by Karen L. Cox
Chief Deputy Joseph Stone holds the overcoat found inside Glenburnie during the murder investigation. (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.)
Dana’s other statements were also cause for concern. During questioning, he told police chief Ryan that Jennie and Octavia argued “severely” over trespassing goats earlier in the week. He also provided conflicting statements about his whereabouts at the time the crime occurred. First, he explained that he was out on a hill at Glenwood “watching the sunset” when he heard a gunshot and a scream, adding that he thought it was “a negro man chastising his wife in a nearby cabin.” In another statement he claimed that he was at home when he heard the shots and had intended to go to Duncan Park to phone officers, but Octavia “became hysterical and begged him to remain at the house [because] she was afraid.” Then there was his original statement to Sheriff Roberts, “I know nothing of the murder,” before Roberts ever mentioned why he had come to Glenwood. He incriminated himself further, while in custody, when he told Chief Ryan, “I did not place the overcoat over her [Merrill’s] head.”11
During this early round of questioning suspects, James Chancellor, the best fingerprint expert in the state, arrived from Jackson to begin his work.12 That Friday afternoon, Chancellor collected a total of thirty-two prints from furniture, glasses, and a door frame “where a bloody hand had been pressed.” He also lifted prints from the silver oil lamp and lampshade discovered on the property. All of these were compared with the ones taken from among those in custody. During a press conference with reporters, Sheriff Roberts said that he was “relying heavily upon fingerprint clues” and confirmed that Chancellor had gathered “a number of almost perfect prints.” The sheriff also indicated that there were prints from “a deformed hand,” which Dana had. In fact, Dick later told reporters of how his hand had become injured from a fallen window. Still, Chancellor wanted to be sure and refused to commit to any firm results until enlargements of the fingerprints were made. He then returned to Jackson to examine his findings over the weekend, while the sheriff promised the public a report by Monday, August 8.13
At 11:00 A.M. that Saturday, August 6, many Natchezeans attended Jennie Merrill’s funeral at Trinity Episcopal Church. Generations of her family had been members there, and, of course, Dick Dana’s father was once the rector. Now, the rector’s son sat in the Adams County jail accused of her murder.
That morning Reverend Joseph Kuehnle, the current rector of Trinity Episcopal, conducted services for the woman whom newspapers continued to refer to — disparagingly, some thought — as the “aged recluse.” After, the cortege headed toward the city cemetery, where Jennie was laid to rest in the Merrill family section alongside her parents, grandparents, and siblings.
Only the day before, the editor of the Natchez Democrat printed a plea that there be justice for Merrill. “The slaying of this lady in its cold blooded premeditation is the act of a fiend in human form,” he wrote, referring to the unknown assailant as a person with “no more compunction on taking lives than the most savage brutes.” This person must be made to pay for this crime “on the gallows.” In the Jim Crow South, terms like “brute,” “fiend,” and “savage” were essentially code for black men who whites believed were naturally inclined to engage in this kind of criminality. To use those words amounted to a clarion call for a lynching.14
Some in the white community echoed this feeling. As Zaida Wells later recalled, “Without even suspecting negroes of the crime, two white people, Octavia Dockery and Richard Dana, starved, wretched inmates of decaying Glenwood . . . were in the Adams County jail charged with murder.”15 Such rhetoric played out in the local paper, too, and shaped public opinion about the pair’s arrest and detention. Only John Geiger, the owner of the overcoat, openly expressed faith in black Natchezeans’ essential goodness.
Then Monday came. Chancellor’s examination confirmed his initial observations. The first positive fingerprint match was one belonging to Octavia Dockery, found on a washstand in Merrill’s home. “Today I picked out a positively identified left forefinger of Miss Dockery as being one of the fingers that touched furniture in the room where Miss Merrill was assailed,” Chancellor announced in his report to the sheriff and the newspaper reporters gathered at the Adams County jail. “I believe and still contend as set out in my preliminary report to Sheriff Roberts last night,” he continued, “that I have one or more prints that correspond to Dana’s.” Those prints were collected from the rear door of Merrill’s home, an old washstand, a chifferobe, and the lampshade taken from inside the house. But since the original prints collected from Dick were smeared, another set had to be taken and examined. Still, it was enough for the county’s district attorney, Joseph Brown, to recommend that the sheriff formally charge the pair with murder.16
The evidence was swiftly growing overwhelming, yet Dick and Octavia steadfastly denied any guilt and protested their innocence. Dick even seemed to enjoy the attention, regaling reporters with stories of his youth. But when the conversation turned to the night of the murder, he was unable to recall events, changed the subject, or complained of deafness. His only recollection was of hearing shots and screams coming from Merrill’s home. He also denied having told officers there were any recent arguments between Octavia and Jennie over the goats.17
Book Roberts felt confident that fingerprint evidence was the key to solving the crime, and Chancellor’s findings confirmed his suspicions of Dana and Dockery. Yet he continued his investigation because a third set of prints found at the crime scene did not match up with any of the prints they had taken of suspects in Natchez. He also had reason to keep the case open, because there was pressure to follow up on Duncan Minor’s assertion that a “strange negro”— essentially not a local black with whom he was familiar — had come to see Jennie about money or something to eat.18
According to Duncan, this same man had also sought him out for work. He had called himself Williams and told him of having recently lived in Detroit or Chicago, that he had “lost several thousand dollars in a bank that failed,” and that he had returned to Adams County to look for work. He came to see Minor because he had worked for him when he was a young man. “I did not remember him,” Duncan said, “but since his day we have hired and fired so many Negroes it would be easy for me to have forgotten him.” At any rate, Minor refused to hire him because, he said, Williams “ruffled my feelings by being insolent.”19
Based on the evidence, Book Roberts had every reason to believe he had the right people in custody. A third set of prints simply meant there was another person working with Dana and Dockery. He even expressed confidence that the pair might be nearing a confession, as they appeared to be weakening under the intense interrogation by himself, Chief Ryan, and county DA Joe Brown. They must have come close to offering one, as the sheriff suggested that their reason for their fingerprints being inside the house was because they had run over to Merrill’s home after hearing shots. After they reached down to touch her “still warm blood” on the floor, they grew afraid and ran back to Glenwood. This, too, contradicted their protestations of innocence.20
While the questioning of John Geiger, Odell Ferguson, Dick Dana, and Octavia Dockery continued at the Adams County jail, Book decided to call in additional help. He seems to have been overwhelmed by a case that was already garnering national attention, so he reached out to Maurice O’Neill, a detective with the New Orleans Police Department. Like Chancellor, he was a Bertillon expert. Named for the Frenchman Alphonse Bertillon, such detectives studied photographs of known criminals, as well as the physical measurements of their heads and fingers, to develop a physical “roadmap” for tracking suspects. O’Neill was considered one of the best. He had joined the New Orleans police force in 1916 and was now the city’s chief of investigation and also highly regarded for his ballistics work. He
agreed to come to Natchez to assist Sheriff Roberts, arriving there two days later on the evening of August 11. Bringing the New Orleans detective to Natchez, it turns out, changed the direction of the investigation decisively.21
Maurice O’Neill, chief detective with the New Orleans Police Department. (Image from Master Detective, September 1933.)
In the week following Jennie Merrill’s murder, James Chancellor worked tirelessly on developing fingerprint evidence so that Maurice O’Neill might render his own technical opinion. When New Orleans’s chief detective arrived in Natchez, he met with Sheriff Roberts and his deputies, ostensibly to assist in the investigation. Before long, however, O’Neill asserted himself and took on a leading role. He intended to offer his own report on the fingerprint comparisons, and in the days ahead, he stood alongside Sheriff Roberts and answered reporters’ questions.22
Then, in an odd turn of events, Chancellor was said to have “broken under the strain” of spending fifteen-hour days examining fingerprints. It was reported that he returned home to Jackson, where he was “confined to his bed.” Coincidentally, it happened within a few days of O’Neill’s arrival. Had he been asked to leave? Was he insulted to have his work re-examined by the detective from New Orleans? Or had he honestly “broken under the strain”? These were all possibilities, and yet there was another potential explanation.23
Sympathy was growing in Natchez for the “pathetic pair” who sat in the Adams County jail charged with the murder of Jennie Merrill. Despite their conflicting statements and the positive identification Chancellor made of their fingerprints, collected from inside Jennie Merrill’s home, locals refused to believe that either Dick Dana or Octavia Dockery was capable of murder. Unnamed advisers declared that if need be, they would appeal to “the friend of the friendless,” none other than the American Civil Liberties Union attorney Clarence Darrow, who just seven years earlier earned fame in what was known as the “Scopes Monkey Trial.”24
The drama that attached itself to Dana and Dockery grew each day the pair stayed in jail. So, after initially allowing Dick and Octavia an opportunity to speak with reporters, Sheriff Roberts changed his mind and decided to keep the pair incommunicado. He did so, in part, because Lee Ratcliff, the son of Ed Ratcliff, who eventually became the pair’s attorney, was giving Dana legal advice in jail. The son, himself an attorney, was also in jail on charges of public drunkenness and had been talking to Dana whenever the two were in the “bull room” of the jail and advised him not to answer the sheriff’s questions.25
Meanwhile, Dana and Dockery received visitors at the jail daily. Young girls from prominent families brought them flowers and petitions for their release. People dropped off books, magazines, bedding, packages of fruit, more bouquets of flowers, and cards of sympathy. After several days, the sympathy even turned to resentment at the thought of the two of them being “bewildered by the relentless questioning.”26
Trespassing visitors to Glenwood also hastened the call for their release. Press reports of Glenwood’s dilapidated condition and unsecured antiques and other potential valuables inside the home drew people from throughout Mississippi and Louisiana and beyond, alarming locals. Hundreds of voyeuristic tourists arrived within days of the pair’s arrest. They wanted to see Goat Castle for themselves, and some went so far as to steal items from the house as souvenirs. Dockery used these transgressions to her and Dana’s advantage. “Can you wonder that Dick chose to shun the world, when people can be so heartless and cruel?” she asked a reporter. “While we are behind the bars of prison for a crime of which, as God is my bearer, we are innocent, vandals prowl through our house,” she continued. “Is there no law, no justice that will protect our property rights — is every one devoid of human feeling?”27
Not one to miss an opportunity in the spotlight now that it was upon her, Octavia made her sole newspaper interview count, telling the reporter, “You are a newspaper man! Tell the world! No! I did not kill Miss Merrill.” She continued to press her case. “God knows I did not kill her,” she said. “True, she was no friend of mine, but had I known her life was threatened on the night I heard screams and gunshots at her home, I would have gone to help her,” she asserted. Octavia made the most of her public performance. She certainly had never received this kind of publicity for her poems and stories.28
The only people allowed a meeting with Dick and Octavia at the jail, outside of their interrogators, were lawyers. Sophie Friedman, a Memphis attorney, visited with them and offered to represent them pro bono and work alongside either local attorney Laurens Kennedy, who often represented Octavia in her court appearances with Jennie Merrill, or Ed Ratcliff. Friedman, a Hungarian Jew, immigrated to the United States with her family when she was a child. They first lived in Memphis. Then in 1900, her parents, Louis and Mollie Goldberger, relocated to Natchez, where there was a thriving Jewish community and synagogue. The widowed Friedman happened to be in town visiting her mother when she decided to offer Dana and Dockery legal representation.29
Yet it was Ed Ratcliff, chief counsel for the Illinois Central Railroad, who stepped in to represent Glenwood’s residents. As Dick and Octavia entered into the second week of their incarceration, Ratcliff took charge of their case by filing a writ of habeas corpus claiming that the pair was wrongfully accused of murder and that they had been “unlawfully and illegally confined” since the night of the their arrest. The writ also stated that they had been “deprived of their liberty” by Sheriff Roberts.30
Locals considered the writ a good sign. White Natchezeans had practically demanded the release of Glenwood’s residents for several days. Now they would be party to the pair’s habeas corpus hearing. On August 15, locals crowded into the Adams County Courthouse to witness chancery court judge Richard Cutrer rule on the case and to see Dick Dana and Octavia Dockery, the odd couple who had been held incommunicado for the past several days across the street at the Adams County jail.
It was a dramatic scene as Dick and Octavia entered the spacious courtroom, filled to capacity with their fellow citizens. As they quietly moved through the crowd, people offered them kind words and reached out to grasp their hands in friendship. They then took their seat until their case was called. When it was, Natchez district attorney Clay Tucker stood up and stated that there was insufficient evidence to justify keeping them in jail and asked that they be released. Judge Cutrer agreed and ruled that the two be released on their own recognizance and be allowed to return home — fingerprint evidence be damned.31
As Dick and Octavia softly murmured, “Thank you, Judge,” the courtroom erupted into cheers and applause. Some in attendance pressed forward to shake Dick and Octavia’s hands, while others offered them a place to stay. They politely declined, preferring to return to squalid Glenwood. When asked how she felt about the situation she found herself in, Octavia said only, “No one can tell what turn events will take.” The pair then walked out of the courthouse escorted by the Reverend Kuehnle and their attorney, after which their old friend Archibald Dickson drove them home.32
Dana and Dockery’s brief incarceration may have ended, but the investigation continued, as Sheriff Roberts and Maurice O’Neill worked to piece together the story of the man named Williams. As they did, their investigation took them to Chicago and soon led them to a little shack on the corner of St. Catherine Street and Cedar Alley.33
CHAPTER SIX
JIM CROW’S INVESTIGATION
Of all the evidence collected from the crime scene — the overcoat, the broken oil lamp, and the positively identified fingerprints — authorities had yet to find the murder weapon. George Allen’s bloodhounds had led them to Wilds Pond and circled it several times, which made him believe the gun was tossed there. Deputy Joe Serio supervised the dragging of the pond in hopes of retrieving the murder weapon but came up empty-handed. Allen sought to vindicate his bloodhounds and even offered twenty-five dollars to anyone who came forward with the weapon. No one claimed the reward.
Based on t
he coroner’s report, the sheriff knew that the murder weapon was a .32 caliber pistol. E. C. Boyt, Jennie Merrill’s car mechanic, remembered that she carried such a gun. Her old 1919 Roadster was a rattletrap that needed frequent repairs, and whenever she opened her purse to pay him he noticed what he believed to be a .32 revolver. “I’ve seen it in her handbag 50 times,” Boyt said, adding, “I never really asked her about it, of course. One didn’t ask Miss Jennie about her business.” When the sheriff entered the house on the night of the murder, Jennie’s empty purse was found lying on the floor, and her revolver was missing. Could it be that her own gun caused her death? Even if it had, Book Roberts was under mounting pressure to locate the murder weapon and to identify the suspect who left the third set of fingerprints found inside Merrill’s home.1
The Sunday after Jennie Merrill was killed, Arkansas police deputy Robert Henslee was making his rounds in Pine Bluff when he spotted a black man he had never noticed in town before. Black men with no clear purpose for being on the street were assumed to be up to no good, so Henslee stopped to question him. The man wore a suit and hat, and his knapsack indicated that he was traveling. According to Henslee, this “suspicious character” refused to answer his questions, so he tried to arrest him. Henslee claimed that the man resisted arrest, and when he reached into the small bundle he was carrying, the deputy shot him — six times — fatally wounding him out of fear that the Negro might be reaching for a gun. Among the man’s belongings was a gun, the same caliber of weapon that killed Jennie Merrill, a .32 Colt pistol. There were also papers, including a letter from Austin, Texas, addressed to him in Natchez, which enabled local authorities to determine his identity as George Pearls.2