by Karen L. Cox
By the time they made it back to Sister’s house, it was almost 9:30 P.M. As soon as they walked in the door, Pink hurriedly grabbed some matches and headed to the backyard, where he ripped off his bloody clothes, doused them in coal oil, and set them on fire. He made a small bundle of personal effects and put his pistol in a scabbard. Or was it Jennie Merrill’s gun? His trunk was too large to carry, so he told Sister he would send for it later. Pink changed into a brown suit and put on a black hat and shoes. He made plans to have Poe drive him to Giles Point, where he would cross the river into Louisiana and head north. Sister joined him as he walked out into the darkness to meet Poe. They both got into Poe’s car, and the three of them made the quiet drive beyond the city cemetery, where they stopped and Pink got out. There on the banks of the Mississippi River, in the pitch of night, Pink and Sister said their good-byes. It was the last time she ever saw him.12
Dick and Octavia scurried back to Glenwood in darkness, their only light Miss Jennie’s oil lamp. But before they crossed the property line into Glenwood, Octavia likely commanded Dick to get rid of it in some weeds. For all of Octavia’s scheming, the pair had returned with nothing but a neighbor’s blood on their hands.
What had seemed simple to her hours earlier had become complicated in the extreme. Octavia may not have liked Jennie Merrill, but she had not fathomed that the plan to rob her would have ended so horribly. She had to know that she would be questioned about it. Just a few days before, she and Jennie had what was later described as an “unusually bitter clash” because Glenwood’s goats had once again trespassed onto Jennie’s estate and made a meal of her roses. She knew it would not be too long before the sheriff came to question them, and she needed to make sure that her ward didn’t tell what he knew. Dick was still very excited by the drama that had unfolded that evening, and Octavia feared — rightly, as it turns out — that he was liable to slip up and say something that would draw suspicion.13
It was around 7:30 P.M. that Thursday evening when twenty-three-year-old Willie Boyd, a tenant on Merrill’s estate, heard shots and screams and the hollering of a German shepherd coming from Glenburnie. His wife laughed at him. “It’s probably Miss Jennie killing another one of Dana’s goats,” she said. Willie was curious but afraid to go see about it, so he walked over to a small black settlement where fifty-eight-year-old M. C. Hacher lived. He remarked to Willie that perhaps Miss Jennie’s dog had killed another of her pet kittens and so she had shot it. Still, he was concerned, and he and Willie headed back up the Kingston Road toward the entrance of Merrill’s estate where they planned to wait on Duncan Minor to arrive, which he did with regularity around 8:45 P.M. More important, they knew that as black men in Mississippi, it was unwise to go to the house of a white woman who lived alone, especially at this time of the evening, because whatever had happened, they could easily be arrested or even lynched.14
As they walked along the gravel road, they noticed a white man ahead walking away from the estate and called out to him to go with them to see what was happening at Merrill’s home, but he refused. Was it Dick Dana? Perhaps. So they waited, and like clockwork, at 8:45 P.M., they saw Duncan Minor. He was riding one of the horses he kept at a local stable in town, traveling at a leisurely pace on his nightly visit to see Jennie. They waved him down, and Hacher had Willie tell Minor about the screams and the shots he heard earlier.15
Something was wrong, and it was now dark. Country dark. And no light could be seen coming from inside the house. Jennie usually waited up on him to arrive. Duncan grew more concerned as he approached the house with Hacher.
After he entered the front door, Duncan called several times for Jennie, but there was no answer. He fumbled for a small antique lamp that sat on the fireplace mantel and lit it. The faint glow of the little lamp revealed a gruesome scene. Blood was smeared on the walls and floor of the dining room and on the floor of Jennie’s bedroom. But there was no sign of her. Her mattress lay askew on the bed. Drawers had been yanked from their places. Furniture had been tossed around. Jennie’s empty purse was on the floor, along with one of her now-bloodied slippers and a hair comb. What had happened?
Duncan searched for Jennie outside. He told Hacher to help him, and they called out for Willie Boyd to join them. The small search party followed the trail of blood and went back and forth between the house and outbuildings and into the woods adjacent to the house but never saw her. Minor’s instincts, however, were telling him she was out there. They searched for nearly an hour before Duncan realized that he’d better contact law enforcement. So, he directed Willie Boyd to go find the nearest telephone and call the sheriff.16
It was late that Thursday evening in August when some teenage boys, including Charlie Bahin, gathered on a street corner in their hometown of Natchez to chew the fat and enjoy what little bit of cool air might brush by them. It beat hanging out down on the bluff overlooking the Mississippi River battling swarms of gnats and mosquitoes. Besides, what else was there to do in their small town? No sooner had that thought crossed Charlie’s mind than a loud siren blared from a car speeding down Pearl Street. Even more surprising to the boys was the fact that one of their pals, Barnett Serio, was driving.
Charlie and his friends started running to find out what was happening. They discovered a crowd gathered around the Gem Café near the corner of Main and Pearl Streets, where Barnett parked the car and ran inside to tell folks what he had just learned. There was a nervous tension in the air as men and women walked in and out of the Gem, where they heard the terrible news that Jennie Merrill had been murdered, or so they thought, since she had not been located.17
As Barnett told it, just after 10:00 P.M. his father, Joe, a deputy sheriff, had gotten a phone call from Sheriff Clarence Roberts to meet him at the Adams County jail on State Street. One of Jennie Merrill’s young black tenants, Willie Boyd, had phoned the sheriff’s office to let him know that Duncan Minor needed his help real quick. Miss Merrill was missing, and there was blood on the floors and walls of her house.18
Fifty-four-year-old Zaida Marion Wells was one of the townspeople who caught wind of something dramatic as she walked out of the Baker-Grand Theatre, where she had gone to see a movie with her friend Nettie Smith. As the women stood on the corner of Pearl and State Streets, they had a clear view of the county jail. They watched and could see sheriffs’ deputies going toward the jail with guns. Then, what seemed like a short time later, another group of men arrived. Across State Street at city hall, several policemen hurried down the steps to a waiting car and sped away.
Zaida and Nettie walked back to the Gem Café, where they heard talk of murder. Now the activity at the jail made sense. The two women, especially Wells, wanted to drive out to Glenburnie, but it wasn’t proper for women to drive alone after dark. So they asked Charlie Bahin and another teenage boy to get in Wells’s car to accompany them out to the Kingston Road where Jennie Merrill lived. As they drove along the gravel road that fronted Miss Jennie’s estate, Zaida slowed her car down to a creep as the entire group of them stared out of the windows looking for — what? They did not know. All they could see in the darkness were the search party lights that waxed and waned through the woods like fireflies.19
Nothing so exciting had happened in Natchez since nearly four thousand visitors had come to their little town only a few months earlier to tour the Bluff City’s antebellum mansions — relics of another time when the town of Natchez had cachet in the larger world. But this was a different kind of excitement — the kind that caused old women to gasp and young hearts to race.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE INVESTIGATION
While word spread throughout Natchez that something sinister had taken place on the edge of town, Sheriff Clarence Powell Roberts and his deputy Joe Serio drove swiftly to Glenburnie to meet with Duncan Minor and begin the investigation. By now it was close to 11:00 P.M., and Duncan’s efforts to locate Jennie had been futile. Roberts’s first priority was to locate her, so he called on his de
puties, former sheriff Walter Abbott, chief of police Mike Ryan, and several patrolmen to assist him. A posse of local citizens armed with lanterns and flashlights also joined in the search and spread across the estate, which by now was pitch-black. Yet even in the dark, the sheriff and his deputies knew this landscape. They had walked it many times with Jennie Merrill as she pointed out the damage done by the neighbors’ hogs and, lately, their goats.
Clarence Roberts, now almost forty years old and unmarried, had not dreamed of becoming an officer of the law. Born in 1892 in the little village of Gloster, Mississippi, he was one of five children and the only son of Quitman and Calpernia Roberts. He first followed in his father’s footsteps, becoming a carpenter and building houses. When he was in his mid-twenties, he enlisted as a private in the Mississippi Infantry and served in the army during World War I. His draft card described him as having a medium build and of medium height, with gray eyes and auburn hair. After the war he worked as a cashier for the Southern Express Company, part of American Express, and later sold cars for local dealers Porter and Claggett. By 1925, though, he was a deputy sheriff, and within five years he became the sheriff of Adams County.1
People who knew the sheriff personally called him “Book,” a nickname that did not come from booking criminals. Rather, it had been with him since childhood. The story goes that when he was in grade school in the late 1890s, he got into a fight with another boy. In the heat of the moment, the two traded insults. Clarence called his opponent “Abraham Lincoln,” a particularly offensive slur in a region still sensitive about military defeat. But young Clarence could not have been prepared for the rejoinder: the other boy hit back and called him “Booker T. Washington,” a reference to the black leader who had ruffled the feathers of many white southerners. Clearly, Clarence’s enemy got the best of him, because the nickname stuck, although in shortened form.2
Duncan Minor (left) with Sheriff Clarence “Book” Roberts standing in front of Glenburnie. (Courtesy of the Thomas H. and Joan W. Gandy Photograph Collection, Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collections, Special Collections, Hill Memorial Library, Louisiana State University Libraries, Baton Rouge.)
Book finished coordinating search efforts, which included calling George Allen, a planter from Wisner, Louisiana, who raised bloodhounds, as well as the state’s fingerprint expert in Jackson, then steeled himself for the task ahead: it was time to have a chat with Dick Dana and Octavia Dockery. In Book’s mind, they were likely suspects, given their long-running feud with Merrill. Just earlier in the week Octavia and Jennie had gotten into a particularly nasty argument about goats trespassing onto Merrill’s estate. And officers had made more visits to speak with Octavia than either of them could count. But had it really come to this?
Along with Deputy Serio, Book drove the short distance to Glenwood along the Kingston Road and then bounced along the gullied driveway that led to the house. The car’s headlights provided the only illumination to be found on the property at that hour, which was reflected back to them by the peering eyes of dogs, cats, and goats.
As they approached the house, they had to be careful not to fall through one of the rotting planks of the front porch. The door was unlocked, probably because it would not close properly, so the two men knocked loudly as they entered the front hallway with only their flashlights to guide them. As they did, Book called out for Dick Dana, receiving no response. Again, he called out. Dick refused to come downstairs. As the sheriff looked around, he saw a man’s shirt drying out from a recent washing.
Already this was suspicious. Dana notoriously never washed his clothes. Why would a man who locals said had a “singular aversion to water” be washing out a shirt at midnight? It made no sense.
Dana finally came down the stairs and, before the sheriff had an opportunity to explain why he and his deputy were there, blurted out, “I know nothing of the murder.” At this point, Jennie was still considered missing. Octavia’s fears of Dick saying something when she was not there to supervise him had been realized. The two were arrested and taken to the county jail for questioning.3
By the time Dana and Dockery were booked into a cell, George Allen and his bloodhounds had arrived at Glenburnie. The dogs were given a quick sniff of the overcoat found in Jennie’s dining room and were off, running first in the direction of the neighboring estate. This made sense, given that the coat originally belonged to John Geiger, who had left it at the Skunk’s Nest, the roadhouse he once rented from Dana. It also made sense that the dogs followed the scent in the direction of Glenwood, because Dana had retrieved the coat after Geiger left and brought it back to the main house. As the hounds approached the dividing line of the property, their baying grew louder. The scent led them to a silver coal-oil lamp with a blue china shade. The shade was broken and the lamp tossed into the weeds. Once sheriff’s deputies retrieved the items, Duncan Minor recognized it as a lamp that had been taken from Jennie’s home.4
This crime map illustrates the proximity of Glenburnie to Goat Castle, as well as detailed findings from the investigation. (New Orleans Times-Picayune, August 15, 1932.)
George Allen and the dogs’ handler, S. J. Sturdivant, took the bloodhounds back toward Merrill’s house and circled it twice; the dogs then led the men west toward Homochitto Street. The hounds’ baying reached a fever pitch as they closed in on Wilds Pond. Allen and Sturdivant felt sure they were on the trail of the criminal or criminals who had been at Jennie’s home as the dogs kept circling the pond.
The hounds eventually led the men to the home of twenty-two-year-old Odell Ferguson, the very same person who years earlier encountered Dick Dana swinging from a grapevine. The sheriff knocked on Odell’s door and woke him from a deep sleep. The hounds had trailed the scent to Ferguson’s property, and the sheriff was there to ask some questions. It could be that Pink and Sister, or even Poe, had traveled in this direction after leaving Glenburnie and tossed the gun in Wilds Pond. But this was just the beginning of the investigation, before Book Roberts knew anything about who was at Merrill’s place that evening. For now, the hounds had led him here. Odell would have to account for his whereabouts earlier in the evening, so he was taken in for questioning as well.5
As the investigation continued into the early morning hours of Friday, August 5, the search uncovered two of Jennie’s hair combs and one of her bed slippers next to a pool of blood at the end of her driveway. Initial reporting hopefully suggested that Merrill had fended off her attackers as she ran into the woods for safety, because this is what local people wanted to believe. Yet this wishful thinking would soon be dispelled.
About an hour before sunrise, at 5:45 A.M., twenty-year-old Alonzo Floyd discovered Jennie Merrill’s body in a thicket about one hundred yards from her home. Floyd, described in the newspaper as a “Negro youth,” lived and worked on Merrill’s estate and had helped Duncan Minor look for Jennie earlier that evening. Duncan had been to the thicket more than once. His intuition told him she was there, so he told Floyd to go there once more that morning. Duncan was right. “Here she is!” Alonzo shouted, as members of the search party ran to where he stood pointing. Her body lay in a thicket resting on a bed of dead moss where she had been tossed — face upward. The bullet wounds to her neck and chest were visible; her clothes were drenched with blood. Miss Jennie had been murdered.6
As dawn broke that morning, local officers detained several individuals for questioning. In addition to Dick Dana, Octavia Dockery, and Odell Ferguson, they arrested John Geiger, whose overcoat was found inside Merrill’s home. This was the Jim Crow South, so they rounded up local blacks who lived on the estate or near Glenburnie and brought them in for questioning as well. Among them were two men who helped with the investigation — Willie Boyd, who told Duncan Minor about the screams he heard coming from Glenburnie, and Alonzo Floyd, who found the body.7
In the early days of the investigation, several more people were brought in for questioning and almost as swiftly released. But Odell Ferguson
remained in jail, and John Geiger was kept there for nearly a week. Geiger had to explain how his overcoat ended up inside Jennie Merrill’s home. He told authorities he had left it, along with other belongings, back at the Skunk’s Nest when he was told to vacate the property by Octavia Dockery for failure to pay his rent. During questioning, she confirmed that Geiger had been sent packing and that the items he left behind — including a filthy mattress — were now on the porch at Glenwood. She maintained that they left the overcoat behind. Dick Dana, too, confirmed this by telling the sheriff that he “sent a Negro to the Skunk’s Nest” to gather Geiger’s possessions and move them to the main house. In truth, he and Octavia had gone there to drag whatever Geiger left inside back to Glenwood. Leaving anything of value, like the overcoat, did not make sense given what packrats Dana and Dockery were, only adding to their suspicious behavior.8
Even after Geiger was released, officers continued to bring him back in from time to time for questioning about what he described as “that pesky overcoat.” He became irritated about the number of times deputies called him to come to the Adams County jail to answer questions, because he kept getting called away from work. He even offered to help catch the murderer himself, saying that if this kept up no one would hire him and he’d be “holding a tin cup.”9
Unlike some whites, Geiger expressed confidence that no one in the local black community was involved in killing Jennie Merrill. “Negroes in Natchez don’t do things like that,” he said. “They are all good peaceful folks around here,” adding, “I don’t know a single negro in Natchez that I’d suspect of killing that lady.”10
Dick Dana and Octavia Dockery, however, were the prime suspects from the beginning. Dana’s “nocturnal laundrying,” as the Natchez Democrat put it, had every appearance of an effort to wash out bloodstains. Deputies also found fresh drops of blood on the page of an old golf magazine in the parlor of their home. Dick attributed the blood to butchering a hog earlier that day, but deputies took it in as evidence nonetheless.