The Man from the Train

by Bill James

  Mary Stacy, the woman with whom Little had been planning to leave town, testified that Little gave her $20 on the day before the murders in order to buy clothes to get ready for the trip, and had told her that they would be ready to go as soon as he was able to get some money out of his bank.

  The most important witness of the trial was a woman named Mary Lee. Mary Lee, for reasons unknown, lived with the Little family; she may have been a governess or housekeeper, or she may have been a relative. The common understanding of the law at that time was that a wife could not testify against her husband, and Mrs. Little did not testify. Miss Lee became the most important witness because she could testify to what the wife could not.

  Mary Lee testified that Little had been absent from the home on the night of the murders. A lamp was left burning; she awoke several times during the night, and the lamp was still burning (the implication being that, had Little come home and gone to bed, he would have put out the lamp). She arose about 6:00 the next morning to find Little asleep on a couch. There was a lantern on a table that did not belong to the family, and his jacket was hanging up wet, as if it had been washed. After breakfast he took out a file and began to file on the lantern. She asked him why he was doing that, but he offered no explanation. He went out to work near the house, cutting some brush, and took the lantern with him. After a couple of hours he came back in and asked for some bandages, saying that he had cut his leg. The wound appeared to be dry.

  Mary Lee also testified that after the murders Little appeared restless. He would wake up in the night, she said, and he and his wife would have long conversations in their bedroom in the middle of the night.

  The lantern became critical. Police found the lantern in a barn outside the Littles’ house, either hidden there or simply hung up where a lantern normally hung; in any case the police insisted that it had been hidden. A long string of witnesses, twenty or more, appeared in court to testify that the lantern had belonged to a neighbor of the Meadows family, had been borrowed by George Meadows, and had been in the possession of George Meadows prior to the night of the crime. Witnesses bounced in and out of the witness box quickly, as was common in trials at that time, perhaps fifty witnesses in a day. Reporters didn’t get all of their names.

  The railroad line that runs through Hurley was the N & W railroad, the Norfolk and Western. On the morning after the murders, Little allegedly bought a newspaper from an N & W news agent named French, and paid for the newspaper with a bloody penny. French saved the penny, and introduced it into evidence at the trial. This apparently had a huge impact, and was said by some newspapers to be the strongest evidence against Little (although the New York Times reported, more sensibly, that the critical witness against Little was Mary Lee).

  Little insisted that he was innocent, but did not take the stand and did not put on an affirmative defense. His attorney attempted to tear down the prosecution’s case by cross-examination. Little offered no explanation for where he was on the night in question. There were two days of testimony, and on the morning of the third day, November 27, Little was convicted of six murders. The jury deliberated for twenty minutes.

  He was sentenced immediately, and taken to Richmond under heavy guard directly after sentencing. He was to be executed in Richmond on January 7, 1910. The New York Times reported, after the trial, that “the crime for which Little was convicted was a particularly atrocious one. The only motive which can now be conceived by the authorities is that of robbery. They believe Little sought to obtain the money which he thought was in the house, amounting to $1,300, and that murder and arson followed, but since the crime was committed none of the money has been found.”

  On Christmas Eve, 1909, Samuel Baker, who was George Meadows’s neighbor and brother-in-law, was murdered in what is usually described as an unrelated incident. Baker’s wife was also wounded in that attack. The murderer of Samuel Baker was strung up by a hundred armed men, and his body, hanging from a steam pipe in the Ritter Lumber Mill, was riddled with bullets. That crime wasn’t entirely unrelated; Harry Pennington, the man who was lynched for killing Samuel Baker, was a good friend of Howard Little and had vigorously defended him in arguments about his guilt. He attacked the Bakers because (a) he was drunk, and (b) he blamed them for the prosecution of Howard Little.

  The governor expressed deep regret about the lynching, all the more so because it was the first lynching in the state in 1909. Virginia had been the only southern state (up to that point) that had not recorded a lynching in 1909, and the governor had been hoping to get them through the year with a clean record. Little was granted a one-month reprieve by Governor Swanson while his case was appealed. Higher courts affirmed the verdict, and Little was executed in the electric chair in Richmond on February 11, 1910. He went to his death calmly, composed and dignified. He denied any involvement in the Meadows murders until the last moment of his life. He was buried in his family cemetery in McDowell County, West Virginia.

  * * *

  The puzzle of this crime is that George Meadows was both shot and bludgeoned in his front yard. This doesn’t seem to make sense. The other members of the family were murdered in their beds. If Meadows was shot twice before the rest of the family was murdered, why didn’t they wake up? Somebody hears a noise outside, the father steps out (half-dressed) to investigate the intruder, there are two gunshots, and the rest of the family goes back to bed? Doesn’t make sense—yet obviously Meadows must have been attacked before the rest of the family was. I’ll try to explain it when we discuss this crime again later in the book.

  * * *

  I believe Howard Little to have been an innocent man, although I can’t explain to you now why I believe that. Much later in our book, in chapter XXXV, we will return to the Meadows family murders; by then you will have a great deal of background information that you do not have now. When we return to the story I will explain what I believe happened and why I believe that, and you can decide then whether you agree or disagree. Perhaps, until then, you will be kind enough to suspend judgment? Appreciate it.

  CHAPTER II

  Logan’s Turnpike

  The Hood family was one of the most respectable of the community, and belonged to that class of our citizens who give offense to no one. That murder was committed seems hardly possible, as they had no enemies and kept no valuables in the home that would tempt the robber.

  —Raleigh Register, November 4, 1909

  In retrospect, it seems strange that the Hurley and Logan’s Turnpike murders were not connected at the time. From Hurley, Virginia, to Beckley, West Virginia, is eighty-two miles, a little bit less as the crow flies, but you can’t get there as the crow flies unless you are a crow. Even with the wrinkles dictated by the terrain it is less than the distance from Sacramento to San Francisco, less than the distance from Philadelphia to New York. Perhaps this describes the relationship between the two and the nature of the time and place: that if you lived in Hurley or Beckley in 1909 and you went to a bigger town to shop for something special, it is likely (in either case) that the bigger town would be Bluefield, West Virginia. Bluefield at that time had a population of about 11,000, hardly a metropolis, but was bigger than any other city in the area.

  West Virginia in the fall is something to see. The mountains still beat back development in concert with generations of poverty, roads underlining its tree-stuffed beauty rather than despoiling it. Beckley, West Virginia, looks like it was built in the late 1980s, which makes it seem new and shiny compared to the prewar structures falling down in surrounding towns.

  The murders of the Hood family took place on Halloween night, 1909, a month and ten days after the murders of the Meadows family. The Hoods lived on Logan’s Turnpike, which adjoins Harper Road about four miles west of Beckley. Harper Road was a well-used road then and is a major highway now. Train tracks litter the area. Two tracks run parallel to Harper, overrun with trees and weeds, behind a Dollar General, the most recently built structure in town. Less than half a mile
from there is what remains of Logan’s Turnpike, a curving pathway with just Coal Marsh Missionary Church and falling-down homes. Chickens scratch boastfully in the road. The dilapidated homes actually add to the beauty of the area, the light and the weeds poking through the structures in a kind of evolution. Trains and their ghosts are everywhere, and you can look down on them in the valley below Logan’s Turnpike.

  A 1909 report from the Bluefield Telegraph describes the neighborhood of the Hood family as “an enlightened section of West Virginia.” One of the first schools for black children in West Virginia was built in Beckley in 1907, and the area had a sizeable African American population. The Logan’s Turnpike neighborhood was occupied by three black families and the Hoods, who were white and lived above a black-owned restaurant. A little way down the road was Glen Daniel, then called Marshes, which was a largely black neighborhood. By all accounts, the Hoods were on good terms with their neighbors. George Washington Hood was a widowed octogenarian and a former Union soldier. Originally from North Carolina, he had lived on Logan’s Turnpike on and off since the war. In 1909, he was living modestly with two sons, Roy and Winfield, his daughter Almeda, and Almeda’s twelve-year-old daughter, Emma.

  Emma was without a known father, as Almeda had never been married. The mother and daughter had recently accepted Jesus at a church revival, and they were baptized on the morning of October 31 at Mount Tabor Baptist Church in Beckley, a few miles away. It was Sunday; the murders occurred on a Sunday night. Roy had attended church with them, to see them baptized. The other brother, Winfield, was out that night visiting some neighboring ladies. The father, George, was reportedly in the restaurant below the home in the early evening, showing off some of the money he had made on the recent sale of horses, but this is merely a “report.” It is something somebody said.

  Despite being a single mother nearing forty, Almeda had romantic prospects. Her suitor, a coal miner by the name of Mike Ferrell, came by the house the previous evening and stayed until early in the morning. They were supposed to be married in December of that year. Some reports claimed that George Hood had thrown him out that night, that the younger man was drunk, and that they had exchanged words. Ferrell reportedly told Almeda that he would be at the baptism on Sunday if he could find a clean shirt, but he didn’t show.

  About 11:00 p.m., Winfield Hood and Walter Harper returned to the Hood residence after their dates. They found the house, including the restaurant on the ground floor, fully engulfed in flames. They rushed the doors, trying to break in, but were pushed back by the flames, standing helpless as the roof collapsed and the house burned with no sign of the people inside. Passersby stopped and people drifted in until the crowd numbered in the hundreds. There were no screams. Everyone inside was already dead.

  When the fire died down Monday morning, the bodies of the younger members of the family were found in the place where the parlor would have been. Roy had a bullet in his head, but how Almeda and her daughter had died was less obvious; their heads and bodies both had mostly disintegrated. Their remains seemed to have been “stacked” in a pile, as was done in other cases in this series. The Civil War veteran was found in the back room, his head crushed by a blunt instrument. The Washington Post reported more extensive axe wounds to Roy and Almeda’s bodies, and that “there seems little doubt, though, that Washington Hood’s throat had been cut before the fire was started.”

  There was an odor of oil or gasoline. Some would later offer the explanation that Almeda and Emma had left a lamp burning for Winfield, forgot about it, and the lamp exploded and blocked their exit. Others thought that the culprit had poured oil on the bodies, to speed the fire.

  Several people were accused immediately. Mike Ferrell, Almeda’s lover, was arrested with three other men in an abandoned railroad lumber yard about eight miles north of Harper, along the railroad and near to where he worked. The four men were separated and sent to different jails in Bluefield and Beckley to avoid mob violence. The men were made to “submit to a rigid examination” and given a “sweating” by the police (you’ve got to love those 1909 euphemisms for police brutality). They gave alibis; the alibis checked out, and the four men were eventually released.

  We are running out of real facts here; that is, we are running out of facts about the murders themselves. There are many facts about the investigation. Whenever there is a tragedy of this nature, people will tell fill-in-the-gap stories to create a narrative. Once these pieces get printed in the newspaper (1909) or circulated by social media (twenty-first century) it becomes difficult to tell the story without them, even though these “gap stories” are generally untrue. We have seen three of them already in this case—the story that George Hood was flashing money on the evening of the murders, the story of the quarrel between George Hood and Mike Ferrell, and the speculation about the lamp exploding. All of these stories are probably false, but we cannot be 100 percent certain that they are false, so we have to include them in our account, just in case.

  In the modern world there is a fairly sharp delineation between objective realists and those who believe in paranormal phenomena. Paranormal phenomena are commonly seen in movies, novels, and books, including books framed as nonfiction, and are a major element of cable television. Studies show or claim to show that most Americans in the early twenty-first century believe in ghosts, and many believe in psychics, witchcraft, mental telepathy, and other paranormal phenomena—but paranormal beliefs are strictly and almost universally banned from police investigations, courts, and prosecutions, as well as from medicine, engineering, the sciences, and from almost all of the ordinary and mundane practices of well-educated people such as accounting and finance.

  In 1909 this was not true. In 1909 discussions of paranormal phenomena intruded casually into serious matters such as police investigations. In a tiny town 120 miles northwest of Beckley lived an invalid, Elizabeth Blake, an impoverished woman who had somehow acquired a national reputation as a psychic. Within a few weeks conventional leads ran out and the investigation began to revolve around meetings between detectives and Mrs. Blake. Mrs. Blake evoked the ghost of the late George Hood. The ghost of George Hood revealed that the murders had been committed by a white man in a mask and three black men. When asked for their names, the spirit of the late Mr. Hood became uncommunicative.

  As was true in the Meadows case, the murders of the Hood family were followed quickly by another murder in close proximity; in fact, the “other murder” in Beckley happened three days before the one-off murder in Hurley. A black businessman named A. R. Blakey was murdered and robbed of several gold coins in Beckley on December 21, 1909, murdered by a man named Luther Sherman. Sherman was put on trial and convicted of the murder in a well-publicized trial. In the summer of 1910 Sherman, teasing investigators, would lead them to believe that he had participated not only in the Hood family murders, but also in the murder of the Meadows family. In fact, he was not connected to either the Hood or Meadows murders.

  The murder of the Hood family was never solved. It is likely that had Howard Little not been quickly arrested after the murders of the Meadows family, the Hood and Meadows crimes would have been connected by the press and public; likely, but not certain. It is likely that they would have been connected because both little towns were in the orbit of Bluefield, West Virginia, and the similarity of the murders, combined with the extreme rarity of a murder of this type, should have been enough to make people connect the dots. This is not certain, however, because the people of that time and place may not have had any concept of how unusual it is for an entire family to be murdered with an axe by unknown persons in the middle of the night, and consequently, not realizing that such events are extremely rare, may not have seen the connection between the two. There was no similar crime anywhere in the United States in 1909, other than these two, which were separated by only a few miles and only a few weeks. But detectives based in Bluefield were heavily invested in the proposition that Howard Little had murdered the Me
adows family, and they would have shot down quickly and emphatically anyone who had suggested a link between the crimes.

  CHAPTER III

  The Scandalous Schultzes

  Houston Heights, Texas, founded by Oscar Martin Carter in 1891, was the first planned community in Texas. In 1910 it was separated from Houston by about a mile, but linked by streetcars and railroads. Houston at that time was a city of 78,000. Houston Heights was annexed by Houston in 1918.

  On the night of Friday, March 11, 1910, Gus Schultz, a lineman with Houston Electric, hosted a “sort of entertainment” for family and friends with his wife, Alice, at their home at 732 Ashland Street in Houston Heights. The Schultzes lived in an unpainted three-room cottage fifty feet from the Missouri-Kansas-Texas railroad. (The KATY railroad; we will see the KATY several more times in our book.) There was beer, piano, guitar, and good company. The couple partied pretty hard considering they had two young children, a three-year-old girl named Bessie and a six-month-old who may have been a boy and who may have been named Sandy, although accounts are not consistent. The house was in a segregated white area, one block over from the black part of the neighborhood.

  Gus Schultz was twenty-three; Alice was twenty-one. At the party she wore a tight-fitting, low-cut pink dress that showed several inches of her legs—provocative in that era, when dresses normally covered the tops of the shoes. For several days following March 11 there was no sign of life around the Schultz house. The house was locked up tight, and all of the curtains had been drawn. An African American woman named Maggie Nelson did the Schultzes’ laundry. On Wednesday, March 16, Ms. Nelson found the laundry from the previous week still hanging on the clothesline, the house still locked, and the Schultzes’ guns visible underneath their house. Ms. Nelson talked to a neighbor lady, who had also been concerned about the family, and the neighbor lady called the sheriff. The sheriff pulled the guns out from under the house (two rusty rifles and a shotgun) and recognized the smell of death emanating from the residence. Late in the day on March 16, police broke into the house, where they found the bodies of five people—two men, a woman, and the two small children. All five had apparently been murdered with an axe. The bodies had been piled on top of one another, and Mrs. Schultz (Alice) was found nude except for a thin nightshirt. The little girl, Bessie, was also found almost nude. There was blood all over the walls. The crime scene was described as “the most gruesome of all the tragedies that have occurred in and about Houston.” The stench in the house was so overpowering that police had to open the windows for several hours before they could begin the investigation. A swarm of flies filled the room where the bodies were found.