Goat Castle

by Karen L. Cox

  Police chief W. D. Fiveash phoned Sheriff Roberts to share the information he and his deputies collected from Pearls, believing that he may be the figure described in newspaper accounts of the murder. The chief told Roberts that the man killed had resisted arrest and that among his possessions was a letter addressed to him in Natchez and what he believed could be the “murder gun,” a .32 Colt revolver. Roberts was appreciative, but the name “George Pearls” was not one of the names he and deputies were pursuing. Book had no idea that he would be calling Chief Fiveash only a few days later.3

  Within hours of his arrival in Natchez, Maurice O’Neill swiftly took over the investigation. He led the sheriff and deputies into the black community to search for clues. Early on, Duncan Minor mentioned his suspicions about a black man whose last name was Williams and who had asked for work from both him and Miss Jennie. His recollection was that the man was from either Chicago or Detroit. Based on this, O’Neill, the sheriff, and a “slew of deputies” went into black neighborhoods in Natchez and on surrounding plantations.

  A major break came on Friday, August 12, when an older man from the black community provided the sheriff a key piece of information. Book Roberts explained to reporters that based on that tip, he and his deputies were able to retrace the steps of a “Chicago-Detroit negro” who had spent time in Natchez under the name of Lawrence Williams. Roberts refused to name his source, saying only that the person had provided the information as “gratitude for a kindness” that the sheriff had shown.4

  With this break in the investigation, sheriff’s deputies swiftly combed the community interviewing local blacks about a person officers assumed was unknown to them. But the man once described in newspapers as a “strange Negro” had actually been born and raised in Natchez. He had left for Chicago nearly twenty years before, like thousands of other southern blacks who migrated north. Williams returned to Natchez, they learned, to “visit with his boyhood friends in the country next to the Merrill and Dana estates.” And while in Natchez, he sought work. It was also clear from discussions with people familiar with Williams that he had met Jennie Merrill, Duncan Minor, Dick Dana, and Octavia Dockery. Minor had already confirmed as much, even if he had not recognized the “yard boy” who had worked for him years before.5

  Several local blacks were brought in for questioning during this stage of the investigation, including Zula Curtis, the owner of a boardinghouse at 33 Beaumont Street, where Williams stayed. They also questioned Louis Winston, a chauffeur for a local white family who, “as a favor to [his] cousin,” moved Williams’s trunk of belongings to the home of Nellie Black on St. Catherine Street adjacent to Cedar Alley. In Curtis’s statement to sheriff’s deputies, she described a man she knew as W. C. Williams who had boarded with her for a few weeks in July before he relocated to the house off Cedar Alley. In his statement, Winston confirmed having taken the trunk from Curtis’s establishment to Nellie’s home. “I moved the trunk, which was very heavy, and placed it inside the door of the Black house,” he said, adding, “While I did not know [Williams], I had heard of him from my relatives. He had removed from Natchez when I was a boy.”6

  Zula Curtis’s statement to deputies helped them develop a timeline of Williams’s activities in Natchez. He boarded with her beginning in July, she said, while he looked for work. This aligned with what Duncan Minor said about Williams coming to him looking for employment. Curtis also mentioned that even after he left her boardinghouse, he came back for a visit and complained that he had been unable to find a job. He had been to Glenwood and spoken with Dick Dana and Octavia Dockery and told Curtis their house was “filthy” and “in dilapidated condition” and that they could not afford to hire him. Williams also told her he had gone to see both Jennie Merrill and Duncan Minor and mentioned that Merrill’s home needed painting and repairs but that “they were too stingy to give him work.”7

  Curtis also made the observation that, unbeknownst to her, may have let Dick Dana off the hook. She told officers she noticed that Williams “did not have normal use of his left hand” whenever they played cards. But this was the extent of her description, and she could not discern whether it was deformed, paralyzed, missing a finger, or anything else. Still, officers and reporters seized on this information. A bloody print of a “deformed hand” had been found inside of Glenburnie.8

  Until now, the sheriff believed the prints found inside Merrill’s home to be Dana’s. Dick had a damaged hand, but it was his right hand. John Geiger, the owner of the overcoat found in Merrill’s home, had a bum hand, too, the result of an injury that had occurred during childhood. It was an odd coincidence that three suspects each had a misshapen hand, but the discrepancies did not seem to matter in Jim Crow’s court of public opinion. The deformed left hand of a Negro was guiltier than the deformed right or left hand of any white man, even though Dana’s prints had been positively identified from inside of Glenburnie.9

  Officers traced Williams’s whereabouts on the day of the murder, too. He had visited friends and family on the Hedges, Forest, and Beau Pre plantations, just south of Natchez on Highway 61. The Hedges is where he likely grew up; he had Williams cousins there. The last time anyone saw him was around 1:30 P.M. on the afternoon of Jennie’s murder as he set out toward Glenwood to see Dick Dana and Octavia Dockery.10

  In the days following the murder, as sheriff’s deputies spread across the black community, Sister likely wondered about Pink. She probably also worried about her own future. While she had grown fond of the man, he had also threatened to kill her if she said anything about that evening. She was also keeping his trunk, because he told her he would send for it once he got back to Chicago. She may have learned by reading the local paper that a man named George Pearls was a suspect in the killing of Jennie Merrill, but she would not have associated that name with the man she knew only as Pink. So, nothing could have prepared her, or her mother, Nellie, for what happened that Saturday, August 13.

  Sheriff’s deputies rapped their knuckles on the front door. Louis Winston’s statement about transporting Williams’s trunk to Cedar Alley had led them there. Then in what seemed like the blink of an eye, they confiscated the trunk, arrested both mother and daughter, and whisked them to the Adams County jail.11

  Inside of Pink’s trunk were several items of interest to investigators. Mixed in with some new shirts, a gold watch, and a headlamp “like those used for coon hunting,” he had undefined “burglary tools,” several .32 caliber bullets like those collected from Jennie Merrill’s home, and a number of life insurance policies made out to George Pearls. Sheriff Roberts immediately recognized the name as that of the man shot and killed by police in Pine Bluff and called Chief Fiveash. During their conversation, the sheriff confirmed that Pearls met the description of the man locals knew as Lawrence Williams. Book asked to come there to collect the evidence and photograph the deceased Pearls, but he was too late. George’s wife had already been there to claim the body and take him back to Chicago.12

  Nellie Black stands behind her daughter, Emily Burns. (Smith family photo, ca. 1913, courtesy of Birdia Green and Phyliss Morris, Natchez, Miss.)

  Among the papers in his knapsack had been documents identifying Pearls’s wife, Meadie, who was in Chicago when her husband headed south. It is unclear whether Chief Fiveash notified Meadie of her husband’s demise or if she learned about it from the newspaper or from acquaintances back in Natchez. If the Pine Bluff police chief did not expect to hear back from some poor black woman in Chicago, he was wrong. Meadie Pearls loved her husband. They had a home in Argo and a life together. He also had a daughter, Amelia. So on August 11, Meadie boarded a train on the Illinois Central Railroad and made the long trip to Pine Bluff. When she arrived, she identified and claimed her husband’s body so she could accompany him home on a train headed back to Chicago. There, she could plan appropriate funeral services at Peoples’ Undertaking Establishment, because George was no “strange Negro” to her.13

  Now, three separate lo
cations held clues to the case — Natchez, Pine Bluff, and Chicago. Book Roberts organized three groups of men to gather the information from those places that would hopefully solve the case. Special Deputies Walter Abbott, the county chancery clerk and former Adams County sheriff, and John R. Junkin, president of the board of supervisors, drove to Pine Bluff to retrieve the gun and Pearls’s personal effects. Local deputies, along with district attorney Clay Tucker, remained in Natchez and continued to interrogate local blacks, a process Maurice O’Neill had begun almost as soon as he arrived. Joseph Brown, prosecuting attorney, continued his questioning of Dick and Octavia.

  The most crucial task involved determining that George Pearls, alias Lawrence Williams, was the same person who committed the murder and whose fingerprints jibed with those of the third set of prints found in Merrill’s home. Sheriff Roberts led this group, which included O’Neill and a local black man named Louis Terrell. Terrell, who was close in age to Pearls, was said to have seen and spoken with the man he knew as Lawrence Williams. Now, he had the unsavory task of identifying the body.

  The three men left Natchez on Saturday evening, August 13, headed to Chicago as Meadie Pearls prepared to bury her husband. Their case rested on a positive identification of his body, and they intended to photograph the dead man and collect fingerprints from his corpse. To ensure they could complete those two grisly tasks, the sheriff sent a wire to the Windy City’s chief of detectives, William Schumaker, to delay funeral services. It read: “Hold the body of George Pearls alias Lawrence Williams alias Pinkney Williams shipped August 13th from Pine Bluff Arkansas to Peoples’ Undertaking Establishment, Chicago. Body accompanied by wife Meadie Williams. Pearls positively identified as murderer [of] Jane Merrill. Signed, C. P. Roberts, Sheriff of Adams County, Miss.”14

  How could he have been positively identified as the murderer even as the sheriff was on his way to Chicago to do just that? Dick Dana and Octavia Dockery were still in jail under murder charges. He continued to believe they were involved, but perhaps he thought George Pearls was the triggerman. There was also the reference to another alias — Pinkney Williams. Most Natchezeans were unfamiliar with that name. But Sister knew.

  When Emily Burns and her mother, Nellie Black, were taken to the Adams County jail, they were presumably being held only for questioning about the trunk and how they knew Lawrence Williams, whom Sister called “Pink.” No formal charges were filed against either woman. They could not afford an attorney, and none stepped forward to defend them as they had for the residents of Goat Castle. Emily and her mother’s race did not afford them such protection.

  By now the jail was crowded with suspects and others held for questioning, not to mention the only two people charged with the murder — Dick Dana and Octavia Dockery. Whether Emily saw Dick and Octavia when she was booked into her cell is not known, even though only a few feet separated them. But two days later, when the pair had their habeas corpus proceeding, Emily no doubt heard the roar of the crowd from across the street at the courthouse when the judge allowed the “Wild Man” and the “Goat Woman” to return home on their own recognizance.

  Their release came as her incarceration was just beginning.

  As officers began their interrogation of Emily and her mother, word came from Walter Abbott and John Junkin in Pine Bluff. Pearls, they were told, had been killed at a railroad crossing on the outskirts of town while resisting arrest. Former sheriff Abbott also believed that the gun he and Junkin retrieved provided “more than sufficient evidence” for solving the crime, noting that it was the same caliber of pistol that had fired the bullets found at Glenburnie.15

  The men brought the weapon back to Natchez to allow Maurice O’Neill to conduct a ballistics test. Once the gun was returned to the Adams County jail, Chief Deputy Joseph Stone traced its sale using the Colt pistol’s serial number. They learned that their deceased suspect, George Pearls, had purchased the gun several years prior, in 1916, at a Sears Roebuck and Co. store in Kiln, Mississippi. The ballistics test, however, would have to wait until the New Orleans detective returned from Chicago.16

  While Pearls’s gun was being retrieved from Pine Bluff, Book Roberts, Maurice O’Neill, and Louis Terrell were en route to Chicago aboard the Illinois Central Railroad, the primary conduit of travel between the Windy City and New Orleans. It was the same railroad that George Pearls used to travel back and forth to Mississippi and along the same line where he met his demise in Pine Bluff. For the three men headed north from Natchez, it was a means to an end, as they sought to confirm Pearls’s identity.

  While in Chicago the sheriff and O’Neill met with police officials who, as it turned out, were very familiar with George Pearls. He had a long criminal record, and they had mug shots and fingerprints from his previous arrests. Pearls was purportedly a member of a “negro gang.” Still, Roberts needed positive identification of the actual body.17

  It may have been enough that Louis Terrell confirmed that the dead man he saw at Peoples’ Undertaking Establishment was the man he knew as Lawrence Williams. But his observations were also confirmed by George Pearls’s own daughter, Amelia Garner. And whether or not it was voluntary, she put it in writing so that Book could submit it as evidence in the case he was trying to build. Her note read:

  Argo, Illinois

  August 16, 1932

  To Whom It May Concern:

  This is to certify that the body of George Pearls is the same man known as Lawrence Williams, also known as Pinkney Williams in the City of Natchez, Miss. He is my own father.

  Mrs. Amelia Garner

  7727 W. 62nd Street

  Argo, Ill.18

  The address Garner gave was the same as that of her father and stepmother, George and Meadie Pearls.19

  With photographs, fingerprints, and Garner’s letter in hand, the men headed back to Mississippi, making a stop in Jackson to confer with James Chancellor, comparing fingerprints he collected with the ones they brought with them from Chicago. Then it was back to Natchez, where Roberts and O’Neill continued their investigation. While reporters were anxious for details about the latest findings, they were perplexed by the “unusual reticence” both men displayed. “The only thing I can say,” Book Roberts explained, “is that we have completed our investigations in Chicago and Pine Bluff and that there are a number of angles that must be looked into in Natchez.” And with that, the sheriff, the detective, and Judge Cutrer took a day-long fishing trip to Lake St. John just north of Ferriday, Louisiana, after which O’Neill headed back to New Orleans to conduct the ballistics test on what most believed was the murder weapon.20

  Although Maurice O’Neill had been called to Natchez to “check and recheck” Chancellor’s fingerprint findings, he had yet to verify or contradict that evidence. He went with the sheriff to the crime scene and to Goat Castle, led the investigation into the black community, and accompanied Book to Chicago. While no report was forthcoming, O’Neill fingerprinted additional suspects, including two people who had regular access to Glenburnie. One was Effie Stanton, Jennie’s cook, but she was swiftly eliminated as a suspect. The other was Duncan Minor.

  Why Minor’s fingerprints had never been taken before was surprising because of his own suspicious behavior and because he was the sole beneficiary of Jennie Merrill’s will. First, he had failed to report for nearly an hour on the bloody scene he had come upon late on August 4. Then, in the early morning hours of the search for Jennie, he was the person to direct Alonzo Floyd to the area where the body was found. When her will was probated, Duncan inherited everything, including her Glenburnie estate and her two plantations in Concordia Parish — Scotland and St. Genevieve — where her father once owned more than two hundred slaves. There were also her investments in stocks and bonds, as well as the money she had in the bank, which altogether was estimated to be worth between $150,000 and $250,000 — no small sum in Depression-era Mississippi. Still, his were not the only fingerprints being gathered.21

  Sheriff’s deputies h
ad rounded up six more blacks from the community, representing an entirely new group of potential witnesses in the case. These included people with whom Williams had interacted on the day of the murder. A few of them were brought in based on information gathered during the interrogation of Emily Burns, now publicly known as the “negress” who operated a rooming house. Some were either family members of Lawrence Williams or friends he associated with while in Natchez, including Percy Perry. Perry was considered an “intimate associate” of the “Chicago-Detroit negro” and a material witness. Sheriff’s deputies took Perry into custody and whisked him to an unknown location for questioning before returning him to the less-crowded city jail, where impatient deputies continued their interrogation. Some local citizens said that “they heard the negro [Perry] screaming in the city jail,” suggesting that police were likely beating him, though officers “assured reporters that a man was having a fit or being crazy.”22

  Sheriff’s deputies interrogated Emily, too, several times a day for several hours at a stretch, but it took more than a week before they wrangled a confession out of her. She may have initially tried to protect Pink from arrest and certain death until she learned that, in fact, he had been killed in Pine Bluff. That news proved devastating in more ways than one, since she had developed feelings for the man and could not know what might become of her now that he was dead. She held out for as long as she could, pretending not to know of events except for what she read in the paper. As intense as the questioning became, however, she did not offer a confession — that is, until the eleventh day of her confinement.

  On the evening of Monday, August 22, Special Deputy John Junkin took her in for what became another long and intense round of interrogation. Chief Deputy Joseph Stone was there, along with Hyde Jenkins, who had demanded to be deputized. But this interrogation proved to be different. When Emily entered the room, she saw Junkin place a bullwhip on the table around which deputies had berated her for several days. He told her she had thirty minutes to tell the truth.23