“Yeah, that was a long time ago. Not many of those still around anymore.”
What I didn't say was that I also had spent the prior months running down every resident of 18th Avenue in Nashville during 1963 and 1964, in an attempt to find the final Christmas Eve quartet member, Jesse Henderson. After dozens of phone calls, I finally stumbled upon an elderly woman, a former resident of 18th Avenue, who remembered a man in his thirties who lived next door to her during the timeline in question. More importantly, she thought the man had worked for a Red Ace gasoline station near Elliston Place in Nashville at about that same time.
After the Red Ace moniker, I offered the Krystal hamburger name, and simply commented that the Krystal was still making burgers. I didn't mention that the Krystal had started in Chattanooga, Tennessee, not Music City.2
In 1964, Red Ace was a chain of locally owned service stations, which included the truck stop where Sam Carlton worked at 1st Avenue and Broadway in Nashville. My Red Ace attendant didn't work at the truck stop downtown, but rather at a small station at Elliston Place near Vanderbilt University.
Elliston Place is a short street with a long history. Elliston Place cuts diagonally from the end of Church Street and Baptist Hospital (now known as Saint Thomas Mid-Town Hospital), through a five-point intersection, and then ends up at a side entrance to Centennial Park, near West End and 25th Avenue. For many years, the street boasted popular restaurants on either end, with an array of specialty stores, coffee houses, gasoline service stations, and even Father Ryan High School.
Father Ryan eventually departed Elliston Place for the suburbs, but on the east end of the street diners still frequent the Elliston Place Soda Shop, at one time owned by attorney Charles Galbreath, and on the west end Rotier's Restaurant still serves one of Nashville's best cheeseburgers.3
In 1964, the Red Ace gasoline station was located across the street from the present day Rotier's Restaurant and next door to Sonny's Car Wash. Many people stopped on the way in and out of downtown to refuel at Red Ace and have their car washed at Sonny's.
Ruth's Diner, the location so key to the tragic Saturday night in February 1964, was across the street from the Hippodrome and on the same side of the street as Centennial Park. The Hippodrome was the place to go for professional wrestling matches held a couple of nights each week.
The home John Randolph Clarke shared with his wife, Callie, was on Dudley Avenue. Today, that property is made up of parking lots directly across the street from the Vanderbilt University track and field complex. Back in the day, Red Clarke could take a five-minute stroll from his home on Dudley Avenue to Ruth's Diner, a quick stroll down West End Avenue to the Hippodrome, another five-minute walk to the Red Ace gasoline station at Elliston Place, and then complete the circuit with a ten-minute walk back to his home.
It was at the Red Ace location on Elliston Place that my new phone acquaintance, Jesse Henderson, had pumped gasoline, washed windshields, and checked oil levels for customers in that ancient ritual of yesteryear. Jesse, in his mid-thirties at the time, lived with his mother, a registered nurse, in a house near Music Row, on 18th Avenue. And the Henderson apartment address just happened to be the exact location where the third and matching bullet in the John Randolph Clarke matter was found near the sidewalk, five days after Paula Herring was slain.
With this background, it was a short conversation to move from the possible connection of the bloody man and his employment at the Red Ace truck stop in downtown Nashville to another Red Ace worker who just happened to live where the most critical evidence against John Randolph Clarke had been found. While on the phone with Mr. Red Ace, who was by this time in his early seventies, I wondered about the chance that he knew the bloody man, and perhaps much more?
“When would be good time to interview you?” I inquired. “I could stop by for lunch or bring a pizza or sandwiches, if you eat that kind of food?”
“Oh, I don't eat much and I'm mostly in bed. I can't help you.”
“Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. I hope you get to feeling better soon, Mr. Henderson.”4
After several weeks had passed, I dialed the same number, and the same high-pitched voice answered again:
Me: How are you today, Mr. Henderson?
Henderson: Alright, I reckon. What'cha calling about?
Me: The Paula Herring murder in 1964.
Henderson: Who?
Me: Herring. Paula Herring. You're the Jesse Henderson that worked at the Red Ace service station on Elliston Place back in February 1964, aren't you?
Henderson: Don't know her, never heard of her. What did you say her name was?
Me: Paula Herring.
Henderson: Oh, yeah, I didn't know that was her name. Yeah, that son-of-a-gun what was his name, shot her.
Me: Clarke?
Henderson: Yeah, he shot her. We used to go to the same barber over on Charlotte. I was there at the party where he fired that gun in the ground. That policemen said it was a wonder he hadn't shot me.
Me: When would be a good time to come by and see you? It looks like you live on White Bridge Road and I'm just around the corner.
Henderson: I'm in bad health.
Me: How about lunchtime next week? Thursday work for you?
Henderson: Call me first when you're coming and don't bring a bunch of women up here. I'm mostly in my pajamas.5
I laughed at this last comment, and made a mental note that Mr. Red Ace himself, Jesse Henderson, had moved to the top of the leader board for interviews.
The following Thursday, I drove to an apartment complex on White Bridge Road near the Lions Head shopping complex, parked my car, and approached the entrance, where I discovered that the large front doors were locked and secure. There was no way to enter the building without a key. And there was no speaker or buzzer to press to request entrance. My first thought was that Mr. Red Ace had known exactly what was going to happen when I arrived, and if he didn't want to see me, he didn't have to see me.
As I turned to walk back to my car, a little woman with a bag of groceries in her lap was maneuvering her wheelchair toward the entrance. As she waved her card at the security system, the lock clicked, and like a gentleman I opened the door for her. She flashed a smile at me and asked if I could help wheel her into the building. “My pleasure,” I replied.
As we approached the elevator, she asked who I was visiting, and when I replied with the name “Jesse Henderson,” she said, “Oh, he lives on my floor, just ride the elevator with me and I'll show you which apartment.”
A few doors down the hall from the elevator, I knocked lightly on the door of apartment 803. With no sound of footsteps or movement from inside, I knocked again a few moments later, and, from within the unit, I heard a distinctive high-pitched voice saying, “It's open, come on in.”
For all of the modern exterior and well-kept interiors of the apartment complex, stepping into unit 803 was like stepping into a haunted house. I stepped inside but immediately came to a halt to let my eyes adjust to the dim light. The two-room apartment was dark, save for a flickering light in a room on my left and a bit of sunshine as a backdrop for a dingy curtain in the small living room directly in front of me.
On my right, the kitchen counter was covered in dust, candy wrappers, and stacks of unopened Pepsi Cola cans. It appeared that a real meal hadn't been prepared in the unit in years. The small living room had a worn-out recliner and a few boxes of books scattered around the floor and stacked on a small table. There was nothing on the walls, no photos or art work, just a coat of beige paint. It looked as if someone had moved in decades earlier and simply had never bothered to unpack their meager belongings.
“I'm in here.”
The tinny voice startled me, and I took a step toward the darkened doorway on my left. Another step closer and I stood just outside the room, while my eyes adjusted to the lighting to see an old man lying under a white sheet on a twin-sized bed. His medium-length gray hair looked as if it had been styled with a comb fu
ll of firecrackers, with no rhyme or reason as to where any particular section was pointing. He was wearing a pair of discolored, large-framed eye glasses that looked like they had been prescribed in the 1960s. His shirt was a simple t-shirt, which may have been white when new but was now a dingy gray.
“Mr. Henderson?”
“Yeah, they let you in downstairs?”
“I guess you could say that. I was helping one of your neighbors, and she said I could find you here.”
“Oh, yeah, that's Miss Busybody. She's always trying to leave me some food or checking on me.”
As I quickly surveyed the small bedroom, I could see the hand of the same decorator who had designed the kitchen and living room. The room contained a twin bed, a few boxes adorned with stacks of hardback and paperback books. The source of the flickering light turned out to be a 1970s-style television on a rolling cart at the end of the bed. A tiny table with a small wooden chair was at the end of the bed as well. The strong odor of stale cigar smoke was unmistakable.
Henderson appeared to be perhaps five foot eight, very thin, and probably hadn't been out of the building in months. He was sporting a patchy growth of gray and white whiskers that hadn't been cut in perhaps the past ten days. If the kitchen were any indication, his diet was junk food, colas, and cigars—not the picture of health.
“Thanks for seeing me today,” I cheerily offered with a smile.6
“Yeah, what's up? You researching that Clarke fella?”
“I suppose.”
“You a writer?”
“No, just an amateur researcher, I'll put it that way.”
“We used to get our hair cut at the same barber.”
“Yes, I remember you mentioning that on the phone. I was actually more curious about your participation on the night of the Christmas Eve party with John Randolph Clarke in 1963.”
As I made this statement, I was closely observing the old man. He was propped up on his right side, two pillows under his head. He seemed to be ignoring my question, as he reached down by the bedside and grabbed a can of soda with his left hand, then took a long sip.
“Mind if I sit down?” Before he had a chance to answer, I made a quick move to the end of the bed, reached over the television cart, and picked up the small wooden chair with one hand, swinging it up and over Jesse Henderson's prone body so I could place it at the head of the bed and sit perpendicular to him. For a split second, I got the impression that Henderson had flinched and perhaps was thinking that I would attack him with the chair. It was a fleeting thought.
“I read where you were living in the Music Row area when they searched for the bullet that Clarke fired into the ground in your front yard. You and your wife lived there?”
“No, my mother.”
“No wife?”
“Oh, yeah, I was married. I think she's in Georgia. I wasn't married when that girl got killed, but I've got a daughter I haven't seen in a while.”
“Mr. Henderson, how did you come to be in the car on Christmas Eve with John Randolph Clarke?”
“Me and Murray and BlueSky had been to a party where Clarke and that Al Baker had been, and we caught a ride with them.”
“BlueSky?” I asked.
“Ah, just some guy I drank with back then.”
“And Murray Cook?”
“Yeah, he was a doctor, a smart son of a gun too, had an IQ of 160. He was the chess champion of Georgia at one time.”
As Henderson ran though the details about his friend, I remembered that I had already attempted to meet with Al Baker, but he had quickly declined, and soon thereafter I had discovered that Murray Cook was dead. So I was down to one Christmas Eve participant.
Murray Cook had been brought to Jackson, Tennessee, to testify in the criminal trial in 1964. On the witness stand, Cook explained his credentials, which included Doctor of Psychology, and then described the snowy Christmas Eve with the gun fired by Red Clarke. When one of the defense attorneys for Clarke asked Dr. Cook if he were employed at the time of the Christmas Eve event, the answer was a simple “No,” and that he had been mostly under a physician's care.
“So were you working at Red Ace at the time of the Christmas Eve car ride?” I asked Henderson.
“Oh no, they let us out that weekend.”
“They, who's they?”
“The VA.”
“The VA Hospital?”
“Yeah, if you had a place to go, they'd furlough you out on the weekends. Me and Murray were psych patients at the VA.”
“You and the doctor were both psych patients,” I replied, my eyes rolling at this news.
“Yeah, he was a manic depressive, tried to kill himself with lithium. Not sure where he is nowadays.”
“I can answer that for you. Murray Cook died in 1969 in New York City.”
“I guess he finally did himself in.”
“I don't know anything about the cause of death, just that he is in fact deceased. By the way, did Red Clarke work with you at the Red Ace service station?”
“Ha, he didn't do much work. He mostly bummed money off of his wife so he could go drinking. She was a schoolteacher. You know that lawyer of his should have gone for the insanity plea.”
“Insanity plea for Clarke, why's that?” I asked.
“He was all the time picking up the phone and telling no one that he was Agent XY14 checking in for messages.”
Thinking at any moment I might be asked to leave, I decided to push the Red Clarke button a bit more firmly and observe the response. “Well, he may have been crazy, but I don't think he shot that Herring girl.”
“Somebody better go out to the cemetery and wake him up and tell him! That jury sure thought he did it. He went to prison for it. I know he drove that old black Cadillac that made a lot of noise and the neighbors heard it that night.”
“No, Clarke didn't drive a Cadillac,” I said.
“Oh, I thought he did.”
“What if they convicted the wrong man?”
This comment was not well received. Henderson's thin body became tense, and his face reddened up by two shades of crimson. He was shaking a long finger in the direction of his feet as he spit out a reply: “I believe Booth shot Lincoln, Oswald shot Kennedy, and Red Clarke killed that girl.”
This statement became the opening I had wanted from the start, so I continued my interrogation with a trick question to see how Henderson would respond: “What about that other man? The one you worked with at Red Ace, Sam Carlton?”
Henderson flung his soda can back to the floor, cursing at me as he did. “I don't know Sam Carlton. Why don't you get out of here?”
I replied with a soft, “Sorry to bother you, I'm leaving.”
And without attempting to replace the chair in its original position, I stood up and backed my way out of the room, turning toward the front door. As I reached for the doorknob, Henderson's calm voice surprised me:
“You think she lived a while?”
I pulled my hand back from the doorknob in slow motion, and turned to the bedroom door, taking two slow steps as I thought about what seemed to be an important answer.
“Yeah, I do. I think she lived a while. What do you think?”
“Me, too.”
“So, Jesse, how much time are you thinking?”
“I don't know, maybe a half-hour, maybe longer.”
Two minutes later I was out of the apartment building and safely back in my car. My heart was racing and when I glanced in the rearview mirror my eyes looked like I had just exited a haunted house. I knew that I needed to make notes of the encounter with Jesse Henderson, so I grabbed a small notebook from the glove compartment and began writing down Jesse's comments, as well as the questions I was quickly formulating in my brain.
Notes from Jesse Henderson Interview:
This old man seems to be serving out some kind of self-imposed prison sentence.
Might have mental health issues, paranoid, schizophrenic, or ?
Knows the details of t
he slaying as if he read the trial transcript this morning.
Knows when Clarke got out of prison, how long he served, and that Clarke is dead.
Could Jesse Henderson have killed Paula Herring?
Could Jesse have been with Red Clarke when Paula Herring was killed?
Who is BlueSky?
The first big murder case in Metro Nashville's young life was, by all accounts, the babysitter murder involving eighteen-year-old Paula Herring. It was also one of the biggest cases handled by then thirty-one-year-old John Hollins, a blond assistant district attorney, whose good looks and stylish wardrobe made him the focus of much of the trial coverage from Jackson.
Known as “Big-un” by friends and family, the tall, large-framed Hollins wore designer sunglasses and smoked expensive cigars when walking the paparazzi-filled route between the Madison County Courthouse and the New Southern Hotel during Clarke's criminal trial. When the attorney general for Nashville, Harry Nichol, chose not to lead the case against John Randolph Clarke, “Big-un” was given the lead trial lawyer's role in Jackson. Hollins had been up to the task, obtaining a first-degree murder conviction against Clarke in five sensational days.1
Hollins certainly had earned his role in prosecuting the babysitter case, having graduated in the famous “Class of 1957” from Vanderbilt University Law School with Jim Neal. Neal went on to fame as the prosecutor of labor kingpin Jimmy Hoffa, and also of various Nixon officials in the Watergate scandal. Hollins worked as a Nashville prosecutor in 1961, followed by a stint as assistant district attorney when the new Metro government was formed, a position he held until 1969.2
Parlaying the babysitter murder conviction into even more success, Hollins already had switched to the other side of the aisle when he was retained to defend a local teenager named Jeffrey Womack, who had been formally and informally pursued for decades as the teenage killer of nine-year-old Marsha Trimble. Trimble had disappeared in late February 1975 while delivering Girl Scout cookies in an upper class neighborhood in Nashville. Though volunteers, psychics, and bloodhounds had searched in vain for the girl over a thirty-three day period, she was found on Easter Sunday morning in a garage 150 feet from her home, and was deemed to have been strangled to death weeks earlier.
A Murder in Music City Page 11