After Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (Crimescape)

by Marilyn Bardsley

  What she didn’t know was that Williams also vetted the kids back at his house. If they had left their small Georgia town because they were gay or were simply desperate enough to make some money satisfying Jim’s friends, he kept them around for a while to make sure that they weren’t a liability. Once he’d broken them in, Jim would introduce them to his friends.

  Later, when he was much more successful, Jim didn’t have to hang around the bus station looking for young talent. All he had to do was to go out into the squares around Bull Street and persuade some of the teenagers to come to home with him. He got to know which ones he could trust.

  Confirming this aspect of Jim’s character was very challenging. Although many in the gay community knew what Jim was doing, locating victims who would agree to an interview was difficult. Many of the “boys” that Jim had exploited over many years were dead from AIDS, drugs or urban violence, but eventually I was able to interview two who are still around. One was a hairdresser, the other a performer who also worked in a fast-food restaurant. Jim’s approach was the same in the years after the bus-station encounters. According to the two I interviewed, he’d invite them to his fabulous Mercer House for a drink. These kids, most of whom were 16 or 17 years old, were poor, absolutely awed by the opulence of the house and desperate for money. Once he selected boys that he could introduce to his friends, he’d groom them and give them money for their services.

  There was at least one instance much later in Jim’s career when Jim admitted to Doug, one of the young men who worked in Jim’s shop, that an out-of-town client paid him for sending Doug over to service the man who was staying at a local hotel.

  Oglethorpe Club, Savannah

  It is unlikely that Jim procured boys for wealthy clients primarily for money, although there were exceptions. What Jim sought in exchange was influence. He needed acceptance into a level of society that normally would have been closed to him because he was not from a distinguished old Savannah family, nor was he “old money.” Gradually, because he was helpful, charming, and did not appear gay, Jim was able to use his interior design expertise, knowledge of antiques, and discreet sexual services to insinuate himself into the upper reaches of Savannah society. Savannah is very tolerant of sin in the rarified reaches of society, as long as it doesn’t become the subject of conversation at the exclusive Oglethorpe Club.

  Chapter 4: Lean Times

  We can most accurately characterize Jim Williams’ early years in Savannah as very lean. He had only one suit to his name and frequently borrowed money for routine expenses. His longtime friend, Joe Goodman, met Jim when he was just 11 years old. They were both living around Washington Square in downtown Savannah. Jim was 18 years older than Joe and became like a father figure to him because Joe’s father was a merchant marine and frequently worked away from home. Jim was on a subsistence budget, so Joe’s mother frequently fed Jim, as did the Saseen girls who belonged to the Saseen Bonding Company family in Savannah. Joe explained that Jim was broke for quite a long time in those early years. He bought a lot on credit and borrowed frequently.

  Portrait of Joe Goodman

  painted by Myrtle Jones

  Jim began restoring homes in 1955, when he bought three row houses on East Congress Street for peanuts. Eventually he bought the whole block, rented them out and then sold them for a reasonable profit. His longtime friend Joe remembers those times vividly. Jim built his young restoration work crew from Joe and his friends that lived around Washington Square, paying them when he could.

  “Want to start making some money?” Jim boomed as he enthusiastically rounded up the boys in the neighborhood. They did things like tearing down walls and putting in new plaster. They all liked him and never suspected he was gay.

  Row houses on E. Congress St.

  Once he pocketed some money from the Congress Street restorations and rentals, Jim set his sights on the houses on nearby East St. Julian. He would put small down payments on houses to hold them until he had the funding to start work. He was not making a lot of money, but he did make an important friend, Henry Dunn, the head of Georgia State Savings Association, who funded a number of Jim’s restorations.

  The first house on East Julian Street that Jim set his eyes on was the Odingsells House, which was the first house of the multi-talented South Carolina native Major Charles Odingsells. Odingsells fought in the Revolutionary War and became a prosperous planter on Skidaway Island and the owner of Little Wassaw Island.

  Often, Jim would often live in a house after it was restored until it could be sold. In 1961, when he finished the restoration, he moved in and brought his antique shop with him.

  The next major restoration was the Hampton Lillibridge house on East Bryan Street. Originally, the house was going to be moved along with another house to Washington Square to become the headquarters of the Port Society. During the move, one of the houses collapsed. The Historic Savannah Foundation let Jim buy and take over the restoration of the remaining Lillibridge house. Jim moved the house across the street from his home on East St. Julian and eventually bought the whole block.

  Chapter 5: Things That Go Bump in the Night

  The Bird Girl

  photo by Jeanne Papy

  Jim Williams was very superstitious and interested in knowing the future. Some said that he had a deep belief in magic and the spirit world. For those who read John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil or saw Clint Eastwood’s movie, one of the most interesting characters was a colorful voodoo princess called Minerva. During the book and movie depiction of Williams’ four trials during the 1980s, she seemed almost omnipresent, casting spells on District Attorney Spencer Lawton, witnesses and jurors. She also performed rites designed to appease the spirit of Danny Hansford, whom she reasonably assumed was angry about being shot. Minerva reputedly learned her skills from her husband, who called himself “Dr. Buzzard.” Jim was a client of Dr. Buzzard, and when he died, he went to Minerva, who took over his practice as a “root doctor.”

  Minerva’s real name was Valerie Fennel Aiken Boles. She lived in Beaufort, South Carolina. According to a man who frequented the Monterey Square area where Jim’s Mercer House is located, Ms. Boles was in Savannah frequently in the 1970s and 1980s, finding a ready market for her services from Jim and others. She passed away in early May 2009. Her age was undisclosed, but she was well past middle age.

  Root doctors are still a big thing in the Low Country, especially in parts of South Carolina. They perform a wide range of personal magical services, such as getting revenge on an enemy, removing curses, preparing love potions, or even ensuring a criminal a shorter prison sentence. They are a current-day version of a shaman or witch doctor using herbs, potions of everyday items to perform their magic rites that originated in Africa.

  In addition to using Ms. Boles’ services, Joe Goodman said that Jim often went to palm readers, even on one of his trips to Europe where Joe accompanied him. In many ways, it is not surprising that Jim had a deep belief in the spirit world, considering what he went through when he renovated and later lived in the Hampton Lillibridge house.

  Hampton Lillibridge house

  According to James Caskey in Haunted Savannah, in 1799, Rhode Islander Hampton Lillibridge built the three-story New England-style house with a gambrel roof and unusual widow’s walk; the house was constructed near the center of the port city. Lillibridge also had a plantation on Sea Island, which is now a resort community with the high-end Cloister boutique hotel, south of Savannah. Jim bought the house in 1963 and moved it to 507 East St. Julian Street across from the Odingsells house that Jim had restored.

  The brick masons working on the house complained about the noise of people running around on the upper floor, but there were no steps to the upper floor at that time and no evidence that anyone human was up there. Throughout the restoration, the masons threatened to quit working on the house because they heard loud voices, furniture being moved around and feet stomping on the upper floor.
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br />   Jim and Joe Goodman and a number of other people also heard sounds that couldn’t be explained by any natural means. Joe, who does not believe in the supernatural, said he heard heavy chains being dragged across the floor above when there was no one on that floor.

  Another time, Joe and Jim were standing outside of the house. Joe saw a Siamese cat looking at them from the upper floor window.

  “Williams,” he said, pointing to the cat. “Look up there. That’s Nooney.”

  “Sure enough,” Jim admitted after staring hard at the cat. “It’s Nooney.” Nooney, Jim’s cat, had died two years earlier.

  One of the most chilling episodes in the house occurred later, when Jim was out of town and three of his friends tried to persuade the masons to go back to work in the house. The friends heard noises that sounded like people upstairs, even though the house was empty. One of the friends went up to investigate. Margaret Wayt DeBolt describes the event in Savannah Spectres and Other Strange Tales:

  “When the others went looking for him, they were shocked to find him lying face down on the floor. He said he felt as though he had just walked into a pool of cold water, and was being overpowered by some force. He had dropped to the floor to try to avoid whatever seemed to be drawing him toward the thirty-foot drop of the unfinished chimney shaft.”

  Various other specters were seen at the windows, including a dark-haired man in a suit and a bow tie. Another time, a gray-haired man with a gray suit and white tie was seen when the house was vacant and locked.

  It’s really no wonder that Jim personally believed the place was haunted. Once, when he was talking to a cop in the house, they heard a crashing sound from a room in which Williams had a pipe organ. When the policeman went upstairs, the pipe organ was fine. Nothing could have made the repeated loud crashing noises. At other times, when Jim was in bed, he heard footsteps come into his room and stop at the foot of his bed.

  The house developed a reputation. One night, when Jim was in Europe buying antiques, neighbors heard singing. Through the lighted windows, they could see figures dancing. However, the neighbors found out the next day that the house was empty and locked.

  Jim had spent a great deal of time and money painstakingly restoring the house and had no desire to see it lose its value because of supernatural forces. To fix the problem, he contacted the Right Reverend Albert R. Stewart, an Episcopal bishop, to perform the rite of exorcism in December 1963. Joe Goodman was there when the bishop came to the house, fully robed with young acolytes. Joe said the bishop said a few words and blessed the house, but the ceremony, which was reported to have lasted 45 minutes, was really not much more than 10 to 15 minutes. Perhaps if the exorcism rite had been longer, the effects would have been more lasting. The spirits kept away for about ten days, but then returned.

  The Hampton Lillibridge house was so obviously haunted that various psychics came to investigate both the phenomena and the history of the house. While the house was being moved from its original location on East Bryan Street, a workman died when the house that was being moved with it collapsed. Some believed that a sailor who once lived in the house had committed suicide by hanging himself in one of the upstairs bedrooms. Jim later recalled that when the house was moved, there was an old crypt on the lot underneath the house, but no one thought to investigate it then. By the time Jim thought of checking out the crypt, it had already been covered up.

  As time went on, Jim’s charismatic personality, expertise in antiques and dedication to furthering the preservation of homes in the historic district earned him a growing number of friends in Savannah’s old-money class. He was also making inroads with influential bankers like Mills B. Lane Jr. Lane was the head of Citizens and Southern National Bank, the largest bank in the South, and a major force in Georgia politics. When Lane returned from Atlanta to live in Savannah, the city of his birth, Jim sold him a lot across the street from his house on St. Julien. Good neighbors and friends for years, they used to walk around the neighborhood drinking wine and talking about the restoration of downtown Savannah.

  Eventually, Jim sold the Hampton Lillibridge house, despite its notoriety, or perhaps because of it. Subsequent owners of the house have reported a number of strange events, like hearing inexplicable music or furniture moved around in empty rooms on the floor above, but the ghostly events did not have the frequency or intensity that had existed when Jim owned it. Most of the unusual happenings were experienced by people who did not live in the house.

  Chapter 6: The Gods Smiled

  Until the mid-1960s, things were lean for Jim. The profit margins on sales of restorations and antiques were insufficient for Jim’s driving ambition. He would take his earnings and put small down payments on a number of properties, hoping that he would be able to eventually be able to earn enough to buy them outright or get enough in loans to secure them.

  At one point, Jim scrounged up an extra $5,000 to buy Cabbage Island, just below Wilmington Island in Wassau Sound on the Georgia coast, where he where he and his friends could drink, fish and party. Little did he know what this dubious piece of vacation real estate would do for his fortunes. Cabbage Island is a large marsh island with very little land mass and is virtually under six feet of water at high tide.

  In Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, John Berendt suggests that Jim’s purchase of the island was an example of his business cunning, because he made a small fortune selling the island to Kerr McGee, who wanted to develop the large phosphate deposits on the island. Kerr McGee bought the island from Jim in 1966 for $660,000. According to Joe Goodman, the island was strictly a party place and he never mentioned anything to his friend about phosphates or any other intrinsic value of the island.

  According to Tonya D. Clayton of the National Audubon Society, in 1968, Kerr McGee also purchased nearby Little Tybee Island for the same purpose as Cabbage Island two years earlier. When Kerr McGee petitioned the state for a permit to strip mine phosphates from deposits 40 feet below the marsh surfaces, there was a public outcry and the state passed a law protecting all Georgia tidal marshes from strip mining.

  Jim’s sudden treasure was a watershed moment in his career. It was an enormous jumpstart to his ability to invest in important properties, lavish restorations, high-value antiques, and collectable treasures. Now he had the means to go over to Europe several times a year and purchase British and European antiques at excellent prices that he could mark up substantially when he sold them to customers in the U.S. He would attend auctions at Christie’s, Sotheby’s and other auction houses to buy for commercial purposes, as well as for his personal collection of Fabergé.

  Jim explained to Joe, who now worked for Jim doing odd jobs, how he was able to get such valuable antiques overseas. As socialism became entrenched in Europe and the U.K., taxes on the wealthy were increased to confiscatory levels, especially inheritance taxes, to pay for the social welfare state. Rather than make it publicly known that they had to sell valuable antiques to pay their taxes, wealthy families concluded transactions with Jim that ensured confidentiality for the sellers. Joe said that he would get an exclusive arrangement on a house that was being sold to pay “death taxes” and then buy all the furniture in the house at a bargain price. He would then ship over only the most valuable antiques to his shop in Savannah and arrange for sale of the less valuable pieces in country. Other bargains could be found as formerly wealthy citizens of Russia and other Eastern European countries were forced to flee and live on whatever treasures they were able to take with them.

  In quick succession, Jim was able to secure and restore some of the most important historic houses and buildings in Savannah.

  Armstrong House

  First was Armstrong House, an opulent palazzo with an exterior in the Italian Renaissance style on Bull Street near Forsyth Park. It was built for George Ferguson Armstrong, his wife, Lucy, and a daughter. Armstrong’s Strachan Shipping Company had made him a substantial fortune. Construction was finally completed after several yea
rs in 1919 at the then-astronomical sum of $680,000, or so goes the legend.

  Armstrong’s widow eventually donated the exquisite property to house Armstrong Junior College. The house remained a college for the next three decades until it was acquired by the Historic Savannah Foundation in 1966, when the growth of the school required a move to a larger location. Over time, Armstrong Junior College expanded greatly and became Armstrong University, a state university.

  Jim bought Armstrong House from Historic Savannah Foundation in 1967, restored it and moved his antique shop there for a couple of years. In 1970, Jim sold it to the law firm of Bouhan, Williams & Levy. One of the law firm’s senior partners was Frank W. “Sonny” Seiler, who bred the famous Uga bulldog mascots for the University of Georgia.

  For those who have seen the Midnight movie, the early scene between writer John Kelso and the actor who played Williams’ attorney, was filmed inside the magnificent Armstrong House. Jim’s real attorney, Sonny Seiler, appeared in the movie as Judge White.

  The Pink House

  No sooner had Jim restored Armstrong House in 1967 than he moved on to his next project, the Pink House, in 1968. The Georgian home was made of red bricks and then covered with white plaster. However, the color of the bricks kept bleeding through the plaster and white paint, creating a pink house. No matter how many times the house was painted white, it eventually turned pink again. Finally one of the owners gave up and painted the exterior pink.

  The pink mansion on Reynolds Square was built by James Habersham Jr., who was from one of Savannah’s founding families. It was saved from demolition by Alida Harper Fowlkes, who bought it and turned it into a tearoom. Later, the Georgian Tea Room closed and the house fell into a serious state of dilapidation—that is, until Jim undertook its restoration. After a contentious time with the city government on granting a liquor license, Jim finally sold the building, which was turned into a popular Savannah restaurant called The Olde Pink House.