Goat Castle

by Karen L. Cox

  There was nothing subtle about placing a bullwhip in full view of a black woman suspect. These deputies knew its history in their community. So did Emily. Her slave ancestors had experienced its brutality, as had countless black men and women in the decades since the Civil War. Now it lay before her, a reminder that this instrument of punishment well known to slaves still existed for those who did not respect the supremacy of white men. The specter of the lash served its purpose. At 12:40 A.M. on August 23, Emily “confessed.”24

  Chief Deputy Stone and his special deputies reported to the press that they had acquired an “authentic” confession from Emily Burns. “After numerous statements in which the woman attempted to avoid a confession,” the Natchez Democrat reported, “she finally agreed to tell the truth.” But a “confession” born of fear did not necessarily represent authenticity or truth. In this instance, Emily stated that the only people involved were Pink (George Pearls), Poe (Ed Newell), and herself. She told them that Pink went into the house to rob Merrill but did not intend to kill her, although he shot her twice. She explained that Poe was with them and that he helped Pink carry the body out of the house. “I carried the lamp,” she said. Based on her statement, neither Dana nor Dockery was at the scene of the crime. The only time she mentioned them was to say that Pink “went to [Glenwood],” talked to them, and got the overcoat. Some took this to mean that he simply got it from the Skunk’s Nest on the Dana property. Sheriff Roberts, however, did not accept this confession as a solution to the murder and stated he planned to wait until Maurice O’Neill made an official report on the fingerprint evidence collected by James Chancellor.25

  Book had charged Dick and Octavia with murder based on that fingerprint evidence. He had also offered a compromise during the habeas corpus proceeding — they could go home on their own recognizance, but the murder charges remained. No matter what his own chief deputy believed, the sheriff remained convinced of Dana and Dockery’s involvement.

  Despite Emily’s confession, the sheriff held off on charging either her or Poe with the crime because the investigation was ongoing. Yet by not charging either of them, Book knew that local whites, already upset over the arrest and interrogation of Dick and Octavia, might engage in mob violence. This occurred with some frequency in the Jim Crow South, as whites, impatient with the pace of “justice,” seized black suspects from local jails and lynched them. Not long after Burns’s and Newell’s arrests, a lynching took place in nearby Wisner, Louisiana. A twenty-six-year-old black man named William House, in custody because two white women claimed he insulted them, was taken from the jail and lynched, his body left hanging on a tree by the side of the road where all could see. To avoid this kind of vigilante justice, the sheriff whisked both Emily and Poe to Jackson, where they were held at the Hinds County jail “for safe keeping.”26

  Emily and Poe were not allowed to speak on the ride to Jackson, and once there, interrogations continued. While Poe denied any involvement, Emily repeatedly placed him at Merrill’s house on the night of the murder. She also amended the confession she gave in the Adams County jail to now include Dick Dana and Octavia Dockery at the scene of the crime. She had clearly met them that night, notwithstanding their protestations of innocence.

  Despite inconsistencies in Emily’s confessions, she always implicated herself, Pink, and Poe — although it was not until later that she explained how Poe came to join them. She maintained that the overcoat found in Merrill’s home came from Dana and Dockery. In her confessions, Pink entered the house first as she remained outside as a watch. Now she added that Jennie’s neighbors joined them. She also included further details — details that rang true for Book Roberts.

  That evening, she said, Pink asked her to go for a walk, and along the way he told her of his plans to “to try and get some money” from Jennie Merrill, adding that “if you tell, I am going to kill you.” Their walk led them into the woods near Glenwood, where she waited while Pink got the coat from Dick Dana to be used as a disguise. Poe joined them near Dana’s home. “I didn’t know we were going to meet him [Poe] until we met him,” she said.27 She then placed everyone at Glenburnie at the same time as they lay in wait under the house until Pink determined the room Jennie was in. Emily allegedly told officers that “there was a struggle from the bedroom to the dining room,” adding, “[Pink] shot Miss Merrill,” facts she could not have known firsthand if she waited outside. Yet her fingerprints were not found in the house.28

  It became clear that Pink shot Merrill based on the other details of this confession. Emily heard Merrill screaming and told officers, “It seemed like they broke to her to keep her from hollering.” Who were “they”? Pink and Poe. Poe, she said, “came out and threw me the lamp and went back and they carried Miss Merrill down the walk and put her in the bushes.” According to her, she accompanied them and then “threw the lamp twenty feet” from the body, but that is not where it was found. Afterward, Pink, Poe, Dick, and Octavia went back through the house searching for money and valuables as she was told “to stay outside and watch.” Immediately after, all of them went to the Dana home. Pink and Poe went inside as she again waited outside. Then the three of them left through the woods, crossed the railroad, and “came through Mr. George Kelly’s [Melrose] and on home by the back road.”29

  After she and Pink got home, she told officers, Pink “pulled off his clothes and got matches and coal oil and burned them up.” He told her he was going to “make [his] way home.” On the Monday after the murder, Emily received a letter from him from Pine Bluff telling her he had made it that far and had not been caught. “Don’t say nothing,” he wrote. “I burned the letter in the stove,” she said.30

  The Natchez Democrat published Emily’s second confession, but it had been edited from the original that she signed. That document offered additional details but was also written in such a way as to appear coerced and in language that was anything but “authentic.” But they were details that aligned with officers’ theories about Lawrence Williams’s movement that night. While the paper included that part of the statement about the route she and Pink took to get home, it failed to include the detail that Poe was with them for part of that journey until he headed in a different direction on his way into town. Perhaps the route he took went by Odell Ferguson’s place, the place the hounds had led officers. The paper also did not include the fact that Dana and Dockery had joined in the ransacking of Merrill’s home or that they all went back to Dana’s place afterward.31

  Other parts of Emily’s confession appear contrived. The deputy who transcribed her confession repeatedly typed “Poor” for “Poe,” seeking to correct what he assumed was black dialect in which “po’” often meant “poor.” But it was the final paragraph of her signed confession that rings most false, because it was an obvious attempt by sheriff’s deputies to absolve them of any rough treatment of her during questioning, commonly known as the “third degree.” When Dick and Octavia were released, Chief Deputy Stone tried to make them sign a similar statement that officers had not subjected them to the third degree. They refused on the advice of their attorneys. But Emily Burns was a poor black woman without any legal option. And she was surrounded by a group of intimidating white officers when she made her confession. She was left with little choice but to sign her name to it.

  That final paragraph read:

  While I’ve been in jail I couldn’t have been treated no better if I’d been a white lady. They’ve been very kind to me. Nobody has promised me anything and nobody has threatened me since I’ve been in jail. I’ve told this because I’ve wanted to and wanted to tell the truth. I’m doing this of my own free will.

  A confession under such duress had very little to do with Emily’s “free will.” That she felt any “better” having implicated herself is questionable. She had simply gone on a walk with Pink when events went horribly wrong, and now she had just signed a confession that absolved deputies of having threatened her with a bullwhip and who knows what oth
er indignities. She had to swallow the lie that they had been “very kind” to her and be reminded, in the most insidious way, of the double standard of southern womanhood. Black women were not thought to be ladies, so she was fortunate to have been treated like a white one.32

  After Emily’s confession in the Hinds County jail, sheriff’s deputies returned her to Natchez, while Ed “Poe” Newell remained in custody in Jackson. Book Roberts, who had been keeping quiet about the investigation, opened up to reporters. “We have unquestionably established the fact that George Pearls, alias Pinkney Williams, the ‘Chicago-Detroit’ negro[,] was the actual slayer of Miss Merrill,” he said. “We also have proven that Emily Burns, the negress who conducted the boarding house where Pearls lived[,]is an actual accessory to the murder,” he continued. Newell was still being investigated, because Emily had implicated him in each of her “confessions.” And while her confessions consistently included Dick Dana and Octavia Dockery, the sheriff claimed that as far as they were concerned, “we are still continuing our investigation,” adding, “We have not yet accepted the credibility of either confession.” As part of that investigation, officers also arrested Nellie Black’s brother and Emily’s uncle, George “Doc” Smith. According to Chief Deputy Stone, Smith “spent much time with Emily Burns at her home,” so they intended to question him to “determine whether or not he had any knowledge of the plot” that resulted in Jennie Merrill’s death. Book also said that Percy Perry and Emily’s mother, Nellie Black, were still being held as material witnesses.33

  While deputies were securing a signed confession from Emily at the Hinds County jail, Maurice O’Neill submitted his ballistics report. The gun found on George Pearls was the same one that fired the bullets found in Jennie Merrill’s home, and he concluded that it was the murder weapon. There was still the matter of fingerprint evidence, including those of Dana and Dockery, which the sheriff said would be submitted to the grand jury for its deliberation. James Chancellor, he noted, “is prepared to appear before the grand jury of the Adams County circuit court in November and testify” to the validity of his findings.34

  Emily Burns had spent nearly two weeks in custody without being formally charged and with no hard evidence to keep her there. But Jim Crow justice meant that there would be no habeas corpus proceeding for her as there had been for Dick and Octavia. And their fingerprints had been found inside the Merrill home. Sister had no attorney and could not return home on her own recognizance, as had the two white suspects, because the same rights of citizenship did not belong to black women.

  Instead, the sheriff, his deputies, and police offers took Emily back to Glenburnie to reenact the crime. Despite Roberts’s attempt to keep this part of the investigation quiet, word got around. Octavia knew something was going on, too. She claimed she was “greatly frightened by the mysterious group” on the neighboring estate, even though she could hardly see them through the overgrown woods surrounding Goat Castle. So she sent her old friend Archibald Dickson into town to inquire about it, knowing intuitively what was taking place.35

  Octavia was frightened for good reason. Despite being able to leave jail and return home, the murder charges against her and Dick had not been dropped. But on her last night in jail, she believed she might have found an out. While DA Clay Tucker continued his interrogation of her, he asked Octavia about a black man named Lawrence Williams. She knew who he was, she said, and even suspected that he was the murderer. She also confirmed something deputies learned from talking to Emily, who was now in custody, which is that Williams had been by Glenwood on the afternoon of the murder. Octavia claimed that she never mentioned it before because she was “afraid” that Williams would link her and Dana to the murder. There was no reason to make that assumption if they were both innocent.36

  By asking her about Williams, Tucker provided Octavia the opportunity to speak truthfully about her interaction with a prime suspect in the case and still shift the focus away from her and Dick. The DA must have told her that Williams was dead, and this convenient truth meant she could point her finger at a black man with the confidence of knowing that he would never have the opportunity to incriminate her or her ward.37

  She never counted on the fact that a black woman might point a finger at her.

  Book Roberts did not think having Emily Burns retrace her steps on the night of the murder was necessary to solve the crime but claimed that she was “willing” to do so. Joined by other officers, Emily allegedly walked them through the events of that evening, adding new details. According to the published account of the reenactment, officers took her to a clearing on the edge of Glenwood, where she said she waited while Pink went to speak with Dana and Dockery. When Pink returned with the overcoat, she reportedly told officers that they took a shortcut across a bayou on the way to Glenburnie where Poe, who had come from the direction of Duncan Park, met them. Dana and Dockery, whom she first saw as they were standing near Jennie’s car, followed them there “to show them how to enter the Merrill home.”38

  In this retelling of the evening’s events, Emily Burns added new details. She claimed that Dick Dana assisted Pink and Poe in carrying Jennie Merrill’s body out of the house. “They put me in front with the lamp,” she said. According to the report, she also pointed out where the body had been thrown and the lamp, too, before the sheriff made her go inside the house to point out other movements.39

  Yet Emily claimed in all of her confessions that she never entered the house. And, after deputies located the lamp, James Chancellor’s test did not find her fingerprints on it, but those of Dick Dana. The sheriff knew, however, that white Natchezeans did not care about the fingerprint evidence even if he found it convincing. So, he had to build a case against the “negress,” too, or the murder might not be regarded as solved.

  At this point, deputies ceased their interrogation of Odell Ferguson. John Geiger, too, was no longer a suspect. And, after what he had been through, he was not as sympathetic to Octavia Dockery as other white Natchezeans. He filed his own lawsuit against her for the return of the items she took from the Skunk’s Nest after forcing him to leave. Geiger claimed that among the missing items were “two cotton mattresses, four feather mattresses, four quilts, three chairs, one lamp, one overcoat, two lumber packs, two tables, one iron bedstead — total value forty-nine dollars and twenty-five cents.” He wanted “that pesky overcoat” back.40

  For most of September, there was little to report as the sheriff worked to put together a case for the November session of the grand jury. John Junkin finally returned Poe to Natchez at the end of August, where he remained in jail until his release on October 6 without any explanation other than that he had been “fully investigated.” Emily Burns and Nellie Black continued to be held until the grand jury issued its findings. The only visitor allowed them was the Reverend Charles Anderson from Antioch Baptist Church, where the two women were members. It was the only comfort either of them were afforded.

  The grand jury was not scheduled to meet until November 17. All Sister and her mother could do was sit in their dank jail cells and wait.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  NATIONAL SCANDAL

  In the fall of 1932, the investigation into the kidnapping and killing of aviator Charles Lindbergh’s son was ongoing, Americans elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt president of the United States for the first time, and the Pacific Whaling Company exhibited a fifty-five-foot-long whale encased in a glass-enclosed railway car near the corner of Broadway and Main Street in Natchez. For three days in early November, Natchezeans paid admission to see, on a transcontinental tour of the country, the “the largest mammal ever captured.” On Sunday, November 6, “Whalebone Lew” Nichols, a real whaling captain and reverend, also delivered his sermon “God, Jonah, and the Whale.”1

  The fall in Natchez had already been an unusual time in the history of the town. In some ways, neither the Lindbergh kidnapping, nor FDR’s election, nor the chance to see a whale compared to what townspeople had going on
in their own backyard. Jennie Merrill’s murder had captured national attention for weeks. Then came word that a woman in Indiana might contest her will. Goat Castle, of course, garnered the most attention. Its notoriety and that of its residents tarnished the town’s reputation but also drew voyeurs seeking what writers described as a drama about an Old South society that was “stranger than fiction.” As one Massachusetts newspaper put it, “Novelists have written until their hands were cramped, trying to spin tales of eerie horror, but did they ever invent anything to beat that [story] from Natchez, Miss.?”2

  During the Great Depression, newspapers were filled with crime stories — bank robberies, child abductions, and murder. These lurid tales sold papers and offered a distraction from the daily economic suffering of millions of Americans. All the better when the case involved wealthy individuals, because their poor choices — not to mention those of President Herbert Hoover — had helped create that suffering. So, the murder of Jennie Merrill and the salacious details coming out of Natchez that fall provided boundless fodder for newspapers across the country. The aura of a romantic Old South that contrasted with stories of southern decay only added to Americans’ interest in the gothic narrative that emerged from Natchez.

  It took fewer than forty-eight hours for Jennie Merrill’s murder to become national news. The New York Times headlined blared “Rich Woman Recluse Slain In Mississippi.” Other papers followed suit. Missouri’s Joplin Globe reported, “Elderly Recluse Is Slain in South.” “Army Coat Is Clue to Recluse’s Murder,” wrote the Atlanta Journal Constitution, while the small Georgia paper the Titusville Herald’s headline proclaimed “Aged Recluse Slain.”3