet of the body that had been dis-
covered submerged in the waters of Lake
Palourde at this same point.

This made it look like a premeditated
crime. Evidently whoever had killed the
man who had been found in the lake had
carried these heavy railroad angle-irons
to this point and left them there, hung in
a‘crotch of the tree where they could be
easily found when needed, with the inten-
tion of either killing the man at this
point or conveying the body there after
his death and: then using the irons to
bury the evidence of the crime beneath
the surface of the lake.

In my opinion, two things had oper-
ated against the success of this plan. The
picnic party had disposed of one of the
heavy angle-irons by throwing it into the
lake. This left the murderer only two—
one to be-attached to the head of his
victim and the other to the feet. There
was no third iron to keep the middle por-
tion of the torso down, and this had come
up as close to the surface of the water’as
the weights attached to the head and ‘feet
would .permits::.Then, too, the body ‘had
been sunk in the lake during a flood
period, and there had since been a three-
foot fall in the water. Thus the absence
of that third iron to attach to the
middle portion of the body and subse-
quent lowering of the waters had catsed
that part of the body to come so close
to the surface that the motorboat of the
frog-hunters had struck it, resulting in
its discovery.

Thus purely accidental incidents , had
given publicity to a crime ‘that other-
wise might have been buried beneath the
waters of The Teche region for years.

AY YWAY, we now had all the evidence
of a premeditated crime that had been
carefully planned in advance. My job now
was to find the. one or ones who had
committed it, and while the investigation
continued the entire Parish was aroused
into a shocked feeling of intense excite-
ment over the, most. brutal murder the

‘peaceful Teche region had ever known.

There were accusations, wild rumors, and
recriminations that only served to hamper
us in our efforts,

Then I heard something that looked

’ like a “hot” lead. More than a year before

Jim Beadle, a trapper abouty forty-five
years old, who was a typical example of
the hundreds of other trappers to be
found between Atchafalaya and the The
Teche where trapping is the principal oc-
cupation, had threatened to kill Jim Le

CME

°°. RRR OTRAS: oe

- of the fl

Boeuf when the latter had borrowed his
a to go on a fishing trip without
eadle’s consent. On that occasion Bea-
dle had gone home and got his gun
and had waited in the underbrush for
Le Boeutf’s return, but the latter’s life
was saved when he landed at a different
oint and failed to return with the boat.
ince that time Beadle had threatened to
kill Le Boeuf if he repeated the offense,
and they had been sworn enemies,

This brought an entirely new figure into
the picture and served to center my at-
tention on Jim Beadle, the trapper of
The Teche, by giving him a motive for
the crime. I knew these trappers of
The Teche as a class who habitually take
the law in their own hands and vent their
personal animosities in their own primitive
way. Jim Beadle was a type who fitted
into the réle of such a brutal killer better
than either of the two illicit lovers whose
names were being linked together in the
vicious gossip that was flying thick and
fast around Morgan City. I couldn’t pic-
ture Ada Le Boeuf being connected with
it, and I was sure that out of the welter
ying rumors I had landed on a
clear trail that led straight to Jim Beadle,

aeow suddenly, I was switched off on
a totally different trail. From a man
named Johnny Bilger, I learned that Jim
and Ada Le Boeuf had gone boat riding
together on Lake Palourde about 7:30
on the evening of Friday, July 1st—the
last time Jim Le Boeuf had been seen
alive. They had gone to Emory Bonner’s
and sat around there for about ten min-
utes, then Le Boeuf had said:

“Come on, mamma, let’s gol”

Jim Le Boeuf had then asked Johnny
Bilger the way to get into Lake Palourde,
after which they had paddled out along
the old shell road in separate boats; and
Ada Le Boeuf had come back alone.
When she got back to town she was met
by hér brother, who asked her where
Jim_ was.

“He’s waiting for me at the corner,” she
replied.

If this story was true, Jim Le Boeuf had
been murdered while out boat riding with
his wife, as that was the last he het been
seen alive—and Ada Le Boeuf, who had
steadfastly maintained that her husband
was “out of town,” and that the body
found submerged in Lake Palourde five
days later was not his, must know who
the murderer was, and for some reason
was hiding this knowledge.

This convinced me that my first duty
was to get from Ada Le Boeuf whatever
knowledge she might have, so I immedi-
ately went to her home and took her in
custody and removed her to m offices in
the court house at Franklin. There I sub-
jected her to a severe grilling for more
than an hour without breaking down her
original story that her husband had gone
“out of town” and that the body re-
covered from the waters of Lake Palourde
was not his. I could see that she was
under a terrific strain and that if I per-
sisted she must eventually “break”. [|
was convinced by her attitude that she
was holding something back, and I kept
hammering at her with all the evidence J
had, in spite of the fact that I felt a
sincere sympathy for her.

“When Jim was last seen he was going
out boat riding with you and you came
back alone. Was that when he left town?
Does he leave town on a business trip
like that? Ada, you’re lying!” I shot at
her. “You're trying to protect some-
body. Who is it?”

90

Boeuf’s contention that her husband had
fired first—but it also served to disprove
her statement that the meeting on Lake
Palourde that night was a “peace meet-
ing’ by showing that both men had gone
there armed.

On the strength of this find the Board
of Pardons granted a rehearing of. the
appeal for clemency they had refused a
week before. This hearing took place on
December 20th, and a: statement signed
by eleven of the jurors who had served
in the trial and who had returned a ver-
dict of guilty of murder in the first de-
gree on the first ballot was presented re-
questing that the condemned pair be
vranted a commutation of sentence.

In the meantime, Jim Beadle had
started to serve his term of life-imprison-
ment at Angola Prison, and a guard. there
told the pardon board that since his im-
prisonment Beadle had confessed to doing
the shooting.

After considering those factors, the
Board of Pardons voted two to one for
granting clemency, Judge Simon standin
out against it. This action by the bo’
brought from Governor Huey P. Long the
heated remark that it looked like “a
mockery against decency and order in
Louisiana.”

Defense attorneys then went to Franklin
and sought a lunacy commission at the
hands of Judge Simon, who granted an
open hearing on January 3rd. The day
before the scheduled execution the slay-
ers were adjudged sane, and Judge Simon
refused to appoint a commission to go

True Detective Mysteries

Hurrying back from Franklin to the
Supreme Court in New Orleans, the attor-
neys then sought writs to compel the ap-
pointment of a lunacy commission, there-
by involving the Supreme Court in a
tangle that is without precedent in_the
annals of that dignified tribunal. Four
justices decided against the application,
Chief Justice O’Neill alone deciding in
favor of it and declaring that, in spite
of the fact that he was outvoted, he had
the authority to order a stay of execu-
tion and did so.

TS. seemingly hopeless snarl in which
this case that had attracted the eyes of
the whole nation was now yee re-
sulted in two of the dignifie Judges of
the Supreme Court threatening to “punch
each other on the nose,” and foresd Gov-
ernor Huey P. Long to grant another re-
prieve until matters could be straightened
out.

On January 11th, the Supreme Court
refused to order the a pointment of a
lunacy commission, nullified Chief Justice
O’Neill’s stay of execution, and advised
a new reprieve which was granted by Gov-
ernon Long on January 12th. On Janu-
ary 28th the final effort to get a rehear-
ing from the State Supreme Court failed,
and on January 29th the Supreme Court
of the United States refused to interfere
and stay the execution. Then, on Janu-
ary 30th, attorneys for the condemned
pair played their last two cards.

One of these final cards was a petition
for a writ of habeas corpus which failed
in Federal District Court, being denied by

further into the matter of their sanity.

Federal Judge Wayne G. Borah. The
other was a petition for a certificate of
probable cause, presented also to Judge
Borah, and also denied by him and three
Judges of the United States Circuit Court
of Appeals.

News of the refusal of Judge Borah
and the United States Circuit Court of
Appeals to grant a stay of execution was
conveyed to the condemned pair by At-
torney James R. Parkerson and mysel!
. 2 o'clock on the afternoon of January

Ist.

The following day—Friday, February
ist, 1929—with their last hope gone, Ada
Le Boeuf, the woman who had loved not
wisely but too well, and who, because of
that love, had become implicated in a
murder, and Doctor Thomas E. Dreher,
her paramour, were hanged in a_double
execution in the Parish Jail at Franklin
Court House.

The tragic tale of illicit love and mur-
der had run for nineteen months to the
day. It had begun on Friday night, July
ist, 1927, when Jim Le Boeuf was lured
to a lonely spot on Lake Palourde and
shot to death—and it ended when the
hangman pulled the lever of the gibbet
in the little yard of the Parish Jail at
Franklin on Friday, February Ist, 1929.

Ada Le Boeuf is the only woman that
has ever been sent to the gallows in the
state of Louisiana—but to these descend-
ants of those French Acadians_ whose
homes were broken up and their families

separated in the years that have gone,
there is no greater crime than that of
violating the sanctity of the home

| The Murder at the “Brown Derby’

by Chief Prosecutor Winfield K. Denton,
Assistant Prosecutor James H. Meyer,
Special Investigator James Thomas, my-
self and other officials.

That night Buella Bender was released
: on her own recognizance. Twenty-four

hours had brought continuous activity but
little else.

The body of Miss Robb was prepared
for burial following the autopsy at Klee
and Burkhart’s and removed to the little
village from whence she came.

ONDAY morning the authorities
pointed to two outstanding facts:
that Mary Elizabeth’s forehead, where the
bullet, entered her brain, was not powder
burned and the shot could not have been
fired by her; and that her forehead had
been cut with a knife, apparently in an
attempt to probe for the bullet before the
girl was taken to the hospital in a dying
condition.

We were far from pleased with the atti-
tude of William Burnette, and he was
taken into custody early Monday morn-
ing by Detectives Lamberg and Hansch
and held for further questioning.

Shortly afterward, a car bearing Prose-
cutor Denton, Deputy Prosecutor Meyer,
Special Investigator Thomas and myself,
left Evansville for Stewartsville. The
Prosecutor, confident that the cuts were
made with a knife, said that he wanted to

ing at the bullet wound, before further
| action was taken.

Tuesday, while authorities were busily

engaged in their search for additional

evidence, friends of the Robb family trav-

eled for miles to assemble in the little

Methodist church to pay tribute to the

girl they had known in happier childhood

days.
Back from the burial ground came the
bereaved parents, and the father, broken

make a closer study of the cuts converg- -

(Continued from page 39)

over the tragedy, was confined to his bed,
for weeks lingering between life and death,
but battling bravely to live at least until
the law should determine and bring to
justice the murderer of his daughter.

No news of the shooting reached the
public until newspaper Reodlinas an-
nounced the death of Mary Elizabeth
Robb Monday morning. And then hun-
dreds of curiosity seekers as well as those
vitally interested in finding the discarded
gun congregated out on the Water Works

oad to search for it. .

Burnette, after being held in jail for
twenty-four hours, showed more inclina-
tion to talk, finally signing a statement
for authorities before his release.

“T turned the lights on in cabin twelve,
and just as I did so I heard a noise out-
side which sounded like a small explosion,”
Burnette told the police.

“Then I walked to open the rear door
and lighted the gas steam radiator. _
looked out the door and saw Staab in
front of the automobile which was parked
just back of the cabin. Moving farther
out the door I saw that he was walking
towards Miss Robb who was lying on the
ground. He. walked around her and I
walked directly up to her.” :

Burnette told us he asked: “What's the
matter with this girl?” and Staab said:
“She’s just drunk, passed out and fell.”

“T told Staab that we’d better get her
off the ground. We started to turn her
over and I remarked about the pool of
blood under her. He ‘said she must have
cut her neck as she fell. He“began feel-
ing her throat and neck as if looking for
wounds. I saw a - in the girl's forehead
and believed she had cut herself in falling.
We then turned her over on her back and
I noticed her purse and gloves which had
been beneath her and I picked them up.”

Burnette further told us that, “from the

time I left the cabin until Staab and I

went back to the car I had my eyes on the
girl and did not see a gun in her hands
or lying near by.” _,

Burnette said. that after: he picked’ up
the purse and gloves Staab asked him if
he could take the girl into a cabin and
get a doctor, but he advised him to take
her to a hospital.

“Staab and I opened the rumble seat
and carried the girl to the car,” he con-
cluded. '

Here Buella Bender and Eddie Gumbel
took up the story which stamped Staab,
if not a murderer, a heartless being com-
pletely devoid of feeling.

Damning her own reputation, Buella
Bender told the investigators that she
had spent the night at the “Brown Derby”
twice before the night of the fatal shoot-
ing, once with her fiancé alone and later
with a married couple whose name she did
not divulge.

“Both times we rented Cabin twelve,”
she said. “And the night we went to
Smitty’s it might have been generally
understood that we should go to a cabin
for the remainder of the night but noth-
ing was said to or before Mary Eliza-
beth about it, and I don’t think she knew
she was going there.”

M* BENDER also revealed in her
well-modulated voice that she and
Eddie Gumbel had never met Mary Eliza-
beth Robb until they drove up before the
Skelton home that night and Cyril brought
her out to the car and introduced them.
Both Miss Bender and Eddie Gumbel
admitted that, following the sound which
they later knew to be a shot, while Miss
Robb was lying face-down in the cinder
path, that Cyril rushed back to the car
and ordered Buella to “scoot over,” adding
that Mary Elizabeth had shot herself with

his stolen gun. so
“Turn off the lights and drive away. If

we leave h.
there no ¢
know she y
us,” he tal.
To thi
Bender ;
protested,
ril started b
ward the g:
as Burnett,
Out of the
Together,
Stooped ov;
for a period
least five m
both Gumbs
Miss Bende
the _authorit;
hat had
and the to
camp atten
been doing a:
stooped ove;
blood-soaked
of the wou
girl? = Autho
believed they
probing for
bullet with y
she had been
between the .
he drive
back of the Cu
was brillian
lights and
headlights of
Viding sufficien
After depos,

Tumble seat of
said that Eddi
Staab sit in th;
and Staab rep]
ee If will.
Staab wanted
Bender would
ume and J’lJ
nim as saying,
She drove bi:
to Riverside Dri
tion, down Ris
turning into the '
raised his hur
and said: “Le
she told polic
They drove a
Long Beach
ordered the car s
‘ He stepped vu,
with a handkerch;

“That’s to tak;
they Gnased Stat
entered the car, «
1t was found I'd |

Since leaving th.
had suggested thr
a dark side street
Water Works Roa
of turning into »
cornfield and hidir
that she was stil
heavily. He mes
alone to die, his
plaining that again
Ing on taking Miss

HS, plans to dis
en instru |
what to say pacing
and tell them she shc
Buella and Eddie t;
When faced with
pegeie he remen

un an i
ay Suggesting

And what ab

. oO
etermined to pal
been | stolen. Staa}
Seetningly heartless

us OVerpowering

{! ANY

{ didn't

yrk—he

, maine
he Was
is the
ts Into
‘eatened
inteered

talking
used by
the part
iy I shot

talk, act-
was and
the con-

ind faced
and Jim
uf denied
men had
had lured
2 of being

iv husband
id become
iid, “for I
yetor as he
at's why I

ce with

o Doc-

; there.
rs and sat
inutes, then
sammia, let’s
lger the way
ved out the
out on the
ed us. with
Doctor Dre-
er boat.
cod
to is that?
Doc,’ Doctor

told me to
ld be friends

isband said.
die with you.’
them from
Two shots
and my hus-

il

at your hus-
idle,” she re-

irst. confession
pparent to me
o muke out a
5 do what she

Dreher from
ting. This was
had been said
4 the first. shot.
santing Doctor
become friends
ever, by a note
rs home. This
itten to Doctor
. Boeuf had dis-
iate of that day

July 1, 1927

oat riding to-
e. I talked to
™ treat you
ht and fix

be friends.

ao way, hearing

to kill us.

As ever.

ADA

When these confessions were made pub-
lic, there was a widespread demand for
swift justice. In deference to this de-
mand, istrict Attorney Emile Vuillemot
conferred with Judge James D. Sitnon and
a special session of St. Mary Parish Grand
Jury was called to dispose of the case.
Before this extraordinary’ session, held in
Franklin on July 12th, Doctor Thomas
E. Dreher, Ada Le Boeuf and James
Beadle were indicted for murder in the
first degree.

The day before the Grand Jury met, I
found the pirogue in which Jim Le Boeuf
had been killed and his body mutilated
and then transported to the spot on lake
Palourde where it had been discovered
by the frog-hunters. This pirogue had
been hidden in the remote recesses of
Bayou Wax, more than three miles from
the scene of the murder. i

Another bit of evidence submitted to
the Grand Jury was a knife we had taken
from Jim Beadle when he was arrested.
This knife showed bluodstains, and Doc-
tor Dreher had said it had been used by
Beadle to open the abdomen of the dead
man so that an accumulation of gas
within the body would not cause it to
come to the surface. :

Then followed the most sensational
criminal trial that any state has ever
known—a trial that threatened to disrupt
the Supreme Court of the State of Louisi-
ana by involving it in a tangle that has
been without precedent in criminal _pro-
cedure; in which dignified Supreme Court
judges challenged each other to fistic com-
bat, a trial that threatened to throw the
whole state into a political revolution.

The trial was called before an extraordi-
nary session of court in the little court-
house at Franklin, Louisiana, before Judge
James D. Simon on July 25th—in the
same month in which the murder had been
committed and just thirteen days after
the indictments. It promised such a bat-
tle of legal wits and so much political
pressure was brought to bear on the case
that Judge Simon ordered that night ses-
sions would be held.

The selection of the jury was completed
in three days. On the first day of the
taking of testimony Ada Le Boeuf, on
trial for her life, collapsed in court and the
session had to ve adjourned till the fol-
lowing morning.

woe. all over the state circulated
petitions demanding that the candi-
dates in a political campaign that was then
in progress incorporate into their plat-
form a pledge of clemency for Ada Le
Boeuf and that she should not be sent to
the gallows. Newspapers from all over the
United States poured special correspond-
ents into the little town of Franklin, in St.
Mary Parish, which rapidly assumed the
aspect of a carnival city. Here a woman
was being tried for her life in connection
with a love-murder that was throbbing
with human interest—and every newspaper
in the country carried that story under
flaming headlines.

In the midst of the trial, Jim Beadle,
the stoical trapper who had kept silent
through it all, suddenly revolted against
what he considered an evident attempt
on the part of Doctor Dreher and Ada Le
Boeuf to fix the actual shooting on him,
an attempt in which he thought that the
defense counsel wus conspiring to make
him the “goat.” Beadle interrupted the
proceedings by demanding separate coun-
se], clairning that he could not get justice
from the same counsel who was serving
the interests of Ada Le Boeuf and Doctor
Dreher. This separate counsel was granted
him by the court, and Beadle, the stoic,
then issued the first statement he had
made beyond a mere denial.

“On July first, late in the afternoon,”

ee ee

True Detective Mysteries

he said in his statement, “Doctor Dreher
came to my house and asked me to go
out hunting with him, which I did. When
we had got wel) out in the pasture he told
me he had come out there to kill that
damned Jim Le Boeuf. I said ‘No, Doctor,
don’t do that’. He suid. ‘Yes, I am going
to do it, and if you open your mouth
about this | am going to kill you.’ Then he
mude me pull the boat till we met that
man Jim Le Boeuf.

“When we met Le Boeuf out there on
the lake, Doctor Dreher suid, ‘Jim, is that
you?’ And Le Boeuf replied, ‘Yes, who
is that?’ Doctor Dreher had hia double-
barreled shotgun in his hands and then,
without another word, he fired two shots
and Le Boeuf fell.

“Then Doctor Dreher said, ‘Let’s go and
get that iron in the oak tree. I want to
sink this thing in the lake” When we
had rowed to where the irons were, he
tied one to Le Boeuf’s neck and the other
to his feet. Doctor Dreher then said, ‘I
am going to slit him open so he will
never be found.’ Then he made me help
him sink the body in the lake.”

OUNSEL for Ada Le Boeuf and Doctor

Dreher objected to this statement
from Beadle being admitted, but they were
overruled. Beadle then was permitted to
take the stand against his fellow prison-
ers.

The statement that had been made by
Ada Le Boeuf was largely discounted,
as being untrue and contrary to the tne
by the testimony given by a number o
trappers and rivermen to the effect that
it would have been impossible for a wo-
man to have rowed a cumbersome pirogue
or any other kind of boat to the point
where Ada had said she had gone with
her husband in a boat of her own. One
of those giving this testimony was Cap-
tain Ed Forgey.

“Tt would be impossible for even an
experienced boatman to row a_ boat
through the passes against the current in
flood water,” said Captain Forgey. “I
couldn’t paddle a square-end pirogue, or
even a good pirogue, from Emory Bon-
ner’s house to the last pass. The current
is so bad a man’s got no business out
there.”

At 10:15 on the night of August 6th, the
state demanded the life of Ada Bonner
Le Boeuf and Doctor Thomas E. Dreher,
and life-imprisonment for Jim Beadle. A
verdict of guilty of murder in the first
degree with the above recommendations

89

was returned by the jury on the first bal-
lot.

On August 10th, 1927—little more than
a month after the discovery of the crime
—Jim Beadle was sentenced to life-im-
prisonment in the State Penitentiary at
Baton Rouge. And two days later Ada
Le Boeuf and Doctor Dreher were sen-
tenced to hang by Louisiana’s youngest
Judge, James D. Simon, following his
refusal of a motion for a new trial by
defense attorney James R. Parkerson.
Parkerson then filed a notice of appeal
to the Supreme Court of Louisiana, which
was returnable on October Ist.

Then followed such a battle to save a
woman from the gallows as no other
state has ever known—a battle involving
names that stand high in the tribunals of
the state and the nation, among them
Huey E. Long, now the celebrated “King-
fish” of the United States Senate, but then
governor of Louisiana.

Hearings on appeals that occupied more
than a year and reached up to the United
States Supreme Court failed.

Defense attorneys led by James R. Park-
erson, then sought the clemency of the
State Board of Pardons. A special session
of the Board had been called for Novem-
ber 3rd, 1928, to hear another case, but
so intense was the interest in the Le Boeuf
case that that this hearing was postponed
by Attorney-General Saint until Novem-
ber 28th, and the Le Boeuf case given
precedence. While the Board of Pardons
was considering the slayers’ entreaties for
clemency, Governor Huey P. Long set
the date for their execution as December
21st, and on December 8rd the Board of
Pardons voted against granting clemency.

Then came a faint ray of hope in the
shadow of the gallows. Governor Long,
at the request of Benjamin J. Daly and
Walter B. Hamlin, defense attorneys, on
December 5th granted a reprieve for the
condemned couple over the holidays. He
indicated. however, that it was granted
only so Louisiana’s Christmas cheer would
not be marred by a double hanging and
that it was the last reprieve that would
be given.

HEN other developments began to

happen. A gun purporting to be that of
the murdered Jim Le Boeuf was found in
the six-foot canal at Morgan City, with
one chamber discharged. Joseph Le
Boeuf, son of the murdered man, admitted
that the gun answered the description
of his father’s and that it might be his.
This would seem to bear out Mrs. Le

IN HER OWN DEFENSE

A scene in the courtroom at the sensational trial that grew out of the murder on the
bayou, showing Mrs. Ada Le Boeuf, wife of the victim. on the witness-stand

t

A casual prank frustrated this man’s calculated plans...

At last Dreher permitted himself to be persuaded. Painful as
the lying tongues were, it was agreed to ignore them.

Another two months went by and if more scandalous tales of
the doctor and Mrs. Le Bouef were being told, they did not reach
the ears of the principals.At least, not until the middle of June
when James Le Bouef again called upon Philomena Brown.

He came directly to the point. “Philomena,” he said, “an
employe of mine at the power company told me today that she'd
heard something he thought I should know. She'd been told that
Ada and Tom Dreher were seen bathing together in the bayou
near Emmy Mae Hawks’ cabin. According to this tale, they
hadn't bothered to put on bathing suits.”

“You still don’t believe it, do you, Jim?” Mrs. Brownasked.

Le Bouef turned an agonized face to her. “No, I don't believe
it. But it’s driving me crazy. Suppose everyone in town calls youa
thief. You may know you're not, but the gossip could upset you
just as much as if it were true.”

Mrs. Brown nodded sympathetically. “What do you want me
to do?”

“I'd like you to run down the source of this rumor. Let's find
out who started it. Then we'll know whom to deal with.”

Mrs. Brown pointed out that the source of a rumor is difficult
to find. Nevertheless, she agreed to try.

On the following day, before she had acted in the matter, she
was visited by Ada Le Bouef. What Ada had to say amazed her.

“Philomena,” Ada said, “lin worried about Jim. More than
that, 'm worried about our marriage. | just heard that Jim was
swimining naked with that woman they call a witch, that Emmy
Mae Hawks.”

Mrs. Brown blinked. Then she laughed. “Ada,” she said, “this
just proves that one never should listen to gossip. Jim heard the
very same tale, but in his case the principals were you and Tom
Dreher. Now you hear it and the people involved are Jim and
Emmy Mae Hawks. The whole story’s obviously untrue.”

But Ada Le Bouef wasn't so sure. She refused to tell Mrs.
Brown where she had heard her version.of the nude swimming
tale. “But,” she said, “I understand the wife of a frog hunter who
lives near the Hawks’ cabin actually saw them. I wish you would
go into the bayou and ask her about it. Her name, I'm told, is Mrs.
Ork Ardon.”

“All right,” Philomena agreed. “Il kill this rumor once
and for all. I'll talk to Mrs. Ardon. I'll go there this afterncon.”

34

‘rented a pirogue from him.

- Mrs. Brown went down to the shore of Lake Palourde, wak- 4
ed along the same trail that Le Bouef had followed on the hiighthy >
had quarreled with Jim Beadle. She came to Beadle's cabin gag #

She rowed slowly through the dark waters, beneath the
overhanging tree branches toward the cabin of Emmy Me.
Hawks. Half a mile from that cabin and on the other side of the ©
bayou stood the wooden shanty occupied by the frog hunter,”
Ork Ardon. : *

Mrs. Philomena Brown beached her pirogue sight beforethe
‘Ardon cabin and walked straight up to, the open door. She we
greeted with marked hostility. :

Mrs. Ardon, an ancient crone with wispy gray hair, ay:
skin and a protruding jaw, eyed Philomena Brown and
“You're from Morgan City, ain't you? We don’t want you folks
the bayou.” Be

Mrs. Brown amiably stated her business. She impressed upae,

Mrs. Ardon that she meant no harm. She merely wished to sav

innocent people from the result of vicious scandal. She, Mn >.

Brown, was certain that Mrs. Ardon had not seen anyone bathing f.
naked in the bayou, she said. But she had come to make sure
Mrs. Ardon looked at Mrs. Brown and her expression wasnt
one of geniality. “I ain’t going to get mixed up in these affair °
she said. “But I ain't going to tell no lies, neither. Sure, I seat
couple carrying on out there in the water. One was that re,

headed witch woman. The man was Jim Le Bouef. They wa. *

carrying on, with no clothes on at all. Why don't all you Morga »
City folk keep away from the bayou? We're respectable peop —
here.” :

Baffled, Mrs. Brown returned to the pirogue. She paddled «
slowly home, her brow wrinkled in thought. The gossip, if itred
ly was gossip, now was quite out of hand. Originally, only Ade
and the doctor had been involved. Now it also involved Jimle
Bouef and the red-headed swamp woman.

Yet it had been Le Bouef who first had come to Philomem ;
Brown asking her to check on the nude bathing story. Wat
possible that he was guilty of infidelityand was covering up i
asking Mrs. Brown to investigate? Was it possible that/he #8 —
behind all the talk of his wife's affair with the doctor?

After several hours’ thought, Mrs. Brown removed hers#
from the entire affair. She kept to herself what Mrs. Ardon bi
told her and notified Him and‘Ada Le Bouef that she didn'twa
to have anything further to do with the scandalous: rumas
Gossip, she said with finality, can do no one any good.

That was true. Murder can do no one any good, either. Awd
although Philomena Brown was unaware of it, amurder plote®
at the moment afoot in St. Mary’s Parish. A plot as dark a
treacherous as the waters of the Bayou Teche. ;

On Wednesday, June 29th, 1972, Aleide Mayon, a youth wie
livedin the bayou, walked idly along the shore of Lake Palourdt
He came upon a gnarled cypress tree whose ancient branche»
stretched out over the water. The tree was dying and Span,
moss draped it like a shroud. é

Mayon leaned against its trunk and lighted a cigarette. TM
he noticed something black and solid resting ina crotch betwe™
two branches. He pushed aside the Spanish moss and #%
vestigated. He found three railroad angle irons, An angle ironat”
rolled iron bar with an L-shaped cross section, used in const
tion work. ie

He lifted one of the irons from its resting place and huntelt®

‘ into the water. The splash quite came up to his expectatio® -

5,

Mayon finished his cigarette, walked away. ae
iron®

On the face of things, he merely had tossed an angle ‘
the water. Unwittingly, he had done much more. I Iehad becust ©
the instrument by which a black crime would come to light
days later. ‘ a

On July Ist, Jim and Ada Le Bouef decided to visit thelatte’
brother, whose home was on the other side of Lake Pal
The Le Bouefs borrowed a pirogue and made the journey
water.

In the course of the evening, Le Bouef remarked oF
brother-in-law that on the following (Continued on page

RR

‘by MALCOLM BURDSALL

%.

: : ; fusca
tle Kimberly Ann, 8, mysteriously dis-
soeared. Her battered body eventually
werned up in shallow grave in front yard

UDGES customarily cite legal
precedents for their decisions.
Some also use strong language to
press their opinions about the par-
teular case on which they are ruling.
Sepreme Court Justice Joe Henry of
Tennessee is one of these.
In the case to be reviewed he wrote:

That this was a_ reprehensible,

hsome, barbarous, repulsive and
@eminable crime, there can be no
reasonable doubt.” The other justices
ewectrred,

They were referring to the hideous
crime that “we shall call Tennessee's
Doghouse Murder Case. It involved an8-
year-old girl who was brutally killed, then

in a shallow grave beside a
se.

* Her given name was Kimberly Ann.
She went by two different surnames at
various times. And she departed this life
the night of December 31, 1971.

The slayer of this beautiful child
*anaged to cover her murder with soil
and Kes for three months. Then his own

i¢ depravity landed him in jail for
tether heinous offense, thus calling

4

x

Questionforatennessee|ury:

OULDA

FATHER

AT HilS

LITTLE GIRL

down suspicion on him for Kimberly's
disappearance. ;
No exact date can be named for when
the chain of evil events leading to
Kimberly's death began. But in the fall of
1971, it led to the Grassy Creek communi-
ty in the mountains of Polk County,
‘Tennessee. That was when a husky, red-
haired mine worker named Clyde Leslie
LaChance brought his wife, baby Cory,
and three stepchildren to Grassy Creek
and rented a cabin. They set up

DEATH?

housekeeping, and the three stepchildren
enrolled in school at nearby Copperhill.

All went swimmingly with them for a
time, as far as neighbors could tell. The
youngsters did well in school and attend-
ed Sunday school at nearby Bethel
Church. LaChance, known as Sonny,
worked regularly and with his wife, Don-
na, partied occasionally with other young
adults.

They weren't howling social successes
with most of the staid mountain people of

In one of the most dramatic moments in
recent court history, the agonizing truths ,
would finally be told by a witness only a little bit older

ae body was found buried beside a doghouse

x: than the 8-year-old girl whose brutally beaten


Kar,

afew A

Sagen. “I think. that that’s evidence
enough to charge Lehmann. Granted that
Mrs. Lehmann probably used the car all
the time for her business, but the question
is, how did Lehmann get the car back
then? I wasn’t able to check whether the
car was at the parking garage on that
night, but I do know that it was in front of
the Lehmann home on the morning of the
seventeenth. If Mrs. Lehmann was
murdered on the night of the sixteenth, as
Dr. Zappel thinks, then Lehmann must
have brought the car back from the
Grinau Castle parking lot sometime
before morning.”

“You're right, of course,” said the in-

spector. “The only question is whether
the examining judge will agree with you
enough to issue an indictment. I don't
think Lehmann is going to do much talk-
ing

In this the inspector was quite right.
Urs Lehmann confined his remarks to
vigorous denial of all guilt in the murder
of his wife. The examining judge,
however, noting that there was only one
blue and white Pontiac in Zurich and that
the Grinau Castle was located on the
Linth Canal, only a few hundred yards
from where the body of Pia Lehmann had
been found, decided that there was suf-
ficient cause to issue an indictment.

oF
Since then, Urs Lehmann has been im 5

police now having learned that Pia had
been threatening to leave him, they are
extracting ever more concessions from
his statements. Trial has been set for later
this year. é ++

der continual interrogation and, as =

EDITOR’S NOTE:

Wilhelm Sagen, Karl Grosse, Aloys
Zappel, Hermann Gusti and Otto
Seemann are not the real names of the
persons so named in the foregoing
story. Fictitious names have been used
in order to comply with Swiss police
regulations.

A Witch’s Curse
Doomed the Lovers

(Continued from page 34)

day he was scheduled to take a business
trip to Franklin, thence to New Orleans.
Shortly before midnight, the Le Bouefs
said their goodbyes, climbed into the
pirogue and began to paddle toward
Morgan City.

It was a dark, moonless night. A whip-
poorwill sang eerily from a cypress limb,
a water moccasin swam silently, tracing a
slender wake in the water. The at-
mosphere was black and evil, a fitting
background for the horror about to oc-
cur.

But the following morning was bright
and hot and if evil had stalked the bayou

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on the previous evening, Morgan City
was completely unaware of it. Business
went on as usual. Jim Le Bouef was away,
a common enough occurrence, although
this time there were whispers that he had
left to get a divorce. Ada Le Bouef was
stricken with migraine, also quite usual.
And Dr. Dreher attended her, which was
normal procedure.

OnJuly 6th, Alcide Mayon, along with
Paul and Norbert Didier set out on Lake
Palourde ina motorboat for an evening of
frog hunting. Recently, due to floods,
there had been extremely high water in
the bayou and the lake. Now, however,
the flood had abated and the waters were
receding. .

Paul Didier stood in the bow of the
boat, a flashlight in his hand. His brother,
Norbert, was at the tiller. Alcide Mayon
leaned over the side of the boat. He too
held a flashlight, which he used to il-
lumine the black water while he looked
for frogs.

Suddenly he saw something dark,
moving slowly through the water ahead
on the port side of the motorboat. “Hey,”
he yelled to Norbert, “there’s a guy swim-
ming up there.”

The propeller bit deep into the water.
The boat slowed down. Norbert bent
over the bow and stretched out his hand.
“Alcide’s right,” he said in an awed tone.
“There’s someone swimming, all right.
Only it’s a corpse!”

“Let's get out of here,” Mayon said.
“We'd better call the cops.”

Paul Didier opened the throttle and
the motorboat plunged toward a landing.
Norbert put through the telephone call.
The boys waited at the landing until
Morgan City’s Chief of Police, Louis R.
Blakeman, arrived with Dr. C. M. Hor-
ton, the coroner.

They climbed into the motor boat and
sped back to the point where the corpse
had been seen. The heavy wire which
bound the dead man was too strong to be
broken and the sheriff had brought no
tools with him for that purpose.

Arduously, the five men tuged at it,
eventually dragging up aheavy angle iron
to which it was attached. One angle iron
had anchored the corpse’s hands, the
other his feet.

Dr. Horton examined the dead maa

The sheriff frowned. The dead maz
had worn tan shoes and a pair of gry’
trousers and a plaid shirt.

Pecot returned to local police hea¢-
quarters. There he talked again to Dr
Horton, who assured him that the body
had been in the water for six or eight days

In reply to Pecot’s question, Hortoe
agreed that, in general, the
resembled that of Jim Le Bouef. “But,” he |
added, “that doesn’t mean much. There
are a hundred men in this parish built like
Jim Le Bouef.”

Forty-eight hours after the swimming
corpse had been discovered, it still was
unidentified. And on that day, July 8th
Ada Le Bouef paid a visit to the family
confidante, Philomena Brown.

“Philomena,” she said, “I have
something to tell you. The sheriff seems
to think that the body they found in the
lake is Jim's. I know it isn’t. He’s run away
with that woman.”

“What woman?”

“That redhead. The witch who lives

the bayou.” :

To Mrs. Brown, who recalled the
story of the Ardon woman, this didnt
appear surprising.

“I thought you told the sheriff that he
was away ona business trip,” Mrs. Brow®
said. vel
“I want to tell you what happened o
that last night I saw Jim,” Ada Le B
went on. “We started back from my
brother's house in the pirogue. During the
trip we began to quarrel.” ;

Le Bouef, it appeared, had grown ir
creasingly angry as they bickered. He
swung the pirogue around and hea
back to shore. There, he ordered his wif
out of the boat, remarking that he kne*
someone who would treat him more

lovingly than she did. Then he paddled sg

out into the bayou again.
Mrs. Le Bouef had taken a piro}
belonging to her brother and row
home alone. She had not heard from
husband since. She was sure that he
run off with the redheaded witch, she
said. |
“Are you sure,” Mrs. Brown
“that the dead man isn’t Jim?”
“Positive.”

body @

eae

si

ee

a

“Have you seen the body?” | :
“No. Why should I? I’m certain it isn’t

‘mn.

This struck Mrs. Brown as peculiar. A
man was dead and Jim Le Bouef was mis-
sing. It seemed reasonable that an anxious
wife would at least view the corpse, to
wake certain it was not her husband. Yet
Ada Le Bouef seemed quite un-
goncerned.

In the meantime, Sheriff Pecot had
wot been idle. He, too, thought Mrs. Le
fiouef's attitude curious. He was by no
means convinced that the swimming cor-

was not Jim Le Bouef. He called in Le
Souef's dentist to settle the matter.

The dentist examined the upper plate
found in the dead man’s mouth, com-
pared it with his charts and stated flatly
that this was the body of James Le Bouef.

This news was promptly com-
eunicated to AdaLe Bouef. She received
# calmly. “The dentist is mistaken,” she
said. “My husband is alive. I know it.”

The funeral was held that afternoon.
4da Le Bouef attended, but she did not
“rep. She stoutly. maintained that the
man they buried was not her husband.

When Mrs. Philomena Brown heard
ef the body’s identification, she decided
that she must see the sheriff. She must tell
tam of the stories she had heard about
beth Jim and his wife. Reluctantly, for the
Le Bouefs had been her lifelong friends,
she sought out Pecot. : .

S.. told the sheriff all the gossip she
had heard since the inception of the af-
far. She told him of Mrs. Ardon’s report
of the nude bathing party. .
Pecot listened intently. He said, “I'll

. talk to Mrs. Ardon today. I’m going out to

the bayou, anyway. I already heard that
Imm Beadle threatened Le Bouef during
@® argument over the pirogue. I'll also
talk to Emmy Mae Hawks.”

“Ada Le Bouef says that Jim’s run

‘way with the Hawks. woman,” Mrs.

m said.

_ It'll be easy enough to find that out,”
Pecot said. He thanked Mrs. Brown for
the information and an hour later set off
for the bayou, accompanied by Police
Bief Blakeman.

Jim Beadle, whom they saw first, was
wdlen and uncommunicative. “I ain't seen
Jin Le Boeuf for over a month,” he said.

And now he’s dead, I ain’t crying about
2 I never liked him much anyway.”

Maybe,” Pecot suggested, “you dis-
Med him enough to kill him. I hear that
“@ one occasion you threatened him.”

1 was drunk that night. And lately
Tve been too busy hunting ‘gators to kill
‘“yone. I sure didn’t kill Jim Le Boeuf,”

a le declared.

“Can you prove it?” Blakeman asked.

I don't have to prove it. It’s up to you
% prove I did.”

it was an unsatisfactory interview, but

the circumstances the officers

ie t pursue the matter. There was no

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Chap

direct evidence against Beadle, save the
fact that he’d quarreled with Le Boeuf
about a pirogue some five months earlier.

Blakeman and Pecot climbed back
into their boat and paddled through the
bayou. As they approached Emmy Mae
Hawks’ cabin they saw smoke rising from
the chimney.

“Apparently, she’s home,” the sheriff
commented. “In spite of what folks said.”

Blakeman nodded. “I expected she
would be. It’s a cinch she hasn't run off
with Le Boeuf. He’s in his grave.”

They beached the boat, walked up the
shore and knocked on the door of the
cabin.

Emmy Mae Hawks opened the door.
She was wearing a tattered pair of blue
jeans, aman’s shirt and heavy work boots.
In spite of her garb, she was not unattrac-
tive. Her hair was flaming red, her lips
full and her eyes sparkling. Her manner,
however, was hostile.

“What do you-want?” she demanded.

“Hello, Emmy Mae,” Blakeman said.
“We just want to ask you a few
questions.”

“T got no use for the law since you guys
tried to frame me for killing my hus-
band,” she stated, “What do you want
now? Are you trying to pin Jim Le Boeuf’s
murder on me, too?”

“Not pin it on you,” Pecot said. “We'd
just like to ask you what you know about
it.”

“I know nothing about it. I don’t even
know Le Boeuf, except by sight.”

“No?” Pecot said. “Then how was it
that you were swimming with him in the
bayou? I understand you weren't wearing
swim suits, either.”

The redhead’s eyes narrowed. She
took a deep breath and said, “Cops are
real dumb. They'll just believe any lies
they're told.” *

“A lie?” Pecot asked. “You mean Mrs.
Ardon lied about it?”

“Sure she did. She saw Ada Le Boeuf

and Doc Dreher swimming together.”
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“Then why did she tell Mrs. Brown
that it was Jim Le Boeuf and you?”
“Because Jim Beadle made her. Either

he gave her money or he scared her into .

changing her story. First, she said she saw
Mrs. Le Boeuf and the doctor. When Jim
Beadle heard about it, he said he was go-
ing to make her change her story. And he
did, too.”

The sheriff and Blakeman exchanged
glances. Blakeman said quietly, “We'll
run along now and talk with Mrs. Ardon.
Maybe we'll be back to see you later.”

Mrs. Ardon was drunk and defiant.
She made it clear immediately that she
shared Emmy Mae’s opinion of
policemen. At first she flatly refused to
answer questions.

Pecot said, “Do you know you could
go to jail for slander? If your story of Le
Boeuf and Emmy Mae_ swimming
together is a malicious lie, you can go to
prison.

“Who'd testify against me? Emmy
Mae won't, and Jim Le Boeuf’s dead,” the
woman countered.

“Mrs. Le Boeuf could prosecute you.”

This statement sent Mrs. Ardon into
paroxyms of bitter mirth. “Her? Fat
chance! She wouldn't dare!”

Blakeman pounced on that. “Why
not?” he asked sharply. :

It took a solid hour to obtain the
answer to that question. The officers con-
ducted a skilled and ruthless interroga-
tion, interspersed with warnings that Mrs.
Ardonstill could be charged with slander.

At last, somewhat more sober, sne
told the truth. “All right,” she said, “I real-
ly did see Ada Le Boeuf and Doc swim-
ming in the nude. [ told some folks about

it. Then Jim Beadle came and gave me ©

twenty dollars to say it was Jim Le Boeuf
and the witch woman, Emmy Mae
Hawks.”

“Why,” Pecot asked, “should Jim
Beadle do that?”

Mrs. Ardon shrugged her thin
shoulders. “How do I know? He gave me
the cash and I did as he asked. That’s all I
know. I can’t tell you any more than that.”

“It’s enough,” Pecot said. “Let’s go.”

Back in Blakeman’s office, Pecot sigh-
ed thoughtfully. ife said, “Tell me, Louis,
why should Jim Beadle care a hang who
was swimming in the bayou?”

“He shouldn't.” :

The sheriff nodded. “As I see it, there
are only two people who could possibly
care.”

“Right. Ada Le Boeuf and Doc
Dreher. They're the only people who
could gain by having Mrs. Ardon change
her story.”

“As I understand it,” Pecot said, “Doc
Dreher treated Ada constantly for
headaches. I take it, he prescribed various
remedies.

“So Ada has said. Why?”

“There's something I’m going to
check. But in the meantime, let’s talk to
Mrs. Le Boeuf.”

There were, three

at that time,

drugstores in Morgan City. After te 7
sheriff canvassed each of’ them 5~
Blakeman went to bring in Mrs. LeBoeg >

Ada Le Boeuf was nervous, but d& 2

still insisted that the man who had bem
, buried was not her husband.

The sheriff dismissed this argumeg
with a wave of his hand. “Mrs. Le Boent”
he said, “you are aware that there he
been a great deal of local gossip aboe
yourself and Dr. Dreher?”

“OF course. But it’s all nonsense. He |
was merely attending me _ for m
headaches.”

“And he gave you prescriptions?”

“Naturally.”

“And you had them filled here &
town?”

“Certainly. And they helped me.”

QJ

etal

Pro drew a deep breath. “Mrs
Boeuf,” he said, “you're lying. Within te |
past year you have filled but ow
prescription in Morgan City and that ws
for your daughter who had the flu. Tht
argues that Dr. Dreher was visiting yo ‘
for some other purpose than medid @
treatment.” {

Ada Le Boeuf lost her calm. She beg
to weep uncontrollably. into be
handkerchief. Finally she said, “What ds
you want to know?” :

“I want to know how your husband ;
died.” 5
There was a long silence. At last Ade —

Le Boeuf spoke in a voice which broke. :

“We had left my brother's and wet 5
almost home when we saw another bot >
with two men init. One man yelled out,# ©
that you, Jim?’ The other man fired tet
shots. I heard my husband cry out. Thet
he fell to the bottom of the pirogue! ”
came home and said nothing about it :

“Why not?”

“Because I was afraid the gossip
would say that Tom _ Dreher
something to do with the murder.”

“And wasn’t Dr. Dreher one of
men in that boat?” :

“No. I mean it was too dark to see wh
they were.” ae

“Was Jim Beadle in that boat?”

“I don’t think so.” }

“Did you ever ask Beadle to g* -
money to a woman named Ardon?”

Ada Le Bocuf shook her head- She
was through thalking for the day:

Pecot addressed Blakeman. “Holder.
on an open charge, whilel go over toDot
Dreher’s office.” ;

Dr. Thomas Dreher paced his offxe :
floor. His face was pale and there we
black circles beneath his eyes. As!
sheriff entered he looked up and it~
mediately became clear that Pecot ¥®
not the first to tax him with the murderé
James Le Boeuf. His conscience
had done so.

Dreher said, “Hello, Sheriff. I've beet
expecting you. I should have done whall
intended to do—shot myself.” .:

“You killed Le Boeuf?”

Re.

“Virtually, yes. Actually, no. I was
dere when it happened and I planned it.
fim Beadle fired the two shots.”

Dreher was placed under arrest and

ed to Chief Blakeman’s office by
the sheriff. There he made a confession.

“{ was afraid Jim Le Boeuf would kill
we, when he found out about Ada and
we.” he stated. “I spoke about it to Jim
Seadle. He’s an old friend of mine. Weve
hented and fished together for years.
Beadle offered to get rid of Le Beouf for

=e.

On July Ist, Dreher disclosed, Ada
had sent him a note, telling him that now
was the time to act. She said that she and
Le Boeuf would be on the lake late that
tight. She advised Dreher and Beadle to
etercept them.

“We met Le Boeuf’s pirogue,” the
doctor said. “Jim Beadle fired two shots
#bim. You can find the gun at my home.
Beadle took nothing for the job. He liked
we and he disliked Le Boeuf.”

Ada Le Beouf, confronted with the
4xctor's story, changed hers. But it still
daxin't jibe with Dreher’s.

Ada claimed that Dreher called out in
the night, “Is that you, Jim?” And her hus-
hand answered, “Yes. I see you've got
that rat, Beadle, with you.” Whereupon
Le Boeuf fired two shots at Dreher's
perogue, Ada said. Two answering shots:
were fired and Le Boeuf dropped dead.
Ada Le Boeuf swore that she did not
laxrw who had fired the shots which slew
ber husband.

Jim Beadle, when he was brought in,
sade no confession at all. Neither did he
sey he was innocent. He glared at the
sheriff and Blakeman and kept his mouth
shot. The trio was taken to the parish seat
# ¥sanklin and charged with the murder
ef James Le Boeuf.

The trial began in Franklin on July
ch, before Judge James D. Simon. The
tho was tried together. On the fourth day
Ada Le Boeuf collapsed on the witness
tand, necessitating an adjournment. On
the sixth day, as Jim Beadle listened to
Dreher's testimony that the alligator
henter had fired the lethal shots, he ap-
parently decided the time had come to
say something in his own defense.

He formally demanded: a separate
eeyer. The request was granted by
Jedge Simon.

When this was done, J im Beadle made
Ses own confession. It differed from those
Ada Le Boeuf and Dr. Dreher.

Beadle claimed that after he and
Dreher had set out in the pirogue, the
ector had said, “Jim, I'm going to kill
that damned Le Bocuf.”

Don't do that, doctor,” Beadle had

“Yes,” Dreher said, “I’m going to do it
wd if you open your mouth about it, I’m
feng to kill you, too.”

When they met Le Boeuf out on the
hake, Beadle swore, Dreher lifted his
sotgun and fired twice. Dreher then
said, “Ive got some angle irons hidden in

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62

that cypress. We'll use them to weight
down the body.”

After the corpse had been attached to
the angle irons Dreher had slit the
stomach open, announcing that it then
would be impossible for the corpse to
float.

On August 8th, the jury found the trio
guilty of first-degree murder. Two days
later Beadle was sentenced to life im-
prisonment at the state penitentiary at
Baton Rouge. Two days after that Ada Le
Boeuf and Dr. Dreher were sentenced to
be hanged. ;

Up to this point no woman ever had
been executed in the state of Louisiana. A
tremendous legal battle ensued to save
Ada Le Boeuf from the gallows. Her
appeal went all the way to the Supreme
Court of the United States, where it was
referred back to the state courts which
originally had denied it.

Her lawyers then addressed
themselves to the State Board of Pardons.

ty 4
The Board of Pardons voted two to onetp
grant clemency to Ada Le Boeuf. Gover
nor Iluey Long, a man who knew quite a
little about murder himself, remarked
that the board’s action looked like *s
mockery against decency and order in the
state of Louisiana.”

However, Ada’s lawyers managed to
draw out the legal proceedings for more
than a year and a half. On Friday,
February Ist, 1929, Ada Le Boeuf and
Thomas Dreher were hanged in a double
execution in the parish jail in Franklin

+4e

EDITOR’S NOTE:

Philomena Brown, Paul and
Norbert Didier, Emmy Mae Hawk
and Mrs. Ork Ardon are not the real
names of the persons so named in the
foregoing story. Fictitious names have
been used because there is no reason
for public interest in the identities of
these persons.

Rich Widow Was
A Sitting Duck...

(Continued from page 43)

letter, the Rumanian prince appeared in
Mrs. Bird's bedroom ina state of great ex-
citement.

“The French Army officers in Algeria
have revolted,” he announced, “and Mon-
sier Debre (the French prime minister)
has just come on television to announce
that he fears an airborne invasion of Paris.
There will be fighting in the streets, and
we had better leave at once!”

As a matter of fact, there actually was
considerable concern in Paris at the time,
and Winnie Bird was aware of it from
watching television. She went along with
Sturdza’s suggestion that they should
leave Paris without delay and return to
Lausanne.

The prince, of course, handled all the
arrangements with his usual dispatch. He
packed up Winnie’s birds and dogs and
jewels and furs and clothes and flew them
all to Lausanne. Upon their arrival in the
Swiss city Winnie was so weak from
malnutrition and the abuse from bar-
biturates that she could scarcely walk.

When they were safely settled again in
her suite at the Beaurivave, the prince got
in touch with Dr. Savoy and he hurried
over. He examined his patient and found
that her condition had worsened con-
siderably, but he said he was confident
she could be restored to good health
through intensive treatment. He hired a
young Belgian woman as a nurse for her,
and promised that he would visit Mrs.
Bird daily—several times a day, in fact, if
that appeared to be necessary.

During the three months that follow-
ed, Winnie Bird, now 64 years of age,
never left her hotel suite. Sturdza, neglec-
ting his new business venture in Paris,

continued to act as her general factotum
He supervised the preparation of her
food, gave her her medicines, ran to the
management with her daily complaints
about the hotel, rushed to the bank to cash
checks, and faithfully walked her dogs.

Every afternoon promptly at §
o'clock, Dr. Savoy would arrive in his
Rolls-Royce for his daily visit to his
patient. Sometimes he would remain for
the evening and play canasta.

This routine came to an abrupt endo
July 22nd, however, when Winifred Ker
dall Bird passed from this vale of tears
into the great beyond. Her death oc
curred suddenly. Only a night nurse was
with her at the time. Prince Sturdza an
Dr. Savoy, both out of the city for the
week end, hurried back to Lausanne
soon as they heard the news.

Two days later Mrs. Bird’s New York
attorney arrived in Paris. Learning only
then, for the first time, that his client had
left the French capital and returned to
Switzerland, he flew at once to Lausanne.
On his arrival at the Hotel Beaurivage, he
was informed that Winnie Bird had died.
Her body had been taken to an under
taking establishment and was awaiting
disposition.

The New York lawyer also discovered
that Mrs. Bird’s possessions had bees
moved out of her suite to a storeroom #
the hotel, but he soon made the further
disquieting discovery that some $700,0
worth of jewelry (a conservative &
timate) was missing. So were her furs
other valuables. So, in fact, was herw

The lawyer conferred with the twe
men who had been closest to his client
Dr. Savoy showed him the death cet
tificate he had issued, which stated that
Mrs. Bird had died of a double cerebral
hemorrhage.

Prince Sturdza informed him tha

Mrs. Bird had given him her jewelY
shortly before her death. He said he kne¥ ~

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wthing about any will.
* The American lawyer promptly
+ "ported his suspicions to the police of
_ Ussanne. An autopsy was performed
© ad traces of massive drug dosages were
» found in Mrs. Bird’s body.

* Asaresult of these findings, of course,

® investigation was begun immediately
__ Wy the Swiss police, with an assist by

Private detectives engaged by the New
i York bank Mrs. Bird had named as ad-
®mistrator of her estate.

dhs investigation, pressed with great

“recy after the initial rumors of foul

» Continued for two years, in the

, @arse of which Dr. Savoy. and Prince

dza were arrested and imprisoned on
“spicion of murder.

_ Before the arrests were made, the

t wthorities had turned up some. in-

ing information. Detectives leamed

Sat Sturdza had sold part of Mrs. Bird’s

to an Egyptian businessman.

Sher valuable objects which belonged

were found in Dr. Savoy’s apart-

®ent. As for Mrs. Bird’s will, it was found,

Y, among her possessions in the

*reroom, but it had been ripped in half!

That posed a sticky legal problem; if

Bird had torn the document herself,

would seem to mean she wanted to

7 it and it was therefore invalid. But

fromeone else had torn it, the validity of

the final testament remained in effect.
The charges against Prince Sturdza were
conspiracy to murder, grand larceny,
fraud and forgery.

Prosecutor Chavan alleged that the
pair had deliberately turned Mrs. Bird
into a drug addict so as to appropriate her
fortune—and that Dr. Savoy had finally
murdered her by delaying a necessary
blood transfusion and giving her an injec-
tion of morphine and_ scopolamine
designed to cause death by respiratory
paralysis. This measure was taken, it was
charged, to prevent her from exposing
them to her New York lawyer upon his
arrival.

The Egyptian businessman was also
put on trial for receiving Mrs. Bird’s
allegedly stolen jewelry from Sturdza,
and Dr. Savoy’s mistress was charged
with helping him to conceal other stolen
property.

The charges were vigorously denied
by all the defendants, and the principal
concern of the three judges and the jury
of six Swiss citizens was to determine
precisely what had gone on in that
gloomy hotel room: in the weeks
preceding the death of The Rich
American. Only a few persons had
entered that room, and all would be im-
portant witnesses.

Prosecutor Chavan’s first witness,
Mme. Platters, who had been alone with
the patient when she died, testified that in

the last days of her illness her patient was
in a state of constant anxiety, that she kept
asking her to lock the door. “She com-
plained that she had no friends but her
two dogs. She was sure that everyone
wanted to steal her fortune.” She also said
that death came to Mrs. Bird suddenly
and unexpectedly, after only a brief
period of agony.

She said she was surprised, “but when
Dr. Savoy came he said it was only to be
expected— that it was the consequence of
the life Mrs. Bird had led for many years.”

“Did Dr. Savoy inject the patient with
morphine and scopolamine on Friday
evening?” the prosecutor asked.

The nurse replied that the doctor had
done this. Dr. Savoy had previously
denied to the police that he had given the
injections, despite the fact that the autop-
sy had established the presence of those
drugs in the body.

AliceS ervais, the attractive young day
nurse engaged by Savoy, was a more
friendly witness for the defense. She was
present during his visit on Friday and had
not seen him give any injection, she
testified. As for the blood transfusion said
to have been “urgently ordered” by a
specialist on Thursday, she said he had
only suggested the transfusion and there
didn’t seem to be any urgency about it.

Mile. Servais also said that Winnie
Bird was not as weak as she pretended to
be, that her condition had improved and

63


r © -tat :

a , Stand-In For Doom -

Tt _’port.

\

eae [Continant fronis page 44]
The coroner peered grimly across the
rubble strewn field. “What would be his
motive for murder?” he asked.

Hester looked up suddenly. “You're

way ahead of me,” he said. “I don’t figure

it was anything but an accident. But I)

will admit it begins to look like some-
thing else.” ve ewer Teh
He asked Dr. Edgerton. what arrange-
ments he had made for outside medical
opinion on the legs. The coroner said he
had called in a panel of five local phy-
sicians and would accept a majority re-

Hester approved the move. Then, after
a moment of deliberation, -he said, “Old
George invited me to arrest him on the

_ dynamite charge and I passed up the op-

8

Sf «

~*~ ma. ‘ ie re ” Ms ss okt tea <
transaction hadn't been more recent— = +
purpose not

to serve some immediate
connected with fishing. -

He learned, however, that Dowdy was
once more telling the truth. The seller of
the dynamite had delivered it to the old
man’s shack around the middle of July.

Hester was on his way back
when he was stopped by a prominent
Tallulah real estate man who also han-
dled insurance. ;

“I hear, you've got George Dowdy in .

» jail,” this man said. “Anything suspicious

about that lad’s death Friday night?”
The sheriff was taken back. Aside from
Dr. Edgerton, he had given no one an
inkling of what was on his mind in con-
nection with Dowdy. The hearing. at

. which the farmer was held made it pub-

licly clear that only the dynamite charge

was involved.

“What do you mean, suspicious? -
The other shook his head. “I mean, if

to his office. -

x

“ays
os

f

_He got his car and drove
' Bena,
- whether any of them had-seen

— “You must have been seeing things,”
the sheriff told her, walking off... >

But he was not so sure she had. What
she told him had a disturbing effect.
out to Talla
where.-he asked

mes looked all the world re me like =
Jim Dowdy, but how could that be? The ~
papers say he was home all night." = $2”

* ties, 2% ¥ se ° bag 7 +4 _ > . — a - : -
VES aan ge ft EN fo FEE oS > See

the farmers
Jim Dowdy $i

- for certain on Friday night..None, it -*.

turned out, had; real had only-seen a
light in the house be

up

| Hester talked with the man who Kad
been G. F.’ Dowdy’s overnight host after

‘the blast.

“What did Dowdy have to Say :
about the explosion?” he asked. iy
“He. said something that struck me as °

queer,” the farmer replied. “He hoped |

- you'd get through ‘nosin’ around’—those ~

were his words—so he could hurry up >
and collect the insurance.” ee eee

ore the place blew. ~~

>

it isn’t,ja couple of my companies stand”
- to pay out quite a bit of/“money.” ,
_The sheriff stiffened, remembering his .
own hunch about the G.I. policy. Pressing
the broker with questions, he learned that -
Jim Dowdy had taken out two policies
on his life since June 15; one for $7,000,
another for $6,000, both containing dou

.. portunity. However, this looks like a -
chance to take up his offer. I mean before
he goes across the river for-a change of |
climate.” Fa ie a Oat

G. F. Dowdy accepted the arrest with-

out emotion. Only when bail was fixed

at $5,000, which he couldn't furnish, did
he show any annoyance., —

.. Hester returned to town with churn. -
ing emotions. Here, it seemed to him, was. >
palpable proof of G. F. Dowdy’s merce",
nary interest in. his son’s death. But a_. 3
greater surprise awaited him at the court-* \. ‘
house. a. ot Tet nee

* Dr. Edgerton’s jury had just reported *~

~

“Kinda stiff, ain’t it, Sheriff” he.pro- |

“= > tested,

“A dynamite charge is serious,” Hester

replied. “By the way, I got an idea from |

going over the evidence
didn’t toss
Nothing was burned.”

Dowdy looked up,

that your son
a puzzled glint in
went off.”

“Maybe,” the sheriff replied as he led
the man to the parish jail:. ur

any gasoline in the stove.

The next day being Sunday, there was
little Hester could do but check Dowdy’s ©
alibi. He learned the man had told the -

truth about being in the tavern at the
time of the blast. \

But. there was something he hadn't

- Spoken about. At one time during the

evening, according to the bartender with

whom the sheriff talked, Dowdy had gone ~

out of the place and met someone at the
curb. The bartender said he had seen
them together through the tavern win-
dow but it was too dark to-tell who the
other man was. wre NM .
The sheriff went home puzzling over
this testimony, which, coupled with the
double footprints in the yard, served to
strengthen his suspicions of G. F. Dowdy.
But why, he wondered, would the old

man conspire to take his son’s life? a

Sunday evening,

while listening to his.

radio, the sheriff suddenly thought about °

Jim Dowdy being a veteran. As such,
Hester knew, he might have been carry-
ing a $10,000 G.I. policy on his life. A

ble indemnity clauses in case of death
by accident. The father had been named
beneficiary. . Bet ss 3

“Do you know whether Jim had vet-
eran’s benefits too?”

* bit anxiously.

The ‘insurance man nodded, saying

“that in making application for the two

calling for double indemnity, J. -D.
Dowdy was worth $36,000 dead! ~~ -

- He left the insurance man hurriedly.
On weet the courthouse, he learned
that. Dr. E
consideration of: the: severed feet. The

gerton’s jury had begun its -

. panel ‘consisted of Dr. Ralph P. Evans, -

|. The sheriff told Edgerton about the ~
insurance and added his conjecture that °
might have compelled his

‘Son to take itout. — . = ie ets

the foreman; Drs. Attie G. Levees, Wil.
liam’ J. Hanley,
Abernathy... .

G. F. Dowdy

“It’s also clear,” he added, “that neither.

_ time, considering their circumstances. It

may be the father had the murder plot

Doo. Allen and B. Co

could pay the premiums any length of |

in mind when he bought that dynamite ;

three months ago.”

‘Overnight, Hester sensed the need of ;

finding the man old Dowdy had met out-
side the tavern, since it was clear he had

Not set off the blast himself. On ‘Tuesday

morning he began talking to persons liv-
ing in the immediate vicinity of the bar-
room, ~ Por ae :

-- He made no progress until he found

tidy sum, in the sheriff's opinion, if one.

wasn't too

asi particular about -selecting a
Victim, 8

On Monday, Hester learned from -

Dowdy the name of the man from whom
he had bought the dynamite. Although
the farmer had said he bought it three
months ago, the sheriff wondered if the

74

a woman who lived in an upstairs apart-
ment across the street from the place.
She hesitated before telling Hester what

‘was on her mind.

“I saw G. F. Dowdy talking to someone

when I looked out my window,” she’said, _

“but I must be wrong about who he was
talking to.”
“How’s that?” the sheriff asked.

‘their findings. They were unanimous in. -:'

‘

_» explosion victim™ was
"blast tore him apart. |
Hester inquired a = | .

upholding the coroner's opinion that the

£

Furthermore, they ruled’ that the red :

“marks.on the victim’s legs were burns

“calves, .

made by a fuse wrapped around _his-

“The way they figure it,"

hi. = “Mavie T ” olicies young ‘Dowdy was compelled to — t 1 :
fle maid: “Fim " dule hae pein eoint ist his other holdings. © |... ‘told the sheriff, “is that-the victim was .-
\ fishin. He was moére'n likely fixin’ a cap Hester did some quick mental arith- laid out on, the cot with his legs dangling
) to a stick of dynamite when the thing _ metic. Taking the G.I. policy and the two" over. The case’ of dynamite was placed

on his chest. 'The killer wound the fuse

around his legs to give himself. a good “°
‘start. :

} :
“When the blast went
dead man to pieces, with the exception :

dead before. the:

RRC ane a ahaa At ch
Dr. Edgerton:

off it blew-the: ~ ,

“oF his. legs. These - were spared because ~ -

they were hanging
Shielded from the explosive.”

down and partly -

~» Hester's mouth clamped shut grimly. :~'s ,
‘But the coroner was not finished. |. -

'- “Here’s the payoff,” he said. “The doc>: ae

tors think the victim was a good deal”

_ the statement of

older than 23, the age of Jim Dowdy. It a

is their opinion he was at least 40.” - !
_ How the doctors could be sure of that?
the sheriff wanted to know. - eae

“They're not,” Dr. Edgerton came
back...““None of them is a pathologist. —
They suggest
one who is.”

& ‘ fit sael Py
Hester thought a moment, then he said, .

“We'll do better than that. I’ll dispatch.

them to the F.B.I. in Washington and ~

ask fora quick report.” ~ Pty
That night, after phoning the Federal

Bureau of Investigation, the sheriff boxed

sending the legs to some-

a

the limbs and sent them north by the 2,245

first plane. hen,
velopments with the coroner, he recalled

across the street from the tavern.

"She could have been right when she ~ -=:.

_ Said. the man she saw talking to G.’F,

Rowdy was his son,” Hester told the cor. :
oner. “If* that’s who. it was, we haven’t

even begun to scratch the surface of this oes

case.” =
ee

the woman who lived. Sf

discussing the new de- ..

/

t

»

re a ~ ~ - +s

Phi eget! PE YS a aes

“=. What He meant was implied by
_ doctors’ findings and the testimony of
_the woman witness: That G. F. and J. D.

- Dowdy were partners in a conspiracy to

pawn off someone else as Jim Dowdy,

older of $36,000

in life insurance pol-
- iciest ‘

. The thought appalled them. Hester,

‘however, cautioned against too hasty

. judgment, pointing out that subsequent
developments might prove their theory
wrong. °.

the

7

re F MA eee E vi ~
~¢! pale on

‘desk and told me he wouldn’t occupy his
room that night. He was going over to
Mr. Dowdy’s place and stay with him.”

The sheriff: had the picture now,
though he wasn’t quite’ certain of the
exact: movements o
the murder night. He was sure that
George Dowdy. had stayed in tke tavern
until he heard the blast, stepping out
only once to converse with some man
who, beyond all doubt, was young Jim.

After the blast, it seemed likely that ~

But on the next day there occurred an j the elder Dowdy, who owned a car, had

“event which caused Hester to throw away

driven out to a point near the plantation,

all his early conceptions of the case. He _ picked up his son and the bundle he was
was seated in his office when a phone »

call came through from a grocer in Sond-
heimer, a town five miles notth of Talla
‘Bea. see ea Bt’ 5

:“Now that you've got George Dowdy
in jail, Sheriff,” this man said, “maybe
he’d like to have that. bundle he left with
me the other night.” _~

, “Bundle?” Hester repeated. “What
Ho night?” ‘ ae ad
» “Friday,”- the merchant. replied.

“me to keep it for him,”

«+ The sheriff said he would drive up

immediately.

‘. “George caine to my house right after
the blast, gave me a package and asked | me?”

carrying, and taken them both to Sond-
heimer. There he left the clothing with

the grocer and let Jim make off for some .

pre-arranged destination.
The reason young Dowdy had stripped

. the dead man, Hester knew, was to pre-

yent identification of his clothing in case
the explosidn did not destroy everything.
“Young Jim’s got quite a few friends

’ around these parts,” Hester told Edger-

ton now. “He might have holed up with
one of them: Want to go looking with

“Count me in,” the coronet replied.

Though they covered about 100 miles’
J- D.,

and visited half a dozen homes,

. The bundle proved to contain clothing Dowdy was not found that night. Re-

—a complete outfit for a man. It didn’t
take Hester long to determine whose
they were and why they were hidden.
He confirmed his suspicions on reaching

his office again and comparing the shoes
in his desk °

“ with one set of prints he had
drawer.

They were far too big for J. D. Dowdy,

turning to his office in the early hours
of Wednesday, October 27, the~sheriff
broadcast.an alarm for the youth based
on information he had picked up.

According to some acquaintances,
young Dowdy had a girl in Ringling,
Okla. Hester, believing the youth was
headed there, requested a search by the

the supposedly dead G.I., who was a slim Oklahoma authorities. He also put in

youth. The shoes were those of the man
who had gone into the Dowdy home and
had not come out again! a

' Furthermore, the pants contained
flecks of paint. And in the jacket was a
label of a store in Hattiesburg, Miss.

‘Hester notified Dr. Edgerton, who hur-_ Assistant District Attorney H. L. Lewis,’

ried over to his office. 3 a

“These clothes are confirmation that and talked with G. F. Dowdy. | °

‘another man—a stand-in—was blown to

bits so tHe insurance could be collgcted,”

the sheriff said. Bo
Though ‘prepared for such ‘a’ revela-
tion by the findings of his own jury, the
coroner was shocked.
man was?” ide.
Hester nodded. “I can put,two and two

“Any idea who the

operation a eon wane notice which
eventually foun
seven southern states. © -

~ ! =

That same morning, after a few.

hours’ sleep, Hester took his evidence to

who went back to the jail with the sheriff
The ‘old man eyed the pair slyly, then
turned to Hester. “I knew danged well

you weren’t keepin’ me in here on no .

dynamite charge,” he said.- .
“What have you to say. about this?”
demanded Lewis. | eae ge

The | share-cropper wiped his © chin.

.“Say?” he echoed. “Heck, you two already

together,” he said. “There’s been an out- - know more about this’thing than I can

of-town house painter around here. for

tell you.” With that he went over to his

‘the past couple of weeks. He stayed at ¢ cot and lay down, face to the wall.’

the hotel. A man like that would fit into
the scheme of-things because he was a,

and see?” ~
Dr. Edgerton needed novsecond invita-

- stranger. Want to go up there with me

they learned from a woman clerk that
the painter’s-name was Walter Dorman,

that he had registered from Hattiesburg.

“When did you see him last?” the sher- .

iffiusked. .-. ,
The clerk thought a moment. “It was
Friday night,” she replied. “He went out

of here around 10 o'clock with Jim
Dowdy.”

In Louisiana, State Highway officers
took to the roads to hunt for Jim Dowdy,
who was believed hitchhiking toward

Oklahoma and his girl. They found evi- :

dence that a youth answering his descrip-

1. tion. When the pair reached the hotel, _ tion had been seen thumbing rides, but

they were unable to catch up with him.
Meanwhile, Sheriff Hester had been in

. that he was somewhere. around 40, and touch by telephone with Mrs. Ada Dor-

man, of Hattiesburg, wife of the sus-

pected victim. She said she would come .

on to Tallulah to look over the bundle
of clothing,: |: . ee
' She did not arrive until Saturday, Oc-
tober 30, by which time Hester had
received back the victim’s legs and a re-

“Are you certain it was young Dowdy?” . port from the F.B.I. saying they were

Hester pressed. Moi

“Yes, Mr.. Dorman came over to the

ra

undoubtedly part, of a man at least: 40
years old. !

rn

- ~

father ‘and son ‘on’

its way to the police in -

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“= . - . . , 4 fs : ‘, ee “
ts * 4 a : 4 tte bh

~ ' { XX ‘ .

_ decided to rope off the area and post a guard over theruins. before. The old man said he had gone to Tallulah shortly ©...
At daylight, he told them, he would come back and go after 7 o'clock, leaving his son home alone. He named * -’ -
. over the debris once more. Bt 8 : places in town where he had been, among them a tavern --

’ “Don’t expect to find much,” he added, “but I just.can’t on the main street. Dowdy said he was at “the bar from fo
_ §tand on what I’ve been able to see tonight.” : around 9 until he felt the explosion at Talla Bena. ;
Dowdy said he would bunk with neighbors until the next » At the sheriff's suggestion, Dowdy raised one foot ‘so

day and would be around in case the sheriff wanted him for Hester could compare his drawings against the man’s shoe >
‘anything more. Hester bade the man good night and left _ size. His feet didn’t match either set of prints. 5 Sy meer
- with Dr. Edgerton, who carried the two severed - legs - Hester’s forehead furrowe -, “Did your son have any |

-.~. wrapped in the tarpaulin. Sean visitors last night?”- ; : foe : ig
mn It was 2 a. m. when the sheriff finally got to bed, and he Dowdy shook his head. “Nobody I know, Sheriff,” he re-- "7
_ tossed about an hour more wondering whether the ex- plied. “At least, he didn’t, say anything about anyone’ |. ~:
_ plosion had occurred exactly as George Dowdy said it did. comin’.” ee et ele ted
If it didn’t, Hester could think of no other explanation. Hester went back to the wreckage. He prowled among
He thought about George Dowdy’s son, known locally. ~the rubble, poking, prying. Then a pertinent fact impinged. |
#as “J.D.,” and that he had been discharged from the Army _ itself on his consciousness. aa: ees
only recently after five years of. service. The youth was - . The bare feet had indicated that the shack victim was or
/ about 23 and single. Hester couldn’t remember anything undressed when the explosion occurred. It therefore stood
else he had heard about him, but he went to sleep thinking’ to reason he had piled his clothes on a chair or some other ~
of how death could play sudden tricks on a soldier who had __ piece of furniture. But the sheriff. as he looked, saw only .

‘ X

beat it back successfully while fighting a war. ragged bits of mattress ticking, white sheet and blanket.
a, ici : - There was nothing remotely resembling an article of wear- Ne
- At 9 the next morning, the sheriff walked around to. ing apparel! Bi. ca, oe ee
. Dr. Edgerton’s office and found the coroner in a puzzled ~ Hester had to make sure. It was hard to believe tha@ ~~
state of mind. “Something funny about those legs,” he clothes could disappear without trace, even in so severe an _
told Hester. “Come in the other room and I'll show you.” _ explosion. Yet it seemed as though this man’s did. “fet Oe
The sheriff followed him into a mortuary and saw the ~ A few moments later, with some. borrowed rakes and’ ee
-two dismembered limbs lying atop a-table. f several farmers assisting, the sheriff began fine-combing the ~ :

. .“It's those red marks around them,” the coroner said. . debris. The longer he worked the more convinced he be:
“They look like burns to me, but I can’t figure out how they _ came. Not a button or buckle or patch of cloth turned up. ae
got there.” 2 - Now he wondered about, the stove blast. Had this pre...
The sheriff peered closely and saw several horizontal lines -_ liminary blast been heard?’ The farmers he talked to just. - =
across each leg. As Dr. Edgerton had said, they seemed to be shook their -heads, ‘indicating they had heard only one —. *: ~’
burns. Hester remembered Dowdy’s remark about the stove explosion. — , yo? ee. cae Ss
blowing up first and wondered if this could be true. If so, The sheriff stood. pondering his discoveries when Dr.
the circular marks might mean that the limbs had been Edgerton drove up; Hester detailed his findings and noted
tied together by string which burned after the stove ex-. the coroner’s surprise. - a _ zg
ploded. ee ens ed - : '<“Do you think the old man touched off the dynamite  .\
, But if the limbs had been bound, why hadn't they been _ to kill his son?” Dr. Edgerton asked. . a ae
burned, too? And how would young Dowdy have been able The sheriff shrugged. ‘George gave me an alibi that —- ~
to move about, toss the gasoline,on the stove, as his father can be easily checked,” he replied. “But that doesn’t mean

had suggested? Nothing looked entirely reasonable. _ he cauldn’t know what happened. That extra set of prints . | -

“Maybe we've got something here, Otis,” Hester told proves someone was with the lad. Old G. F. lied about the --*

_ the coroner, explaining what was on his mind. — . Stove blast, so I think he’s lying when he says he doesn’t’ *. --<~

Dr. Edgerton nodded. “There’s apother good reason why _ know who was with his son.” [Continued on page 74]. 2) -=

_ that fellow couldn’t have moved around,” he said. if oe han AV Bi Rite ata cage ie Aa ek GEE] Bly OME EL beats. coo it
“What's that?” the sheriff asked. aa eg we ey Be Sy age hgh pad pig Eke eee wo Pie e ek! Diet eke

“I feel sure he was dead at the time the dynamite went _ a
OR" ee wg arcs
“Dead?” Hester repeated the word incredulously. “How.
can you tell that?” aa: Tom ss

“Because of the burns. Live flesh will blister; this didn’t. _
But I’m calling in some other doctors to give me an opin- —
ion.” 293 Fe
Hester,. leaving the coroner to make his arrangements,
drove out to Talla Bena. In the daylight he was able to see
a number of things he had missed the night before. Antong
these were several sets of footprints leading to and away
from the farmhouse door. _ :

The sheriff knew that neither he nor Edgerton had made
them, and he felt sure the police and firemen hadn’t either.
He studied the tracks. Did they have any meaning?

In the absence, of material for making casts, Hester ob-
tained a piece of string from one of the farmers and care-
fully measured thetracks. He saw immediately that they _
had been‘ made by two persons, One man had gone’ into
the shack and come out again. The other had just gone in. - §

He got some thin paper, laid it over the prints and traced [
their outlines. His curiosity now aroused, he looked up G.
F. Dowdy and asked him about his movements the night

kins Pb

~ -
> *

The motive, as Sheriff Hester, right, reckoned, involved
a tidy sum, obtainable through the double indemnity route.

»

44


t+

. ‘e . Puen ae :
Mrs. Dorman, in Hester’s office, said

: ” \her husband was 44, that he worked both
*_. aS a painter and as an electrician, but

= =

. “( foot,”

. had come to Tallulah in the former ca-
nacity after answering an ae ina Vicks-
ies ati Miss., paper.

‘= She had no trouble ddentiving his
' clothes, describing them in advance for ~

‘the sheriff. When he unwrapped the
bundle for her. he saw she had called

- . each article perfectly. ,

Holding up bravely under her ordeal,

- Mrs. Dorman asked to be shown her hus-

band’s feet. “If there’s a long callous be-

tween the two small toes on the right .

she said to Hester, “then they're
my husband's.”

The callous was there. With all ‘doubt
about the victim removed, Prosecutor |

‘ Lewis obtained .warrants charging mur-

‘.. der against G. F. and J. D. Dowdy.

George Dowdy was arraigned that
same afternoon and held without bail
after he stood mute.

On the following morning, 1 Mrs. C. Ev
Townsend, of the town of Vivien, in
southern Louisiana, had a visitor—a dirt-

streaked, bedraggled youth who was her |

brother. Sneaking into her home, Je

‘_ “Dowdy asked to be hidden..

“They want me on a murder charge,” °
- he told his: sister,

“but I’m not guilty.
It was an. accident.”

When the sister refused to hide him,

-Dowdy said the police would never take
him alive. He gave Mrs. Townsend $120
in cash and a diamond ring, instructing
her to send the latter to his girl in Okla-
_ homa,

When she urged him to give himself ~

', up, the youth ran from the house. After

"he had gone, Mrs. Townsend went across ~

the fields to a church, where she knew

“State. Highway | Patrol, whe dgised ‘the

Texas authorities and then took to the’
roads to hunt the wanted youth. °

In Texas, Marion Count 2 Sheriff Joe
Riggs suspected that Dowdy might try

to escape into his state. Aided by some,

Rangers, he set up a block on the main.
highway. +

hitchhiker they had picked up not far

¢ ‘ . as
. ¢ =
ag” ie mh alte

tes

“in the end Hester and Assistant Dis- ~

. - There, at 11 o'clonk on October 31, act
'. car belonging to a Bivens, Tex., couple

was halted. In the back seat was a young _
: hotel and went to the latter’s room. They -

from-Vivien, La. Riggs, who had Dowdy’s _

description, recognized him. .
-““What’s your name?” he demanded.
“Jack R. Allen,” the man replied.

“Get out, Allen,” the official ordered. ,

“We want to talk to you.”

Sheriff Flournoy, who was only a>

mile away at the time, was notified by
radio.

When he arrived, the youth admitted _

he was Jim Dowdy. Flournoy took him to
Shreveport, after Dowdy consented to

being returned over the state line, lodged -

him in the Caddo Parish Jail. and pec

- Hester.

The following aay’y young Dowdy had

~ joined his father at Tallulah. Hester had
brought him back on the murder war-
’ rant. Questioned in the jail; he stuck to

his story that the dynamite blast was an_.

,accident. 4

\ But he had no idea how much the

sheriff knew. His demeanor changed ab-
ruptly as the-evidence against him and
his parent was outlined. But still he re-
fused to make any statement. However,
the authorities saw some of his defiance

'. giving away.
They resorted to an old trick by pitting .

one man against the other. Pretending

Deputy Sheriff Cal Bains, of Caddo Par- “ _ wthey had obtained a statement from the
son, they put it up to old George Dowdy. - -

ish, taught Sunday School.
Blurting the news to him, ‘she. tear-
fully added, “It’s a terrible thing to turn

in your own brother, but I know it's |

ae right.” ght

_ Bains went to a phone and ‘notified
‘Sheriff J. Howell Flournoy in .Shreve-
port. This officer radioed an alarm to the

ieee of
rt .

- The sharecropper would just shrug and~
say, “TE Jim says it’s so, I guess that’s the :

way it was.’

» When they needed to verify some ‘other:

angle they would tell young Dowdy his

. father had already told them about it.

“Well, by he did,”

en ut 4

the son n responded at:

' Parish Grand Jury on November 3 ‘to

_ at that time that'both men will face a.

one point, “then that’s all you n n

-closed, had gone to Tallulah together on: >.
the night of October 22. Young Jim— ~*«

‘cluding Dorman’s wife and the Sond |

.with first degree murder.

demand the death penalty, according to ©

their complete innocence will rest with a,

O ete Bowe

Soy tle et ng, Pe gk Sos 9 i ae Sa
Se gE ae AP BO ASS ee em

eed 1 is
know.” ee
The puocedure was drain out, barr RE

age

‘on:
trict Attorney Lewis believed they had
all the facts. At.no point did they differ: ~~
from the sheriff's own discoveries. . sa

~ The pair, their joint statements dis- «.:

then left his father, met Dorman at the

talked and drank until 9:30, when Jim
went back down the street, met George
outside the tavern and told him Dorman
had agreed to gO back to the shack with ~
him.

It was then, the, authorities bilieved,
that final arrangements were made about .
the victim’s clothing and an -appoint- -
ment made for after the blast. Whether
Dorman was shot or slugged, neither of
the accused men would say. But_the _
sheriff was inclined to believe his head
had been bashed in before the fuse was
wrapped around. his legs. He did not _
think Jim Dowdy, whom he felt was the...
actual killer, would have taken a chance
on a pistol shot being heard. - ;-

: The questioning of the pair, along with '
their. answers, was taken down bya dicto-
graph operator whose transcript was used ~_
when Lewis went before the Madison

ask indictments against the accused men.
The jurors’ also heard Hester,’ Dr. ~ :
Edgerton and several other witnesses, in- } —

heimer grocer. Before nightfall that same ©
day they handed up true bills charging «’
G. F. Dowdy and his son, J. D. Borer: - “|

No date was set for the trial, dasant
the 'riext, session of the Superior Court
will convene early this year. It is expected _

fight for’ their lives, since the state will

plans made at the time this story was -
written. The degree of their guilt or

jury of their poses: RRL SITE ROS tact 2)

= , iy ae te

“Passion Stops
the Picture ‘<

[Continued from page 13]

at headquarters, Jerry ‘Mead idéclared
with earnest vehemence that he knew
_ nothing of the double murder. They
hammerec at him.
“Why did you run?”
_¢ “I was scared, that’s all. I didn't want.
“any trouble.” . .
-- When he could produce no alibi be--
yond an explanation that he had “gone
for a walk,” Director Wilson of the crime
. laboratory asked him, “Are you willing
to take a lie detector test?”
} Mead moistened ail ipe.
sure.’ ;
The machine was brought i in‘and the
recorders attached to Mead’s arm and

“Yeah—

chest. Officials waited tensely as the ques-_,

76 ea a

~ o

‘se
tions droned on and sie needle inked its
‘way across the graph. »

yt

Wilson unwound the blood-pressure —

band from the youth’s arm and grinned
at him reassuringly. “All right, Jerry. The,

" machine says you're telling the truth and
that’s good enough for me. Only next.
- time officers want to talk to you, don’t °

run!”

a hat, two men in Streator and two more

in Granite City,” he enumerated, “beside _

' Gertrude Bauman’s former boy friend in

- Chicago. Something oven to come from

all these leads.”

Still another lead was adiel only a
few moments later when Detective Cap-
tain James Mullen telephoned from Min-

potas. pee Mullen reported that a rail-
“roa

brakeman had just been arrested in
Minneapolis on a morals charge.
“This ishiow, spends three dayt a week

“

Pa

Reluctantly, the officers: ushered chet’

once-prime suspect to the door. But even. ,
. though Mead had been eliminated,
. Thompson was still hopeful. “We've got

_ in Eau Claire on “his: eating ras.”
_ Mullen explained. “He admits that he ~.

after their swing into Illinois. “Those

mone

was in Eau Claire last Saturday. Want to. ~
send someone to talk to him?” © - °~ . “+
“I'll come myself,” Thompson said.
But the next 24 hours produced only
a series of heart- -breaking disappoint-
ments. Thompson’s journey to Minne-
apolis proved to be in vain when the rail-
road brakeman was able to prove that he.
had left Eau Claire before 4:15 p.m.,
Saturday, the earliest possible time fixed.
for the double slaying. = Saas
Back at his headquarters, “Thompson ay
checked off the brakeman and saw other -~_
hopes go glimmering as reports came in. |
“No good,” Gilbertson telephoned .

sailors drove east from Billings, Montana,
and were in Eau Claire, all right, but
we're convinced they don’t know a thing
about the murders. They're being turned
over to*the Navy.”

“How about the auto thiev es at Granite
City?”

24

Among the clothing located ‘at his hide-out in Texas was

found the brown pin striped coat belonging to Dorman,
which he had also worn the night of his murder and which
was positively identified as being the coat shown on him
in the photograph above referred to. The coat was further
identified as belonging to Dorman: by the three witnesses

who had identified the belt, the brother likewise also having
given him the coat.

All of these items found in Texas at the site on the

Neches River were offered in evidence by the State on the
trial of the case.

This mass of evidence proving the guilt of both de-

fendants beyond any reasonable doubt was never contra-

dicted or controverted by the defendants; neither defendant ~

ever taking the stand.

The trial of this case commenced on May 9th., 1949,
taking some five days to secure the jury. At least two hun-
dred prospective jurors were examined prior to the time
' that the jury, together with the alternate, was selected in
this case. It was apparent that counsel for defense, who
were all familiar with every one of the prospective jurors,
were entirely satisfied wtih the jury selected inasmuch ag

the defense faaled to exhaust all of its peremptory chal-

lenges.

25

The trial of the case consumed almost the whole of a
week, with the State setting forth, without a break, a
tightly woven chain of circumstantial evidence which was
readily accepted by the jury as true and correct in all
instances. The Court never once, after the verdicts were
given by the jury, forced the defense to take any further
action in the case until the defense counsel expressed their
willingness and readiness to try a motion for a new trial

and supplements thereto.

ARGUMENT

May It Please the Court:

Perhaps not in the history of our courts has there
ever been a criminal case tried by a jury in the State of
Louisiana where the circumstantial evidence presented by
the State was so conclusive and complete as was that
presented in the present case. Circumstantial evidence has
often been viewed with suspicion, but this case is clear
proof of the general belief held by members of the Bar
that circumstantial evidence is often times heuer and
stronger evidence than direct evidence. The chain of cir-
cumstantial evidence forged by the State was so strongly
linked and without flaw, that no dispute was had as to

its correctness or the meaning thereof.

If mass means merit, then the defense in this case

would undoubtedly be entitled to a new trial on the basis


2
SYLLABUS

1. After an appeal has been granted no further action
in the case can be taken by the trial judge; provided that as
to matters of ministerial or not in controversy on appeal,
the trial court may render interlocutory orders and definitive
judgments.

Art. 545 of the Louisiana Code of
Criminal Procedure.

2. Accused is entitled to inspect public records and
documents or articles in the possession of the state which
form the basis of the charge against him where there is no .

valid reason for their being withheld.
State v. Lowery, 160 La. 811, 107 So.
583 (1926).

-3. Tales jurors should not be sequested before being
called on their voir dire.

4. The names of tales jurors shall be drawn from the
tales jury box by the clerk of court and called for exami-

nation on their voir dire in the order drawn by said clerk.
Art. 186 of the Louisiana Code of
Criminal Procedure.

5. Tales jurors should be summoned to report immedi.

ately for jury service.
Art. 186 of the Louisiana Code of
Criminal Procedure.

6. From the moment of the acceptance of any juror
until the rendition of verdict or the entry of a mistrial, as
the case may be, the jurors shall be kept together under the
charge of an officer in such a way as to be secluded from

all outside communication.
Art. 394 of the Louisiana Code of
Criminal Procedure.

7. The plea of insanity is a separate plea and the issue
of insanity at the time of the alleged crime should be tried
and disposed of prior to any action on the plea of not guilty. '
Art. 261 of the the Louisiana Code
Criminal Procedure.
State v. Eisenhardt, 185 La. 308, 169
So. 417, (1936).
State v. Gunter, 208 La. 694, 23 So.
2d 305, (1945).

8. Testimony of a co-conspirator relative to alleged Mase Meo

Se. Oat baton ites aghhinde

that which is charged in the indictment is not admissible.
State v. Rives, 193 La. 186, 190 So.
374, (1939);
States v. Bates, 46 La. Ann. 849, 1i
So. 204, (1894);
State v. Williams, 111 La. 179, 35 So
505, (1903);

r Rice on Evidence, Vol. 3, Chapter 25,
Sec. 153; and especially regarding Lar-
ceny, Chapter’ 42, Sec. 453; II Marr’s
Criminal Juris Produence 568;

State v. Johnson, 38 L. Ann. 686, (1866);
State v. Norphlis, 165 La. 893; 116 So.
374, (1928); .

State v. Brown, 185 La. 1023, 171 Soa
433, (1936);

State v. Gardner, 198 La. 861, 5 Sa
2d 132, (1941);

State v. Calvin, 209 La. 257, 24 Se
2d 467, (1945).

q “44, The best evidence which from the nature of the
case must be supposed to exist and which is within a party’s
control must be produced.

| Article 436 of the Louisiana Code of

Criminal Procedure.
32 CJS, Sec. 7777, p. 701.

f © 49. That neither admissions or confessions are admiss-
able unless it is affirmatively shown that they were volun-
tarily made without duress and without any treatment de-
signed by effect on body or mind to impell one to confess
or give evidence against himself.

La. Constitution of 1921, Art. 1, Sec. 11;
United States Constitution Amendments
5 and 14;

State v. Howard, 127 La. 435, 53 So.
677, (1910);

State v. Simpson, 157 La. 614, 102 So.
810, (1925);

State v. Roberson, 157 La. 974, 103 So.
283, (1925);

Ziang Sung Wan v. United States, 45
Supreme Court 1, 69 Lawyers Addi- °
tion, (1924);

Bram v. United States, 168 U. S. 532,
18 Supreme Court 183, 42 La. Ed. 568;
State v. Alexander, 109 La. 557, 33 So.
600, (1903); —~

Se fn ght

és ee
ew a 2

SUPREME COURT OF LOUISIANA

NO. 39,788

- STATE OF LOUISIANA
Plaintiff and Appellee

versus

J.D. DOWDY AND GEORGE R. DOWDY

Defendants and Appellants

Appeal from the Sixth Judicial District Court for the Parish
of Madison, No. 4005, Honorable Frank Voelker, Judge.

ORIGINAL BRIEF IN BEHALF OF J. D. DOWDY AND
GEORGE R. DOWDY, DEFENDANTS AND APPELLANTS


Thats io tas Oot fT Dy Cyladae

schemes which were not a part of the conspiracy charged
in the indictment is not admissible against a fellow con-
spirator.
Article 434 of the Louisiana Code of
Criminal Procedure.

Y \9. Evidence of the character of the accused is not ad-
missible until the accused puts his character in evidence.
State v. Rives, 193 La. 186, 190 So.
374, (1939).
Article 481 of the Louisiana Code of
Criminal rPocedure.

I21%t8 Evidence tending to prove that the defendant com-
mitted or proposed a scheme to commit a crime other than
Chara tg vn Cas tape te 50 La .Ann. 481, 23
. \ . ’ ’
0, lo Abe7 State v. Hayes, 162 La. 310, 110 So.
‘ 486, (1926);
State v. Scarbrough, 167 La. 484, 119

Oa t '
Alor fer ler ©. 523, (1929);
aca Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616,
9 A fi, 29 La. Ed. 746, 6 Supreme Court, 524;
° y, Greenleaf on Evidence, Sec. 219;
4 ee a State v. Taylor, 173 La. 1010, 139 So.
3B 463, (1931):
YV Ag anf State vs. Eli Terrill, et al, 175 La. 578,
144 So. 488, (1932);
State v. Henry, 196 La. 217, 198 So.

910, (1940);
State v. Graffam, 202 La. 869, 13 So.

lila 2d 249, (1943);
hea? 20 Am. Jur. on Evidence, Sec. 483, p.
422;
Opul! A State v. Ellis, 207 La. 812, 22 So. 2d
181, (1945);
m Met OY State v. Young, 52 La. Ann. 478, 27

_= — So. 50, (1900); ‘

- LF (0p » “+ State v. Doiron, 150 La. 550, 90 So.
920, (1922);
State v. Lanthier, 201 La. 844, 10 So.
2d 638, (1942); -

State v. Crittenden, 214 La. 81, 36 So.
2d 645, (1938).

13. A photograph of a dismembered foot, parts of the
scalp, hair and teeth of the deceased are gruesome objects
designed to disturb the composure of the members of the
jury and should not be admitted in evidence.

5

14. A mortician who has handled six to twelve dyna-
mite cases is not an expert qualified to state his opinion
as to the cause of a burn on the body of the deceased.

Article 463, of the Louisiana Code of
Criminal Procedure.

State v. McBeth, 167 La. 324, 119 So.
65, (1928).

15. Evidence designed to show absence of grief or sor-
row is irrevelant and prejudicial.
Article 435 of the Louisiana Code of
Criminal Procedure.

16. Each co-conspirator is deemed to assent fo or to
commend whatever is said or done in furtherance of the
common enterprise, and it is therefore of not moment that
such act was done or such declaration was made out of the
presence of the conspirator sought to be bound thereby, or
whether the conspirator doing such act or making such

declaration be or be not on trial with his codefendant. But

to have this effect a prima facie case of conspiracy must

have been established.
' Article 455 of the Louisiana Code of

Criminal Procedure;

State v. Smith, 194 La. 1015, 195 So.

523, (1940).

17. Demonstrative evidence is not admissible where
its existance is not disputed and it should be excluded §be-

cause of its tendancy to create prejudice.
16 C. J., Sec. 1221, p. 617;
22 CJS, Sec. 708, p. 1201.

18. An alleged scheme from which the defendants
would derive no benefit is irrevelant, imaterial and preju-
dicial. ‘

See authorities cited under syllabus

number 9- 7<fetePr Bx? tbat

x. Se
19. Minute details of the loc fon &é A, carn Cite site

far removed from the scheme of the alleged crime is ir-
revelant and immaterial.

20. The district attorney must confine his argument
to matters in evidence and a reference by him to evidence
of attempted suicide by the accused where such evidence
was excluded by the court is so highly prejudicial that its
effect cannot be cured by instruction of the court to disre-
gard.

ET as wet aed ‘
ck as” LeBoeuf home when Jim was out of
_ fo0n aa he stops being angry,” she town on business, and slaylug there
ald, to cheer them up.) a “far Into the night,” Mrs, Dreher went
+). "There was nothing to damn the’wo-" to ‘Jim with the letter and he had
By man as @ murderess just because she ‘sworn to be avenged, ‘
“went rowing with him, Nothing that; It was rumored that he had several
. > “vated ag legal proof.’ But Chief of «times forced Ada to drive their car
Police Louis. R,: Blakeman kriew his * through the streets. of Morgan City,
sister-in-law too well ty ev'ase teagan» while he crouched out of sight in the
“She was 38 years old, had been mar-. * back seat, a shotgun in his hands, He
“ried 20 years to Le Boeuf. and was °- a Sano to shoot Doctor Dreher, if
“the mother of five children.~» And she.‘
_ Was frenziedly enamored of the town's ° ‘terms, | ; ey
‘leading physician, “Doctor Thomas B;.\.. Letters and’ messages undoubtedly
' Dreher, ‘aged’ 55.* Dreher. had once. passed: between Ada‘and the Doctor,
been friendly.-with ‘Jim; he ‘was sup--. They had been carried by the woman’s

‘posedly -happy in his own family life. :, Youngest daughter, Liberty, and by a.

But since “Ada’s “name and his’ had -
** been. linked: together, venomous jeal= « Hebert at it and. raged like a maniac.
« ousies had been. 5
households," =" “oes man, -that Jim : had -:then threatened

far more ‘serious than the ‘neighbors: st -dnterview: *«

Suspected. On one occasion Jim had 2. yee ait ;
rushed into his office and demanded © 4! |'VE been a fool not to act on all the
that he use his authority as Chief of---".! warnings I’ve had. But get this

“Police to prevent Dreher from’ driv- - Straight: If you don’t keep away from
«sing his automobile Past the Le Boeuf -Ada, I’m going to kill you.”

. home! “Blakeman tried to calm him, ~~» Yet during that Spring and early
“sreminded him that he could not keep: ‘Summer of 1927, the adulterous cou-
“Dreher off a public street, \ /2“© ple had continued to meet frequently,
? he. would ‘ill his on the outskirts of
; Pett, Negro servants and
Blakeman that Ada

«town had written ‘an’ anonymous let-/ Wee a
ter to Mrs. Dreher, The trouble-maker: © With these unpleasant facts in mind,
had accused the Doctor of. visiting the ‘the. Chief ‘of . Police . Settled down to

Bi ‘ ‘
» Ada’Le Boeuf sz. Gland-Warped Passion Murderess
Bi EARS Pe SI BN eb Bath! 3 r es M3 ’

e had -hailed. her. in. compromising .

e: two” Ada had ‘told her sister, Mrs, Blake--

“Brothers Run Tru

Fl DATED ‘Eveready’ batteries saved ;

“\writes Mrs. H, N: Seymour, a % “the day, giving the doctor not only | ,

nurse of Rankin, Illinois, “the - “bright light, but safe light.” :

brother had dragged the injured boy into “This is but one of many cases | have’

“the house. The poor little fellow was badly ~ been on out in the country where your
‘frightened and bleeding dangerously. The ‘dependable DATED batteries made an -
doctor ordered me to give him ether for emergency operation possible. With a
an emergency operation, and asked for lamp, the lives of all of us would have

extra light #0 he coyld see to, close the i aed
ee g ; ”

eC in danger.” (°

severed arteries, #{ <4

“The brother started to get =

_ kerosene lamp, but the doctor - ik cae ake SR F
stopped him, ‘No, no’ he said, : 7
‘and don't strike any matches, ia SEVEREA Y 4
Look in my bag, hand me that ( BATTERIES “3
flashlight. Ether is mighty ex- 4 ARE F RE SH
plosive stuff. Never lightalamp es
in the same room with ether.’ -BATTERI ES |

Ei The Deteting
Guarantees Freshness
National Carbon Co., Inc.
30 E. 42 St., New York, N.Y.
: eee
] IT MAKES THE OIFFERENCE
6] BETWEEN TAKING A CHANCE
s| AND BEING SURE. IT's
MOISTURE THAT MAKES
BATTERIES WORK AND IP
THEY'VE DRIED OUT THEY
Rencrateu 6
Vel
QUARANTEES FRESHNESS,

“So, here again, the steady,
dependable power of fresh

YOU WANT DATED -
“EVEREAOY* BATTERIES, |
THAT'S "WHAT THE f
OOCTOR ALWAYS GETS,

the business of Brilling his slyter-ine
law.

He called her “Sis,” and was gontlo,
But he had a consclence, and he told
Sheriff Pecot that he was resolved to
be “of illegal help” to no one, not
even to Ada.

“Sis, it will be better if you turn
State’s evidence,” he said to the wo-
man. “This is going to be hard on
us, but I have taken an oath and I am
going to do my duty, Better tell what
you know, Sis; we know a lot more
than you think,”

She protested her innocence, Blake-
man enlarged on his theme. He de-
clared that two and perhaps more per-
Sons seemed to have been involved
.in this murder, Doctor Dreher was
up to his neck, and he must have
» It would have taken more

unsatisfactory confession.

“Before we went to Emory Bon-
ner’s house,” she stated, “my husband
suggested that we go boat-riding be-
cause we had often gone boat-riding.
We had two boats, because one was
too small for both of us. We had
always been going in two boats. We
Stayed at the Bonners’ for a little
while, until about 7:30, Then we went
for a boat-ride.

“We met another boat. I heard two

shots fired. I was back of Jim’s boat,
and in my excitement I just turned
my boat around and came on back.
My boat rocked a little, but did not
turn over, I do not know whether the
boat Jim was in turned over,
' “My brother (Emory) ; asked me
where my husband was, and I just
said he was at the corner waiting for
me, .So.I went on home and never
said anything about it to anyone. ‘The
next morning, my girl. asked where
Jim was and: I Says, ‘Jim has left
town.’ That is all I said,”

oT HO killed Jim?”
W Blakeman.
“I don’t know. It was too dark for
me to see the face of the man who
fired.”

“Was it Doctor Dreher?”

‘No, no!—The killer was a lot
smaller than the Doctor,”

But the next minute, Ada admitted

demanded

.that her reason for not reporting the

tragedy in town was a fear that “peo-
ple would have thought” Dreher guilty,
Hadn’t he been menaced with death

She was removed to the parish’ jail
at Franklin,

Doctor Thomas E. Dreher was next,
Sheriff Pecot went to his home with
a warrant for his arrest, The phy-
sician acted as if he was glad to have
the suspense over, He invited Pecot
and his deputy into the living-room,
and in the presence of his wife and
two daughters he said recklessly:

“T’ve been expecting this for a week.
I knew you would come and get me.
This is Hell. That man Le Boeuf led
me a life of Hell. I have feared for
my life all of the time. He kept my
home in darkness, But I didn’t do
the killing myself. I didn’t kill Jim
Le Boeuf.”

“How did it happen?”
changed everything.

“I told Jim Beadle, the trapper, that
Le Boeuf had been threatening to kill
me, and that I didn’t expect to live
out the week. ‘Well,’ -Beadle said,
‘you bring that lousy so-and-so out
somewhere and I'll fix him so he’ll
never bother you again,’ I didn’t kill
him. Jim Beadle killed him for me,
but I’m just as guilty as he is,

The answer

I
guess I should have gone through with

nemeenentioveinn- gi Mas SRT

(Continued from Page 25)

Whal 1 was going to do tn the first
Place. I should have shot myself.”
Thin connecting of Deadly hume
with the plot threw the entire case 5
into confusion. The trapper was a
familiar local character, who lived out
in the Bayou Teche with his wife and
seven children. Somewhat of a ne’er-
do-well, he failed to support them with
his hunting and fishing, but occasion-
ally earned money as guide, He
had long been on the friendliest terms
with Doctor Dreher, who helped him
out with gifts of clothing and food,
Beadle had been close to Le Boeuf,
too, and in the old days had taken Jim
and the Doctor hunting. But they had
quarreled, Pecot remembered | that
about a year before, Le Boeuf had
borrowed the trapper’s boat without

“On July 1, Mrs, Le Boeuf sent.
me a note stating that she and her
husband véttre going boat-riding that
night,” the Doctor answered,

IT didn’t pay him a cent. He
did it through friendship for me.”
Pecot asked to see the note. As-
tonishingly, it had been preserved, and
Dreher handed it over. It read:

“Dear Doctor:

“Jim and me will 9° boat rid-
ing on the lake tonight. | talked
to him and I believe he will treat
you friendly. So meet me tonight
and fix this up friendly and we
will be friends, | am tired of liv-
ing this way, hearing Jim say he
is going to kill both of us.

“AS ever—Ada.”

On the face of it, this cleared Ada
of a premeditated crime. But, with the
Doctor’s confession, it left the Doctor f
and Beadle more deeply involved. H
Dreher was taken to Franklin Jail. : 5

Pecot went after the trapper.

The bronzed, 44-year-old man of
the bayous was found in‘his shack
with his wife and children, He had
not heard of the Previous arrests and,
with perfect calm, he denied that he
knew anything about the death of Jim
Le Boeuf. He defended himself far
more effectively than the other sus-
pects had done. This was all a stupid
mistake, he declared,

Added +o the group at Franklin, he
spent most of his time sleeping. When
Pecot confronted him with Dreher, he
shook the Doctor’s hand and advised
him to cheer up.

“This is Hell, Jim?’ Dreher said.
“T’ve told everything. Why don’t you
go and tell all you know about it?” ©

“I don’t know what you’re talking
about,” the trapper drawled.

“You might as well,” the other
urged. “The woman has told how it
all happened, and I have told. Now
you ought to tell. The jig is up.”

The stubborn woodsman yawned.
“I don’t know a thing.” ,

But Chief Blakeman in Morgan City
soon unearthed a valuable piece of

SPOR

Lees

ir cis

re ia i 5's

ie

evidence.

Shortly after 5 P.m. on the fatal
July 1, Alex Comeaux, another trap-
per, who lived on the outskirts of
town, saw the Doctor’s automobile
come splashing down a flooded street
and stop beside a partly submerged
city fireplug. Dreher and Beadle were
in the car. Lashed to the side of the
auto was a pirogue, or bayou. boat,
painted bright green. The men got q
out, untied the pirogue and moored it oo
to the fireplug, They drove away, ;

Comeaux assumed that they were
going hunting. About 8:30, after the
boat disappeared from the fireplug,


Paver

fe

“gen |

v wir he

LY

fas lights sin led out the body yee

t came tovmind. *
come”
passion $0 sensational that it
wf en ce ah Court andwénd

od

He

: DREHER, Thomas & LeBOEUF, Ada, whites, hanged Franklin, LA on February 1, 1929 :

—

. ay
sak ta

day ‘be

Pry ight

Sept ahd

(Alig egitl OF Sa paescncar eee clin

2

7

' Pub Jee 5


he heard no ghetgor
interne,

Pred twiee at aome the Prrotlings he receivedt from others,
and from circumstances,

The Chief made a search for the As for Jim Readle, the trapper, he

green pirogue, THe found it on Worle win the Uta Pouhineek: who: aires
ly shove miles trom the spol where Le nal gland is too active and stirs him
Bocuf’s body had been found. It had to brutal, impulsive crimes, The
been set adrift after the killing. "The Physical signe are oa Mediu beta
eratt belonged to Dreher, with plenty of bone and muscle, and

On July 12, a

special Grand Jury 8reat hairiness. He is at his worst

indicted Ada Te Bocuf, Doctor Thomas When drunk. _When he thinks he has
“. Dreher and James’ Beadle for the cause to be vicious, he does not hesi-
murder of Jim. The trial was set for tate to mutilate his victim. Beadle

July 25,

I was dee
of this case, whic
lime as a erime
from the sultry p

wife and bad m

been sterilized before she got a chance

to hand down an

I went .down to Louisiana and sat ;,

th at the trial M heory and him rest. Our p
- person observations fit gether

neatly enough. But if I had known heart of the Lo

what I know now

filted the picture in all respects. His

and sterilize them,

NEED scarcely add that Jim Le
Boeuf, with his brooding, cruel and

ut he was murdered, and we - ba
roper concern is wi
y Mheory: and” My“ the three who went on trial in the
The hearin, pean ge led
e hearing opened as schedu
about the malfunc- before Judge. James D. Simon, sitting

ining of the ductless glands, I' should Pe Franklin. District Attorney Veuil-
have reached more scientific conclu-. jemot prosecuted. The principal at-

sions,

torney for the defense was R. F. Walk-

Fortunately, I kept my notes, as well. er, former Speaker of the Louisiana

as photographs of the chief’ actors, House of Representatives. The three

Before I give details of the trial and accused

ms had agreed to be de-

perso!
its curious aftermath, I want to ana- fended jointly, but suddenly Beadle
lyze the defendants as glandular types. startled the court by demanding an

Ada Bonner Le Boeuf was 88 attorney of his own,

This was grant-

thorough-going an example of the» ed, and the trapper broke his long
thymocentric ‘influenced by pituitary silence by dictating a statement, which

deficiency as it would be possible to

declared that Doctor Dreher actually

find. I have explained in previous fired the fatal shot,
ey eg it cannot .be repeated On August 12 the case went to the

the. “jury, The talesmen needed to take just

us
gland of childhood. It should disap- one ballot. Ada Bonner Le Boeuf and

pear in adolescence, If it does not, the
individual remains forever a child;’ as charged, with death on the

Thomas E. Dreher were found guilty
gallows

fanciful, selfish, active, cunning; above as the penalty. James Monroe Beadle

all, unmoral, because adult standards

A received a second-degree conviction,

and was sentenced to life imprison-
ment, i

A sensational fight to save Ada fol-

“om = #4 he a lowed. Committees of women in all

though the impulse to do so will be Parts of the State drew up petitions

° | : aie ie tee issue. * yoens
al ie wnt, |. campa: or Governor was then being
physical stigmata: waged, and one of the candidates on

faced. The general tendency of her the Democratic a i

Her hyphen was Pituitary, and she had and Long

despite ‘the peer at i committees asked all candidates to

short body, with brushing it aside. He was elected,

’
plenty of flesh around the: hips. a's The regular appeals dragged through
I say that in a Scientifically ordered . mt on se ng le year, the

world, Ada.would

early as a peril to her kind, would

have been’ spotted unanimously

have been given surgical treatment to. The defense attorneys then sprang

Emotionally curbed, she would still A revolver, with one shell discharged,
have been fit for marriage, She might, had been discovered in a canal near
because of her unmoral childishness, » Morgan City. Joseph Le Boeut, the
have indulged herself with a lover, Murdered man’s Son, testified that it

[3 us turn’ to
Dreher. He was

ct contrary of Ada’s: signed a petition asking for commu-
no cther ‘aeinastoene tation ‘of sentence. The: Board of

pre-pituitary ever clemency. Governor Huey P. Long,

slaying motivated -by . however, declined to be moved. He

‘engeance on a sex partner—or ‘the asserted ‘publicly that the efforts in
ear of losing that partner. Dreher Ada’s behalf looked to him like “a
tall, >

iad the

my frame and the mockery against decency and order in

qental quickness of his type. Crimes Louisiana.” He was unimpressed by

f avarice are char,

‘acteristic of weaker the argument that his State had never

re-pituitaries,. but Dreher had no. before hanged a woman.

uch drift. He w.

sufferer, - I do not feel that there was undue

No one ee have foretold that this severity, much less a miscarriage of

‘tan wo

and _ sterilization justice, in. the taking of the unfor-
- tunate woman’s life. The weight of
was concerned. In evidence showed that she had egged

alance was upset by on Dreher, that the Doctor had enlisted |-

help oof tits retainer, Beadle, on Ada Le Boeufs in the world today. I
her account. But even if these points refer fo the whe dave nnd yel
hal deen lepally oubttuk, be ostvaete Heachedk the point of extreme violenes,
SUITE hold) Ada Le Boouf responsible, but who are sure te el there, ‘They
because of her salient ylandutar stipe en de vesneliby telentitied, af only the
met She wines a (hytmocentiie, wath Peltee Gre enipoweree Dy law to ip.

post-piluilury  lyphen, That is ply the tests which I have set forth.
enough for me. Endocrino-criminoloyy is the detec-

But why do we allow such erimes to tive science of lomorrow, with sterili-
80 on occurring? ‘That is the im- zation its best means for achieving
portant question. There are numerous both prevention and eure,

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39


N

a iricsccttireeecemenenenenoe- tte

DREHER & LeBORUF, whites, hanged Franklin, La

le-1-1929.,

Colin Wilson

and Patricia Pitman

ENCYCLOPEDIA
OF MURDER

FOUNDED 1838

GP

G. P. Putnam’s Sons
New York

/taoe.

~~ @


Seal

DREHER

live at Moat House Farm, near Audley End in Essex, in 1898. An episode
with a frightened servant girl (‘I only wanted to wind up the om ;
her room’) revealed him as a rogue to the once-trusting Miss Ho oe
who resolved te leave him. Dougal shot her, burying her body in the
filled-in moat trench, and proceeded by forgery to derive an income veer
Miss Holland’s bank, informing any inquisitive callers that ‘Mrs oe
was away on a yachting expedition. For three years Dougal aiken : e
jovial squire at Moat House Farm. Hordes of women surroun ec aa
and he was the locality’s first motor-car owner; once he was seen in the
grounds teaching a naked girl to ride a bicycle. The police mein
suspicious over the prolonged yachting spree, and when one o =
Holland’s cheques was found to be forged, Dougal was arrested an
search for Miss Holland, dead or alive, began. After many weeks the
remains were found, identified as those of Miss Holland by her tiny (size
wo), specially made boots. :
ee his trial, due the following Monday (he pleaded the rien.
was accidental), he wrote to a friend concerning the intentions of his
various women friends for that day:

I dare say the girls have received their notices to attend next
Monday . . . have they not? there will be several from about there,
and it would be a good idea to club together and hire a trap and
drive all the way. It is a delightful drive through undulating country
and would be a veritable treat for them all... .

Convicted of Miss Holland’s murder, Dougal eventually admitted his
guilt to the chaplain a few seconds before he was hanged.

DREHER, Tom .
Loutstana doctor, aged 52, convicted of the murder of Fim Le Boeuf, the
husband of his mistress, Ada Le Boeuf.

hildren, lived in
The Le Boeufs and Dr Dreher, all parents of grown c » lived

Mason City, Louisiana; in 1927 Ada Le Boeuf developed migraine
trouble, which necessitated many visits from Dr Tom Dreher, although

after-inquiries revealed that no prescriptions for her ailment had ever been |

deposited with local chemists. Le Boeuf was an enthusiastic fisherman,
spending long periods away from home, fishing in the bayou paner
usually hiring a canoe from a taciturn individual called James Beadle.

One afternoon, after an altercation concerning the hiring’ of a boat, Beadle -

i lating about
spitefully revealed to the husband how people were speculating
Dr Dreher’s frequent calls to the Le Boeuf residence, although Ada Le
Boeuf, when interrogated, denied the implications, merely stressing the
need for her regular course of injections. On 1 July 1927, Ada and Jim

186

Serie se ir Pa sini Te Te 2
Det ei vise Se ee

¥:
DUBUISSON

Le Boeuf rowed across nearby Lake Palourde to visit a relation, setting
out for home at midnight. On 6 July the body of a man with two bullets
in the head was recovered from Lake Palourde; efforts had been made to
wire the body down by means of heavy rail-irons, and the stomach had
been slashed, presumably to allow for the escape of body gases and so
reduce buoyancy in the water. Ada Le Boeuf, whose husband had been
missing five days (‘on business’) denied that the corpse could be his, but
Le Boeuf was identified by his dentist. Under constant questioning the

- Suspect wife began to tell conflicting stories, and when Dreher was

questioned he admitted complicity in the plot to kill Jim Le Boeuf,
although he said the actual shots were fired by James Beadle; Beadle
maintained he had merely rowed Dreher out to a strategic firing position
on Lake Palourde. Dreher, Ada Le Boeuf and Beadle were tried for the
killing of Jim Le Boeuf, and all found guilty of murder in the first degree,
the elderly lovers being sentenced to hanging.

Numerous anti-hariging petitions were submitted to State Governor
Huey Long (no woman had ever been executed in the State of Louisiana)
but he declined to order a reprieve, saying such a direction from him
would be ‘a mockery against decency... .’

Dreher and Ada Le Boeuf were hanged jointly on 1 F ebruary 1929.

DUBUISSON, Pauline

Twenty-four-year-old F renchwoman, convicted in November 1953 of
the murder of her ex-lover, Felix Bailly.

From adolescence Pauline Dubuisson had enjoyed a stringent love-life;
at 16 she was mistress to 5 5-year-old Colonel Von Domnick, director of
the German Hospital at Dunkirk during the Occupation period, being
punished for this misdemeanour after the Liberation by having her hair
shorn (along with other ‘collaborators’) in the main square at Dunkirk,
In 1946 she studied medicine at the Medical F aculty of Lille University
(‘she is well-balanced but haughty, provoking and a flirt’ said one of her
reports) also commencing a spare-time study of love-techniques, writing
down the names, along with the respective sexual aspirations, of her many
1 rs; later this eccentric list did much to alienate people’s feelings
towards Dubuisson. A fellow student was Felix Bailly, with whom
Pauline Dubuisson had an affaire which lasted two years, and whose
name was duly entered on The List, along with the names of concurrent
lovers about whose existence Felix Bailly was unaware. Disillusion
followed the realization of Dubuisson’s infidelity, and in November 1949
Felix Bailly (despite an abortive attempt by a contrite Dubuisson) trans-
ferred his studies from Lille to Paris; there is evidence too, that Bailly
had tired of Pauline Dubuisson’s attractions. The two were not to meet
again until March 1951; in the meantime many more names were added

187

a

: | \ A "i DUNN, Ed, hanged take Provi-
‘ ast Veta i dence, La., <-0- 1955.

e Dvatlh Wearraut., "

Cxenplibe Deyartnent,
———— - ee ..

oe <eenensa — — - —

~a

Wf 77> ies | pint iol a.
‘ , Mwah; wLafpoars from the wanneved da y cod fied copy
of Vhe Oourd freceedings c Mhah OS 0 DOISOW of» Vie Honnalle Mhe
_—,-SIXTH JUDICIAL DISTRIGT COURT, PARISH OF RAST CARROLL |

and heldioi the Yous day of OCTOBER AG | 34
%
DUNN. Y

{
7 é i
bands frre aes and, for seeel pongo, 88

ty yudgment of baud Courd aendered on Vhe ith MY of OCTOBER :
Z

in serbenced Cy his Honor Mhe fucy cof baal lcd fo Me hanged
“4
by the neck until. ge Melon 3
: rs, low, Dherofare, YOhcar Ki WMlen, Governor of hc Se bof Seucseiena;
\4 . . « 4, °
~ J SF eta a herely dared and nguie OW, lhe Sher ff Z MeN of. EAST CARROLL !
| cause Mheerecibim tolelomeon th tt, Laud | cain |
| Mo cuise Mheevecilion tobe Cne.onw she ody of bat /__ ED DUNN}
Since. cricKaie JOON ded anulene tmnertin ell thangs crcconong bo the
. e ° | A
; dg ment and dentence.of sail | Courk and, Vhe leew ald Such cabdrnadeand
fereveledt on___¥RIDAY the 8th day of. TRBRUARY AG 35

, q
: belucen Me hourkiof. r2 oe otlook: NOON ian otlook: 2M.

= 2
and sd aweulin shit Lake, Mace.in , the Darth of iasr CARROLL Mlle apf”
Souisona wilben.anenchsen tr00m and entire iy owed, off from vecw of al evel

2 ao, ¢ get Ip ” )

ned more Vhan e070 norhesshhan sie widlnersda tote seeded ty YO. One
WO. of saulr cmpedend wdbnessesdshild be < consid bch a g hy Hun,
andr ll Shall be eclegersof Ue She of Seuthinnn ry tall cle ty ; ade lhe
. . fered: serlal of thecrrcutinanileronlh wn tech parvees seal tall lofi loify
Melek of the Cowl of Me Rerik, EAST CARROLL |
toybher wells lhe annewd daly crlfiedc wf Y of Ve Jrvevedings had mn date wie

wsdl Court, and forall Sf while Mhis Shall le your wariantand, aubhoriy:

i CP DAY sagnalareand the Grint Seal off
MoS dete: of Toatis shaiceenls thea Hew oCipilolin the
Cn ‘Y of Da On Hougeon his Vhe: 4th

day of TaNUARY VD 179 35. |

as C2 o2 f (Lie
| “Dy the Go OO os 4h é :

4

Vecretary of ‘SVdeede:

te
~

@s

wi

{
4

woes VERBAL OF THR EXRCUTION OF ED DUNN.

ee ee eee

mt ric Sn it Sh ye

~ —~ Ea Dutt having been p anced “teal by « by said “above named Physician at the hour of ‘eie7 o'clock on

STATE OF LOUISIANA,”
PARISH OF BAST CARROLL ’
BE If ort AND REMEMBERED that I, JNO.C.BAS8s, the duly elected, commissioned and qualified
Sheriff in and for th’s Parieh of East Carroll, State of Louisiana, having received in due course from
the Honorable Ogcar K+ Allen, Governor of the State of Louisiana, a death warrant signed by said Govern-
or under date of the 4th day of Jamary, 1935, directing me to cause the execution to be done on the
vody of said ka Dunn of the sentence of the Sixth Judicial District Court for the Parish of Fast Car-
roll ,State of Loutsista, sentencing the said EA Dunn to be hanged by the neck until he be dead for the
crime of murder of ih he had been lawfully convicted in said court; the date of said execution being
‘fixed in saia-death fatrant for Friday the 6th day of February,1935, between the hours of twelve o'clock
noon and three o'cl t eM. in the Parish of East Carroll ,State of Louisiana; after having in due course
~ seed ~0ndd_death—wart ot #o_the.neid_34-Dam who was confined in the publio jail at Lake Providenee-im— ,
the said Parish of: das Carroll ;State of Loui siend, aia on Friday the 8th day of February,1935, between
the hours of wire: o*lock noon and three ° ‘clock P.M. as directed in said death warrant and in ac-
comiance with the law, execute the said EA Dunn by hanging him by the neck until he was dead on a gallows
previously erected for puch purpose in an enclosed room in the parish jail of said Parish of East Car-
roll, the said execution being entirely cut off from view from all except those in the room; ani the
said execution taking Sone in the presence of the following named and undersigned seven witnesses select-
ed by me,said Sheriff, aia citisens of the State of Louisianma,residing in the said Parish of =a Carroll:
Dootor W.K.Evms, FeM. tison, Re W.Widson, Wo olrow Wilson, ¥.M.Cobb, funn C.Gist,R.D.Bunyard and Jesse Kent.
one of said witnesses, ely,Dr. W.K. vans, being a competent practicing physician and being coroner of
said Parish of East Carroll, The trigger of said gallows being drawn or pulled by C.T.Jones, Deputy
Sheriff, at the hour of 12:20 9 "elock P.M. on said Pri dey the char ‘aay of Feveaary 2926, and the said

ee ee

Friday the 8th day of February,1935._

IN TESTIMONY rEBRIO?, I,saia Sheriff, hafe ‘executed and signed’ this proces verbal of said
execution of Ba Dunn under oath before W.McF.Long,Clerk of said Sixth Judicial District Court for the
Parish of East Carroll, state of Louisima, which is also hereby attested by said above named and undier-
signed wi tnesses unter oath taken before said W.McF.Long,eaid Clerk of Court on this 8th day of February,
e Providence, Parish of Bast Carroll, State of Louisiam.

1935, at the town of i

of the Parish of Bast Carroll,
ste e of Louisiana.

QRS YI

ATTEST:

.
SHORN 10 AND, ,0RgcraED before me by, the sbove none ‘mort fant the above named seven witnesses

me

Parish of “Raat
ui af ana.

Sixth pistry ee

ct yu i :
‘86 Carrol) Parish teen?

ana,


ORS ii (6 8 EN Na

sh, La.,

LIGH

J someone had

actly who...

ind deformed condition
later, James E. Younse
eral Home in Tallula}
with a fire truck. Mr
‘d the coroner, Dr. B
efore he left Tallula
picked up the legs and
ents of flesh and tin
could be located. The
ave been blown to bits
gs, as no pieces larger
‘ar could be found.
been so terrific, the
ied me, that windows
in houses a quarter
ictures had fallen fro
mile away.
ne blast site, I found
in the ground unde
rner of the bedroom
ession extending alongie
ne room for about five’
s of the body had been
iches into the ground
ssion. I dug these ex .
rusty shovel found inl)
The timbers in thef
tually pulverized near
the blast went off and 4
ind household effects ;
‘ran area of about}
the flames were ex- i
inor explosions took

ng area, hurling fiery}

See eer rare ame


Tue EXPLOSION WENT OFF at 11:30
Pp. M. at Talla-Bena. It rattled windows
in Tallulah, Louisiana, eight miles away.
The repercussion violently rocked the
ferris wheel at the Delta Fair carnival,
its occupants screaming in fright. One
woman fainted. Others hastened to the
shelter of their autos as canvas tents,
lashed by the gust of wind, strained at
rope moorings.

The sound of it was like the roar of
thunder, though the sky was cloudless
and star-studded this crisp autumn
night of October 22nd, 1948.

Deputy R. R. Holt and I had been
patroling the streets thronged with fair-
goers and had paused briefly at the
Madison club when -word reached us
that a cabin had been blown up near
the Sun Oil company tank farm.

We set out at once for the blast scene.
After we had driven five miles along
the winding road we saw a dull red
glow in the sky, and then crimson fin-
gers of flame stabbing the darkness.

Drawing near, we observed the sil-'

houettes of a cluster of curious folks
gathered about the wreckage.

The rustic cabin was in ruins. The
roofless rear room, walls buckled out-
ward, was tottering and in flames. Bits
of debris of the front room were burn-
ing in scattered clumps. The cabin
was of the single-wall “shotgun” type,

22

By C. E. Hester, Sheriff, Madison Parish, La.,

as told to FRANK BRONAUGH

(Left) George R. Dowdy

14 by 32 feet overall, with two rooms
of about 14 x 14 and an 8-foot front
porch, There was little left now but
splinters and ashes.

I saw two bystanders staring curious-
ly and pointing to two objects lying in
the debris, and as I looked closer I saw
they were two legs of a human lying
about eight or nine feet apart within
the confines of the original outline of
the bedroom.. The legs were intact
from the knee down but the portion
above the knees had been badly man-
gled from the explosion.

I sent Deputy Holt to a neighbor’s
telephone’ to call an ambulance and the
Tallulah fire department to extinguish
the fire in the rear of the house. I then
turned to question onlookers who in-
formed me that the house stood on a
farm leased by Hugh Montgomery and
was occupied by tenants George R.
Dowdy, sixty-eight, and his son, J. D.
Dowdy, twenty-four.

The Dowdys worked on the land and
also did commercial fishing in the near-
by bayous and lakes. They had been
known to use dynamite in killing fish
and were believed to have had explo-
sives stored in the cabin.

The legs were naked except for socks
on the feet which I removed, and two
local men in the crowd judged the feet
to be those of the elder Dowdy because of

their shriveled and deformed conditior-*
Some minutes later, James E. You
of Young’s Funeral Home in Tallul
arrived together with a fire truck. M ms 4
Young had called the coroner, Dr. He®
Otis Edgerton, before he left Tallulaligts
The undertaker picked up the legs an@
such other fragments of flesh and tin .

except for the legs, as no pieces largem
than a silver dollar could be found.

The blast had been so terrific, the “
neighbors informed me, that window\, A"
had been broken in houses a quartepstg
mile distant and pictures had fallen frompms
walls up to half a mile away.

In examining the blast site, I foundt
a deep depression in the ground undem™

- ‘ cyte
or six feet. Pieces of the body had been a.
blown 10 or 12 inches into the ground
all along the depression. I dug these ex-fsemtime?

hibits up with a rusty shovel found in
back of the house. The timbers in the
house had been virtually pulverized near
where it appeared the blast went off and
all other timbers and household effects
were scattered over an area of about
10 acres. Before the flames were ex-
tinguished two minor explosions took
place in the burning area, hurling fiery


Sa

68

ing and that any man who worked for
a living was a fool and that there were
a lot of angles in making easy money”

“Then you believe Dowdy is a victim
of his own scheming?”

He gave me a stony stare. “Where’s
Dorman? He’s missing, ain’t he? Who
knows but what those legs are his!”

This blunt conjecture struck me a sharp
blow. It made me aware of how little
positive identification we actually had of
the body. Both young Dowdy and Dorman
had vanished after the blast, and had not
since been seen.

Hadaway talked on: “There are plenty
of folks who'll tell you about Dowdy’s
schemes to beat the insurance people. Ask
any of those people who live out there by
him.”

Returning to my office, I called the police
chief at Jackson, Mississippi, informing
him of the tragedy and asking that he ad-
vise relatives of Dorman to come to
Tallulah to examine the legs.

Early the next morning, Mrs. T. R. Rich-
ardson, a daughter of George Dowdy, to-
gether with her husband and other rela-
tives from Longview, Texas, went with me
to the funeral home. She was positive the
legs were those of J. D., her brother. She
said she had. trimmed J. D.’s toes many
times and he had an ingrowing toenail
on his right large toe.

At 9 a.m., W. S. Lynch, a brother-in-law
of Walter Dorman from Jackson, Missis-
sippi, arrived and viewed the legs. He
advised me he had raised Dorman and
was positive the legs were Dorman’s. On
departing he informed me he would re-
turn the next day with more of Dorman’s
relatives.

I began to wonder if perhaps both Dor-
man and young Dowdy were killed in the
blast. I called in Dr. Edgerton for a re-
check of the physical evidence, but it still
appeared only one man had perished in
the blast.

True to his word, Lynch was back the
next day with Mr. and Mrs. W. B. Mont-
gomery, brother-in-law and sister of Dor-
man, all of Jackson, Mrs. Ada Dorman,
wife of Walter Dorman of Hattiesburg,
Mississippi, and Mr. and Mrs. James W.
Dorman, brother and sister-in-law of Wal-
ter N. Dorman from Mansfield, Louisiana.
All viewed the legs and were convinced
Dorman was the blast victim. His tearful
wife identified the legs by certain scars.

I drove the relatives to the blast scene
where Mr. Montgomery and I examined
the footpath from the Stockland Road
across the fields to the Dowdy residence
and found prints in the soft soil from a
point where the two men left the cab to
the blasted cabin. At some points we were
able to find two sets of footprints going
to the cabin and only one set leaving it.
All footprints were in loose soil and we
were unable to lift any in a plaster of
paris mold.

Later that day, Lee Stevens of Ringland,

Oklahoma, an uncle of J. D. Dowdy, ex-
amined the legs and was positive they
were not Dowdy’s.

The elder Dowdy came into my office
shortly afterwards. He was irritated. Why,
he demanded to know, was I holding the
legs. He said relatives had been notified
and desired an immediate burial of the
remains. I told him frankly we suspected
foul play and could not release the legs
until further investigation, and that there
was yet some doubt about who had been
killed in the blast. He went out mumbling
to himself.

Avrer Dowdy had stalked out, I tele-
phoned Hurd and informed him I sus-
pected murder in the dynamite blast and
suggested he so inform his company. After
going home that night I began to ponder
over the facts we had so far brought to
light. We knew young Dowdy and Dor-
man had gone to the cabin at 9:30 P.M.
The house was blown to pieces at 11:30 P.M.
The two men should have been in the
blast if it were an accident, but the re-
mains of only one were found. Eight peo-
ple had identified the legs as those of
Dorman; two as those of J. D. Dowdy,
and one of them was beneficiary of large
insurance policies. Evidently here was a
motive for murder—to collect insurance
for accidental death at the expense of an
innocent victim.

As I mulled over the case, it struck me
as urgent we arrest old man Dowdy at
once, and sound an alarm for J. D., as I
now felt certain he was alive and in hiding,
waiting to grow wealthy on fraudulent
insurance claims.

I telephoned Deputy Holt to go to the
Hi-Way Hotel where George Dowdy and
his daughter, Mrs. T. R. Richardson, were
stopping, and arrest him. When I arrived
at the jail a half hour later, Holt informed
me we had just acted in time as he had
found Dowdy’s suitcase packed ready for
a hasty departure.

Opening the suitcase, I saw a large,
fat envelope from which I dumped five
insurance and two burial policies on J. D.’s
life, There were also two certified copies
of J. D.’s honorable discharge from the
Army.

Old man Dowdy hotly protested his in-
nocence of any fraud plot and still in-
sisted the legs were those of his son.
Mrs. Richardson, however, when informed
of my suspicions, appeared greatly shocked
and admitted she may have erred in her
identification and promised to assist me
in locating J. D. Dowdy. It also occurred
to her now, that her father had been act-
ing strangely of late.

Acting on Hadaway’s tip that others
knew of the Dowdys’ rumored fraud
schemes, Deputy Holt and I picked up
three men who lived across the road from
the Dowdy cabin. Robert Page, Sr., a gray-
haired old man with a reputation for hon-

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esty, told me he had noticed George and
J. D. Dowdy acting very secretively during
the past two weeks. He said the elder
Dowdy had moved his traps and all cloth-
ing from the cabin to a house near by
and had sold his boat motor. Page
had looked into the cabin on Wednesday
before the blast and said none of the
Dowdys’ clothing was hanging in the usual
place. He said George Dowdy had hired
a girl to tell the laundry man to take
their laundry to the Vining General Store
near by.

Henry Page, the elder man’s son, said
J. D. had once approached him with
fraudulent schemes and threatened to kill
him if he told about it. The plan briefly
was this: Henry and J. D. would go out
on the river in a boat, knock a hole in
the bottom and both swim to shore, but
Henry would swear that J. D. drowned, so
J. D.’s folks could collect a lot of insur-
ance. On another occasion, he had tried
to get Henry to go to work with him on
the Mat Boat. J. D. would slide into the
river some night off the side of the boat
and Henry would swear that he saw J. D.
drown. Similar propositions were made to
Robert Page, Jr., Henry’s brother.”

Upon arriving at my office at 8 a.M. on
Tuesday, October 26th, I sent my deputy
to bring in Luther Stillwell, Versie Still-
well and Doyle Lott, all of whom, we had
heard, knew of J. D.’s boasts of easy money
via the fraud route. All of them verified
the stories mentioned.

Convincep we faced solution not only
of a murder, but also a large-scale fraud
case, I began to check on the validity of the
insurance policies found in George Dowdy’s
room.

A telephoned inquiry to the Veterans
Administration, Dallas, Texas, brought me
word that J. D. had reinstated his GI
insurance policy No. N-14384319 for $10,000
on June 14th, 1948, and changed the bene-
ficiary from his father, G. R., to his sister,
Audrey McDaniels. I now had posi-
tive proof that J. D. had a $7,000 policy
with the World Insurance Company, issued
August 16th, 1948; a $6,000 policy with the
Pan-American Life Company, issued Oc-
tober 7th, 1948, and two burial policies, one
taken out as late as September 25th, 1948.

Counting the double indemnity benefits
with the two commercial companies, his
total collectible insurance in case of violent
death amounted to $36,000, for which he
had paid in premiums only $52.41, ex-
cluding his government insurance.

I began to concentrate on finding J. D.
Dowdy whom I believed to be alive. I
dispatched a telegram to the FBI, asking
that a “stop” be placed against his finger-
prints on Army discharge number, and
alerted sheriffs in cities in three states
where Dowdy had relatives. .

This message was sent to the border
patrol at El Paso, Laredo and Browns-
ville: “Expect J. D. Dowdy, white, male,
wanted for murder, to cross border. Have
bridge authorities watch for him, arrest
and hold. Age 23. Height five feet, five
inches, weight 160 pounds, brown hair, scar
on chin.”

I decided to send one of the legs to the
FBI laboratory in Washington for a path-
ologist to determine the victim’s age from
the bone structure. I called Coroner Edger-
ton to first empanel a coroner’s jury and
view the legs. The jury was composed en-
tirely of practicing physicians: Dr. Ralph
P. Evans, Dr. Attie G. Leeves, Dr. William
J. Hossley, Dr. D. H. Allen, and Dr. B. C.
Abernathy.

One of the jurors, a woman physician,
Dr. Leeves of Tallulah, identified four teeth
picked up by the undertaker at the blast
scene, as those of a human of middle
age. Dr. Allen said in his opinion the burn

on the wk
minutes a
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re
sk
of
heaa. «At
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persons u
Hotel wh:
where th
his disapr
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his legs
I carefi
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clothing <
the vault
At 11
with a he
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son, Miss
press to
I wired
mens wer
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at scene
skull; (4
hair fron
of Walter
(7) left s
On We
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Sa ne

24

cinders over the curious onlookers.

It was impossible to keep the crowds
back and scores swarmed over the area,
picking up, as souvenirs, papers and bits
of debris. I told Mr. Young to take the
remains on into Tallulah for later posi-
tive identification.

Combing hastily through the wreck-
age, I found an undamaged coil of dyna-
mite fuse where it had been blown out-
side the building. Onlookers picked up
several unexploded dynamite caps which
were handed to me.

A man, who identified himself as
Robert Page, living directly across the
road from the Dowdy cabin, told me the

ee

blast blew him from his bed onto the
floor. His front door was blown down
and his windows shattered. He said he
had seen no light nor heard any voices
at the Dowdy cabin prior to the blast.
He had returned home at 9 p. m. and had
retired an hour later. The Dowdy home,
Page told me, had been strangely de-
serted for several days prior to the blast.
About a month previously, he had seen
the Dowdys removing a radio and some
suitcases from the house. ;
Another neighbor, M. C, Farlow, ‘liv-
ing one mile east of the scene of the
blast, voiced the first suspicions that
the tragedy may have been a planned

murder. Awakened by the thunderouy:ner clues by fiashlig
explosion, he had hastened to the Dowd) -eturn to Tallulah unt!
home, had been shocked to see the leg: At the funeral homé¢
lying there in the debris, and had T€- the exhibits. The left
turned home to call my office in Tallulah. ounds about the an}
He had then returned and cleared frag- Was singed and flesh
ments of splintered boards from the streak, the size of a pr
roadway so authorities could drive UP The burn had come

to the house. had not blistered,
He had noted that no blankets, quilts, pointed out. It app
clothing or anything valuable lay in burn was caused by
the debris, and it had struck him that coil attached to the
the cabin had all but been abandoned this observation that
as a place to live, though it might still man to whom it b«
be used as a fishing camp. murdered. The burr
Farlow now drew an old skeleton been dead prior to th:
out of the closet, so to speak. Some plosion did not kill h:

years before, William Salmon, the hus- identified some bone ?f:
band of young J. D. Dowdy’s sister, had of the vertebrae, and «
been found hanging from a rope in the that the blast had ac’

Salmon house. The body was in a squat- the torso.
ting position on the floor as if the noose It appeared now th
had never been drawn taut, or had fication of the murde:
loosened after death. The coroner had wrong. Dr. Edgerton
termed the hanging a suicide, but rum- not those of an old n
ors had flown thick and fast. It was re-
ported Salmon was insured for $6,000 instead of his father
and the policy covered suicide. I was called to th«
It was strongly rumored that foul Police Officer Marvi:
play was involved here, and that J. D. located George Dow
and his father may have benefited, but was at Schrader’s b:

such claims lacked actual proof. At any poker.” He then tok
rate, so much talk cast a shadow over Dowdy out and told }

had been blown up a
legs had been found
were the legs of his s
took it calmly,” added

the lives of the Dowdys.

Further inquiries at the scene of the
explosion seemed to add but little to
what was already known. Finding no

they belonged possib|;

Although evidence showed only one person had been
in cabin at time of explosion, both Walter Dorman
(left) and young man above were missing afterward


i Mn a a

-ened by the thundero
id hastened to the Dowd
1 shocked to see the leg:
the debris, and had re
all my office in Tallulah
turned and cleared frag
tered boards from th
horities could drive up}

that no blankets, quilts,
‘ning valuable lay in

had struck him that
| but been abandoned
©, though it might still
ling camp.

so to speak. Some
‘iam Salmon, the hus-
D. Dowdy’s sister, had
ing from a rope in the
ne body was ina squat-
‘he floor as if the noose
drawn taut, or had
ath. The coroner had
ng a suicide, but rum-
‘ and fast. It was re-
‘is insured for $6,000
ered suicide.
rumored that foul
‘ here, and that J. D.
’ have benefited, but
i actual proof. At any
< cast a shadow over }
owdys.
es at the scene of the
to add but little to
Known. Finding no

rson had been
‘alter Dorman
sing afterward

other clues. by flashlight, I decided to
return to Tallulah until daybreak.

At the funeral home I again viewed
the exhibits. The left leg had two deep
wounds about the ankle and the hair
was singed and flesh burned in a thin
streak, the size of a pencil, up the side.
The burn had come after death as it
had not blistered, Coroner Edgerton
pointed out. It appeared to me the
burn was caused by a dynamite fuse
coil attached to the leg, and it was
this observation that convinced me the

-man to whom it belonged had been

irew an old skeleton ‘murdered. The burn showed he had

been dead prior to the blast, so the ex-
plosion did not kill him. Dr. Edgerton
identified some bone fragments as parts

‘of the vertebrae, and we knew from this
‘that the blast had actually demolished

the torso.
It appeared now that our first identi-

-fication.of the murder victim had been
wrong. Dr. Edgerton said the legs were
' not those of an old man, so we figured

they belonged possibly to young Dowdy
instead of his father.

I was called to the telephone. It was
Police Officer Marvin Ingram. ‘We’ve
located George Dowdy,” he said. “He
was at Schrader’s barber shop playing
poker.” He then told me he had called
Dowdy out and told him that his house

_ had been blown up and that a pair of

legs had been found and maybe they
were the legs of his son. “The old man
took it calmly,” added Ingram. As Dowdy

(Right) Sheriff Hester was
amazed to find tenant farmer's’
life insured for $36,000

had no auto, I told Ingram to advise
him we would take him to the scene
the next day, but he said the old man
had already hired a cab for the trip.

At dawn, Deputy Holt, Undertaker
Young and I returned to the death
scene where we hired a number of men
to search the near-by fields for further
evidence.

Especially did we seek a piece of hand
or finger for identification purposes. No
evidence of any portion of the hands
could be found nor any portion of the

-human body except that located within

the confines of the bedroom site.

We used picks and shovels to make
more .excavations. Splintered prong
legs of a cot and tattered fragments of
canvas were unearthed along with
skull bones and pulverized wood fiber.
It appeared the victim had first been
killed or stunned, laid on the cot face up,
and a heavy dynamite charge placed on
top of the body from the head down to

near the knees. A long fuse had been

placed in the dynamite, wrapped around
the leg to prevent slipping, and the fuse
ignited,

A thorough search of the wreckage
failed to reveal any clothing except a
shredded pair.of GI trousers. One shoe
was found. Mr. Young examined the
cloth closely. He said it was identical in
texture and color with a 4 x 8 inch piece
he had taken from the mangled thigh
portion of one of the legs.

We came to the conclusion that all

Tiny bone slivers (examined
by Sheriff Hester, left) were
pt all of body's remains

clothing had been removed from the
cabin prior to the explosion, and that
the victim was clad only in underwear,
pants and socks.

At 9 a. M. we decided no more vital
clues could be found, so we returned to
the funeral home in Tallulah. George
Dowdy was there awaiting Mr. Young’s
return. Dowdy looked at the legs and
coolly remarked, “Those are the legs of
J. D., my son. I’ve washed them a
thousand times and I ought to know.”

I was stunned by the man’s indiffer-
ence. The undertaker suggested he look
at some caskets and select the one he
desired for burial of his son’s remains,
and he shrugged, “It don’t make any
difference to me. Just bury him in any
old thing.”’.

I inquired the reason for Dowdy’s in-
difference, and he assured me he was
grieved at his son’s tragic death but
didn’t believe in costly funerals. His
manner, however, belied his words. He
told me he had last seen J. D. about
8:30 p. m. the night of the blast at
Schrader’s barber shop, when he told
him he. was going home and go fishing
and would soon return. His theory was
that his son went to the Talla-Bena cab-
in where he had a case of dynamite
stored in the northwest corner of the
bédroom and that he picked up a can
of gasoline by mistake to start a fire
and the gasoline ignited, blowing J. D.
over onto the Army -cot where the
dynamite ex- (Continued on page 67)


ENIGMA OF THE MISSING BODY

(Continued from page 25) ploded and blew
him to pieces.

The old man, I felt, was overplaying his
hand. His firm conviction only whetted
my suspicion of foul play. I decided to
shadow Dowdy.

He first went to the telegraph office
where he sent messages to persons in three
distant cities advising them of the death
of his son. I later saw him talking with
Versie Stillwell and after he had departed
Stillwell advised me Dowdy could not
write and wanted him to type a letter to
the World life insurance company of
New Orleans regarding payment of in-
surance on his son’s life. When Stillwell
had expressed his sympathy over the son’s
death, Dowdy had replied, “Yes, J. D.
finally got his wish.” But Stillwell was
unable to interpret the import of this re-
mark. ‘

Dowdy’s haste to collect the insurance
even before his son’s burial struck me as
an unnatural reaction for a parent, to say
the least. Stillwell had not written the
letter, as he could not use a typewriter,
but instead had referred Dowdy to L. C.
Laughman in the Madison Journal office.
At Laughman’s office, some minutes later,
I was handed a copy of the letter. It read:

Tallulah, Louisiana
Oct. 23, 1948
Mr. R. Bolinger
World Insurance Co.
1211 Maison Blanche Bldg.,
New Orleans, 16, La.
Dear Sir:

This is to notify you of the sudden
death of my son, J. D. Dowdy, Policy
318207, who was killed accidentally
some time last night.

Your prompt attention in this matter
will be greatly appreciated.

Very truly yours
George D. Dowdy

I picked up the telephone and began
checking other insurance men in Tallulah.
Aubrey H. Hurd, who represented the Pan-
American Life Company, said Dowdy had
reported the explosion and death of his
son to him early that morning as he was
walking to his office.

The policy for $6,000; with double in-
demnity benefits, had been issued on
September 22nd, 1948, a month prior to
the blast, on the life of J. D. Dowdy with
his father, if living, as beneficiary. Other-
wise payment would go to Audrey Lee
McDaniel, a sister.

As Dowdy seemed so intent upon col-
lecting money on his son’s death, I felt
he would stick around for some days, so
I deferred arresting him though, by now,
I strongly suspected he had had a hand
indirectly in the killing. His presence in
the recreation hall at the time of the blast
cleared him of actually committing the
crime in person.

I returned to my office. At 2 p.m. I re-
ceived a call from Chief of Police H. C.
Massey, and went directly to his office.

Chief Massey had a strong lead that
was later to give the case a strange turn.
He had received a call from Mrs. Mae Hays-
mer, landlady at the Danbert Hotel, that
one of her roomers, Walter N. Dorman, a
house painter, had left her hotel at around
9 p.™. the night of the blast with a young
man of twenty-five or so whom he called
Dowdy. The men had departed in a taxi
and Dorman had not since returned. Dor-
man had told her he was going to spend
the night with Dowdy, but would return
the next day. Dorman was dressed in a
dark suit with a pin-striped coat, and hat.
Dowdy was clad only in shirt sleeves and
was bareheaded. He appeared to have

been drinking quite a good deal.

A quick check of all cab drivers led us
to a driver named Clarence Brown who
told us he drove two men from the Danbert
Hotel to the Stockland’ Road on Highway
65 about 9 to 9:30 p. m., Friday. After
alighting from the cab, Brown observed,
the men crossed the highway and railroad
and walked away to the east. The Stock-
land Road is directly west of the Dowdy
home and about three-fourths of a mile
away. Brown said the younger man, hat-
less and in shirt sleeves, appeared drunk.

“Did they discuss anything while in your
cab?” I asked him.

He shook his head. “No, I don’t believe
either of them said a word during the
whole trip.” He had, however, smelled
liquor on the young man’s breath and
noted he reeled slightly as he walked. A
bulge in his back pocket looked like he
was carrying a bottle of liquor with him.
He said he had seen the younger man
earlier that evening at Jack’s bar drink-
ing with an elderly man. ;

I went at once to Jack’s Bar where
the owner, Albert Walker, said George
and J. D. Dowdy had been drinking whisky
that Friday afternoon, that they appeared
on good terms with each other and did not
argue, though he paid little attention to
their conversation.

V. D. Curray, an employe at the bar,
said he had observed Walter Dorman and
J. D. Dowdy together there at 7 p. m. the
night of the blast. The two men came in
alone and left alone, he recalled, but while
there imbibed heavily and appeared to
be getting intoxicated. He had overheard
them discuss a meeting later in the eve-
ning at Schrader’s gaming room.

I went directly to H. Schrader’s place.
He told me J. D. Dowdy and his father
were playing poker when Walter Dorman
entered the place at 8 p. m. Dorman said
nothing and appeared to be intoxicated.
J. D. kept up a heated argument with
Sanford Hadaway, another of the players.
At 8:30, J. D. arose, pocketed a half pint
of whisky the elder Dowdy handed to him,
and left with Dorman.

Tue post office gave Sanford Hadaway’s
address as Route 1, and after some inquiries
I located it, a small white farm cottage
three miles from Tallulah. At mention
of Dowdy’s name, Hadaway flushed angrily.
Cause of his wrath seemed to be mistreat-
ment and abuse he claimed to have suffered
in a poker game with the Dowdys. “They
told me they had recently killed one man
and killing me would be just as easy,”
he said. I learned he was referring to the
Salmon hanging, and he was positive the
Dowdys had slain him. He said J. D.
Dowdy had left town shortly before Sal-
mon’s death and that he saw a telegram
the elder Dowdy sent to his son in Ringling,
Oklahoma, which read, “Everything behind
is OK.”

He said young Dowdy had approached
him shortly before the poker game and in-
vited him out to his cabin, saying he had
some money he wanted to put away.
Distrustful of Dowdy, he had refused.
Hadaway seemed convinced this refusal
saved his life.

“He was trying to kill two birds with
one stone,” said Hadaway. “Kill me and
take back the money I had won from
him.”

“You think he would kill you for the
poker stakes?” I inquired.

Hadaway shook his head. “No. He was
after bigger ones—tens of thousands. in
insurance money. I know something of
the scheme he’s been hatching. He’s told
me more than once I was a fool for work-

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“Sure there is. But I didn’t want .

you fellows to know I bought it.”

“Why not?”

“Because I didn’t want to get into
trouble with the Law.”

“How would buying dynamite get you
into trouble with the Law?”

“Because I wanted to shoot the river
for fish. And you know that’s agin’
the law.”

“Okay. But you told me there wasn’t
anything explosive in the shack except
gasoline. Do you think trying to save
yourself from a rap for shooting fish
is more important than finding out
what caused the explosion in which
your own son was killed?”

“No, of course I don’t. But I told you
there wasn’t any in the shack because
there wasn't. We'd used it all up.”

“You’re lying,” Hester charged
bluntly. “Some of it, at least, was in
the house.”

““Course it wasn’t. How can you say
it was?”

“I say it because it’s true. Gasoline
won't go up that way. It couldn’t
possibly have caused a blast like that.
And, even if it could, it would have set
the place afire. I knew immediately
there was some other explosive in there,
something far more powerful. That’s
what started me trying to find out if
you bought any dynamite. Now, why
are you lying? What are you trying to
cover up?”

“T ain’t trying to cover up anything!”
Dowdy yelled. “Except what I told you
about shooting the river for fish. If
you want to jug me for that, why, go
ahead!”

“I don’t want to jug you for any-
thing,” the Sheriff said impatiently.
“But hereafter when I ask you ques-
tions, you tell the truth or you will go

J. D. Dowdy: “I might just
as well be dead anyhow"

into the jug. Where did you see your
son last?”
“In front of the hotel.”
“You telling the truth about that?”
“Sure I am. Why would I want to

lie about it? You can check up and.
see.”

Hester didn’t anticipate any difficulty
in doing so. As in practically all small
towns, everyone in Tallulah—popula-
tion 7,000—knew almost everyone else.
The officer’s confidence was justified.
He located five or six persons who had
seen the two Dowdys in front of the
hotel at about the time the father had
mentioned. Two of these also had
seen the son starting in the direction of
his home after taking leave of his
father. So far George Dowdy’s story
had been verified in every particular.

And the Sheriff did not take too seri-
ously his statements concerning the
purchase of dynamite and its presence
in the little cabin. Local courts had
been determined to stamp out the prac-
tice of dynamiting the river by fish-
ermen desirous of taking this short cut
to wealth, and had been inflicting se-
vere penalties on offenders. It was
only natural for Dowdy to try to es-
cape the punishment which he knew
would be meted out to him if he were
caught.

THs fact tended to lull the suspicions
which came and went in Hester's
mind. Still—what about the clothes?
Outside of the few bits of torn sock, no
clothing or parts of clothing had been
found in the debris. As there had been
no fire, he hardly could believe that all
of the Dowdys’ clothes had been com-
pletely obliterated by the blast.
Despite a second and even more in-
tensive search which the Sheriff per-

The force of the explosion was felt
even on this main street of Tallulah

sonally supervised, not' one sliver of
any kind of garment had been found.

“Those Dowdys didn’t carry every
stitch they owned on their backs,” the
puzzled officer asserted to one of his
deputies. “Some clothing must have
been there before the explosion. And,
if it was, who removed it? And, more
important, why? And, still more im-
portant, what became of the clothes of
the dead man?”

“Maybe he didn’t have any on,” the
deputy suggested. “He might have
been sleeping raw, as some of the folks
around here call it.”

“Suppose he was. His clothes would
have been somewhere near by, on a
chair or something. We didn’t find any
for one reason alone, of that I’m
morally certain. There wasn’t any in
the place. The man who died there
didn’t carry his clothes away and then
come back naked to be killed. Some-
one else must have done it. And who-
ever that was, he probably had only
one reason.” ,

“To prevent identification?”

“Right. Which would mean it wasn’t
an accident.”

“But what for?”

“That I don’t know yet. But I can
promise you I’m going to find aut.”

“Have you thought of the possibility
that young Dowdy might have com-
mitted suicide?” ;

“Of course. But that still doesn’t ex-
plain the missing clothing. Even as-
(Continued on Page 60;

AtEtR IS Retr ett. 2

9: Sienawormemccrmens.
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From Two Dismembered Legs, Found
In the Shattered House Near Tallulah,
La., How Could the Sheriff Learn the
Truth About the Fire That Would Not
Burn and the Victim Who Wasn't Dead?

By Edwin Cooper
Special Investigator for
OFFICIAL DETECTIVE STORIES

~

Sheriff Hester:

le ‘
that night of October 22, 1948. occurred, The Sheriff, acting with us. pag “_
In the homes at near-by Tallulah, ual promptness and decision, took im- 9° Up that way
and in farmhouses for miles around, mediate command,

N EARTH-SHAKING roar split gathered, centered on whether anyone
the quiet Louisiana countryside had been inside when the explosion

searching about with some of hisdepu- way in which his clothes hung on him,
‘ies, located the scene of. the explosion. gave bao appearance of: being under-

| persons leaped from their beds to the “You people Stay back of this,” he
sound of crashing windows, ornaments directed the growing group of specta-
and pictures dropping to the floor, tors, indicating a twisted bed-spring
furniture jiggling about like a dance of hurled out by the blast. “Don’t touch
uneasy graveyard ghosts, anything. Come on, boys.” He turned
But then the racket stopped. An to his deputies, “I want you to search
unearthly silence settled Over thecoun-_ the Place. Look Particularly for pieces
tryside. No fire was in evidence; no of flesh or bone or human hair or bits
one had been hurt. The moon shone of clothing. It’s more than possible
down on the same familiar countryside someone was inside,”

and on the shimmering waters of the “Someone was,” came a voice at his

rushing Mississippi, ; elbow. “It was J. D., my son.”
Puzzled, the people of Tallulah The Sheriff whirled to confront the
called authorities Almost an hour elder Dowdy, a gray-haired, sunken-
| passed before Sheriff C. E. Hester, faced, slender man who, because of the

This was at Talla Bena, a small nourished. i oe ee
settlement about a mile and a half “Your son!” he exclaimed. “Are you = yw Bs,
‘rom Tallulah, on Property that had sure?” ag Ae se On Sm ame
een leased to Hugh Montgomery, who Dowdy passed his hand over his eyes
n turn had built some fishermen’s as though to obliterate the frightful
hacks on it and rented them out. scene. .

The one which had been destroyed, “Yes,” he answered in a low, pained
he Sheriff realized immediately, was voice. “I was with him in Tallulah this
he home of George R. Dowdy, 67, and’ afternoon. I Stayed in town and I
lis son, J. D., 23. In reality he didn’t asked him to stay with me. But he
ecognize the home; he knew only that wouldn’t do it. He said he wanted to

particular spot was where the Sheet- get an early start in the morning. I

letal cabin had stood. wish he—oh, why didn’t I make him do
j For there was scarcely anything left it! Why didn’t I make him!”
' ) recognize. The one-story building “I’m sorry, George,” the Sheriff said,
ad been torn to bits. All that re- taking him by the arm. “You'd better
‘ ‘ained was broken and twisted ruins, get back there with the others while

lintered beams, tiny fragments of we search the place. We might find
00d which looked like so many match something you wouldn't want to see.”
icks, unidentifiable. Odds and ends A half hour's Prowling among the

hich once had been part of the small os Soutien . rr lg mee one of ; : Sl @
ructure’s meager equipment. WO poss es e : Either, con- ‘

The thoughts of Hester and hisdepu- trary to what the father believed, no Walter Dorman: He
*S, a8 well as of the crowd which had one had been inside the flimsy struc- wore socks to bed


was making. “Not much so far,” he said.

“I’ve got a jury convening Monday,” the
coroner said. “Five doctors will examine
the legs and let me know what they think.”

Saying these were local physicians, he
named them as Doctors William J. Hasley,
A. C. Levees. Ralph P. Evans, B. C. Aber-
nathy and D. H. Allen.

Sunday was a quiet day for Hester.
Dowdy gave him a list of relatives he want-
ed notified and some money, and the sheriff
delegated one of his deputies to send them
telegrams.

Monday, when the coroner’s jury met,
Hester waited in his office for their report,
which he did not think would be long in
coming. At two o’clock Edgerton gave him
a ring.

“I thought the doctors might split on the
question of death prior to the blast,” he said,
“but they were unanimous in agreeing that
my theory was right. That fellow was
killed first, all right.”

“Good,” the sheriff said, “this thing is
coming to a head.”

“I can tell you something more,” the cor-
oner went on. “Those red marks on the
legs were burns. The doctors think they
came from a long fuse that was drapped
around the ankles.”

“Fuse?” Hester exploded.

“Yes. They think the box of dynamite
must have been placed on the dead man’s
chest. His legs escaped, probably because
they were hanging off the edge of a bed or
something.”

Did the sheriff need more confirmation of
his suspicions than this? He thought not.
Yet he was unprepared for Edgerton’s next
statement.

“It is the opinion of the doctors,” he told
Hester, “that the dead man was more than
twenty-three years old, Jim Dowdy’s age.
They believe he was over forty.”

This information hit the sheriff hard.
“Are you sure?” he demanded.

“I’d bank on what they say,” he replied.
“However, if you have any doubt, I’d sug-
gest a pathologist.”

“I think the F.B.1. will give me an opin-
ion,” Hester said. “Prepare those legs for
shipment and I’ll put a call through to
them.”

Hester was dumbfounded. Could it be
that the victim wasn’t Jim Dowdy at all?

HAT night, after the F.B.I. had con-

sented to receive the severed legs and
they had been shipped off on a plane, the
sheriff went back to the cafe and surveyed
the houses across the street. What he need-
ed to know immediately was the identity of
the man with whom G. F. Dowdy had
talked on Friday night.

In the houses across the street he found
a woman who not only had seen the old
farmer talking to someone but was puzzled
by what she had seen.

“I read in the papers,” she told Hester,
“that young Jim was home the night it hap-
pened. But I’d swear 1 saw the father and
son talking together outside the bar and
grill around ten o'clock.”

“Maybe you did,” Hester said thought-
fully, knowing she had the time exactly
right.

His thoughts were in a turmoil that night,
and when he reached his office the next
morning, he wondered what his next step

54

at tate se dee

would be. At that instant, his phone rang.

The caller was a man he knew in the
town of Sondheimer, five miles north of
Talla Bena. “Here’s something you ought
to know about, sheriff,” he said. ‘Not long
after that blast went off the other night,
G. F. Dowdy came to my place and left a
package with me. He told me to keep it for
him and not to tell anybody about it.”

Hester had a hunch what was in the bun-
dle. “I'll be right up,” he told the Sond-
heimer man.

The sheriff’s hunch was correct. The bun-
dle contained a complete outfit of clothes
for a man.

But they wouldn’t have fitted Jim Dowdy,
Hester saw at once. The young veteran
was a much larger man.

Returning to his: office, the sheriff tried
the shoes in one of the casts. The fit was
perfect. He now knew that whoever had
owned the clothing was the man who en-
tered the Dowdy shack and did not come
out again!

As Hester examined the trousers of the
victim he saw they were daubed with paint.
A sudden light struck him. He called
Edgerton: over to ‘his office and explained
the theory.

“There’s been an out-of-town painter
working around here for about a month,” he
said. “1 think the Dowdys plotted to blow
up some’ stranger and pass him off as the
son to collect all that insurance.

“This fellow was Walter Dorman, who
was about forty-four. He lived at the hotel. I
suggest we go over there and see whether
T'm right.”

The night clerk of the hotel, a woman,
told them Dorman hadn't been around since
the night of October 22nd.

“That evening,” she added, “he left here
with young Jim Dowdy, telling me he was
going out to Talla Bena to stay overnight.
I called a cab for them. Wally Burns took
them out.”

Dorman, she said, hailed from Hatties-
burg, Miss.

Hester and Edgerton looked up the hack
driver, who. confirmed the statement. Not
only had he taken Dorman and Jim Dowdy
to the plantation, he said, but Dorman, on
the way out, had mentioned that he in-
tended to spend the night.

“He told me that when I asked whether
I should wait for him,” Burns added.

Hester how realized that Jim Dowdy had
left the community so his father could col-
lect $36,000 insurance on the pitiful remains
of a corpse that would be identified by him.

The. sheriff broadcast an alarm for the
youth, calling attention of all the authorities
to the list of relatives previously given him
by old G. F. Dowdy.

N October 31, while trying to make his

way into Texas from the home of a
sister in Vivien, La., James F. Dowdy was
captured at a roadblock set up by Marion
County, Tex., Sheriff Joe Riggs. He gave
his name as “Jack R. Allen.”

But when Sheriff J. Howell Flournoy of
adjoining. Caddo Parish, La., was called in,
the youth admitted his identity. But he
denied killing Walter Dorman, the house
painter.

Flournoy lodged the suspect in the Caddo
Parish ‘jail at Shreveport and notified Sher-
iff Hester, who drove down with a murder

warrant the next day and returned Dowdy
to Tallulah.

Aided by Assistant District Attorney M.
J. Haslick, the sheriff questioned the youth
and his father separately, using statements
made by one ‘to force admissions from the
other. Young Jim Dowdy proved the hard-
er to crack. ‘a8

“All right,” Hester said, “let me tell you
what took place. “You and your father
plotted this months ago, when he got the
dynamite and you took out all that in-
surance.

“Last Friday night, your father drove you
to town in his jalopy and went to the tav-
ern. You went to the hotel and arranged
with Dorman to spend the night with you.
I don’t know what inducement you offered
him, but nevertheless he went with you—in
a taxi.

“Once you got him in the shack, you
bludgeoned him to death. You must have
gotten your clothes full of blood. In fact.
I see some suspicious stains on your coat
right now.”

This was merely a stab in the dark, but
he could see young Dowdy squirm.

“After Dorman was dead, you stripped
him of his clothes because you were afraid
some of them might be identified as not be-
ing yours, and laid him on the bed. Then
you placed the dynamite on his chest and
wrapped a long fuse around his legs.

“When the fuse was burning, you picked
up his clothes and ran off. You were some
distance away when the building blew up.
Your father then drove out from Tallulah,
met you at some prearranged place and took
you to Sondheimer, where he left the bun-
dle of clothing with a friend. I have them.”

He paused, watching the youth's reaction.
Jim Dowdy was sweating profusely.

“Isn’t that right?” Hester demanded.

Dowdy lowered his head. “I don’t know
how you found out so much,” he mumbled.

The son made a statement which he
signed. When this was shown to Dowdy,
Sr., he seemed amazed. “You got it all
right,” he said, “but I ain’t puttin’ my name
on nothin’.”

Despite his inability to get a signed con-
fession from the father, Hester claimed he
had proof he took the son to town; talked
to him during the evening, though he didn’t
mention it; picked him up after the blast
and deposited the clothes at Sondheimer. In
addition to that, Hester alleges the old man
had bought the dynamite and paid the in-
surance premiums, which he could ill afford
to do.

The F.B.I. returned the legs with a re-
port saying they belonged to a man about
forty to forty-five years old. Hester
brought Mrs. Ada Dorman, wife of the
suspected victim from Hattiesburg, and she
identified both the clothing and the feet as
her husband’s. The latter had numerous
calluses on the soles, to which she had
called the sheriff’s attention, in advance of
the identification.

The Madison parish grand jury, meeting
on November 9th, heard three witnesses and
returned murder indictments against G. F.
and J. D. Gowdy. The father and son were
held without bail for trial some time early
in 1949,

At that time the guilt or innocence of the
pair accused of a brutal substitution crime
will be determined.

There
Roy Lar
farm han
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vestigate

But b
tigation
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and tho
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ture when the explosion occurred or
if J. D. Dowdy had been in there he
had been blown to such minute bits
that identification would be impos-
sible. Not one vestige of human re-
mains could be found.

Hester was hoping that no one had
died when there came a shout from one
of his deputies: :

“Look here, Sheriff!”

The Sheriff looked—at one of the
most gruesome-sights he-ever-had seen-—
It was the mangled remains of two
human legs and feet, torn off at about
the same spot just below the knees.
They had lain under a pile of debris
and so had escaped notice ‘during the
first part of the search.

Choking back the horror and revul-
sion which he felt, the officer examined
the ghastly proof that a human being
had met his end in the little shack.
Outside of the shredded remnant of
what apparently had been a sock, noth-
ing was there but flesh and blood and
bone.

The Sheriff knew that one peculiar
characteristic of explosions was their
apparently miraculous way of stripping
the clothing from a victim, sometimes
without even injuring him. But one
fact bothered him.. Outside of the few
threads of sock remaining, he could find
neither shoes nor any other article of
clothing, either in whole or in part. It
did more than bother him: Almost
without conscious reflection on his part,
it aroused a nebulous, gnawing sus-
picion. poe :

When the legs had been put into a
bag to be taken to a funeral parlor in
Tallulah, he talked again to the grief-
owed father.

“Did you—find anything?” Dowdy

nquired brokenly, i

38

George Dowdy: "We
were like brothers"

“Yes, I’m afraid we did.”

“That bag—did it—was it all—” His
voice trailed off into an incoherent
mumble--

The Sheriff nodded.

“Could I see it?” 3

“You'd better not,” Hester advised.
“Maybe later, if necessary for official
identification. I know how you feel,
George, but I’ve got to make a report
on this. Are you able to answer a few
questions?” : :

“Yes, I—I s’pose so.”

“All right; when did you last see
J.D.?”

“In Tallulah, in the afternoon.”

“What time?”

“Around half-past five or six, I
reckon.” :

pe saw him start toward home?”

“ es.” : ~

“No one. else was living with you?”

“No, only the two of us.”

“Well, I hate to tell you this, but 1
don’t think there’s any doubt that it’s
your son. Have you any idea what
caused the explosion?”

**VES, I have. I warned the boy again
‘and again not to do it, but he
wouldn’t.listen and—” .
“Do what?” -
“Throw gasoline on the logs to make
them burn.” :
“But that wouldn’t be likely to cause

an explosion, would it? _ It would only

have started a fire.”

“Yes, that’s right. But something
else might have happened, like the
can slipping out of his hand and fall-
ing into the fiames or something like
that. Then it would explode. It had
to be something like that because the
gasoline was the only thing in the
Place that would have exploded.

“I don’t know. what I’ll do without
the boy,” he went on. “We were more
like brothers than father and son. We
did things together, went places to-
gether and things like that. And he
Saw I was getting too old to hold up
my end, so he took lots of the jobs off
of me, and now he’s—”

“I know how you feel,” the Sheriff in-
terrupted, a surge of compassion sweep-
ing over him. “It’s a tough break, all
right. You’d better get back to town
and stay with some friends. You don’t
need any money, do you?”

“No, thanks, Sheriff, I’ve got a little
with me. Enough to get along on for
awhile.”

Flanked by two sympathetic specta-
tors, he walked slowly back toward
Tallulah. .

Leaving a deputy to see that nothing
at the scene was disturbed, Hester also
returned to town. Here he formed a
special jury of five physicians, three of
whom had attended young Dowdy at
different times, to see if they could
identify the legs and feet. He wanted
to close the matter as soon as possible.

But he was vaguely disturbed, he

. Of resignation.

All that remained of Dowdy's
shack after the deadly blast

Scarcely knew why. After he had re-
turned to his office, vaporous shreds of
Suspicion slowly and almost imper-
ceptibly solidified. Gasoline wouldn’t
have exploded with such shattering
force.. And a gasoline explosion surely
would have started a fire. This ex-
plosion, he was positive, had been
dynamite.
HE CALLED in an explosives expert
from an oil company, and this man
agreed with him. °
Who had purchased dynamite lately?
Sheriff Hester paid a visit to various
Stores in Tallulah. This proving fruit-
less, he crossed the border into Missis-
Sippi and called on similar concerns in
Vicksburg and in Jackson, the state
capital.
When he returned he sent for Dowdy.
“You told me there was nothing in
your home which would explode except
gasoline,” he said. “Is that true?”
“Sure it is.”
“Sure it isn’t! Three months ago
you went to Jackson and bought a case
of dynamite. What about it?” :
For a moment the old man, watched
closely by the officer, was startled.
Then he spread his hands in a gesture
“Well, as long as you
know it anyhow, I might as well *fess
up. Sure I bought it.”
“Why did you go all the way to Jack-
son? There’s plenty of dynamite to be
bought around Tallulah.”

12

(

had murdered Dorman, he placed Dorman’s body on the

aforementioned cot, piled dynamite on the upper extremi-

ties of his body, from Dorman’s thighs to the top of his —

head, ran a fuse down between his legs, then under his left
ankle and over and across that leg and through and out
a window situated on the far (South) side of the combina-
tion room, cutting off the fuse on the ground under the
window. A portion of this roll of fuse was found immedi-
ately under this window, undamaged, (showing it Sata
not have been in the house at the time of the explosion)

and measured an approximate length of seventy-one fae
In passing, it might be mentioned it was determined that
a normal roll of fuse measures one hundred feet, and it
required a fuse of. approximately twenty- -eight feet in

length to carry out the detonation of the dynamite placed

on Dorman’s body, all as above set forth.

Before attempting to dynamite Bormana body J. D.
Dowdy removed therefrom Dorman’s COAT and BELT

and placed them on himself.

It is apparent that this whole scheme to murder Dor-
man or someone else had been planned as far back as the
| early part of the summer of 1948, inasmuch as J. D. Dowdy,
during that summer, purchased a case of dynamite from
the Sondheimer Store, Sondheimer, Louisiana, and J. D.

Powdy and George R. Dowdy, from time to time, moved out -

1 . ; 13 ’

of their home all their personal goods and equipment in

order that game would not be destroyed at the time their

~ home was demolished. At the time of the explosion their

home was bare except for a cot and wood stove.

After J. D. Dowdy had murdered Walter Dorman,
taken a portion ‘of his clothing, and had detonated the
dynamite placed on Dorman’s body, he escaped without
anyone knowing, at that time, except his father, that he was

still alive or had been the perpetrator of the crime.

Immediately after the explosion, the Sheriff's Office,
together with the Young Funeral Home employees, went
to the scene thereof and discovered that the Dowdy house
had been completely demolished, with debris from the cabin
being scattered over an area having a diameter of ap-

proximately one quarter of a mile. Upon searching the

ruins, Sheriff C. E. Hester, of Madison Parish, discovered

two fairly well preserved legs of a white man lying a
few feet enek and south of a point where the cot had once
staod ii the destroyed building. Where the head of the cot
had been, a deep depression was found in the ground, and
it was out of this depression that a number of teeth, bones,

flesh and hair of a human being were dug.

It was first presumed that the legs and other remains

were those of George R. Dowdy, but upon learning that


F
R. Dowdy, his father, named as beneficiary of at least
$26,000.00 of that amount, and thought by both defendants
to be the beneficiary of the remaining $10,000.00. Keeping
in mind that the Pan American Life Insurance Company

. issued its policy of insurance to J. D. Dowdy on October
7, 1948, and the murder of Walter N. Dorman occurred
on the night of October 22, 1948, we retrogress from the
latter mentioned date in order to bring in other facts and

circumstances leading up to Dorman’s murder,

After he had obtained the insurance referred to above,

J. D. Dowdy made several attempts to have friends spend

the night with him at his home situated on the Montgomery

property, but for various reasons those friends failed to
accept his invitations. Apparently, J.D, Dowdy was even

then seeking a victim to carry out the scheme which later

developed and was consummated upon the murder of Walter-

| N. Dorman. »

Durtig the middle of September, 1948, the murdered
man, Walter N. Dorman, came to Tallulah, Louisiana, seek-
ing employment as a painter and, during his first several
weeks in that town, found lodgings at the home of one of
the witnesses in this case, Luther Stillwell, It was vhere

at Stillwell’ s home that J. D. Dowdy first made Dorman’ 8

acquaintance. Dorman later moved from the Stillwell resi-

9

dence and found lodgings at a hotel owned by Mrs. May

Haysmer, at which hotel he lived until the time he met

his death.

On the afternoon of October 22, 1948, J. D. Dowdy
and George R. Dowdy appeared in Tallulah and a short
time thereafter were seen in the company of Walter N.
Dorman, all three being seen at several places around
Tallulah, including the Fisher Barber Shop and City Barber
Shop. Later in the afternoon the two men, J. D. Dowdy

and Walter N. Dorman, were seen together elsewhere, at .

Jack’s Bar, Danbert Hotel, the Bus Station, and on a trip
in a taxi cab from Tallulah to a point on Highway 65 north

of Tallulah, approximately one mile west of the Dowdy

residence.

The pertinent facts in this case occurring between the
time the Dowdys and Dorman met on the afternoon of the
murder, October 22, until the time both Dowdys were placed
in the parish jail at Tallulah and tried under the indict-
ment charging them with the murder of Walter N. Dorman

are as follows:

J. D. Dowdy, George R. Dowdy and Walter N. Dorman,
after having been together at the places above referred to,
separated, with George R. Dowdy remaining in Tallulah,
where he played poker during the entire night of October
22. J. D. Dowdy and Walter Dorman, after the separation,

10

went to Dorman’s room at the Danbert Hotel. At that
_ place Dorman changed clothing, putting on a brown pin
striped coat, light brown trousers and an unusually dis-
tinctive tan ranger-type belt. After leaving the Danbert
Hotel, J. D. Dowdy and: Walter N. Dorman ate supper to-'
gether at the Bus Station Cafe, Tallulah, secured the service
of a nego taxi and were driven toa point near Dowdy’s

home, as aforesaid, where they alighted and where Dorman»

was last seen alive,

The State proved that upon reaching the Dowdy home,

J. D. Dowdy shortly thereafter murdered Walter N. Dor- _
man, placed dynamite on the upper extremities of his body, ..

and detonated the dynamite in order to destroy those parts” |

of Dorman’s body which could be identified as Dorman’s,
a D. Dowdy’s purpose in doing this was to destroy those
parts of Dorman’s body which could be readily identified -
so that his father, George’ R.. Dowdy; could identify the

preserved parts of the corpse, (the legs), as having been

parts of J. D. Dowdy’s body, making it possible to collect

on the life. Insurance policies which had been issued on.

the life of J. D. Dowdy, ag aforesaid. | re

cd

For the information of the Court and for the purpose

of clarification, the details as to the situs of the murder.

and the manner in which the explosion, etc., occurred are
herewith net forth.. -

1

11

~ The Dowdy home was a cabin measuring approximately

fourteen feet: in width by thirty-two feet in length, with a

front porch attached thereto, measuring approximately

eight by. fourteen. feet, Immediately, to the front of the

-main part of the house was a combttied living room and

bedroom, measuring approximately fourteen by fourteen
feet. To the rear of this room was a anal room, measuring
ten by fourteen feet, which was used as a kitchen and
storeroom. At the time of the explosion of this building, a
cot was situated in the northwest corner of the combination
living room and bed room.

Inasmuch as the entire building was completely de-.

_stroyed, as well as the entire upper portion of Dorman’s'

body, the State was not able to ‘definitely prove the exact
‘manner employed by J. D. Dowdy in murdering Dorman.
However, the evidence is conclusive that Dorman was dead
at the time his body was destroyed by dynamite inasmuch
as medical testimony definitely proved the existence of a
fuse burn on the ankle of Dorman’s left leg, this burn

having been caused at least twelve minutes subsequent to |

Dorman’s death. Medical experts testified that if fuse burn a

had been made on ankle prior to death a blister would have
appeared—that it took at least 12 minutes for human cells
to become inactivated to the extent the flesh would burn
‘rather than blister. The physical facts, as well as the

referred to medical testimony, showed that after Dowdy


14

George R. Dowdy was in Tallulah sitting at a noker table,

the presumption: arose that the remains were those of
J. D. Dowdy,

Upon George R. Dowdy being notified that an explo-
sion had occurred, that his home had been destroyed, and
that the remains of someone had been’ found at’ the scene
thereof and believed to be those of his son, J. D. Dowdy, the
only remark in response to that information was, me
my money and clothes are gone,” never once showing
any grief or despondency Over the believed loss of his gon.
(This remark was made by him knowing full well that prior
to the explosion all of hig clothing, money and belongings
had been removed from the cabin and safely stored.)
George R. Dowdy then went to. the funeral home with
Officer Ingram, and in the presence of the undertaker and
others, stood outside the door of the room in which lay the
two legs found at the explosion; while some ten feet away

and almost without looking, he identified them as being the

legs of his son.
|

From the fundiad home and after daylight, George R.

Dowdy went to the scene of the explosion in a taxi, After.

reaching there and viewing the scene of the explosion, he
went Across the road to the home of a negro by the name.
of Robert Page, Sr., and there directed Robert, in a secre-

tiv
€ manner, not to disclose to anyone their Mississippi

| 15
River plans, stating that if “they kept their mouth shut,

he (George R. Dowdy) would be so rich, he wouldn’t have
to spit.” |

Rotating to Tallulah from the scene of the explosion,
George R. Dowdy then returned to the funeral home and
immediately began requesting a pidef of death statement
from the undertaker. While there, the undertaker requested )
information from George R. Dowdy as to the type of casket

he desired to select for the burial of the remains, where- ©

upon George R. Dowdy replied that “it didn’t make any

- difference to him but to just bury him in any old thing.”

At this time, George R. Dowdy brought it to the attention

of the funeral director that he held two policies of burial

_ insurance on J. D. Dowdy, and since J. D. was a veteran,

he, George R. Dowdy, would receive assistance from the

Veterans Administration to defray a portion of the burial
expenses. des
Immediately after leaving the funeral home, George

R. Dowdy went to the local office of the Pan American Life

Insurance Company and advised its agent, Mr. Aubrey

Hurd, that J. D. Dowdy had met his death by accidental

medns on the night before and that he wanted the insurance

company notified as to the death.

From Mr. Hurd’s office, George R. Dowdy went to the

Madison Parish Service Office and requested the local serv-


ig ccttrnn ented

DREHER *

LeBOEUF, Louisiana

Mes OSL nM
aes ee oe

AMERICAN DETECTIVE,

~ SWAMP

By Anthony Field Snapp

side of t
wildly th

distorted

closer wi

Murder in the Louisiana § ™**”

slit and

swamps starts detectives to § ,

leaped fr

work on One of the most amaz- j shore an

mediate],

ing homicide cases that ever BF "**

baffled Southern officers It was

succeedec

and once
had been

lashed to

(Left) Dr. Thomas E,
Dreher, physician .and
confidant of the LeBoeuf
family shown at time of
trial. He told authorities
that Jim LeBoeuf was his
best friend. (Right) Mr.
Emil Vivillemont who
’ aided officers in unravel-
ling this great detective
case,

{

HEN John and Cleveland Beadle de-
: Wee to go frog hunting on the night.
of Wednesday, July 6th, 1927, little
did they realize that they were destined to
uncover one of the most brutal crimes in the
annals of the State of Louisiana. If they had,
so realized, they would have hesitated before
they pushed their catamaran into the back-
wash of Poulard Lake, that dismal swamp of
water in the Mississippi River delta country,
near New Orleans.

The night was dark as they rowed away
from the shore; the water beneath the
bottom of their skiff was even: darker.
And then, abruptly, they were almost
pitched headlong into the water as
their catamaran struck some heavy,
half submerged object.

46

Januafy, 1945


Louisiana
letectives to
2 most amaz-
es that ever
rn officers

Snapping on their flashlights, the two boys played them over the
side of their boat. And what they saw set the blood to pounding
wildly through their veins. A few inches below the surface, a pale,
distorted face leered up at them out of the tepid water. Looking
closer with horrified eyes, they made out the blurred outlines of a
man’s body. And that body was naked—mutilated. The cheeks were
slit and long slashes traversed the torso from shoulders to waist.

John and Cleveland Beadle had seen enough. Terrified, they
leaped from their skiff, ploughed through the shallow water to the
shore and made all haste to Morgan: City. Here they reported im;
mediately to Sheriff Charles Pecot, of St. Mary’s Parish and a scant
hour after their gruesome discovery, they were leading the Law
back to the dismal swamps of Poulard Lake.

It was a gruesome task, but ‘at last Sheriff Pecot and his men
succeeded in bringing the body to shore. It was completely nude
and once clear of the muddy water, the frightful mutilation that
had been wreaked upon it was quite ‘evident. The body was fairly
lashed to ribbons with long cuts. Grinning teeth showed through

(Right) Mrs: -Ada Le-

Boeuf shown at the time
of the sensational murder
trial. Who killed her hus-
band? (Left) James Le-
Boeuf, President of the
Louisiana Utilities Cor-
poration, at Morgan City,
who was mysteriously
murdered. in the Louisi-

cheeks.

ana swamp country.

the savage slits in the | ~ ~ cand
But death had not a

been caused by the

slash of steel. There

was a bullet hole in the man’s right temple and another
in the chest. Death had been swift and sure before the
murderer had mutilated the body.

The ankles and wrists of the. dead man had been
lashed together with wires. And hanging from these
wires were two angle irons, obviously picked up along
the nearby railroad tracks.

Pecot examined the body with interest. Unlike
most bodies found in the water, it was not

bloated. He examined the long cuts in the
torso and then he understood. Whoever had
committed the crime had apparently known
anatomy, for the hellish mutilation was not a
thing of savage chance. It had been cunningly
done so that ‘no gasses would form in the
body, thereby causing it to rise to the surface.

Sheriff Pecot and his men made a thorough
examination and search of the swamp land
and water in the vicinity of the spot where

47

yo


48 American. Detective

we

(Above) Another view

of Sheriff Pecot at time

of the trial. The detec-

tive work turned in by

this amazing case brought

Sheriff. Pecot national rec-
ognition.

the body had been found
but unearthed nothing else.
It was close to midnight when
at last they carried the mutilated
body to a waiting ambulance and
whirled away to the Morgan ‘City mortuary.

Sheriff Pecot immediately sent for the town’s medical
examiner, a young and conscientious physician. Case
hardened as he. was to death—natural and violent—the
doctor was shocked by the condition of the body. Swift-
ly, expertly he examined the mutilations, probed the
bullet holes, felt for broken bones that might indicate
a struggle.

At the end of the examination he pried open the
locked jaws. And it was only then that he made the
discovery that the teeth of the dead man were false,
both upper.and lower plates.

And no one knew better than Sheriff Pecot that false
teeth could be traced, identified.

The body of the dead man was still unidentified but
now, at last, the Sheriff had something definite and tan-
gible to work on. A real clue. Immediately he sum-
moned four Morgan City dentists from their homes,
put in a hurry call to Franklin, seat of the parish gov-
ernment, for Thomas Gilmore, brilliant assistant dis-
trict attorney. .

The dentists and Gilmore arrived at the morgue at
about the same time and while Pecot was giving the As-
sistant District Attorney what details he had of the crime,
the dentists made their examination of the false teeth.

Their decision concerning them was unanimous. They were
agreed that the plates had been made by a company. ef manufac-
turing dentists in Baton Rouge, the state capital. That was enough
for Pecot.. With a deputy and one of the dentists he started for
Baton Rouge, just as a pale dawn broke in the East.

Pecot worked swiftly, reached the head of the dental concern
at his home, summoned him at once to his office. There, after
examining the plates and checking his records, he gave them the
information they desired. And that information shocked them
beyond words.

For those false teeth, taken from the mouth of the murdered
man found in Poulard Lake, had been made for James LeBoeuf.

(Above) X
marks the
spot in
swamp where
James Le-
Boeuf met
his untimely
death at the
hands of un-
known per-
sons

(Left) James
Beadle, one
of the cen-
tral figures
in this great
detective
case.

And everyone knev
was the president o
in Morgan City. h
family man and a

Pecot was shock:
dentist headed bac
motive could any
LeBoeuf? From th
only be one answe

It was twelve o’
gan City. Immed
with Gilmore. Th
Boeuf. What he |
Boeuf was not the
of days. They dic
Mrs. LeBoeuf had
that he was ill.

A strange fore
filled Sheriff Pecoi
home. James wa
home, but Mrs. Le
called. The sheriff a
himself, was quic
ceive the note of \
anxiety in Mrs.
voice as she answe

. He asked her
husband was.

Mrs. LeBoeuf |
moment, stuttere:
supposed that he
was at his office. I
for there that mo

(Center) Jail wher

slayer was held d
(Below) Dr. Thoma
who was family phys
LeBoeufs. What start
formation did he fu
nish authorities?


ous. They were
ny of manufac-
‘hat was enough
s he started for
t.
dental concern
ce. There, after
> gave them the
shocked. them

f the murdered

James LeBoeuf.

(Above) X
marks the
spot in
swamp where
James Le-
Boeuf met
his untimely
death at the
hands of un-
known per.
sons

(Left) James
Beadle, one
of the cen-
tral figures
in this great
detective
case,

: Te Bie . a Swamp Rat.

And everyone knew that James LeBoeuf, at forty-eight, wor Mc ‘ of

was the president of the Louisiana Utilities Corporation wife of the slain
in Morgan. City. More, he was a civic leader, an ideal tifed be Ping
family man and a social favorite. trial ong

Pecot was shocked, stunned, as he, his deputy and the
dentist headed back for Morgan City. What possible-
motive could any one have had for murdering Jim
LeBoeuf? From the condition of the body, there could
only be one answer. Revenge!’

‘Tt was twelve o’clock noon when they reached Mor-
gan City. Immediately, Pecot went into conference
with Gilmore. Then he called the office of James Le-
Boeuf. What he learned, confirmed his suspicion. Le-
Boeuf was not there—had not been there for a matter
of days. They did not know when he would return.
Mrs. LeBoeuf had phoned in several days ago, stating
that he was ill.

A strange foreboding, that he could not analyze,
filled Sheriff Pecot as he put in a call for the LeBoeuf .
home. James was not at
home, but Mrs..LeBoeuf. was
called. The sheriff announced
himself, was quick to per-
ceive the note of worry and
anxiety in Mrs. LeBoeuf’s
voice as she answered him.

- He asked her where her
husband was.

Mrs. LeBoeuf hesitated a
moment, stuttered that she
supposed that her husband
was at his office. He had left

for there that morning.

(Center) Jail where suspected
slayer was held during trial.
(Below) Dr. Thomas E. Dreher
who was family physician for the
LeBoeufs. What startling in-
formation did he fur-

nish authorities?

in?

-

Sheriff Pecot thanked her po-
litely but his eyes were troubled
when he hung up. Jim LeBoeuf
was dead—murdered. And Mrs.
LeBoeuf had acted mighty
strange over the telephone. What
was the answer to that one, he
asked himself as he headed his
car for the residential section of
Morgan City.

A few minutes later he pulled
up before an hospitable white
house set deep in well kept lawns.
He rang the bell and his sum-
mons was answered a moment
later by a Negro servant. No,
Mr. LeBoeuf was not at home.

But Mrs. LeBoeuf was. Would Sheriff Pecot come

Pecot would and did; made himself as comfort-
able as possible under the circumstances, in a taste-
fully furnished living room. There was a long
wait, a mumble of words, a half hysterical sob in
the rear of the house and then Mrs. Ada LeBoeuf
entered the room.

If the parish records were correct, Mrs. LeBoeuf
was just this side of forty. Though her hair was be-
ginning to gray, it was quite evident that at one time

she had been beautiful.
She greeted the Sheriff politely enough but he was
quick to note the tremble in her hand.
Pecot was not’ only Sheriff but a gentleman.-He was
just as polite. “Sorry to bother you, Mrs. LeBoeuf,” he
said. “But I’ve been wondering whether you’ve heard


OMAS E.
descrip-
d police,

sitterly.
. whose

woman.
hunting
isband’s

-ward to

tell what you knew about your .husband’s murder?”

“Perhaps.” ;

“But now that you feel certain Beadle will pay for
the crime, particularly after your testimony. You are
willing to admit that you actually were present at the
murder?”

Her answer was an evasion. ;

“Why didn’t you tell us about the shooting before?”

“Because I was afraid the police would suspect Tom
—Doctor Dreher.”

“The man your husband warned you to stay away
from because he suspected you were lovers?”

Ada Le Boeuf stared around her wildly, but before
she could recover her composure, Sheriff Pecot snapped,
“It may interest you to know that we already suspect
Dr. Dreher. And maybe we’re still interested in him
despite the evidence piling up against James Beadle!”

From the outset of the bizarre case, rumors of an
illicit love affair between the passionate, romance-
starved Ada Le Boeuf and her physician, Dr. Thomas
E. Dreher, had seeped through to the investigators. It
was the incredible story of an erring wife hungrily
seeking the kisses of a lover who held her under a
slavish spell of possession and sex greed.

There were whispered tales of trysts the lovers had
kept in a deserted cabin deep within the bayou; of
other rendezvous in-secret places along the snake and
alligator infested banks of Lake Palourde; of a date
the pair had kept in New Orleans.

It started ten years before when quiet-mannered
Dr. Dreher came to Morgan City and opened a modest
office. Amongst the first to welcome the new arrival
were the Le Boeufs. Soon, they were bosom friends.

A year ago came the first. dark hints of a scandal.

Jim heard the rumors and laughed them off. But they
persisted, and against his will, he questioned his wife.
A violent scene of confession followed.

Heartbroken, the disillusioned husband.threatened to
shoot Tom Dreher if he didn’t stay away. It was thus ~
that matters stood on July Ist, when Jim disappeared.

Understandably, Chief Blakeman and Sheriff Pecot
had to tread carefully before making arrests based on
mere rumor. Ada Le Boeuf was a long-time resident; —

_ Dr. Dreher was one of the city’s most respected citizens.

But now, after hearing the revealing statement made
by Mrs. Le Boeuf, it was decided to take her and Dr.
Dreher into custody. . '

The stocky, steady-eyed physician was to be ques-
tioned first, and Chief Blakeman, Sheriff Pecot and Dr.
Horton were prepared for a bitter verbal battle with
the prisoner. But Dreher showed no belligerency what-
ever. A mood of deep fatalism seemed to possess him.

“On the day that Jim was killed,” he related calmly,
“I got a frantic note from Ada. She told me that she
and her husband were going up the lake on a visit. She
said, now was the time to do something, if at all.

“Jim had threatened to kill me because of his wife.
I figured it was better to kill him first. I knew about
his argument with Jim Beadle and decided to take

‘ advantage of it. Jim Beadle is my good friend. I went

to him and told him I was afraid of my life. Beadle
said to take it easy, that he would be glad to take care
of that rat.

“After supper, Beadle and I waited in his pirogue
for Le Boeuf to come by. It was a perfect ambush.
When the two canoes came up, Ada was in the second
one, about twenty yards behind. Beadle said, ‘Is that

_ you, Jim?’ and then fired a blast as soon as he got an

answer. Then he ripped open the man with his hunting
knife.” Dreher shuddered. ve

“We weighted the body,” he continued, “with irons
and wire we had taken along.: That is. the whole
story.” : ,

Within 36 hours after this stark confession, Beadle
was tracked down by a posse in a shooting blind at
the lake.

He readily admitted his part in the fiendish murder.
There was an air of smirking self-righteousness in his
manner as he declared, “I killed Le Boeuf because Tom
Dreher is my good friend.”

Ada Le Boeuf steadfastly maintained that she had
no hand in the plotting of her husband’s death, but:
only 20 days after the finding of his body, first degree
murder indictments were returned against her, Dr.
Dreher and James Beadle.

A few days later, on August 12, 1927, Ada Le Boeuf
_and her paramour were sentenced to hang. Beadle,
who had fired the shot that blasted the life from the
innocent husband, was given a sentence of life im-
prisonment.

An automatic appeal by defense lawyers brought
about a stay of execution. While the two killers were
languishing in jail, Huey Long became Governor of
Louisiana. ; (Continued on page 43)

GOVERNOR HUEY P. LONG stubbornly resisted every effort to
save the firs

+ woman to be executed on the gallows in Louisiana.


w

* at

‘actically together. Se
td rom Showers’ locker the police ¢
ers Seized a jumper and dun a) s
at had been recently washed. Ate
nte te manager told them Sho
3 a steady buyer of Cubeh

sarettes.

Back at Malone with their eviden
d testimony, Woolsey and Rosbréae
irned that the tires of Showers’ truck
d been found to match the roadside _
cks and that his shoes fitted aie
aid the footprints. on ee
ith the i i renthe
ached, de CCE wecker atee ued Ee
nued tg —
d out, though not with such yehe-_
ace as before. His chin now trembled
he answered questions, and with
h new piece of evidence produce 4
slumped lower in his chair. oom
There’s just one thing more,” Cap™
Broadfield said, reaching into his—
wer. “When that girl struggled with —
: she pulled some of your hair out a
the roots. I have that hair here and
ae a
howers put his hands up to his ~
‘ Never mind,” he said. “I'll tel] —
. I did it, but it was an accident.” —
he youth then proceeded to relate =
of _the most fantastic stories the
ce in that region had ever heard.
she was walking along the road.”
said, “when I drove up alongside s
er. “ed something and she must _
4 e frightened. She slipped |
fe.. uuder the back wheel of the
truck and I ran over her.
could see she was badly hurt. I got
cky. I put her in my truck and i:
ed toward Bloomingdale. She was
ain’ all the way. Finally I stopped eS
carried her into the woods. It was Es
of those things,” he said. “She
-d so pretty. And the moon was

ever mind!” Broadfield, revolted
ed. “Go on with your story.”
dawned on Showers that he would
1 for a bad time of it if the girl
_and identified him. Accordingly
pped off a piece of sapling pei
eded to beat her until she died.
aen I got the hell out of there,”
ound up his sordid story.

the absence of even the slightest
val evidence that Cleo Tellstone
‘een run over by a truck, Showers’
3 story was branded a lie by the
Ss.

icted three weeks later, on No-
r 27th, 1939, the smirking
v-year-old killer went on_ trial.
ily found guilty, he was promptly
ced t« life imprisonment at Clin-
ris¢ imnamora, for his crime.

Tages te at
Pais ee

°

US NOTE: To protect a person
ntly involved in this case, the
Betty Freen is fictitious as used

THE END

wes

ODY. AT THE BAYOU

¢ Gontinued trom: page 37)

it, But it wasn’t the temporary defeat
that bothered him; there was more than
one way to bark an oak tree. What was
really disturbing was a puzzling contra-
diction in the impression she made.
Pecot was a shrewd and perceptive off-
cer; he was sure he could detect it if
she were lying or covering up. He had
felt no such warning buzzer in his mind.
Why, then, had she refused to cooper-
ate? Did she really think he would be-
lieve that nonsense about “emotional
distress” and the rest of it?

Pecot took his leave of Mrs. Le Boeuf

“and went to confer with Chief Blakeman

at the latter’s office. A certificate order-
ing burial: of the corpse had been signed
and interment was scheduled for the
following morning.

Speedy identification of the body was
essential. The corpse might be that of
Jim Le Boeuf. The similarity of thumbs
and the fact that Le Boeuf was not to
be contacted were significant. Pecot dug
around and learned the names of the
power plant employee’s dentist and ‘tai-
lor. The dentist had an office in Morgan
City. He positively identified the gold
denture as one he had made for Le
Boeuf. The tailor likewise was able to
prove by his records that the suit worn
by the murdered man was the one he
had sold to Le Boeuf in the summer.

The police accepted the identification
as official. Le Boeuf’s funeral was sched-
uled to take place at 8 o’clock the follow-
ing morning. But the imperious wife
refused to attend. She openly attacked
the police, accusing them of having made
a ghastly mistake. Jim was still alive.
He would show up in his own good time
and make a laughing stock of Pecot and
Blakeman.

The wife’s astonishing behavior indi-
cated to officials that she must be de-
liberately trying to befuddle them in
order to hide some guilty knowledge of
the crime; or else she was burying her
head in the sand like a foolish ostrich,
refusing to accept the truth because it
would cause her “emotional distress.”
Such reaction to crushing news was not
exactly uncommon, of course, so Pecot
and Chief Blakeman were reluctant to
sit in final judgment on Mrs. Le Boeuf
until they could root out the motive for
the shocking, carefully planned and
executed murder. The murderer and
the motive—these were the objectives of
Sheriff Pecot’s and Chief Blakeman’s
combined investigation.

The corpse that had been identified
as that of Le Boeuf had scarcely been
lowered into its grave when Pecot’s

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ROBABLY no love affair is as
seething with passion, as secre-
tive—and for that reason as
loathsome and dirty—as an illi-

cit liaison between two married people.

What percentage of these end in true
happiness, nobody will ever know; prob-
ably none, since somebody’s feelings are
bound to get hurt, sooner or later. And
a certain ‘proportion of these affairs—
probably relatively small—wind up in
outright violence.

This story is about one of these latter
—one of the most dramatic and vicious,
although least known, cases of first-
degree murder ever tried in this country.

Two young frog-fishers steered their
flat-bottom boat along the bayous near
Morgan City, Louisiana.

The moon was waning, and the mid-
night darkness was making the bayou
water so black they could barely see the
man whose bobbing head grazed the
boat’s keel. They hit him and felt the
impact.

“Whoa!” cried the younger boy, rais-
ing his oar in self-defense.

“Take it easy, Jim! Looks like a log.”

But they discovered it was nothing at
all like a log—it was, in fact, a dead man.
His arms and legs were tied with ropes

36

His face blasted off...his stomach slashed open
his body weighted down... the lovers obviously
never expected their victim to be identified!

POLICE DETECTIVE, June, 196),

to which weights had been attached to
hold him down. Jim and Harvey had
seen death before. Wordlessly, they
marked off the spot in their minds and
headed for Chris’ store. Chris had a tele-
phone and it was he who notified the
Morgan City police.

Chris spoke his piece, then hung up
and relayed the order to the boys to
wait around till the officers arrived. They
nodded in understanding and were
drinking soda pop when a big Buick
pulled up outside the store and Police
Chief Louis R. Blakeman of Morgan
City alighted with several deputies. A
Chevy sedan of ten years’ vintage
chugged to a stop at the curb and Char-
lie L. Pecot, sheriff of Franklin Parish,
got out, followed after a moment by Dr.
C. M. Horton, the parish coroner. The
night of July 6th was the tenth in a
brutal string of dog days and Dr. Hor-
ton, roused from sleep by Pecot’s phone
call, looked understandably hot and
wilted. Almost hopefully, he turned to
the boys, saying, “You sure you didn’t
cook up a wild yarn?”

They assured him otherwise and they
all scrambled into the boat Chris had
provided. In a half-hour they sighted the
body at the edge of Lake Palourde’s
treacherous shallows deep within Bayou
Teche country where, according to leg-
end, French Acadians of Evangeline’s
day had settled from Nova Scotia.

But there was nothing even remotely
romantic about the scene at the moment.
The stench from the body was fright-
ful, million of insects bit at the perspir-
ing officers, and except for the oars and
a couple of boat hooks there was no
adequate way for the men to grapple
with the heavily weighted body and
bring it up without mangling it.

Also, a disquieting thought passed

through Sheriff Pecot’s mind. Suppose,
after spending hours in attempting to
recover the body, they discovered this
wasn’t a case for the police at all, that
the man hadn’t met death by violence,
but had died of natural causes and been
buried in the lake’s fastness by a fam-
ily eager to avoid funeral bills?

When at last they had the body on
dry land, Sheriff Pecot heaved a sigh
that expressed both worry and relief.
This was no swamp burial to save an un-
dertaker’s fee. The man in the lake had
been murdered, there was no doubt
about it. Half of his face had been shot
away by a gunshot blast; bits of wad
from the shotgun’s shell had penetrated
the wound; some of the powder had
driven into the shattered flesh, indicat-
ing that the gun had been fired at very
close range.

“A nice touch, that,” said Dr. Horton,
pointing to where the dead man’s abdo-
men had been slashed onen with a knife.
“The killer did it deliberately so gasses
wouldn’t form in the body and float it to
the surface of the lake. An old-timer’s
trick and an effective one. Whoever’s
responsible for it knows his way around
the bayou.”

The weights were heavy railroad angle-
irons. Judging from the knots in the
rope, the murderer had tied three angle-
irons to the body when he dumped it into
the lake but one of the weights had
come loose, and the corpse had risen
to the surface.

Dr. Horton’s estimate—and he admit-
ted it was only a guess—was that death
occurred from a week to ten days be-
fore. The victim was well dressed and
about forty years old. He was trimly
built, wore a size 36 suit, and weighed
about 160 pounds. But due to the
crabs that had nibbled away chunks of

by James M. Simms

the face and the rupture of facial tissues
caused by gasses from the shotgun’s
blast, there wasn’t enough left of the
man’s - features to guarantee recogni-
tion by his own mother. His clothing
would be dried out later and examined
for labels and laundry marks. The body
itself might reveal some tattoo, surgical
scar, birthmark or minor disfigurement
which would identify him.

The sole contents of the dead man’s
pockets were a wallet and 21 dollars—
but no cards, papers or keys. He wore
no jewelry. There was a removeable gold
bridge in the upper jaw that might be
traced to the dentist who had made it.

The body was transported by boat
and auto to a funeral patlor in Morgan
City. At the inquest, an open verdict was
returned, naming the usual “person or
persons unknown.” Dr. Horton, in
charge of the victim’s body, obtained
the assistance of medical experts from
the Louisiana State University and New
Orleans Police Department. They veri-
fied the doctor’s theory that the victim
had been dead about a week. The gun-
shot blast had killed him instantly. It
was also revealed that whoever had
slashed the man’s abdomen had “ex-
hibited professional skill in the employ-
ment of surgical tools.”

An anatomist pointed out an abnor-
mality that had escaped police atten-
tion because of the bloated condition of
the victim’s hands. The thumbs were so
short they could be regarded as disfig-
ured, the report read. And the tips were
definitely crooked.

A police description of the dead man
published on July 7th included this curi-
ous detail. Public reaction was prompt.
Several residents of Morgan City phoned
the sheriff’s office to say that Jim Le
Boeuf, superintendent of the Morgan
City Light and Power Company, had

/ similar malformed thumbs.

It was a pretty fair lead. Pecot drove
out to the company’s office to check on

Le Boeuf. He was told that the super-
intendent had left six days ago on a busi-
ness trip to Lafayette, Louisiana. He
was not expected to return until the
end of the week.

Pecot paid a call to Mrs. Le Boeuf.
He explained the grim reason for his
visit. Would she be willing to come down
to the morgue and view the body of the
man some people were insisting must
be her husband? Especially since Mr.
Le Boeuf himself was not present to
refute the claim.

Ada Le Boeuf eyed her visitor coldly.
She was dark-eyed, beautifully poised,
aristocratic in manner.

“My husband is in Lafayette,” she
said calmly. “I do not possess a morbid
nature and have no intention of staring
at a corpse that the newspapers describe
as terrifying and ghastly. There is no
purpose to be served by subjecting my-
self to such an ordeal. I refuse, flatly.”

“But suppose you are mistaken! Con-
sider the harm you are doing yourself
and us by...”

“My Jim is not a corpse, Sheriff. He’s
as alive as you are at this moment.”

“Can you prove it?”

“Certainly. In good time.”

“And when is that?”

“A day or two.” .

“Can you call him now, at his hotel or

Doctor grew intimate with patient.

wherever he is staying?” Pecot pleaded.
“Let me talk to him for a minute!”

“That’s impossible. I can’t reach him
in Lafayette.”

“Yet you’re positive he’s alive?”

Her smile was curiously patient. “Yes,
Sheriff,” she said almost gently. “I’m
positive Jim is alive.”

“Will you at least look at the dead
man’s clothes? Maybe that way...”

“No.”

“But why? Don’t you want to help
the police?” ©
“You are badly confused, Sheriff. If
you will accept my word that Jim is

right now in Lafayette, going about his

Sut

T "aoa Coury

TyueTT pesuey *soqtuM *anyOgel pue wT

.

business as he intended when he made A>

the trip...”

“I can’t accept your assurance, Mrs. @
Le Boeuf. Not till I know for sure about
the dead man in the morgue.”

The woman rose carefully from the
red brocade-covered chair. “I would like
to make this plain,-Sheriff Pecot,” she
said without haste. “The dead man is
not my husband. I refuse to expose my-
self to the emotional distress of think-
ing about that corpse in relation to Jim.
Surely you don’t think you can force me
to do so?”

Of course Pecot couldn’t force her to
view the body. He was licked and knew

(Continued on page 57)

37


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angle of the case when the phantoms
struck again, this time on Valley
Street, near Holmes. The girl, 18-year-
old Agnes Mitchell, suffered a deep
wound on her left thigh before her
screams aroused the neighborhood and
drove the attackers off.

This time, however, in their haste
to leave the scene, the sadists Grorpes
their deadly weapon. A_ flashlight
search of the area by Leighton and
McGinnis uncovered it among some
high weeds.

“It’s a.machine tool called a tap-

er,” exulted Leighton, turning his

ashlight on it. “And there’s writing
on it. It says, “P & W. No. 12.” .

Checked for fingerprints, it was
found to contain nothing but smudges.
However, valuable information was
obtained when Leighton showed it to
a machinist friend. ;

“It’s a quarter-inch tapper,” agreed
the machinist. “The P & W means
Pratt and Whitney. They’re a large
tool manufacturing firm in Bridge-
port, Conn. The No. 12 stamped on it
is the tool’s catalog number for or-
dering purposes.” Z

Leighton and McGinnis hurried to
Bridgeport and showed the tapper to
Pratt and. Whitney’s production fore-
man. The latter nodded when he saw
it. “Sure, this is one of our tappers.
What do you want to know about it?”

“Who ordered it?” asked Leighton.

The foreman frowned. “Ordinarily
we wouldn’t be able to tell you, but
it so happens that we don’t make
number 12 tappers anymore,” he said.
“Wait a minute. I think I can help
you.”

He returned ten minutes later,.a
grin on his face. “You guys are in
luck,” he said. “We made this tool in
August, 1939, for the Bloomfield plant
of the General Electric Company. We
haven’t made one since.”

The Belleville officers thanked him
and returned to New Jersey. At the
General Electric plant they showed
the tapper to the foreman. The latter
admitted, however, that any number
of men in his charge used the tool.

“Do you have any brothers working
for you?” inquired Leighton. “Young
fellows, say between 23 and 25 years
of age, stocky, dark wavy hair and
wearing thick-lensed glasses.”

The foreman looked _ surprised.
“Why, yes, we have a couple who look
exactly like that. They’re the Welder
twins!”

“Do they have access to this tool?”

“Yes. In fact they asked for a new

one only this morning. Said they had
lost the other one somewhere.”

The foreman revealed that the twins
had been employed at the plant for
seven months, and had compiled an’
excellent record. During that time
they had continuously worked the

seven P. M. to four A. M. shift.

AKEN to Belleville police head-

uarters, the Welder twins, Albert

and red, vehemently denied having

had anything to do with the atrocious

wave of sex crimes which had ter-

rorized the residents of four commu-
nities for months.

They said they were 24 years old
and resided in North Bergen. They.
had come from Chester, Pa., about
a year before. Albert said he was mar-
ried and made his home with his par-
ents. Alfred also resided with his folks
but was single. ; ;

The pair broke down several hours
later when eight of their pretty vic-
tims alg ag identified them as their
attackers. In their 23-page confession
they admitted sexually attacking more
than 50 girls throughout New Jersey
and Pennsylvania during the past 18
months.

They said they would leave their
home around four-thirty every eve-
ning and cruise through the dusky
streets looking for a likely victim.
When their lust was satiated they
would head for the Bloomfield plant
in time for work.

Examined by psychiatrists a few
days later, they were found to be
entirely sane, but possessing such vi-
cious personalities that they would
always be a menace to society.

Shortly before going to trial they
changed their plea of not guilty to
one of “non-vult” and threw them-

* selves, on the mercy of the court.

Sitting in the Essex County Court-
house, Common Pleas Judge Dallas
Flanagan sentenced them to terms of
not less than 22 years and not more
than 25 years in the state penitentiary
at Trenton.

In pronouncing the sentence, Judge
Flanagan strongly urged that they
never again be allowed to mingle
among decent, self-respecting citizens.

Nore:: The names Thelma Herzog
Joyce Fortune, Marie Horvath and
Agnes Mitchell, used in this story, are
fictitious in order to protect the iden-
tity of actual persons from embarrass-
ment.

The widow breathed a jong. sigh of
relief at the news of the Kingfish’s
election. Long’s disregard of conven-
tion was well known. The adultress-
killer was certain that at his hands
she would obtain a reprieve.

But to her astonishment—and with
acclaim of thousands who were fol-
lowing the case with intense interest,
Governor Long stubbornly resisted
every effort to save her from hanging.

On February Ist, 1929, the now

PASSIONATE
PARAMOUR

(Continued from page 23)
ee

nerve-racked, haggard woman who
had sacrificed everything for the
stolen kisses of a man ten years her
senior, was hanged a few minutes
after Dreher was pronounced dead.

Thus she became.the first woman
ever to die on the gallows in the’state
of Louisiana. :

Governor Huey Long ‘certainly did
not hesitate to flout convention and
tradition in this case to uphold the
prescribed penalty for murder.

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43


ere Peiemeeel te :

iar tas aed aS Lh
uy iy paca ide i eet a a CF ate ie
DOWDY » de Des |

i Rigs 4 te midpvanne Ca ee

- | aia . : , / - acd
-_ 1 have preferred a safer abode. The sheriff of Madison Parish, .
Pe. BY JOHN S. THORP of a4 : 2 Mason knew about these fears, and when he Visited -
= — <2 ant es _ the plantation, which lay in his bailiwick, he would point ~
ae ee gee Out the modern factdrs employed by the company and urge
Rea. the tenants to trust In the marvels of science
. cd ge people who occupied the tenant cabins of the Sun Shortly after 11 o'clock on Friday night October 22, 1948
Plast i Oil Company’s Talla Bena plantation near Tallulah, La ester’s own confidence that no such calamity ever would
> lived in a perpetual miasma of fear. From one day to the- take place hh cee Shaken, along with the walls of his
- Ee next they could never know whether one of the huge rug rome, though it stoo ' 2 800d nine miles from the planta-
— storage tanks on the banks of the Mississippi River, thoy tion., = ae: ai eel! Reni
¢ a full quaiter mile from their homes ment 80 bust” and _._He rushed to the phone, called the Tallulah police and
a blow them all up, ‘es asked, “What happened?” A ee hater
* he expression was their own but it seemed justified by Don’t know: yet, Sheriff,” replied the officer in charge:
local history. While nothing like that had ever happened “The whole town just shook. voon's. I get something [’l] :
; . at Talla Bena, there was scarcely another oi] property in ring you back. < are ae ee a
. the area where it hadn’t.. The cotton these Talla Bena ester hung up, ‘walked to his window and looked off at
‘ farmers grew was shared with the company; the arrange. the northern sky. He saw no red glare such as there should

ment was liberal, so they stayed, though most of them would

~ es ae eee fs a ee ear se . “The calls. are Pouring in, Sheriff,” said the Tallulah
E Fag : * ogre fat ‘y* police officer, “ I

Only recoverable bits of a human being oR
a Cc ! ae an ~~ A chill ae

fl. he said. in We a an Ye
‘ The narrow road leading to the plantation was clogged }

x

“4 . after the terrific blast were two legs

an . : wR Ke ‘ . ~i ahs
ey .. 2 Scattered in the debris. Yet Sheriff cae
& - » ; , . a eet i Bee ‘ ‘ ; :
Hester built a murder case Upon them

e:

Cee, . :.

isis es RN eS

~~

on the left foot occurred from 15 to 30
minutes after death.

In digging at the site of the blast, I had
recovered pieces of bone from a human
skull, fragments of bone from the limbs
of the body and flesh with hair from the
head. After the coroner’s jury adjourned
with a verdict of death at the hands of
persons unknown, I went to the Danbert
Hotel where Dorman had been living and
where the room had been locked since
his disappearance, and found several hairs
from his head on his pillow and hairs from
his legs from beneath the sheets. Thése
I carefully preserved for laboratory
analysis. I also collected all of Dorman’s
clothing and belongings and took them to
the vault for safe-keeping.

At 11 a.m. Deputy Holt left Tallulah
with a heavy wooden box containing the
leg packed in dry ice. He drove to Jack-
son, Mississippi, to ship the box air ex-
press to Washington.

I wired the FBI that the following speci-
mens were enroute: (1) Left leg of blast
victim; (2) hair from human body found
at scene of blast; (3) fragments of human
skull; (4) pieces of bone; (5) strands of
hair from Dorman’s head; (6) left shoe
of Walter Dorman taken from his room;
(7) left sock taken from victim's left leg.

On Wednesday, October 27th, I tele-
phoned Sol Goldman of the Pan-American
Life Insurance Company, New Orleans,
that we were involved in an insurance-
fraud murder case and to hold up all claims
until the investigation was complete. Mr.
Goldman offered to send an investigator to
assist me. The following day Albert D.
Trecost of the Pinkerton National Detective
Agency, New Orleans, arrived. Trecost, a
shrewd investigator, pitched right into the
case and his assistance proved invaluable.

We re-interviewed many witnesses with
whom I had previously talked,: to tighten
our pattern of evidence. Clarence Brown,
the taxi driver, identified a photo of Dor-
man as one of his passengers the night of
the blast.

On Friday, October 29th, Pinkerton Op-
erative Trecost went to the scene of the
blast. The explosion had scattered debris,
papers, canceled checks and letters over an
area of five or ten acres across ditches
and cotton fields. It was in the cotton field
that he found several canceled checks,
and a letter addressed to J. D. Dowdy from
the National Protective Insurance Company
of Kansas City, Missouri, acknowledging
his application for a $5,000 insurance policy,
but denying same and returning his money.
Had the policy been issued, a tenant farm-
er’s life would have been insured for
$46,000.

The Pinkerton operative’s astute ques-
tioning developed other vital evidence. He

learned from Carl Smith at Fisher’s barber
shop that young Dowdy and Dorman had
come into his barber shop at 6:30 p.m.
on October 22nd, and he noticed Dorman’s
shoes had paint on them, and because of
this Dorman had declined to have them
shined. He identified a shoe found at the
blast scene as identical with those Dor-
man was wearing. .

Pretty, young Dorothy Stillwell, told
Trecost she had dated J. D. some weeks
prior to the blast and that he had boasted
of his schemes to collect insurance on the
death of a dummy or substitute victim
of violent death. She looked upon J. D.
as being “so silly” she would.not go out
with him any more after that first date.

Luther Stillwell told the Pinkerton op-
erative he had talked with George Dowdy
right after the explosion and that the old
man believed Dorman had killed J. D.,
robbed him and skipped out, as “J. D.
had $1,700 hidden behind a picture in the
house.” George also told Stillwell that,
“He had heard talk that J. D. was being
suspected of killing Dorman since Dor-
man was with J. D. that night, so not to
mention anything about Dorman being
with J. D. the night of the blast.”

Albert Walker had been at Jack’s Bar
the night of the blast and observed J. D.
was taking his drinks more carefully than
usual, while Dorman was drinking heavily,
Trecost learned.

Early Saturday morning I hired Bob
Gaumitz, a local aviator, to cruise over the
dense swampland fringing the Mississippi
in the chance J. D.’s boat might be spotted
if he were hiding in the dense under-
growth of cypress and willow. We hoped
a wisp of camp fire smoke might also be-
tray him. .

Using field glasses, Holt spotted a green
canoe beached along the bank up one of
the old river beds east of Island No. 102.
Returning to the airfield, Holt and Trecost
engaged a motor boat at the Sun Oil docks
and set out upstream as far as they could
travel by boat. Afoot, they then waded
through the shallow bog, sinking at times
to their waists in the ooze. At one point
footprints were found and traced into the
woods but were finally lost. Nightfall
forced them to turn back before sighting
the boat they sought.

Sunday morning Bob Gaumitz and Holt
made another flight over the river area,
especially examining the levee system and
roads around Brunswick. They spotted
someone paddling in a green canoe near
where they had sighted the boat the day
before. After again landing at the air-
port, Deputy Holt and Jesse Laird again
searched the swamps and bayous. No trace
of Dowdy was sighted. The boat they had
spotted was being used by fishermen.

Dorman’s relatives arrived late that
afternoon, bringing along A. E. Crawford

Wake a date ta tune tx

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of the Crawford Secret Service, Jackson,
Mississippi, who was prepared to conduct
a lie detector test on George Dowdy. The
test proved ineffective as the old man’s
mind was so shifty and vacillating.

Dowdy denied even knowing Dorman
or participating in any scheme to defraud
the insurance firms on a fake claim and
made excuses for removing all his clothing
and radio from the house. He did admit
his son had discussed how to make some
easy money from the insurance companies.
He said he had lived his life and was not
much concerned with the future. He said
he had moved the dynamite from the house
because he thought it was too dangerous,
but that J. D. had taken it back. He was
caught in several lies but remained un-
concerned, with replies, “So what, I’ve
lived my life; I have done nothing wrong
and this is the first time I have been in
jail.” He said the dynamite was being
used to blow up fish.

Ar 4 P.M. we got our first real break in
the case. My telephone rang. It was
Sheriff Howell Flournoy of Caddo Parish
at Shreveport, Louisiana, on the wire. His
voice was vibrant, eager.

“We've caught J. D. Dowdy!” he said.
“Have him in jail here.”

I felt a triumphant tingle up my spine.
My theory had proven correct. Dowdy was
alive.

Early Monday I filed an affidavit against
J. D. Dowdy before Judge R. L. Russ,
charging him with the murder of Walter
N. Dorman.

Pinkerton Operative Trecost, Deputy
Holt and I set out early | by auto for
Shreveport.

We listened to Sheriff Flournoy’s story
of the capture of Dowdy with intense
interest. It was mainly a story of flight
and hiding in the densely-wooded lowlands
of the Neches River, as the fugitive awaited
his share of the fraud loot.

At 10 a.m. on Sunday Sheriff Flournoy
had received a telephone call from Deputy
Cal Bain at Vivian, Louisiana, who told
him that Mrs. W. E. Townsend, a sister
of J. D., had reported her brother had just
left her house. She had left two small
children alone to walk the two miles to
spread the alarm. She said J. D. had given
her $120 to give to her father, and a dia-
mond ring that was for his sweetheart
at Ringland, Oklahoma. He had then
kissed them all good-bye and said that
he would not see them again as he did
not expect to be taken alive. He told
his sister the explosion over at Tallulah
was an accident, but refused to yield to
her plea that he give himself up.

Sheriff Flournoy had then called on offi-
cers to set up road blocks over a wide
area, and had then left for Vivian, ac-
companied by Deputies Ed M. Ward, Gor-
don Carr, H. M. Terry and W. H. Ander-
son, After contacting Deputy Bain at
Vivian, they went to the Townsend home
and from there tracked J. D. across the
fields into the woods. They kept on the
trail all forenoon and afternoon, keeping
in touch with all officers by radio.

At about 2:30 p.m., Texas State Patrol-
men Earl Elliott and Louis Coward stopped
a car driven by R. F. Maxwell of Bivens,
Texas, near Trees City on the Texas-
Louisiana line, in which rode a young
man whom they suspected to be Dowdy.
Mr. Maxwell had picked him up as a
hitchhiker. The Texas patrolmen called
Sheriff Joe Roggs and his deputy Mance
Fant of Marion County, who were near by,
and they questioned the man.

In the midst of the inquiry, the man
began quivering as if shaken by an
epileptic fit. He bled from the mouth pro-
fusely. They had started toward Vivian
for a doctor and just across the Louisiana

line they met Sheriff Flournoy, who took
the man in custody and to jail in Shreve-
port. Under stern questioning, he admit-
ted he was J. D. Dowdy, and that the fit
had been feigned to avoid answering ques-
tions and the bleeding was caused from
biting his tongue.

Wauen caught, Dowdy was dressed in a
pair of dark blue striped pants, white and
blue striped shirt, a brown suede hunting
coat and a hunting cap. He had $118 in
cash, a picture of his sweetheart, Miss
Allen of Ringland, Oklahoma, together
with a hunting knife, bus ticket stubs, and
hunting license issued to Jack R. Allen
at Tyler, Texas, on October 25th.

That night Dowdy attempted to commit
suicide in jail by breaking an antiseptic
bottle and using the jagged edge to cut
his wrist. He refused to eat for two days.

We took charge of Dowdy and started
back to Tallulah. He was morose and
sullen.

We questioned him until midnight but
could get very little truth out of him.

I went to George Dowdy’s cell and
awakened him. “George,” I said abruptly,

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“we have J. D. in a cell downstairs.”

He looked at me oddly, feigning sur-
prise. “I’m sure you’re kiddin’,” he re-
plied. “J. D. is dead.”

I then led him to J. D.’s cell and he just
stared at him silently, saying nothing.

Fearing another suicide attempt, I placed
a guard in J. D.’s cell for the night. Next
day Deputy Holt and Trecost questioned
Dowdy at length but failed to wring a con-
fession from him.

On Thursday: night, November 4th, Dowdy
tore the collar and tail off his shirt and
flushed it down the toilet. A few days later
he had destroyed the shirt, evidently trying
to hide some incriminating evidence. We
had previously examined it and found no
laundry or other identifying marks on it.
We did, however, take from Dowdy a belt
which had a buckle which closely re-
sembled one Dorman was shown wearing
in a photo given us by his relatives.

On Friday, November 5th, the grand jury
indicted J. D. and George R. Dowdy on
murder charges.

It was the following Sunday that we
received the body specimens back from
the FBI. Their report, highly technical,
was in plain words damning proof of a
murder. The hairs taken from Dorman’s
bed matched those on the legs and the
legs were those of a man in his 40s. We
felt our identification of the corpse was
complete.

Further proof that J. D, had stripped the
victim of clothing prior to the blast came
to us the next day when his brother, James
W. Dorman of Mansfield, Louisiana, identi-
fied the belt as one he had given Dorman.
Dorman had found it -too long, he pointed

OOS a es ee ms mR SNS RN Ne)

out, and had ripped off and resewn the
tongue.

Late that day W. B. Jernigan, deputy
sheriff at Tyler, Texas, reported that a
trapper’s camp had been found in the
bottoms of the Neches River near Bullard,
Texas, and that some of the clothing in
the tent had the laundry mark of Dowdy.
I advised him to pick up this clothing,
then telephoned Sheriff Flournoy to take
in custody all clothing left by Dowdy
at Mrs. Townsend’s home. ,

On Monday at the sheriff’s office in
Tyler I checked clothing taken from the
suitcase of J. D. Dowdy. I found a brown
coat with pin stripe, a pattern which
matched the coat worn by Dorman on the
night of the blast. The lapels were splotched
with brown stains and mildewed. I then
traced Dowdy’s movements while in flight.
He had bought a hunting license under the
name of Jack R. Allen, and spent $213 for
hunting ‘equipment, intending to hide out
for some weeks or months.

His plans went awry when he became
embroiled with Jim Scritchfield, a farmer
who regarded Dowdy as an intruder on
his private hunting grounds and ordered
him to leave. Scritchfield came upon
Dowdy Saturday, October 30th, while hunt-
ing squirrels. Dowdy sat astride a log
skinning coon. Both men kept guns trained
on each other and hot words were ex-
changed. Dowdy decided to pull out.

Scritchfield reported the trouble to Game
Warden Bob Gross, who went with Deputy
Jernigan to Dowdy’s camp on October 3lst,
but no one was there. Dowdy, apparently
frightened, and fearing discovery, had made
a hasty departure.

On Thursday, December 2nd, District
Attorney Thompson L. Clarke, called in
W. B. Alford, Gulfport, Mississippi, ex-
plosives expert, referred to us by the
Pinkerton Agency, who viewed the wreck-
age and fragments of body and confirmed
our theory that the body had been heavily
weighted with dynamite before the blast
was set off. We also interviewed R. Stover,
manager of E. Songheimer Company, who
sold the dynamite to J. D. Dowdy.

Arrest of the Dowdys fanned rumors
anew in Tallulah. Some came to us with
positive opinions the Dowdys had mur-
dered William Salmon, whose case was
termed a suicide, saying they had used
poison in killing him.

On May 16th, 1949, the first of a parade
of forty State’s witnesses began to weave
a pattern of evidence on which the State
asked the death penalty for both George
and J. D. Dowdy. Judge Frank Voelker
of Sixth District court presided at the joint
trial at Tallulah, Louisiana.

In his opening statement, District At-
torney Thompson Clarke charged that the
death of Walter Dorman resulted from a
conspiracy between the Dowdys. The
motive, Clarke said, was to collect $36,000
insurance which the younger Dowdy had
bought, naming his father as beneficiary.

On May 20th a Madison Parish jury
found J. D. Dowdy guilty of murder as
charged which under Louisiana law carries
a mandatory death penalty. The elder
Dowdy was found guilty without capital
punishment, which means life imprison-
ment.

Epitor’s Note

An appeal has been filed and is pend-
ing on the foregoing case, and the reader
should always bear in mind the possi-
bility that a higher court might bring
the conviction into legal question, and
order a new trial.

A picture of J. D. Dowdy appeurs on
page 24,

voice
“Do
might
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Mr.
said br
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‘scattered. over a wide area.. <7 wY

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ssn tend ope ae

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5 See .
a os

Swept over them. But no exploding oil tank had caused

such ‘hhavoc, he knew; they were still standing. _
A dense cloud of dust hovered over a pile of wreckage,
but. there was no sign of smoke or fire. Baffled, Hester

pushed his way to the forefront of a group of police and

_firemen, who stood around surveying the ruins.

Noting his puzzled expression, one of them said, “Dyna-
mite, Sheriff. It blew everything to bits.” :
Hester’s eyes, now becoming accustomed to the picture,
saw how true this was. There was a bare patch where the

shack had stood and fragments of the house itself lay_

far

“Whose place was that?" of ;
- One of the farmers, trousers pulled over his nightshirt,

- spoke ap. “Belonged to George Dowdy and his son, Sheriff.

au

-- "heen severed from t

The old man went’ to town earlier this evening but the
young fella must have been in there.” 2

Hester knew both Dowdys. Shocked, he sen an officer to
telephone Dr. Otis Edgerton, the Madison Parish coroner.

- When this official arrived, he and the sheriff began search- .

ing the debris for signs of human wreckage. “8
“If any poor devil was in there,” Dr. Edgerton said,

-_ “there won’t be much of him left for us to find.”

“No,” the sheriff grimly agreed. “A whole case of that

.. =
_ stuff must have gone off.” , -
-- A4ew minutes later, when their torches began singling -

out bits of dismembered flesh, Hester knew two things:

“Someone had been blown to bits in the explosion and, as Dr.
_ Edgerton had surmised, there would be hardly anything -
_- Jeft for them to identify. 6% <s Rickee 01"
~~ "The sheriff shuddered as,he went about his grisly task.

Then, quite suddenly, he came across part of a human leg,
the foot still intact. He obtained a tarpaulin from the fire-
men and laid the gruesome exhibit out on it.

While he was studying the limb he heard a shout from the
physician. The coroner had found a second bare foot with

- about the same length of leg attached to it!

Though they searched for another half hour neither was
able to find more than tiny fragments of flesh. It became
apparent that the feet and the stumps of legs were all that

remained of whoever had occupied the shack at the time of ©

the blast... > eT ee : ;
Then they noticed an odd coincidence. The limbs had

4

places.“ - , e.5 Tbs
“It must be his legs were protected while the rest of him
was. exposed to the dynamite,” the coroner said.

“That's the way it looks,” agreed the sheriff, wondering

Two for the money, but one had to
go. And the man in the middle was
the individual selected for the role
of substitute victim. Though blasted
to pieces, he was subsequently iden-
tified and the men flanking him.
are being held for his murder. -

‘around the place.”
— The sheriff knew a

_to blame for what happened to Jim.

he rest of the body at almost identical —

eo)

~~.

ut

‘whether there was any particular significance in this.

While he was pondering the severed feet he heard a

_ murmur go up in the crowd. Turning, he saw a grizzled,
_ gray-haired man coming toward him. The sheriff recognized

the new arrival as 68-year-old G. F. Dowdy, owner of- the
shack. : . wf pe 7K, ; poo ;
The man, a’ veteran sHare-cropper, stopped and looked

‘at the wreckage, then at the sheriff..“That’s what. he gets -
for being careless,” he said. -

Hester, taken back, demanded, “Are you talking about

your son?” ee ; yy
“Yep,” Dowdy replied. “He's the only one who'd be

t . t
lot of weatherbeaten, toil-worn
farmers who, inured to disaster inf years of bitter striving
against man’and the elements, accepted calamity are
sophically. Perhaps old Dowdy didn’t want to para

“It’s plain what happened,” Dowdy replied. “Jim was

always throwing gasoline on the stove to get it goin’. That's ~ .

what he probably did tdnight. It backfired, settin’ him on.

e his .
true feelings before a crowd. “What did you mean,” he | -
asked, “about your son being careless?” ae

r

fire and tossin’ him back on the case of dynamite: Then .~

“that was touched off.” co pF a 3 8 Es
He apparently knew the sheriff suspected dynamite for...

he made no bones about it. In fact, he didn’t even wait for

the question poised on Hester's lips; he began to explain it.
“I bought that case of dynamite three months ago, Sher-

iff,” he said, “intendin’ to do some fishin’. But [’never got
around to it.” — on oF ees
Hester scowled. “George,” he scolded, “you know that

kind of fishing is against the law.” ,

Dowdy nodded. “Sure, but most folks around here: do

it now and then. Arrest me if you want to. I guess I'm
A charge of dynamite set off in the Mississippi would
keep a family in fish for a long time. The authorities fought.
the practice because of the danger to shipping, but made
little headway. Possession. of the explosive without a per-
mit was illegal, yet Hester ignored Dowdy’s suggestion that
he make an arrest. — row Np oy
“He turned and looked down at the severed legs. “Those

“your son's?” he asked the father.
Dowdy crouched and examined the pitiful human re: .

mains. “Yep,” he replied. “He had a cern on his little toe.
There it is.” NO Bete le pe AS | : pais
Dowdy was receiving the condolences of his neighbors

eee ‘

?

4

when Hester, after'conferring with the Tallulah police, ~


22.

When J. D. Dowdy was apprehended, he was carrying
on his person a Texas residence hunting license and resi-

dence trapping license, both of which had been purchased

by him in the name of Jack R. Allen, at Tyler, Texas, on 7

October 25, 1948. Also, he was carrying on his person a

paid receipt from the Blackstone Hotel, at Tyler, Texas,

dated October 23, 1948, he having registered at the hotel

on October 23, 1948, under the name of Jack R. Allen,
Bullard, Texas, me checked out on Monday, October 25,
1948... , ae

. ‘

After J. D’ Dowdy was placed in the Tallulah Jail, the
Sheriff’s Office was presented a very plain and detailed
photograph which had been taken of ‘Walter Dorman

. just a short time prior to his murder. The coat and belt
worn by him at that time were most noticeable and out-

standing. An inspection of this photograph immediately

brought to light that J. D. Daway was wearing an identical
be]t as to that one shown in the photograph. Upon being _

questioned as to the possession of the belt, J. D. Dowdy ©
refused to make any statement as to its ownership. How-
ever, this belt was later traced, and upon the trial of the
case, it was shown that ‘the belt had been given to the
murdered man by his brother at Mansford, ‘Louisiana, dur
ing the preceding September.: he belt was positively identi-
fied as belonging to Dorman by an employe of the brother

who had gi

_and by the brother who had given it to him.

23

ven him the belt. his individual had personally

shortened the belt and could identify the stitches and other

characteristics thereof. Likewise was the belt identified

by the murdered man’s former roommate, Luther Stillwell,

\

Learning that. J. D. Dowdy had established a hideout
in Texas, Sheriff C. E. Hester proceeded to Tyler, Texas,
and discovered that J.-D. had actually registered at the
Blackstone. Hotel. His investigation there disclosed that
A ee the while in Tyler, had purchased from the Sportland,
Inc., a large amount of camping equipment, including sleep- |
ing bag, tent, cooking utensils, traps, a rifle, hunting, fish-
ing and cooking equipment. One of the sporting goods

store employees informed the Sheriff that he had actually

taken J. D. Dowdy, together with this equipment punenaned:
‘to an isolated point on the Neches. River, about eight miles
from Bullard, Texas. The Sheriff’s Office, at Tyler, Texas,
had already - relocated this hideout through the sporting
goods store employee and had taken possession of all of
Dowdy’s equipment which he had left behind in his flight
back to the place where he was apprehended. A large
amount of personal clothing belonging to J. D. Dowdy was |
found at the site of the hideout, and at the home of his

sister in Caddo Parish, and it was identified as being the

clothing he had owned prior to the explosion but had moved

out of the demolished building previous to its destruction.


16

ice officer to send a telegram to J. D. Dowdy’s sister inform-

ing her “that J. D. had been blowed to hell.” There he
_ discussed with Mr. W. H. Harvey, the loca] Service officer,
the question as to whom was to receive the $150.00 burial
benefit from the Veterans Administration and as to what
means should be employed in obtaining the benefits due

him under the G. I. insurance carried on the life of J. D.
Dowdy.

Leaving the service Office, he then went to the Madison
Journal Newspaper Office and contacted J. D.’s friend,
_Versie Stillwell. He requested Stillwell to write a letter
for him to the World Insurance Company, notifying the’
company of J. D.’s accidental] death and requesting it to

take action on its policy of insurance covering J. D.
- Dowdy’s life. | |

At this time a controversy arose between Versie Still.
well and George R. Dowdy to the extent that Versie Still-
well contended the policy of insurance with the World
Insurance Company was no longer in effect inasmuch as a
portion of the premium thereon was unpaid. When this”
contention was advanced, George R. Dowdy immediately |
reached into his inside coat pocket and pulled out a letter |
showing the policy was fully paid for until N ovember,. 1948,
_ and giving the full address of the company.

Several times during the day and the following day,
George R. Dowdy contacted Luther Stillwell and requested

17

that he not tell anyone about J. D. Dowdy being seen on

the previous afternoon in the company of Walter N.

Dorman. |

In summarizing the matters pertaining to the insur-
ance 'policies, the attention of the Court is directed to the
fact that all of the’ policies of life insurance, except the
National Service Life Insurance, carried double indemnity
provisions and were in effect less than three months prior
to the date of the murder of Walter Dorman; that is, all
were continued ‘in effect by the payment of monthly or

quarterly premiums and at a very slight cost to the insured.

| On Sunday morning, members of J. D. Dowdy’s’
family came from different sections of the country, viewed
the legs at the funeral home, and one sister was the only
one of that group who would positively identify the legs
as having belonged to the body of J. D. Dowdy. Later
on, during that dey and the following day, numerous rela-
tives of the miirderdd man, Walter Dorman, and a friend
unqualifiedly identified them as being the legs of Walter
N. Dorman. It so happened that Dorman’s relatives were
unusually qualified to identify the legs because of thé fact
that Dorman, during his military service, had contacted a
fungus growth on both feet and had an ingrowing toenail

on the big toe of the right foot, both the fungus growth


“18 pied

and the ingrowing toenail having: been treated by his

sisters on numerous occasions shortly prior to Dorman’s’
death. |

\

Sheriff Hester was in constant touch with George R.
Dowdy Saturday, Sunday, and Monday immediately fol-
lowing the murder and observed the suspicious manner in
which George R. Dowdy had been acting. Especially was
the Sheriff impressed with the lack of concern showed by
George R. Dowdy over the loss of his son and by the fact
that George R. Dowdy had so readily identified the ibera

as belonging to his son without closely examining them

or doing anything more than making a casual examination -

of them from a distance. These suspicious circumstances,

coupled with the apparent and expressed anxiety of George

.. R. Dowdy to have the legs buried without ceremony and ~

delay SO that he could secure a death certificate and leave .

Tallulah for Texas to see a sick relative (On another occa-
sion George R. Dowdy had informed the Sheriff that his
reason for fang to leave Tallulah immediately was the
fact that he wanted to avoid having to pay the heavy hotel
expenses at the Highway Hotel), caused the Sheriff to

| apprehend George R. Dowdy for investigation. Especially

was it deemed imperative that George R. Dowdy be ap-
prehended since it was learned that both Dowdys had seen
Mr. Hugh Montgomery, George R. Dowdy’s employer, the

afternoon of the. murder but neither had mentioned the

19

fact that George R, Dowdy was prepared to leave and was
leaving Tallulah the following morning. Also, the Sheriff

had received reports, in a round about way, that a-large

~ amount of insurance had been obtained by J. D. Dowdy,

with George R. Dowdy as beneficiary. On Monday after-

noon, October 25, George R. Dowdy was apprehended and ,
placed in the parish jail at Tallulah. A search was then
made of his personal clothing and effects, which were

found packed in suitcases ready for travel in his hotel room

‘and in his daughter’s automobile. In searching his effects,

an envelope was found containing the World Insurance
Doley Pan American Life’ Insurance Policy, two certified
copies of J. D. Dowdy’s United States Army Discharge .
papers, and —_ funeral policies on J. D. Dowdy and three |

on George R. Dowdy. In George R. Dowdy’s purse were

"found insurance premium receipts and cancelled checks

for all premiums paid since June 14 on all insurance policies
purchased by J. D. Dowdy. One money order receipt, pay-
able to Veterans Administration for premium due on his
‘service life insurance,: was dated the afternoon of the
murder. A large amount of laundry and bed clothing was
found in George R.. Dowdy’s room at the Highway Hotel or
in his daughter’s car parked in front of the hotel. The en-
tire search of George R. Dowdy’s room, suitcases and his

|
daughter’s automobile was done with full approval, consent _

20,

and supervision of George R. Dowdy’s daughter, Mrs.
Richardson.

Upon finding all of these papers, bed clothing, laundry
and receipts, and in view of all the other facts and circum-

stances surrounding the death of Walter N. Dorman, formal

charges were filed on George R. Dowdy, and he was duly

incarcerated in the parish jail.

Firmly convinced beyond all reasonable doubt that
| Walter Dorman had been murdered by J. D. Dowdy as a
result of a conspiracy with George R. Dowdy to defraud
the insurers of J. D. Dowdy, the Sheriff’s Office, Madison
Parish, sent out a general pick up order for the appréhen-
sion of J. D. Dowdy. On the afternoon of October els dy
D. Dowdy was apprehended by Texas and Louisiana officers
| near the Louisiana border. At the time of his apprehen-
sion, J. D. Dowdy denied his identity, claiming that he was
Jack R. Allen. When he was apprehended, J. D. Dowdy at-
tempted to deceive the officers into believing that he was an
epileptic by biting his tongue and going into a simulated fit.
On the way to the Caddo Parish Jail i in Shreveport and upon
being confronted with his own pictures, he then admitted

to the officers that he was J. D. Dowdy. He was initially

incarcerated in the Caddo Parish Jail, where he remained —

until he was returned to Madison Parish.

On November 1, J. D. Dowdy ‘was brought by auto-
mobile from Shreveport to Tallulah. On that trip and while

21

between Shreveport and Monroe, he voluntarily and without

any duress, promises or threats, whatsoever, made a state-

ment to the officers accompanying him to the effect that

-he and Walter Dorman had gone to his home on the night

of the Explosion and after arriving had decided to cook
pork chops. However, J. D. Dowdy stated that he and
Dorman: had prepared several bundles of dynamite to be
used in their next day’s fishing operations prior to the |

time any attempt was made to cook the pork chops. The

- statement further set forth that while Dorman was in the

process of cooking, he, J. D. Dowdy, stepped outside to
~iieve himself and at the time the explosion occurred, he
was in a squatting position about fifteen yards from the
house; that he remained at the scene of the explosion, for
at least thirty finutes but, becoming frightened, fled to
Highway 65, hitch hiked a ride to Tallulah and from there
went to Delhi, where he boarded a bus to Tyler, Texas.
This same statement was later given by J. D. Dowdy to
one A. D. Trecost, a Pinkerton detective, in the presence
of Sheriff Hester and the parish jailer. In connection with
this statement, it is pointed out that on the trial of this
case a number of witnesses testified that they arrived at
he scene of the explosion within five minutes and made a

detailed search of the entire surroundings, but that J. D.

Dowdy was not seen there.


ior, Dascanio
king up and
off on foot.
plain-clothes
were behind

he end of the
ill’s property,
cht ahead, he
the river and
t. Bailey, hur-
saw him drop
it through the
he other side,”
looks as though
.t, but he’s try-
ng out first.”
| again, moving
all, At the end
he tracks, hesi-
, vaulted over a
in the mill-yard!
eet behind, saw
leg; he gathered
ging at his own

ald leap or Das-

what he held 4
4 out of the F

i leveled re-
aid Fonow’s

ji’ you?” he de-
after me, for? I
a worker.”
sailey, “and what
this?” and with a
wrenched at Das-
forth—the gun, at
zolly, look here,
d the side of Das-
whole right pocket
ath had been cut
with a canvas hol-
an had rested; just
slit in the overalls
ng the gun to be
at the same time
ence beneath two.
cloth.
rugged his shoulders
vever, as they led
say nothin’,” he told
sverything. “If I talk
ik, I live. I don’t say

that. He kept to it
ent trial, when three
‘fied him as the man
, across the yard after
“was slain; he kept to
4 Cowles mounted the
hy his ballistic micro-
iexorable scientific ac-
hat the bullets which
vn three mill workers
had come from
or. He kept to it
ury returned from its
sand in the verdict of
nded forever the reign
sf the moonlight.

ss a acre

American Detective

Swamp Rat. :

(Continued from page 51)

Gilmore’s eyebrows shot up another ~

inch. He spoke swiftly. “Who said any-
thing about weights, Doctor? How did
you know there were weights on the
body?”

The glance with which Dr. Dreher
favored him was heavy with scorn and
contempt. He snorted, “Nothing but
weights and good heavy ones at that,
biting into wet flesh, could have made
those bruises on Jim’s wrists and ankles.”

The sudden light faded from Gilmore’s
eyes. He was a trifle confused. After all,
Doctor Dreher was one of the most re-
spected and influential members of the
community. To suspect him of murder
was rank folly.

“I’m sorry, Doctor,” he said sincerely.
“I apologize. You're right, of course,
about the contusions on the body.”

Casually he hooked his arm under
Dreher’s and led him into.the inner office.
Doctor Dreher stiffened as he recognized
Mrs. LeBoeuf, seated before the desk.
When she looked at him he noted that
her eyes were red from weeping.

“Ada,” he said, “this is terrible.”

Mrs. LeBoeuf dabbed at her eyes with
her handkerchief. She looked appealingly
at Dr. Dreher, whimpered. “I’ve told
them. I’m sorry, but I had to. I couldn’t
keep that terrible secret with me any
longer. You’ve got to tell them—tell
them the truth. Tell them that Jim
Beadle did it.”

Twin spots of color flamed to Doctor
Dreher’s cheeks. But his chin came up as
he turned to confront the sheriff and the
Assistant District Attorney. “Yes,” he
said quietly. “‘Jim Beadle did it.”

Gilmore said nothing for a long min-
ute. From speculative eyes he studied the
two. Could it be possible, he mused, that
these two had conspired to murder Jim
LeBoeuf? The thought was beyond be-
lief. There was absolutely no motive. At
least, none that he knew of, for such a
heinous crime. He dismissed he idea, laid
a sympathizing hand on the doctor’s
shoulder. ‘Don’t misunderstand me,
Doctor. I’m not accusing you or Mrs.
LeBoeuf of complicity in this 2errible
affair. But I do believe that you are try-
ing to shield someone. You will appre-
ciate that under the Circumstances, that
is a foolish course to take. Speak plainly
and I will help you both.”

With a weary shrug Doctor Dreher
settled himself more comfortably in his
chair. He nodded. “You're right, Gil-
more. I’ll tell you just what happened.”

He began his recitation. It was sincere,
straight-forward, plausible. A week be-
fore, while rowing one night on Poulard
Lake, he had come upon two other boats.
Jim Beadle was in one—Mr. and Mrs.
LeBoeuf in the other. Voices were raised

in anger. The two men were quarrelling.

Doctor had started to row over to
them, when he heard two shots. Look-
ing up quickly he saw Jim LeBoeuf fall
forward in his boat. Beadle started to
row away. But the doctor, pretending
that he had a gun, forced him to stop.

When Dreher rowed up to the scene
of the tragedy, LeBoeuf was dead. And
on. asking Beadle why he had killed him,
the man answered that LeBoeuf had
been hounding him for an old debt; had
threatened to put him in jail.

“He begged me to help him for the
sake of his family. He hadn’t really
meant to kill Jim.

* “How can I help you?’ I said. “You’ve
killed.a man. The law will have to take
its course.’

“And it was then that Mrs. LeBoeuf
told me that Jim had threatened Beadle.”

The doctor shrugged. “You under-
stand how it was. My mission in this
world is to save lives—not take them.
Jim was dead. There was nothing we
could do for him. And for the sake of
Beadle’s children, I decided to save him
from the gallows. He told me that he’d
get rid of the body. He said he knew how
to rip it open so it wouldn’t float, because
he had killed a man the same way before
and the body had never been discovered.

“That’s the story, gentlemen. The
whole story—and the whole truth,”

concluded Doctor Dreher. “I was fool-

ish, of course, to try to conceal it.”

Doctor Dreher was visibly relieved
after his confession. Mrs, LeBoeuf also
grew more calm, now that she had been
unburdened of her terrible secret.

Gilmore smiled at them sympatheti-
cally, apologized that under the circum-
stances they would have to remain at
the parish prison at Franklin over night,
until they had arrested Beadle.

This matter attended to, Sheriff Pecot
started once more for the dismal low-
lands of Poulard Lake. He knew Jim
Beadle well, knew him for a lazy, ne’er-
do-well swamp rat. But murder? Pecot
didn’t know. However, he took no
chances.

An hour later, 2s he and two deputies
stepped out of his automobile, he slipped
his revolver into the side pocket of his
coat. Swiftly they moved down a narrow
path that led to a ramshackle cabin on
the edge of Poulard Lake.

It was a dilapidated, unpainted sham-
bles. A rotting porch clung to the road
side of the cabin and swamp trees all but
hid it from the eye of the passerby.

The sun had just set when Sheriff Pecot
knocked on the front door. His summons
was answered by a washed-out, tired-
looking woman in a cheap calico dress.

A haunting fear came into her eyes as

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84
she recognized the sheriff. She started to
close the door. Pecot was in the act of
jamming his foot between it and the
jamb, when he heard a rear door slam.
He vaulted off the porch, swiftly circled
-the cabin into the back yard.

A gaunt and ragged figure, that he
recognized as Jim Beadle, was running
toward the heavy undergrowth that sur-
rounded the cabin. Pecot drew his re-
volver.

“Stop, Beadle!” he called. “Or Pll drop

you—sure!”

Beadle stopped, turned, then slouched
back toward the three officers. His face
was a sallow gray—fear lurked in his
shifty eyes. “What you want me for,
Mr. Pecot?” he asked sullenly.

“We just want you to tell us about
this Jim LeBoeuf business,” said Pecot
kindly.

“] don’t know nothing.”

The kindness went out of Pecot’s
voice. “No? Doctor Dreher says you
killed Jim LeBoeuf.”

The simple statement had a dynamic
effect on Beadle. Hate crowded the fear
from his eyes. ““He said that, did he? All
right, Sheriff, I'll talk. And I'll talk
plenty.” :

And on the long ride back to Franklin,
Beadle did talk. In substance, his story
was this:

For a number of years he had been em-
ployed by Doctor Dreher at odd jobs.
Ten days before, the physician had called
him into his office, had told him that
he had another job for him which would
pay very well. But the Doctor had de-
manded absolute secrecy. From Dr.
Dreher’s story, he was having trouble
with Jim LeBoeuf and had arranged to
‘meet him on Poulard Lake for a final dis-
position of the matter. He had asked
Beadle to accompany him in the role of
protector.

To this simple proposition Beadle had
agreed readily enough. On July first Dr.
Dreher gave him orders to meet him at
the edge of the backwaters just south of
the Negro schoolhouse, north of Morgan
City.

Beadle rowed to the appointed spot in
has catamaran.

About eight P. M. the doctor appeared.
He was pale and excited.

“You armed?” he asked.

“For what?” ‘

“He might make’trouble.”

Beadle said nothing. Dr. Dreher then
got into his boat and was rowed over
to the railroad, a long, narrow embank-
ment above the flood waters. Here the
doctor got out and after looking about
&% moment returned to the boat, order-
ing Beadle to row over to the school
house.

Beadle started the long pull and half-
way there, heard the faint slap of oars

south. A moment later a flat boat came

against the water. It came from the .

. into view through a fringe of trees and

American Detective

rushes. Mrs. LeBoeuf was. in the boat—
alone. On seeing this Doctor Dreher had
sworn.

But a moment later the bow of a sec-
ond boat nosed’ through the rim of the
undergrowth, in the wake of the first.
And in that second boat, pulling at the
oars, was Jim LeBoeuf.

Beadle had seen’Dr. Dreher’s hand go
to his hip. “Pull over to Jim’s boat,”
ordered the physician.

Still not realizing the doctor’s inten-
tion, Beadle turned the skiff and headed
for LeBoeuf’s boat. At about the same
time, Mrs. LeBoeuf swung her boat to-
wards the edge of the clearing and rested
or the oars.

Swiftly Bgadle’s boat bore down on the
second craft. Suddenly LeBoeuf became
aware of his danger, pulled about and
confronted Dr. Dreher. The physician
spoke. “That you, Jim?”

Sudden fear was in LeBoeuf’s voice as
he answered. “Yes. Good God, Doctor—
what’s the matter? What are you going
to do?” ;

A pistol was in Dr. Dreher’s hand. As
the two boats touched he fired point-

blank at LeBoeuf. LeBoeuf clutched at
his heart, crumpled forward slowly. The
doctor fired again: And the murdered
man pitched into the bottom of the boat.

Mrs. LeBoeuf rowed quickly over, as
Dr. Dreher climbed into the boat con-
taining his victim. “Doctor—is he . . .?”
she called anxiously.

“Yes, You better get out,” he an-
swered. ;

She swung her boat about and headed
hurriedly toward Morgan City.

Terrified, Beadle attempted to flee.
But Dr. Dreher summoned him abriiptly
back. “You're in this,” he told the quak-
ing man. “You'll stay and help me—or

Yl see that you hang for this murder.”

Beadle dared not go. Together they
rowed toward the railroad. On the cin-
der roadbed they stripped the clothes
from LeBoeuf’s body. Dr. Dreher drew

_a long knife, made great gashes in the
body. The muddy flood waters swept up
over the roadbed, washed away the crim-
son stains of the crime.

They found four angle irons and some
wire along the tracks, bound and
weighted the body. Then they rowed
once more across the waters with their
grim burden, consigned it to the brack-
ish waters,

They parted at the schoolhouse. Beadle
had yet to leave LeBoeuf’s boat in the
marshes, then destroy the man’s cloth-
ing.’ The doctor gave him a last, ominous

warning. He was to keep the dark and

terrible secret. One word from him and
he, Dreher, would see that Beadle went
to the gallows. For against the word of
Dr. Dreher and Mrs. LeBoeuf, who would
believe the unsupported word of a swamp
rat! .
That was Beadle’s shocking’ story and
though Gilmore and Sheriff Pecot cross

examined him for hours, they were un-

able to break it down in any essential de-
tail.” -
When the session was over, Pecot was
sure of but one thing. Jim LeBoeuf was
dcad—had been murdered.

With Beadle locked up in the same jail
that held Dr. Dreher and Mrs. LeBoeuf,
Sheriff Pecot started another line of in- -
vestigation. And it wasn’t long before
he unearthed a series of ugly rumors
concerning an illicit romance between
the doctor and the wife of. the murdered
man.

But Pecot well knew that in a case of
murder, malicious tongues took a fiend-
ish delight in wagging. Dreher and Mrs.
LeBoeuf were respected by the entire
community. It seemed impossible that
they could have committed such a butch-
ery.

Dr. Dreher was fifty-five years old,
long established, trusted, wealthy; Mrs.
LeBoeuf a home-loving, motherly soul.
‘And in contrast to them stood Beadle.
Beadle the marsh rat—shifty, unreliable.
True, the law had nothing definite
against him. But he had been suspected
often, however, of various transgressions.

- After all, he was the logical murderer.
And the assertion of Dr. Dreher that his
mission in this world was the saving of
lives, not their destruction, explained his
suspicious actions.

For long hours Sheriff Pecot discussed
the case with Gilmore. For still longer
hours they questioned Beadle, cross-ex-
amined him relentlessly. But his story
was unshakable.

Pecot and Gilmore were confronted
with a simple proposition. Someone was
lying—either Beadle, or Dr. Dreher and
the wife of the murdered man. At Pecot’s
suggestion they confronted the doctor
and Mrs. LeBoeuf with the swamp rat’s
story, and received in return still an-

ther story; or two more, to be exact.

According to Mrs. LeBoeuf, she had
arranged to meet Dr. Dreher on Poulard
Lake near the schoolhouse that night.
She was to bring her husband with her.
Jim LeBoeuf had suspected her and the
doctor for some time and she wanted to
prove to him that the malicious gossip
about her was untrue. However, she ad-

mitted that she had not told her hus-
band the reason for the nocturnal boat
ride. She had not had a chance when Dr.
Dreher rowed up in another boat.

The doctor called out to them: “That
‘you, Jim?” ae

Her husband had replied: “What are
you doing here, you dirty ——!”

"And then, without warning, he fired at

the doctor. There were two more pistol

shots and LeBoeuf pitched over in the
boat, dead. That was all. Mrs. LeBoeuf
didn’t know what happened after that.
The doctor’s story was identically the
same, save in one major detail. It was
his contention that it was Beadle who
had done the shooting—that the swamp

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can’t be Jim’s,”
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e just then was
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Swamp Ral 51

However, Dr. Dreher gvas not at home when the
Sheriff arrived. He had ‘gone to his office. Pecot fol-

lowed him there.

Dr. Dreher greeted him affably enough. Pecot got to

the point of his visit immediately.

“We've got a body down to the mortuary, Doctor,”
he began, “we'd like you to examine.”

“Surely. Whose?”

“We think it’s Jim LeBoeuf!”

Dr. Dreher paled. “Jim LeBoeut-—dead?’:

“Murdered!” answered Pecot.

Doctor Dreher was visibly upset. “Man!” he ex-
claimed. “I’ve known Jim LeBoeuf for twenty-five
years and more. Why would anyone want to murder
him?”

Pecot shrugged. ““That’s what we all want to know. I
thought maybe you might help us. And besides, I want
you to help identify the body. You’ve had a wide ex-
perience in these kind of cases. There’s some peculiar
scars on Jim’s body. I’d like to get your professional
opinion on them.”

The doctor’s hand clenched and unclenched. “It’s
terrible,” he muttered. “J can’t understand it. Of course
T’ll do all that I can.”

They left the doctor’s office a few moments later, re-
paired immediately to the mor-

‘this has shaken me—best friend I had in the world.”

He talked on hurriedly, spoke of personal intimacies
between him and the dead man as if he were trying to
forget the awful business before him. He bent over the
body again and with skilled fingers examined the

‘wounds minutely, peered into the gaping mouth. He

looked up after a few minutes, the coldly efficient
medical man once more.

“A crude job, this,” he said shortly. “Jim was man-
gled by a man who was seeking insane revenge. Not
satisfied with shooting him twice, he slashed him to
ribbons for pure wickedness. A fiend.”

The eyebrows of Gilmore elevated. ““That’s strange,”
he said. “The Doc here”—indicating the young exam-
ining physician—“advanced the theory that those
slashes were made to open the body so no gas would

form. And with that I would say that Jim’s body was.

slashed so it wouldn’t rise to the surface of Poulard
Lake.”
“Fiddlesticks,” caclalacel Doctor Dreher. “If that
were the case, why did the murderer weight the body?”
(Continued on page 83)

Justice takes its toll—the body of the guilty party being
taken from the Franklyn, Louisiana, jail after the hanging.

tuary. At the time of their ar- ' TET
rival, Mrs. LeBoeuf was in the in- ee
ner office, giving Mr. Gilmore the
details of her quarrel with her
husband. Doctor Dreher did not
know that she was there. Nor did
she witness his arrival.

Dr. Dreher, well familiar with
his surroundings, followed Pecot
into the morgue proper. With as-
surance he stepped over to the
cold slab, threw back the gray
shroud, looked long and search-
ingly into the dead face of the
man.

He turned away, nodded grim-
ly. “It’s Jim, all right,” he said in
a hoarse voice. “But you’d hardly
recognize him.”

He was a little pale,. visibly
shocked. He had been more than
a physician to Jim LeBoeuf.

He turned abruptly away from
the body, was met by Gilmére
who had just entered the room.

“Just a minute, Doctor,’’ said
the Assistant District Attorney.
“J wish you’d: look over those
gashes in the body—tell us what
you make of them.”

With 4 visible effort, Doctor
Dreher gained control of his
shaken nerves. “Of. course,” he
muttered. “Seeing poor Jim like

Louisiana takes a life for a life.
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condemned person.


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Mrs. Ada LeBoeuf, shown in courtroom where she was
brought on her sickbed to testify in the murder trial.

anything from Jim?”

Mrs. LeBoeuf looked at him nervously fora moment,
then shifted her eyes to the walls, to the floor. She sat
abruptly in a large chair.

“Why, no—what do you mean—wasn’t he at his
office?”

Pecot frowned slightly. ‘““They told me at the office
that you had called, saying he was ill—that he hadn’t
been there for a week.”

Mrs. LeBoeuf bit her lip. “Well, yes—maybe I did
tell them that. He has been ill—I mean, he isn’t
here... 2.” :

““Where is he?”

““Why—why—he went away.”

“Why?”

50 .

Dramatic courtroom scene shows ‘
m wife of slain man aiding state to
‘solve this murder mystery.

Her hands plucked nervously at
her dress, then.her chin came up. “It
was a personal matter—between
Jim and myself.”

Pecot nodded sympathetically.
“Maybe you better tell me about
it,” he suggested kindly. “I’m your
friend, Mrs. LeBoeuf—and Jim’s.”

With an effort she composed her-
self. Haltingly, she told the sheriff
of the quarrel she had had with her
husband. That at the height of it,
he had left the house and not re-
turned. She had been living in a
state of miserable anxiety since his
departure—nervous, upset, un-
strung.

When she had concluded, Pecot
castigated himself for the suspi-
cions he had entertained against
her. He understood now, her pe-
culiar actions. As gently as pos-
sible, he told her of the body at the
morgue.

Mrs. LeBoeuf was on the point of
fainting. “It—it can’t be Jim’s,”
she moaned. “Are you sure?”

Pecot shook his head. ‘No; but
the false teeth have been identified
as his. You better come down to
the mortuary with me, Mrs. Le-
Boeuf. You’ve got to be brave!”

Mrs. LeBoeuf was brave. By the
time she and the sheriff had reached
the mortuary, she had regained her
composure. Supported under one
arm by the Sheriff, she entered the
morgue room, stopped, hesitated,
swayed a moment by the gray slab
upon which lay the body, covered
by a white, oiled sheet.

An attendant pulled back that
sheet. Mrs. LeBoeuf clutched at Pecot’s arm—the color
drained from her face—as she identified the dead man
as her husband.

Sheriff Pecot was still trying to arrive at a motive for
the brutal murder of James LeBoeuf, as once more he
headed his car for the residential section of Morgan City.
A half hour after Mrs. LeBoeuf had identified the body
of her husband, he turned into the tree lined driveway
that led to the mansion of Dr. Thomas E. Dreher. Dr.
Dreher was one of the leading physicians of the city, a
man of wealth, influence and social position.

But what interested Sheriff Pecot more just then was
the fact that Dr. Dreher had been family physician to
the LeBoeufs for the past twenty-five years. Surely, if
anyone knew the motive for the crime, it was he. In
addition to this, Dr. Dreher had rendered invaluable
aid to the District Attorney’s office on more than one
¢riminal case.

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aides, nosing around to pick up what-
ever stray bits of gossip they could, ran
head-on into the name of Jim Beadle as
a suspect in the killing.

On July 3rd, about two days after the
murder had been committed, according
to Dr. Horton’s autopsy, Beadle, a
dour but cannily competent trapper of
French Acadian descent, had attempted
to sell a practically brand new 20-gauge
Winchester double-barrel shotgun for
fifteen dollars to a man in a: Morgan City
general store.

The gun was worth at least five times
that amount. Since Beadle had been cold
sober at the time he offered the gun for
sale, and since his reputation as a hard
trader was well established in the region,
the would-be purchaser had naturally
eyed the deal with suspicion and had
turned down the tempting proposition.

No man who lived by his rifle as
Beadle did would attempt to sell such
an excellent weapon for such a ridicu-
lous price unless something was defi-
nitely wrong.

When the man in the general store
learned that Le Boeuf had been mur-
dered with a double-barrel shotgun, he
promptly relayed his story about Jim
Beadle to police authorities. It proved
to be the first real break they had.

Eagerly, the lead was followed up and
the more the sleuths learned, the more
interested they became. Several months
before the shooting, they discovered, Le
Boeuf had visited Beadle’s camp on Lake
Palourde to borrow the trapper’s

pirogue. Beadle and Le Boeuf had been
hunting companions for years. As it hap-

pened, Beadle was absent from camp
when Le Boeuf showed up, so the latter
simply helped himself to the boat, in-
tending to return it long before his
friend should miss it.

But he didn’t return it that day. Or
the next. He had anchored the pirogue
about a mile away from camp but had
neglected to tell this to the trapper.
Beadle had a quick temper. He insisted
that Le Boeuf had stolen the boat and
he promised to shoot Le Boeuf down in
cold blood the very next time they
chanced to meet.

Le Boeuf heard of the threat but ig-
nored it, intending one day soon to go
down to Beadle’s camp with a couple of
quarts of whiskey, in order to straighten
the thing out.

But there was no information forth-
coming to indicate that the reconcilia-
tion. had ever taken place. On the con-
trary, Beadle had never ceased his bitter
denunciation of “that thief, Le Boeuf.”

On July Ist, the officially accepted
murder date, Jim Beadle had told
friends he was leaving on an up-country
trapping trip and had packed his traps
and rifles and gear. But he had not left
his cabin! Fellow trappers had observed
him sneaking around the bayou, obvious-

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One of these was James Beadle. She never worked, but she
always appeared to have enough cash to pay her bills. Perhaps
she had come upon the hidden fortune her husband was reputed
to have accumulated.

She still was an attractive girl. Her body was slim, her figure

good. Her face was pretty, although there was a certain hardness
about it.

She had few friends among the bayou people and none in
Morgan City. The Morgan City folk considered her eccentric
and left her alone, as they did all the bayou people.

Then, in December, 1926, Ada Le Bouef began to suffer a
series of sick headaches, a development destined to unsettle the
even lives of both the Morgan City and the bayou folks.

Ada’s husband, James Le Bouef, a descendant of the French
Acadians who had been exiled to Louisiana two centuries before,
was perhaps the most successful man in Morgan City. He was
superintendent of the Morgan City Light and Power Company, a
utility which owned subsidiary establishments all across the
state.

Le Bouef, a handsome, powerful man, accustomed to
authority, had married Ada 25 years before. They had five attrac-
tive children of various ages. Ada now was approaching 50, a
chronological fact not at all visible to the naked eye. She was ex-
tremely good-looking, tall and of graceful bearing. Her eyes
were dark and her lips full. She spoke softly, with a caressing
southem drawl. ;

It was a week before Christmas when Ada Le Bouef suffered
her first attack of migraine. It struck as she sat at the breakfast
table with her husband. It was almost 9 in the morning and he
gulped his coffee with one eye on the ormolu clock which ticked
on the mantelpiece.

Ada uttered a little gasp, blinked her eyes and put her hands
to her ternples.

Jim Le Bouef put down his cup. “What's the matter, honey?”

“A headache. I’ve suddenly got a terrible sick headache. It
hurts very badly.”

Jim Le Bouef expressed sympathy. He offered to stay home
from the office and minister to his wife.

This suggestion she emphatically turned down. “I don’t need
you. I'll call Tom Dreher. He'll give me something to stop it,” she
said. ;

Dr. Thomas E. Dreher, a medical graduate of Tulane Univer-
sity, had come to Morgan City, where he had set up his practice,
more than 20 years before. He had married, raised two girls anda
boy and had prospered. Both the doctor and his wife, prominent
in local society, were intimate friends of the Le Bouefs.

Jim Le Bouef rose from the table. “Sure,” he said. “Tom'll
give you some pills to stop it. I'll call him up as soon asI get to the
office.”

Ada Le Bouef, her head still in her hands, uttered a faint groan
which her husband took to be an expression of mingled pain and
assent.

He said, “Goodbye, then. And I hope you'll feel better.”

That evening, Le Bouef was pleased to find that his wife's
headache had vanished.

“Tom Dreher gave mea prescription,” she said, “and it work-
ed like magic. I’ve felt fine all day.”

But as the weeks went by, it became evident that the cure was
not permanent. Ada Le Bouef underwent several painful attacks
of migraine. Sometimes they occurred when her husband wasn’t
at home, either during the day, when he was at the office, or at
night on occasions when he was out of town on power company
business.

This was something which James Le Bouef never noticed. It

32

later became apparent that someone else did.

Now Jim Le Bouef was fond not only of his wife and ch
He also was fond of the dark waters of the bayou. Asad
had played on the swampy banks of Lake Palourde anés
black, mysterious water exercised a strong fascination fork

Whenever it was possible he ignored his car and traveled
pirogue. A pirogue, the principal means of transportation fe
bayou folk, is a heavy affair, shaped like an elongys
symmetrical leaf and hewn from the trunk of a single tree by
clumsy, difficult to maneuver, even when handled by an expe!
Jim Le Bouef liked nothing better than to set out throug
bayou in a hired pirogue. :

Spring comes early in the Bayou Teche country and late
February afternoon, when the air was languourous, the sunwey
and the butterflies trying their fragile wings, Jim Le Bouefs
along the bank of Lake Palourde. He followed a narrow
among the thick tree trunks until he came to the shanty of}
beadle.

- In the past Le Bouef often had hired on e of Beadle's pi
for a trip through the darkness of the bayou. Now he knocke!
the door of the shack, expecting to do so again. There ws
answer. Beadle apparently wasn’t at home. eae

Le Bouef walked down to the shore where two of Beade-
pirogues were pulled up on the bank, their oars shipped &
shoved one of them into the still water and hopped in. Afted_
he was a regular customer. He could pay Beadle for the bat
hire when he returned. It never occurred to him that therew
anything irregular in his action. z

Two hours later, Le Boeuf returned to Beadle’s shanty &
sprang from the pirogue and pulled the boat up on shore &
turned and faced the shack. “Jim,” he yelled. “Jim Beadle#
you there?” *

Jim Beadle was there. The door of the cabin opened
Beadle emerged. He was carrying a shotgun, its black mest
aimed at Le Bouef's heart. ;

“Put that gun down,” said Le Bouef. “It might go off” {

“Tt will go off,” Beadle said loudly, “unless you can gf

damned good explanation of why you took my pirogue with
permission.” 3
Le Bouef shrugged in surprise. “Why, you weren't here,®
So I just took it. I figured I'd pay you for its use when I got but
What's wrong with that? Tell me what I owe you for it” ©
Beadle came closer. He did not lower the gun. Le Bouef ot
see that the trapper’s eyes were bloodshot, his face unshz®
There was a powerul, sour odor of bad whiskey on his breathi
he held the shotgun with a steady hand.
“If anyone touches my property without permission,” Bee”
said, “I’ll kill them.” ;
“You're drunk,” Le Bouef said. “Put down that gun. Ind
ing to pay you. I’ve done no harm.” :
Beadle squinted along the gun barrel. He said, “It ant
matter of doing harm. It’s a matter of respecting property.*
because you're careless with yours, you can’t make free bal
mine.” : .
“You're talking like a fool. And what do you mean by sat
I'm careless with my property?” s
“I'm talking about your wife,” Beadle retorted. “If ye"
careless about her doings, I don’t expect you'd be careful wh
pirogue you take. I'll let it go this time. But touch my stuff
and I swear I'll kill you. Now, get off my land.” a
“Wait a minute. What do you mean about my wife?” ~_
But Jim Beadle had dropped that subject. “Get,” he
again. “Get off my land while you're still alive.” alt
Le Bouef’s first inclination was to dismiss the matter f j

F Aeadach

ne ¥ ?

Bride Ada Le Boeuf suddenly began to suffer mysterious headaches, aggravated by persistent rumors of scandal...

wind. If Beadle had intended to hint that Ada had been un-
tathful to her marriage vows—well, that was unthinkable. Even
# the utterly impossible had somehow happened, how would an
‘georant swamp rat like Beadle know it?

Le Bouef made no’ mention of the affair to his wife. The
folowing morning he told his colleagues at the power company
w his run-in with Beadle and the trapper’s threat to kill him. He
4 vot repeat Beadle’s remark concerning Ada.

He did not forget it, either. But not for lack of trying. It gnaw-
ed at his mind. Finally he paid a visit to Philomena Brown. Mrs.

was a woman who had known Ada Le Bouef almost all of
her life. They were intimate friends. :

Le Bouef put his problem in Philomena Brown’s lap. He told
ber of the clash with Beadle and, on this occasion, he omitted no
ees. “It's probably nonsense,” he said, “but I can’t get Beadle’s
temark out of my mind. I’m really worried. Is there anything you
tan tell me?”

Mrs. Brown looked grave. “Jim,” she said, “I’ve heard some
fsip about Ada lately. But, of course, it’s a lie. And I’ve been
éemg my best to put a stop to it.”

“But who's the man?” Le Bouef asked.

“There isn’t any man, naturally. It’s only malicious small-town
®asip. Some of these women are saying that Tom Dreher is
"sting your house too often.”

Le Bouef was stunned. “But Adam’s been having migraine

hes,” he said. “Tom’s treating her. Besides, he’s the best
I have in all Morgan City.”

Mrs. Brown nodded. “I know. But you can’t stop gossip. It’s
Weious and wicked.”

Le Bouef paced the floor thoughtfully.

“Look, he said at last, “I don’t want to talk to Ada about this,
bet I think she should know. Will you mention it? Ask her to be

et. Warn her of what's being said.”

This Philomena brown agreed to do.

r Ada Le Bouef took the matter lightly. She said, “Of course,

em's been here when Jim was away. He's been treating my
es. Tom and I have grown children. This gossip is the
9 thing I ve ver heard. I’m just going to ignore it complete-

le Mrs. Brown duly reported this conversation to Jim Le Bouef.
» considering that the affair now was out in the open,

ike of it to Ada.
~ _ tou know,” he said, “these headaches of yours seem quite
meas, [ think I'll get a specialist up from New Orleans. If he can
you, Tom Dreher won't have to make so many calls. Maybe

“* €an stop gossip and headache at the same time.”

wv
y

Bl ya a a S
yay ; tats aay oe

A month went by, Jim Le Bouef attended to his business. Mrs.
Le Bouef suffered from headaches. And Dr. Dreher attended
her. Morgan City was serene as always. Then one hot morning Le
Bouef received a telephone call in his office. M7rs. Thomas
Dreher was on the other end of the wire.”

“Jim,” she said urgently, “can you come over to Tom’s office
right away?”

It was inconvenient, but the woman sounded distressed. Le
Bouef left his desk and drove to the doctor’s office.

Dr. Dreher was sitting at his desk, an expression of grave con-
cern on his face. Mrs. Dreher was standing by the window,
holding a sheet of yellow paper in her hand. As she turned to
greet Le Bouef, he noticed that she had been crying.

She said, “Jim, read this!” She thrust the sheet of paper into his
hand. It was lined :paper which had been torn from a pad. The
handwriting was a childish scrawl. The message was unsigned.

It read: “Two nights ago there was a lady and a man in that
empty shack in the bayou. One of them was Ada Le Bouef. One
of them was your husband. What kind of treatments is he giving
her out there?”

Jim Le Bouef put the note down on the desk. There was a
blind and bitter rage within him. “Damn then!” he said. “So
they're at it again.” F

Mrs. Dreher snapped, “Again? You mean this happened
before?”

“Nothing has happened,” Dr. Dreher said patiently. “I’ve told
you that before.”

“He’s right,” Le Bouef agreed. “Don’t get yourself upset.
Nothing has happened except this gossip. We've got to stop it.”

Mrs. Dreher said miserably, “There’s nothing in it, Jim?
You're sure?” ;

“Of course not,” Le Bouef declared. “If there were, do you
think I'd be taking it so calmly? If it was true, I swear I'd kill Tom,
even though he’s my best friend.”

Mrs. Dreher smiled at that. “The letter upset me so,” she sigh-
ed. “I suppose I was silly. Of course, it can’t be true.”

Dreher cleared his throat. “Jim, I think you'd better get adoc- .

tor in from Franklin to look after Ada. I don’t want you folks up-
set. I don’t want my wife upset. And I can’t afford this sort of
thing. It’s bad for my practice and I’ve a family to support. I
won't visit Ada any more.”

Both Le Bouef and Mrs. Dreher thought this a foolish course
to take. They argued that, as a physician, Dreher was obligated to
go where he was called. It was absurd that he shoud lose a patient
and that Mrs. Le Bouef lose a good doctor, just because of these
malicious rumors.

33

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ly anxious to remain out of sight.

Motive, means, opportunity; the un-
holy trinity of premeditated murder.
Added to this substantial argument for
Beadle’s guilt were his open threats to
kill his one-time friend. And his suspi-
cious attempt to sell a new, valuable
Winchester shotgun for the crazy. price
of fifteen dollars.

Pecot lost no time in ordering the im-
mediate arrest of Jim Beadle. But it was
soon discovered that the trapper’s camp
was stripped and empty and Beadle him-
self had apparently vanished into the
vast and deadly interior of Bayou Teche,
where a swamp man like Beadle, with a
need to hide, could out-hide and out-
smart his hunters for a discouragingly
long time.

Overnight, Morgan City began to buzz
with the exciting turn of events that had

‘rendered Beadle a red-hot murder sus-

pect and the target of an intensive man-
hunt. And it was while the search was at
its height that Ada Le Boeuf walked
calmly into Sheriff Pecot’s office and ad-
mitted she hadn’t told him the truth
originally about her husband.

“Jim didn’t go to Lafayette,” she con-
fessed unhappily. “On that terrible night
of July first, he and I set out in separate
canoes for my cousin’s place at Sabre
Landing.

“Poor Jim was ahead of me as we
rowed in the darkness,” she revealed.
“We were chatting back and forth—you
know how voices carry over the water—
when a pirogue came on us suddenly,
headed straight for Jim’s canoe.

“T heard Beadle’s voice. He was crazy
with triumph and he laughed in a way
that sent shivers down my spine. He
called Jim horrible names. ‘I’m going to
shoot you!’ he cried. Then I heard the
blast of a shotgun and Jim’s canoe just
... just floated away...”

The widow buried her face in her
hands and sobbed convulsively. “I did
a horribly shameful thing,” she added,
at length. “I’m a terrible coward, and

when I heard the shot I just turned my \

canoe around and raced back home. I
never saw Jim again. There wasn’t any
doubt in my mind about him being
dead. But I couldn’t admit it, not even
to you when you asked me to look at
the dead man in the morgue. I couldn’t
face my own cowardice. I had to pretend
that the whole ghastly thing had never
happened and that Jim was really in
Lafayette. I did believe it, too!”

She was certain the voice she had
heard was Jim Beadle’s. She was will-

ing, actually eager, to sign a statement

admitting her cowardly, shameful be-
havior at the moment of her husband’s
brutal murder. :

Mrs. Le Boeuf’s story-could be true,
of course, Pecot had to admit. But there
was one jarring note he couldn’t over-
look. Her tears, somehow, didn’t seem

60

to fit her. Self-abasement seemed hardly
in keeping with the iron-willed character
she showed to the world. Her ribbed-
rock pride was being discarded almost
too willingly, to make room for her vol-
untary mantle of cowardice and shame
and self-disgust. Too, she herself sug-
gested that she put her whole story in
writing, so she could sign it and make it
a legal record of her disgrace!

Why such inordinate desire to toss
away her pride and dignity? Con-
science? Why hadn’t it come to the sur-
face before the hunt for Jim Beadle had
risen to full cry?

The probe into Mrs. Le Boeuf’s af-
fairs, momentarily halted by increased
official interest in Beadle, was now ac-
celerated. And soon the whole truth
stood revealed. Ada Le Boeuf—calm, re-
strained Ada—had reached out in her
hunger for love and passion, not to her
unsuspecting husband, but to a man who
was Jim Le Boeuf’s best friend, a Dr.
Thomas E. Dreher, Morgan City’s most
fashionable physician, himself a_re-
spected husband and father of three
children. ;

The doctor had been a frequent and
eagerly welcomed visitor to the Le Boeuf
home and, betwitched by Ada’s over-
powering passion, he had tossed aside
honor, respectability, and the love of his
own wife and children, for an endless
round of trysts in rented cabins and
Ada’s husband’s own room at home—
with the insatiably love-hungry Ada.

In the end, the lovers had arrived
at the decision that Jim Le Boeuf must
be removed. And so his erring spouse
had planned with Thomas Dreher to mur-
der her mate who was too large a
barrier in the path of her violent and
tempestuous love.

Jim Beadle’s sudden hatred for his
friend, Le Boeuf, had arisen as a happy
coincidence—suggesting to Ada and her
paramour the fabric of their whole dead-
ly plot. Beadle agreed to kill Le Boeuf
for his own satisfaction and as a “favor”
to Dreher. The details were easily work-
ed out and it was Ada who lured her
husband to Sabre Landing.

Jim Beadle was captured soon after-
ward in Morgan City as he sneaked
in one night under cover of rain and
darkness to replenish his whiskey sup-
ply. He readily admitted shooting Le
Boeuf and outlined in detail Ada’s and
Dreher’s participation in the grisly
swamp crime.

A month after Jim Le Boeuf’s body
had returned to the surface of Lake Pa-
lourde, on August 12th, Ada Le Boeuf,
Jim Beadle and Thomas Dreher were

‘tried for his murder. Mrs. Le Boeuf

and Dr. Dreher were found guilty and
sentenced to be hanged. Jim Beadle was
likewise found guilty and sentenced to
life imprisonment.

Almost to the last, no one really be-

lieved Ada would die on the gallows ;

in Louisiana. Governor Huey Long was ~

too gallant to permit a woman—even a =

murderess—to die at the end of a rope. —
But Governor Long, master of the un-
expected, refused to save Ada Le Boeuf.

On the morning of February Ist, Dre.) —

her paid with his life for Jim Le Boeuf’s
death. And only a scant five minutes
later, Ada followed him calmly up the
scaffold stairs.

“| Was Held Love Captive
By A Sex Sadist!”

(Continued trom page 35)
ed, made.a date to meet her in front
of the post office. He was huge, but
middle-aged and white-haired, and so
fatherly in manner that she had not
hesitated to get into his car and drive
home with him to meet his wife—at —
least, that’s where he said they were ~
going. But when he pulled off to the
side of the road, 18 miles north of San
Ysidro in the middle of the desert,
Eleonora suddenly became suspicious.

“My wife won’t bother us here,” he
laughed, and added, “Anyway, she’s in

Texas.” He then ripped all the clothes

from her body. ear

Half-crazed though she was by her ~
experience—she was later committed
to a state insane asylum as a result—
Eleonora Myers had memorized the_

plate number of her attacker’s car. —

Captain Garcia promptly made an ar-
rest. ;
He was Carl J. Folk, 55-year-old,
owner of Folk’s Celebration Shows, a
traveling carnival with headquarters in
Albuquerque. He was as large and
husky as Eleonora had described.

Folk readily admitted the attack, in
fact he seemed rather proud of it, cer-
tain aspects of which may appear un-
derstandable in view of his age. But
he also had an excuse. While poor
Eleonora was about to slowly go nuts,
Folk actually was—or so he claimed.
_ Law-enforcement officials and med-
ico-social workers, agreeing that he
might have something there, permitted
him to enter a plea of insanity. His
mental unbalance was confirmed at a
hearing before District Judge R. F.
Deacon Arledge on November Ist, .~
1949, and he was committed to the ~
state insane asylum at Las Vegas, the
same institution in which his victim
would be soon confined.

Four months later, ‘in the initial

move of a legal tour-de-force which =

eventually was to arouse public wrath
and demand sweeping reforms in New

Mexico’s treatment of sex offenders,
Folk was released from the asylum in

custody of his attorneys. He was
brought to trial on charges of rape and

of contributing to the delinquency of a

minor female. He was found guilty and
sentenced to 10-to-15 years on the first

charge and 5 years on the latter, the

sentences to run concurrently. He ap

wr?

THE END se


Lawmen charged James Bowen and sex kitten
girlfriend got idea of robbing Bud Houser

green pastures. Detectives knew this to
be a friendly community, with a lot of
visiting back and forth. Neighbors would
be able to tell them a good deal about
Houser’s friends; and enemies, if any.
Almost immediately, it was learned
that the last time Houser’s closest friends
had seen him was 10:30 on the Friday
night preceding his death. He had arrived
at the home of a neighbor, where a
shrimp supper was planned, late in the
afternoon, bringing with him two bottles
of whiskey, one of which had been re-
quested by his host. The other bottle was
Houser’s own special brand, the same as
that found in the half-empty bottle on his

. a § ak
Ch. Dep. Whitesides noted something about death weapon, M-1 Army carbine, which

kitchen counter by officers

Although he had brought his own
brand of whiskey with him, the host cou-
ple told officers, Houser had not drunk
anything. He had eaten of the rich
seafood lightly, too, explaining that his
stomach had been troubling him in recent
days. Houser, though a hearty partygoer,
had not been much of a drinker, anyway,
his friends reported.

Several other friends had been pre-
sent for the festive occasion, and all were
absolutely and precisely sure of when
they had last seen Bud Houser. They had
been watching a television show that con-
cluded at 10:30 p.m., and the neighboring
horseman had risen to leave just as the
program came to an end, saying -he was
going home.

In a later interview with another
friend of the murdered man, detectives
learned that, while Houser might have
headed home at 10:30, he had other plans
for the evening.

Before that the canvassing lawmen
had picked up first one strange story and
then another. Looking at one another
quizzically, they wrote down names. It
soon became necessary to make three
columns of names, to be classified:
Friends .... Enemies . .. Playmates.
Houser, it seemed, had been known far
and wide as “The Lover of Lincoln Coun-
ty.” The neighbors’ opinions of the slain
horseman’s conduct ranged, depending
upon the viewpoint of the reporting
witness, from hilarious to outrageous to
ridiculous. One thing they were all clear
on, though: Houser had not given a par-
ticular damn what anyone thought of him
or of what he did for sport and pleasure,
whether it was horse-trading tricks or
amorous hijinks.

The man must have had ahg

many friends, but most of #
viewed agreed that Houser had
opinionated fellow, quick to tug
deal, and that he was perfectly egg
knocking hell out of anybody why
crossed him.
Despite his solid marriage #
years, it appeared that Hows!
deniably had had an eye for the
pecially the very young ladies
the names furnished officers we
of nearly a dozen girls; ranging!
from 16 to 25. The eldest of the
years younger than the hefty
and lawmen would find it necesses
terview each and every one of the
were surprisingly candid abouts
fairs with Houser. Several of the
tractive of the playmates were
Others were young girls still &
home where there were fathe
brothers. Any one of the male
could well have taken it into hist
put an end, once and for all, tof
corruption of their women.
Detectives soon began to fe
health officials trying to trad
possible candidates for ven
For each name on the pl
several male names had to be
the Enemy list, and on and ont
As soon as autopsy results¢
analyzed, investigators learatf
Houser probably died ‘# i
between 2:00 and 4:00 a.m., or
hours before his body was d
He had died instantly from s
in the head, two of which had
through his cheek and anothet
(Continued 00

%% WATERS of the Nayou
. tun black and deep
4 canopy of huge trees
! Meargling in the grip of gray
“Sess. The stream, dark as sin, un-
“a mirror, moves as sluggishly as
. Ogee vee it, flows im-
© the Atchafalaya Riv
Whe Gulf of Mexieg et hve
Morgan City, in St. Mary’s
i a merase com-
“Moving, humid and
. , chap 4 : situated on
 SWitne € of Lake Palourde,
4 PP pert of the bayou itself.
Pole of the bayou were rough,
Meuging respect for the law and
4 tr for the 18th Amendment,
; w. They were heavy
“a rack shots. They had quick
4 te * sromcd tongues and their
is ¥] Morgan City folk was

5 Morgan City’s opinion of
ap Were colorful, hard-bitten
ed ae ot them were unique.

2 ae “ony ' € was a fisherman, a

an alligator hunter, who
IS prey with his bare

— . *
would develop into an important &
¥ ha

MASTER DETECTIVE MAGAZINE, March, 1976.

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cuURS
THE C

by JAMES FARRINGTON

hands. He was 45 years old, with a wiry
body and a complexion the color of
leather.

He lived ina shack at the black water's
edge, drank prodigious quantities of corn
whiskey and was acrack shot, quick to re-
sent an insult. Although he owned few
worldly goods, his sense of possession
was that of a parsimonious Magpie.

At the other end of the bayou, six
miles from the unpainted shanty oc-
cupied by James Beadle, lived the witch.
Of course, Emmy Mae Hawks wasn’t
genuine witch. However, among the
bayou people, she had that reputation.

Externally, she. didn’t resemble a
witch. She was neither old nor grizzled.
She wasn't ugly and her customary
method of transportation was a pirogue,
not a broom. She was in her early 30s. Her
hair was red, her features regular. Her
temper was violent and when she was in
its grip her vocabulary was as shocking as
her voice was loud.

enemies 00 YOU REMEMBER THIS HEADLINE MURDER?
Ss &, : Gh es ‘ } 46-44

The dark, back bayou Swamp country of Louisiana was
the clandestine Setting for illicit sex until

ITCH'S

DOOMED
HEATING

Three years before, she had married a
trapper almost twice her age who had
been reputed to have several thousand
dollars hoarded in his cabin. It also was
alleged that old Ephraim Hawks wasn't
quite all there.

Six months after marrying Emmy
Mae, he wasn't there at all. ;

He was found, one dank winter mor-
ning, on the bank of the Atchafalaya
River with a huge hole in his head, a
shotgun grasped firmly in his right hand.
Two deputy sheriffs called upon the
widow and informed her that she was un-

der arrest for murder.

Emmy Mae announced her opinion of
sheriffs’ deputies in ear-splitting, obscene
language. She was taken off,
nevertheless, to the parish jail in Franklin,
where she swore that her elderly husband
had been brooding and doubtless had
taken his own life. The coroner was com-
pelled to admit that such was possible,
Emmy Mae was released.

She returned to the bayou, where she
lived in poverty and loneliness. She drank
heavily and permitted no one to come
near her cabin, save a few thirsty cronies.
31

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_EVEQUE, Adrian, hanged New Orleans, La. 6-15-1877.

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GEORGE. MORRIS, ADRIAN EVEQUE and JOAQUIN FLORENZO, all Hanged, New Orleans, Lae, 6-15-1877,

Gellows erected on northern ward’of- the 'yardt, a paved court in the centre of the prison,

overlooked on the four sides by windows of the cells, The condemned men slept a little

PES Dees ae during last night by Eveque spent most of time in prayers; At 5:30 AM white shirts, duck.;
Pa vs pants and slippers were handed to each one and they were instructed to dress in them

It was then that Morris' control broke and he began rushing about cell in frantic manner

| ane y Aatxiegs wildly gesticulating and exclaiming: 'Oh, my God! I am coming to thee My Jesus who -
ares NR BBE A ee spilt your blood for me, and for all sinners like me, I am coming! You will save me, #3
Sh Reet GA pio ie Bless all the people on earth; all those who have been friends to me, and all my enemies," et

Florenzo though clothes nice until he realized he was to be hanged in them and he then
objected to putting them on but was persuaded to do so, Aveque dressed neatly and
wibhout exhibition of nervousness. Aveque visited by mother and half-brother, Godin,
shortly after 8 o'clock, He remarked to Godin, under sentence as accessory to the murder
that he would die bravely and as a Christian, At 10:35 the executioner went with rope to

es bind the condemned, A few minutes later, Deputy Sheriff Hart read warrants, Aveaue
Mme coke sat silently and motionless with chin slightly depressed and eyes opened, Florenza moved
f mys ae ete his head from side to side, nervously, and mttered something in Spanish, supposedly a

prayer. Morris's whoe frame trembled, his lips moved convulsviely and his head fell back,

Drop fell at 11:12, Necks of all broken,

Crimes:

"George Morris, The deed for which this man expiated on the scaffold, was one of the most

atrocious and brutal ever perpetrated in this city, Early on the morning of Nov, 30, 1875,

he killed a young mlattress named Sarah Jones at No, 253 St, Louis St., within a few squares

“ of the spot where he suffered death, The woman, who had been his mistress, deserted him,

a ie Morris, on the day mentioned, inflamed with maddening jealousy, went to her house and

Mohit Op ey | : attacked her with a long, sharp knife, She took to flight and endeavored to evade the

ES oor 8 S58 at pursuing demon, but in vain, He leaped upon his victim with the ferocity of a tiger and

* Pe syn od 8 plunged the deadly weapon many times into her body, Then deliberately sharpening the knife

N copeees on the curbstone, he took the head of the dying woman on his lap and cut her throat, |

aki Pending the trial he manifested utter indifference as to his f ate, and loudly and openly

boasted of his prowess, and, after conviction, he proclaimed his readiness to follow his

; Meet victim to the grave, His remarkable sang froid and recklessness of demeanor during the <e

HRs ete aie past few weeks had been chronicled, He was of medium height, muscular and in color a me

AS ; griffe, but of unprepossessing countenance, His dark eyes particularly when he was
petits angered, gleamed with passion ahd his lips trembled with the force of an ungovernable

Bi Mie oo, ae a instinct that raged within him, In age he was about 27,"

y / "Adrian Aveque, This man killed RichardyTurner, colored, on the evening of Feb, 6,
6 M 1876, at a negro ball, given at the corner of Claiborne and Ursulines Sts, Aveque,

f who was somewhat under the influence of liquor, fell into a row with Turner and without
warning, drew a pistol and shot him through the head, The next day he was captured on
“ayou Road. He was convicted on April 8 and sentenced to death on May 2 by Judge Steele,
the Supreme Court thereafter affirming the sentence, He was a bright mlatto and in age
about 20 years though he looked much older, being tall and robust in stature, He was
the most religiously disposed of the three men and was generally to be found, during his
imprisonment, reading a Bible, He leaves a wife, mother, and other relatives, His
half-brother, Godcin, was charged as accessorry, convicted and is now serving out a term
of two years in the Parish Prison, his sentence having been commuted by Kellogg,"

"Joaouin Florenza was a native of Manila in the Pacific, Several years ago he went to

favana and thence came to try his fortunes in this city, The crime for which he suffered
PRingh N E 3 the death penalty was the mrder of a mlattress known as Marie Louise at No, 133 Bourbon

on j St. on Jan, 16, 1876, As in the case of Morris, jealousy was the incentive to the deed,

The wonmm was his mistress and he suspected her fidelity, With a deliberation characteristic
of Oreientals, he prepared for the bloody act, which he executed with fatal certainty,
The woman was found in her bed early the next morning, a corpse, with a knife thrust throu gh
her heart. The bed and floor were strewn with told and silver coins and rolls of bank notes
which the mrderer had scattered about in his frenzy, He seems to have slain his mistress
as she slept. The same morning he attempted the life of her suspected lover, but was
arrested, convicted on Feb, 21, and sentenced tod ath on Mapeh Os a brSBAA fnew but few

in English and was able to converse only
Hs eeeertie inteltinencs, and it was long before he could be made to comprehend the circumstances |

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+ whith Surrounded him, Towards the last:he manisfested considerable solicitude as to
his spiritual condition, and was attentive to the teachings of the priests and Sisters
‘of Mercy who visited him, He made confessién of ‘his built."

EX NEW ORLEANS PICAYUNE, ‘June 16, 1877