When Henry Lee wasn't being retained for high-profile criminal cases, such as the O. J. Simpson trial in Los Angeles, the Martha Moxley murder case in Greenwich, Connecticut, or the JonBenét Ramsey case in Boulder, Colorado, he was busy at the Henry C. Lee Institute of Forensic Science at the University of New Haven, Connecticut. The new institute had been in business only a handful of years when I attempted to contact the famous forensic expert.
After an email and a couple of phone calls to Connecticut, I was routed to Dr. Al Harper, the executive director of the institute. After expressing my desire to reach the famous physician, Dr. Harper explained to me that Henry Lee had earned a PhD in Biochemistry from New York University and was not a medical doctor, and that Lee's schedule of work, other than a few events per year at the institute, found him all over the globe.3
With this news, and as concisely as I could manage, I attempted to describe my situation, noting the fact that I had copies of photographs from a crime scene, as well as photographs of the victim, and that I did not understand what I was seeing. I made it clear that I wasn't attempting to exonerate the defendant, John Randolph Clarke, but instead I was completely focused on unraveling the truth, and I believed that the crime-scene photographs could point me in that direction.
I don't know if it was the helplessness in my voice or simply the heartbreaking aspect of a six-year-old boy sleeping through his sister's murder that caused Dr. Harper to offer assistance. Perhaps it was my mention that J. Edgar Hoover had been involved in the case and that the case was tied to the birth of Metro Nashville in the 1960s that elicited Harper's response. To his great credit, he said he would review in confidence anything I sent to the Henry Lee Institute.
Not wanting to send my only copies of the photographs, I made another trek to the print shop in Green Hills. I spent the first few moments of my visit getting instructions on using a high-resolution scanner to capture and copy the extremely graphic crime-scene photographs onto a CD that I could mail to Dr. Harper. I got more than a few wide-eyed looks from the technician who assisted me, and I had to offer a detailed explanation of the images and ask that they be erased from any hard drive when I finished my scanning work. I got no argument on this latter point.
Many months passed before I would learn of the results from Dr. Harper's review. One of his graduate students had initially made a first pass at the photographs in the summer of 2004, but then the student had taken a job at another university and the files were ultimately determined to have been lost in the move. So I repeated the process of creating a CD and resent it to Dr. Harper. In late October of 2005, I was scheduled to attend a meeting at Yale University in New Haven, which by car was less than ten minutes from the University of New Haven, and Dr. Harper graciously invited me to visit with him about the Herring case.
Harper, with doctoral degrees in forensic anthropology as well as law, was a most gracious host when I arrived at Dodds Hall and found his office on the fourth floor of the red-brick building. The big man, with his salt-and-pepper beard, receding hairline, and wire-rimmed glasses, was eager to discuss the particulars of his initial review, and, after I took a seat opposite him, he got right to the point.
“I can't speak to the sequence of the gunshot wounds, but I can confirm that there is one entry wound in the upper shoulder near the victim's collarbone area, and two gunshot entry wounds in her back.”4
“No question about those?”
“None; they are all classic gunshot entry wounds. Do you have a theory as to why they didn't mention all three gunshots at the criminal trial?”
“I'm not sure, unless someone thought that maybe two different guns were involved in the girl's murder and they wanted to hide the trail to the owner of one of them. It's just a random theory on my part and most likely a wrong one.”
A smile crossed Harper's face as he asked his next question: “Do you know where any of the bullets are being kept at this point in time? I see two exit wounds on the front of the girl's chest, but no exit wound on her back where the front collarbone shot might have ended up.”
“Yes, I do. The two bullets fired into her back are stored in evidence with the exhibits from the criminal trial in Tennessee. Why do you ask?”
“We can easily discover if two different guns were involved in the shooting. We'd need a funeral home, and a ballistics expert at some point, and either a family member to approve the exhumation or a court order to let us proceed.”
“Proceed?”
“We'd dig her up. I'd fly to Tennessee with the current chief medical examiner for Connecticut. He's a friend of mine and a colleague. We could fly in on a Friday, exhume the body, conduct the autopsy on Saturday, and fly out on Sunday. We would likely find a third bullet near the victim's spine, or perhaps in the bottom of the casket.”
“I certainly hadn't thought of that option.”
“You understand there would still be significant expense. You'd have to pay for an exhumation, and pay the funeral home for a place to do the work, and then pay for the reburial. The ballistics analysis would likely run a few hundred dollars as well. If you can get us there, and provide the hotel rooms, and maybe some good bourbon, it would be fun to try to unravel the mystery.”
“It's a lot to think about, and a very gracious offer. While I'm thinking, may I pose another question to you?”
“Please do.”
“If the victim were shot in the collarbone area first, how long could she live until the two shots in the back were fired into her?”
Harper gazed at the doorway a moment and then turned his eyes toward me. “Young people can exhibit an unusual ability to hang on. Not knowing for certain the trajectory of the bullet, this girl could have survived a half hour, perhaps much longer. It all depends.”
“Thank you, Dr. Harper.”
Just find who did this.
—Jo Herring
In November 2005, a few weeks after the visit with Dr. Al Harper, my wife and I went out to dinner with some friends who lived across town from us. We decided to meet in the Cool Springs area south of Nashville, at one of the easy-to-find restaurants convenient for both couples. My wife and I had not seen Steve or Becky Brewer in a long time, and there was a history between Steve and myself that went back to 1986. Steve had been a company officer at a large corporation when he walked into the computer business where I worked to explore using a personal computers as part of their network. My role in the project was to coordinate our technical resources to prove the concept and deliver the computers needed through our distribution channel. It was during this informal business partnership that I had eventually gotten to know Steve's wife, Becky, who worked as an officer for a small regional bank.
I was looking forward to reconnecting with Steve and Becky, in part, because for some time I had been attempting to avoid the obvious fact that the Paula Herring research project was near the end. With W. B. Hogan's death, and the puzzling comments of Dr. Ed Tarpley, combined with the potential cost of an exhumation that might be fruitless, it felt like there was nothing else to be gained from continuing down the same path. It was a painful reminder that I was on the verge of failing in my quest. Thus, the promise of seeing old friends felt like an excellent alternative to a decision I had been avoiding for weeks.
After the requisite hugs and greetings, we settled into our table at a large log cabin–style restaurant, built to mimic a Rocky Mountain hunting lodge with all of the typical adornments—moose and elk heads, giant trout, salmon, and walleye mounted throughout the restaurant. We hadn't gotten too far on the theme of “What's new with you?” when my wife offered the news that I had been working on a research project for a rather long time. I attempted to downplay it, saying it was an old story from early Nashville Metro history. When quizzed about the subject matter, I muttered a few words about it being a murder that had taken place in Nashville back in the sixties, a babysitter who had been killed in the Crieve Hall area on a Saturday night in February 1964. My wife offered up the vi
ctim's name, and the next words I heard came from the mouth of Becky.:
“She was my next door neighbor.”1
“Huh?” I astutely replied.
“Paula Herring. She was my next-door neighbor. We were good friends. She and her little brother practically grew up with us. She went to Overton High School, and we lived next to each other.”
I was silent for a moment, but then quickly decided it was all a clever trick. So I turned to my wife and said, “Nice setup, very funny. You guys are good, but that's not possible.”
Becky leaned in with a somber, sober expression and slowly said again, “Paula Herring was our neighbor on Timberhill Drive. Our houses were literally next door to each other.”
My head felt like it was being overwhelmed with images, sound clips, bits of legal transcript flying by, while I silently made a mad attempt at making order out of chaos and correlating the history and facts that I knew. I didn't say anything for a full minute, as I sat blank faced.
“You're not old enough,” was my first response. I wasn't attempting to flatter her, but I didn't see how Becky could make the cut, age wise. She looked far too young for that to be possible.
“Yes, I am,” came the soft reply.
I looked at Steve. “You're in on this? A group prank, right?”
“Oh, no. I grew up in East Tennessee. Don't look at me, I don't know this story.”
I turned back to Becky with what must have been an incredulous look on my face. “You were Paula's next-door neighbor? Did you go to the funeral?”
“Yes, it was awful.”
Becky's expression appeared to be genuine. There wasn't any duping delight in evidence.
I said, “I've known you both for dozen years, and now this news?”
I took a long sip of iced tea and then shifted into interview mode. “At the murder trial, Paula's mother said that Paula's cab fare was paid by a neighbor when she came home from Knoxville the Friday night before she was murdered. Was she talking about your mother?”
“Yes. Paula was always out of money.”
“Okay, no offense, I don't believe you but I think I might believe you.” At this point, my wife offered up that I had been seriously invested in the project for some time.
Becky offered the next obvious question: “Why are you doing this? Why are you researching Paula's murder?”
I settled in for a long meal and began to unwind the story thread. After a couple of hours, and the eventual goodbyes, I promised to call Becky later in the week to finish our discussion.
As my wife and I drove home after dinner, she posed a simple question to me: “How much longer?”
“I don't understand the question.”
“How much longer until you're finished with Paula Herring? You've been doing this almost as long as we've been married, did you realize that?”
I was silent for a few moments, and then offered the most honest answer I could muster: “I don't know. I don't think I will let it go until I get to the truth, and based on the dinner conversation you just witnessed, I don't think I'm there yet.”
Not surprisingly, the rest of the trip home was a silent one.
The next morning, I made a phone call to Becky Brewer, and we picked up where we'd left off the previous evening:2
Becky: I haven't had anyone to talk to about this.
Me: Why is that?
Becky: I wasn't home the weekend that Paula was killed. I flew to Daytona to watch the race.
Me: A race in February; you mean the Daytona 500?
Becky: Yes. My dad was involved with the Nashville racetrack back then, and he loved racing. I left on Friday afternoon to go to Daytona, not realizing that Paula was coming home that same afternoon.
Me: At the trial, Jo Herring said that Paula went next door to visit with you that Friday night?
Becky: That's not true. I wasn't at home. In fact, I always felt it was my fault for not being home, because earlier in the week I told Paula that I would be. I heard the news on the radio late at night, on Sunday night, while riding in a car back to Nashville. I couldn't believe it.
Me: You knew Paula pretty well?
Becky: Sure. We'd sit in Alan's inflatable pool in the backyard and hang out when it was hot. That's when we worked on Paula's hair, during that summer before she was killed.
Me: I don't understand.
Becky: I was into makeup. My mother had done some modeling work, and Paula didn't have much interest in the makeup routine. She was really into basketball and sports, but we made Paula's hair lighter and blonder. My mom thought it looked great, and she egged it on.
Me: Did your mom have anything to say about the murder?
Becky: My mother helped babysit Alan the night of the murder and that Paula might have been hit with a bowling trophy.
Me: I know there were some trophies in the house; I suppose it was possible. So you were doing a lot of dating, and Paula not so much?
Becky: Yes. In fact, you remember Gregg Allman? Carol Blake and I were dating him when he was in town. He went to Castle Heights Military School as a kid, the school in Lebanon, Tennessee.3
Me: Gregg Allman, as in the Allman Brothers Band? The guy who was once upon a time married to Cher? That Gregg Allman?
Becky: Yes, he and his brother Duane were born here, and after they moved to Daytona Beach they'd come home during the summers to stay with their uncle. In fact, one of the uncles was a Metro cop. They used to play some of the dances around town back then, when they were teenagers and known as the Allman Joys.4
Me: America's biggest small town. I can just see me asking Gregg Allman and his uncle about the Paula Herring murder. On a different topic, any chance the Herrings had more than one car? Maybe Paula had a car in Knoxville at school?
Becky: No. They just had one car, the Ford.
Me: Any chance your mom was not home at the actual time of the murder?
Becky: She was not. I was returning from the Daytona stock car race with my dad, and my mother was in Waverly, Tennessee, visiting family until late Saturday night.
Me: What do you remember about Paula, personality-wise?
Becky: Paula had a temper. She did not like her mother's friends and could have or would have mouthed off to them. Paula was mostly embarrassed about her mother, especially the drinking.
Me: Did your family keep up with Jo Herring after Paula's murder?
Becky: No, after Paula's death, we moved out of the area pretty quickly.
Remembering my troubling correspondence with two of Paula Herring's dorm mates, I realized I had made a pivotal mistake while researching the babysitter story. In rereading the criminal trial testimony, I found where one of the detectives had stated that his team followed the time-honored tradition of starting with the victim, then investigating the victim's family, then family friends, etc., essentially working the circle outward from the victim. And I had spent countless hours unaware of this process and looking at random suspects instead.
When I reviewed my notes, I found that one of the Nashville television stations had reported that Metro police arrested a couple of Vanderbilt University students on suspicion of murdering Paula Herring and that they also had retrieved a gun and processed it for comparison to the slugs found at the scene. But, curiously, they released the Vanderbilt students a few hours later. After going back through the trial testimony, I found mention of a student named Jerome Shepherd as being one of those who had been arrested and released. Perhaps there was more to discover on this topic.
My research into the Vandy students led me to some illustrious fraternity brethren, a prestigious group known as the “Dekes.”1 In 1962, the president of the fraternity was Andrew Lamar Alexander, who would later serve as governor and senator of Tennessee, United States secretary of education, and president of the University of Tennessee. Secretary of the fraternity was future bestselling author and comic Roy Blount Jr. Blount was senior editor of the Vanderbilt student newspaper, The Hustler. It was an impressive group, and Jer
ome was one of their own.
A brief conversation with the registrar's office took my breath away when they confirmed that Shepherd had been enrolled at Vanderbilt University from the fall of 1961 through the fall of 1963 but then had dropped out of school on February 29, 1964, one week after the murder. Based on the knowledge that several of the fraternity members had eventually gone to law school, I called the Tennessee Bar Association to see if Jerome might have followed the law as a profession after his arrest in February 1964.2
The man who answered the phone delivered the news that Jerome Shepherd had received his law degree from Emory University. The helpful clerk also said that I should be able to find Shepherd practicing law in a sleepy little town within an hour's drive of Knoxville.
A few days later, I was returning from East Tennessee and made a lunchtime stop in a small town southwest of Knoxville and north of the Georgia state line. The setting was idyllic and supremely Southern. Two blocks from a small private university, I found the address of Jerome Shepherd's law practice. It was a 1950s-style bungalow home with established shrubs, a small front yard, and giant oak trees.
The side yard had been turned into a parking lot, and I could see one sedan parked under a tree. Given that it was lunchtime, I thought it possible that the office was closed and no one was at home. But I was wrong.
I grabbed my leather portfolio and made my way up the steps to the front door. Out of habit, I knocked, and I heard a young woman's voice telling me to come in.
To my surprise, a thirty-something receptionist was working with a stack of papers at her desk. She appeared to be a paralegal. Inside the house, the front room had been turned into a waiting area, and the bedrooms in the back appeared to be the law offices for Jerome and anyone else he might have working for him.
A Murder in Music City Page 14