After Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
Marilyn J. Bardsley
Copyright
After Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
Copyright © 2011 by Marilyn J. Bardsley
Cover art to the electronic edition copyright © 2011 by RosettaBooks, LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
See the full line of true crime ebook originals at www.crimescapebooks.com
Electronic edition published 2011 by RosettaBooks LLC, New York.
ISBN Mobipocket edition: 9780765319129
Contents
Chapter 1: Good and Evil
Chapter 2: Most Likely to Succeed
Chapter 3: Overcoming Obstacles
Chapter 4: Lean Times
Chapter 5: Things That Go Bump in the Night
Chapter 6: The Gods Smiled
Chapter 7: Jim’s Gay Savannah
Chapter 8: The High Life
Chapter 9: Shady Dealings
Chapter 10: Danny Hansford
Chapter 11: The Prosecution
Chapter 12: The Defense & Closing Arguments
Chapter 13: Trials and Tribulations
Chapter 14: Not Again!
Chapter 15: Some Observations on Danny’s Death
Chapter 16: Aftermath
Acknowledgements
Photo credits
Sources
Photo Index
Forsyth Park
Gordon, GA
Jim Williams
Greyhound bus station
Oglethorpe Club
Portrait of Joe Goodman
Row houses on E. Congress St.
The Bird Girl
Hampton Lillibridge house
Armstrong House
The Pink House
Herb Traub Jr.
Blaine’s
The Lady Chablis
Mercer House
Crockfords Club
Mercer House party
Joe and Nancy Goodman
Tombee plantation house
Jude Law during filming
George E. Oliver
Spencer Lawton Jr.
9 mm Luger
Mercer House parlor
Sonny Seiler
Spencer Lawton Jr.
Danny Lewis Hansford’s grave
Dorothy Kingery
James Arthur Williams’ grave
Chapter 1: Good and Evil
A decade ago, I abandoned hectic, impersonal, traffic-choked Washington, D.C., and embraced sunny, serene Savannah. As the executive editor of Court TV’s Crime Library website, I had the luxury of working anywhere I could get a good Internet and cell phone connection, so I chose the quiet calm of semitropical Savannah.
Forsyth Park
Savannah is a truly lovely city where atmosphere hangs as heavy as the Spanish moss on the giant live oak trees. A stroll through the elegant, seductively beautiful historic district, with its spacious porches, walled gardens and intricate ironwork, is a glimpse of a treasured past, now lovingly restored. But the city is so much more than an antebellum grand dame. It is a unique state of mind: Discreetly scandalous, insular, stubbornly resistant to change, and resplendent with eccentric charm and perfect manners.
The grid design of Savannah was planned by General Oglethorpe in 1733, when the city was founded. Every few blocks in the historic district there is a shaded park-like square with huge oak trees, gardens, and monuments; each square is a quiet leafy oasis.
Savannah’s Rosemary Daniell aptly described the special character of her city: “Despite this city’s pastel beauty, it also has a dark underside. Within its hothouse atmosphere, the present runs concurrently with the past; events that happened decades before are discussed as though they happened yesterday, including a number of scenes of sex and violence extreme enough to rival any dreamed up by Tennessee Williams.”
After living here for a few months, I found myself fascinated by one of the city’s most memorable characters, Jim Williams. Like millions of other people, I then read John Berendt’s runaway bestseller, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, and watched Clint Eastwood’s movie starring Kevin Spacey as Jim Williams and Jude Law as Danny Hansford, the lover that Williams shot.
As a publisher of hundreds of crime stories, the Jim Williams case, with its four separate murder trials, struck me as quite unique. Imagine spending the better part of a decade and much of your wealth defending yourself in four separate trials, punctuated by a two-year stint in a seriously substandard county jail.
I wanted to get to the heart of this very bizarre case. It called out to my investigative instincts, which meant that I needed to understand Jim Williams and Savannah a great deal more than I did after reading Berendt’s book and seeing Eastwood’s movie. I began a series of some 40-plus interviews, starting with a veteran Savannah Morning News reporter who covered the Williams trials and was kind enough to let me look through the newspaper’s archives. He also gave me a list of people he thought would be good to interview. Each person I talked to expanded my list of additional people to contact. The list was varied and ranged from socially prominent Savannah “bluebloods” to antique dealers, drag queens, hairdressers, photographers, bartenders and others of differing layers of society and backgrounds who had rubbed elbows with Jim Williams.
I discovered a charismatic and multifaceted man with astonishing talents and long-lasting contributions to the restoration of the historic city of Savannah. However, as a part of this complexity, I also found a man who indulged in clearly unethical and illegal activities that could have put him behind bars well before he shot Danny Hansford.
What emerged is the story of a man to whom the city of Savannah owes an enormous debt. It is the account of a highly talented artist and entrepreneur who had enormous passion for the arts and dedicated his career to saving many of the grand old houses of Savannah from the wrecking ball. Surprisingly, it is also the tale of an often-arrogant man with a shocking predatory streak who deceived and exploited people at every level of society. Ironically, the intersection of these conflicting currents in Jim Williams’ personality gave birth to Williams’ greatest contributions to Savannah: The fallout of Danny Hansford’s shooting and the subsequent trials, John Berendt’s bestselling book and Clint Eastwood’s movie put Savannah squarely on the tourist circuit, generating millions of dollars of revenue, which flowed into the city for more than a decade and, most likely, will continue to do so well into the future.
I invite you to come along with me into the very fascinating and complicated world of Jim Williams.
Chapter 2: Most Likely to Succeed
Some have characterized Jim Williams’ life as a Horatio Alger story. Not so, says Kenneth Worthy II, an antiques dealer and friend of Williams. According to Kenneth, Jim’s parents were never poor. They weren’t cash-rich, but they were quality people with decades of good breeding. Jim personally enjoyed tracing and writing about his family’s English heritage and its journey in the New World from Boston to central Georgia. They were a family of prosperous farmers.
James Arthur Williams was born December 11, 1930, in Gordon, a small mining and farming town east of Macon in rural Georgia. His father was a barber and his mother, Blanche Brooks Williams, was a secretary for a local kaolin mining company. Jim’s thick dark hair and good looks were a gift from his rakishly handsome father. He ha
d one sibling, a younger sister, Dorothy, whom he nicknamed D.O., which was short for Dorothy Ollie.
In 1983, Jim wrote fondly about an idyllic childhood in a close-knit family of grandparents, uncles and aunts, who frequently got together at his grandparents’ farm at Turkey Creek, some 18 miles from Gordon. Ultimately, his father and mother divorced and his father remarried, but his father and his new wife lived in close proximity to the children. A number of Jim’s writings about the history of his family, his early interest in saving disappearing Georgia architecture, and stories about restoring homes in Savannah and South Carolina are captured in Savannah’s Jim Williams and His Southern Houses by his sister, Dr. Dorothy Williams Kingery.
Gordon, GA
The entrepreneurial spirit was strong in Jim even as a youngster. Worthy told me that even at the age of 14, Jim was buying and selling antiques he thought were valuable or could expand his knowledge. Jim’s strong business sense and work ethic so impressed his school principal that once he let the teenager out of school to close a transaction. To encourage Jim’s love of wooden furniture, his father built him a wood shop, which is still standing in an old tobacco barn, according to Worthy.
From his youth onward, Jim had a deep love and respect for history and its survivors, antique pottery and furniture. It greatly pained him to see the destruction of so many fine old rural houses as enormous areas were cleared to plant pine trees for the pulp and paper industry. Later, this early fascination with history expanded beyond what he saw and found in central Georgia, even beyond colonial America, to the antique treasures of Europe and Asia that he would ultimately possess.
First, he had to go to college to get the credentials he needed to become a credible architectural preservationist. With the help of his mother’s salary, he was able to enroll at the Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida, to study interior design. The normal program for an interior design certificate was three years, but he only attended for two, from August 1948 to May 1950. It’s possible that he didn’t go for the third year because of the Korean War and the increasing need for young men to go to Korea and fight the Communists. Jim joined the USAF, which was an alternative to being drafted into the Army.
Chapter 3: Overcoming Obstacles
By 1951, when Jim Williams first saw Savannah, it had become a shabby city. A few years earlier, Lady Astor said, “Savannah was a beautiful lady with a dirty face.” Her comment shamed Savannah, but not enough to do anything about it. Preston Russell and Barbara Hines summed up the problem in their history of the city: “Prominent businessmen who cared nothing for old architecture assumed there was little to save.”
In 1952, when Jim left the Air Force and decided to stay in Savannah, it was a time of economic growth and pride in America’s future. He was greatly disturbed at the destruction of houses in the historic district to make way for parking lots and garages. It seemed like every week, another house in the historic or Victorian district was destroyed. Ironically, the value of the old Savannah gray bricks as building construction material was greater than the value of the house, so some houses were torn down just so the bricks could be sold.
To make ends meet, Jim became a salesman for Klug’s Furniture Company at the corner of Victory Drive and Abercorn St., well outside the central downtown district. For a while, Jim invested his time and impressive knowledge of art and antiques in a joint venture with his friend Jack Kieffer. Kieffer put up the money and Jim put up the expertise, but the antique sales venture did not survive. Even though Kieffer remained a lifelong friend, Jim told close associates that Kieffer made out much better financially in the venture than he did.
Jim’s goal at that time and for a number of years in the future was to restore important historic homes in Savannah. What was going on in downtown Savannah was happening to cities everywhere. The inner city had become crime-infested and affluent people moved out to the suburbs, leaving once-lovely large homes to fall into disrepair. Most of these large homes in the historic and adjacent Victorian districts became tenements and apartments rented out to numerous large families, which further accelerated the decline in property values. Wealthy families built their mansions in suburban Ardsley Park, not far from middle-class neighborhoods of ranch and colonial-style homes. Two decades later, as executives from northern states with harsh winter climates planned their retirements, many of them were enticed by the gated communities and exclusive golf courses on Skidaway Island like the Landings and other Low Country club resorts, rather than settling in a city that was still in decay.
The early 1950s was a watershed time for the city. The Georgia legislature gave the city permission to raze the historic City Market, which was replaced by an ugly parking garage. Finally, the people of Savannah woke up, and although they couldn’t save the old City Market, an influential group created the Historic Savannah Foundation in 1955. As one Foundation member explained, “We needed one crisis, one central issue that would focus attention on the downtown area. This happened to be it.”
The decline of Savannah’s historic district worsened in the 1960s as suburban shopping centers and Oglethorpe Mall, Savannah’s first shopping mall, made it unnecessary to go downtown for any reason. Savannah’s banks, like banks all over the country that faced a deteriorating inner city, redlined the area. In other words, they would not lend money for restoration projects. Downtown property values plunged and large stately homes in the downtown and midtown districts could be purchased for less than $5,000.
Jim Williams
Courtesy of Jeanne Papy
For a man like Jim Williams, brilliant, ambitious and absolutely hellbent on becoming a major force in restoring Savannah’s architectural jewels, it was very challenging. The wealthy families of Savannah and the city’s financial institutions were extremely hesitant to invest any money in risky downtown restoration ventures. The fledgling historical foundation was a good start, but it wasn’t going to further the dreams of Jim Williams anytime soon.
Ever the businessman and opportunist, he came up with an ingenious—but unethical and ultimately illegal—solution to the problem of getting his restoration projects funded and increasing his friendships with important people. Jim was a very masculine gay man with a trim body, a handsome face, thick dark hair and penetrating dark eyes. Moreover, he was extremely intelligent, poised, and an expert in antiques and architectural design. He had attended the Ringling College of Art and Design and was blessed with exquisite taste. Jim was remarkably persuasive and struck most people as being extremely trustworthy. In short, he was one attractive and desirable bachelor.
Jim quickly learned that a number of wealthy and influential gay men were locked into the married life that Savannah society required its upper crust to embrace. Some of these married gay and bisexual men were at the top of important financial institutions and businesses that would ultimately determine whether or not there would be funding in the future to restore historic Savannah.
Jim understood the conundrum that these men faced. They may have dreamed about young gay boys as sexual partners, but the risk of seeking out such relationships was fraught with enormous risks. Yes, there were many young male hustlers hanging around the Bull Street squares, but engaging them was far too dangerous. There was great potential for scandal, extortion, blackmail and even personal injury if they were engaged in a homosexual relationship. To a businessman like Jim, the conundrum for Savannah’s wealthy gay men represented an opportunity. Jim used this opportunity to insinuate himself into Savannah’s old-money crowd and coax his new influential friends to fund his restoration projects. An extra bonus was to cultivate the spouses of his new gay friends and further insert himself into the fabric of Savannah’s high society.
Certainly, this did not happen overnight, but it began fairly early in Jim’s residence in Savannah. As a very cultured, handsome man with enormous charisma and persuasive abilities, developing sexual relationships with selected influential gay men was not difficult for him. To the gay
socialite, Jim represented a “safe” relationship for men whose married life and reputation demanded the utmost discretion.
Jim didn’t work this avenue solely with his own charms. Some of his gay married friends hankered after sexual partners much younger than Jim, but could not afford to be seen cruising gay bars or making sexual overtures to employees or acquaintances. Opportunist that he was, Jim found a way to serve the needs of his friends. Unfortunately, the service Jim provided—which I first stumbled upon early in my research into Jim’s life and character—was immoral.
I was having some painting and wallpapering done at our home when Buddy, our wallpaper guru, overheard me talking about Jim Williams.
“My mother hated him,” he blurted out.
My ears perked up and I asked him why his mother hated Jim.
“She was the manager of the Burger King at the bus station back then,” he explained.
Greyhound bus station, Savannah
My thoughts focused on the downtown Greyhound bus station. There was only one in Savannah.
“She’d watch him [Jim] as the buses came in from rural Georgia and South Carolina. He’d look over the teenagers coming off the buses and go talk to the good-looking ones,” Buddy continued.
“Then what did he do?”
Buddy shrugged. “My mother saw him walk away with the boy he chose, but she didn’t know where they went.” He paused for a moment. “She knew what guys like that were up to. You see that kind of thing when you work at the bus station. He didn’t do that once or twice. He was around a lot, looking for runaways.”
Seeing Jim month after month checking out boys in their mid-teens and leaving the station often with them disgusted her. She assumed that he befriended the boys for his own pleasure, and that was partly true. Jim loved sex with young men and boys.
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