“No. I lived with my parents and grandparents. I had to help out with them,” he said.
“You're a good man. You worked for Vanderbilt Hospital for several years, according to your brother, back in the 1960s?” I stated.
The old man nodded.
I pushed on. “Nashville was a fun place to be back in the sixties. The city was growing so fast; there was wrestling at the Hippodrome, and all the good places to grab a hamburger or barbeque and a beer, right?”4
“It sure was; a lot of fun,” he said.
“Well, one of the reasons I'm here is to pass along some news about one of your friends from back in those days. Do you remember Jesse Henderson? He might've been a drinking buddy of yours?” I asked.
A chuckle and a smile were the quick response, followed by a yes and another nod. Given his age, I wondered if he really remembered, but then he floored me with his follow-up.
“Jesse was a character. Always wanted to go out and get a beer or a drink. Course, I paid for most of them. He'd find me, had to get rid of him sometimes, but he'd chase you down.”
“He said he always called you BlueSky. Is that right?” I asked.
“Yes, that's right,” he replied.
As he spoke, I could see he was drifting back to my desired decade, and then he looked directly at me. I was ready.
“And what about Lizzie, Mr. Raylee?”
“She was something else,” he said quietly.
“You knew her, too?” I asked.
“Yes, we ran around a lot and eventually got married, but I haven't seen her in a long time.”
“How did you meet her?” No sooner had I spoken than another worker entered the room. I introduced myself to her and asked if I was interrupting anything scheduled for Mr. Raylee, such as therapy or medication of some kind. But the friendly staff member had only stopped by to drop off clean clothes from the laundry for Mr. Kennedy. She was gone in less than sixty seconds.
“How did you come to meet Jesse and Lizzie?” I asked.
“That was a long time ago. I don't remember. Trouble followed them,” he said.
“I don't understand. Are you talking about Jesse and Lizzie?” I asked.
“Yes. Trouble always followed them.”
“I have some bad news about Jesse Henderson. He passed away a few days ago. I actually saw him just days before he died. I'm told he passed peacefully in his sleep. We talked about you and Lizzie when I was with him.”
I continued. “Mr. Raylee, I'm hoping you can help me unravel a mystery that has been going on now for almost fifty years. Do you think you can help me?”
“I'll try. What is it?” he said.
“Back in 1964, when you were working at Vanderbilt University Hospital, there was a young girl tragically murdered in the Crieve Hall area of Nashville. The girl was eighteen, a University of Tennessee student home for the weekend in February. Her name was Paula Herring. Does that name sound familiar to you?”
“No, it doesn't,” he responded.
“Take your time, it's important,” I said.
As I said this, I realized I sounded like a trial lawyer gently coaching a key witness through critical testimony. I turned around and looked at the doorway to make sure no one was listening.
“It's foreign to me,” he said.
“I don't understand.”
“That name, I don't know it.” He seemed to have more conviction in his gruff voice.
“Do you remember John Randolph Clarke, Red Clarke, or Jo Herring?” I asked.
A dark, red cloud appeared on the old man's face. I could see he had a great capacity for anger, and it was beginning to focus on me.
“No! It's foreign to me. Don't ask me about that!”
I could see his hands were now gripping the arms of the wheelchair, strongly enough to turn his knuckles white. It was at that exact moment a flash of insight came to me, spurred by the cryptic comment by Jesse Henderson regarding two guys fighting in the Herrings’ garage.
“Mr. Raylee, when I was with Jesse Henderson, he told me that, on the night of Paula Herring's murder, you and he were in the dead girl's garage fighting with a truck stop man named Sam Carlton. Can you help me? Please?” I was almost begging him at this point.
“No, don't ask me.”
And with those words, he repositioned his wheelchair away from me and turned himself to look out the window at a pleasant view of green grass, flowers, and manicured shrubbery. For all practical purposes, Carl Raylee had objected to the questioning and called his own mistrial for my final session of court.
Moments later, looking at the floor, I negotiated my way past the nursing station as they unlocked the front door from within and reflected on the fact that I had spent more than a decade hoping and praying for a chance to finally meet with Carl Raylee, and in a matter of minutes that opportunity had been lost. I was sick to my stomach knowing that I had been stonewalled and the game was over, a complete shutout in the Paula Herring solution contest, with the “cheap detective” on the wrong end of the score.
Deep in thought on the way back to my car, I reached into my pocket for my car keys with the idea that I would simply sit in my car in the parking lot and try to figure out a way that I could turn this major setback into something other than a loss. I was stumped.
If I went back inside to see Carl Raylee, the old man could simply say that I was harassing him, and I would be escorted out of the building for good, likely forever. If I waited a few weeks, or even a few days, and then returned, Carl Raylee could pass in the meantime from this life into the next, and he'd take the answers I needed with him. Not a pleasant thought. Not after the Jesse Henderson experience, and not after the journey that had brought me here.
With keys in hand and ready to open my car door, I glanced at the luxury sedan next to me, a Cadillac, and at that moment I thought of Jesse Henderson and his statement to me that John Randolph Clarke had driven a Cadillac in the winter of 1964. I smiled as I now began to wonder if Jesse had been toying with me, in an attempt to see if I could figure who actually owned a Cadillac that might have been a part of this story. Perhaps the owner in 1964 was the man I had just met? Instead of opening my car door, I opened my trunk and retrieved a leather portfolio. I almost broke into a trot heading back to the entrance of the nursing home, and I didn't slow down as I flew by the front desk and tossed a “Forgot something, sorry” in the direction of the receptionist.
When I arrived back at his room, Carl Raylee was still positioned to look out the window. I said, “Mr. Raylee, I forgot to ask you one question. What kind of car did you drive when you worked for Vanderbilt?”
He turned his wheelchair toward me, looked up, and replied, “I always drove a Cadillac.”
“What color?” I asked.
“Black. My grandmother had a black Cadillac, but she couldn't drive anymore, and I started driving it and never drove any other brand.”
Thank you, Jesse Henderson, I thought to myself.
For the moment, it seemed like we had reconnected and gotten past the previous stalemate. I opened my leather portfolio and retrieved photographs of the 1964 crime scene.
“Do you remember getting married to Lizzie in Alabama? You and Lizzie brought Jesse with you to be your witness. And you drove your grandmother's Cadillac for the trip, right?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember waiting to see if John Randolph Clarke was convicted before you two got married?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“That way you wouldn't have to testify against each other about what happened to Paula Herring, Jo Herring's daughter. You're still married to her, aren't you, Mr. Raylee? I bet you haven't lived together in decades.”
As he turned his head to look away at the sunny view outside his window, I thought to myself that Lizzie would have easily chosen Raylee and his family money over Jesse Henderson, no matter how Jesse may have felt about it.
“Tell me about Lizzie; can you do that, please?” I asked
softly.
“She could get angry in a minute. Jesse, too.”
At this last response, I produced the graduation photo of Paula Herring, so that he could see her face.
“Mr. Raylee, this is Paula Herring, as she looked in 1964.”
“Pretty girl,” he said.
“Yes, sir, she was,” I said. “Unfortunately, her life ended in a tragic death in Nashville in February 1964. Do you remember being at her house the night she died?”
He quickly looked away. It was a classic sign that the words had registered with him as strongly as a slap in the face. I then showed him one of the large photographs of Paula lying on the den floor at Timberhill Drive.
“I need your help, Mr. Raylee. Can you tell me about the girl and why this happened? Can you do that for me, please?” My words were soft.
I placed my hand on his arm, and it startled him a bit. He looked up at me. As soon as he did, I dropped to one knee beside him. “Can you help me, please? There's nothing anyone can do for her now. She's gone. And so are her father and mother. They're all dead. I know you know. Help me, please?”
Carl Raylee sat quietly, staring at the photograph. I swapped it with one of Paula Herring lying on the floor, on her back. You could see her eyes focused on the ceiling while detectives worked over her. It was a cruel thing to do to the old man, but I needed his help.
Suddenly, a high-pitched squeal seemed to be emanating from the wheelchair. It was so odd and out of human vocal range that I couldn't believe it was coming from the old man seated next to me, but it was. He was looking at the photograph, holding it with both hands, and the sound lasted almost a half-minute, as if he'd held his breath for fifty years waiting to exhale. It was as if he'd gone back in time to the night of the murder.
When he looked up at me, his mouth was slightly open, his eyes were red and wet, and he was visibly shaken. I wondered if I needed to call one of the staff members in case he needed medical attention.
“Mr. Raylee, are you alright?” He didn't respond, but he didn't appear to be in pain, so I continued, hoping that I would not be interrupted for the next few moments. “The night that this happened was a Saturday night. You were driving your grandmother's Cadillac, right?” I said.
“Yes, but I wrecked it,” he said softly.
“Do you remember where?”
“Out on River Road, toward Pegram,” he replied.
Then he looked up at me, “We turned it over going around a curve.”
“Anyone hurt?” I asked.
“Nah, just shook up a bit.”
‘What about the car? You had to get it towed somewhere?” I asked.
“No, it landed back on the wheels and I drove it home. My uncle fixed it for me and never asked me about it.”
“How did you come to be at Timberhill Drive on the night of the girl's murder?” I asked.
“We had dinner,” he said.
“I don't understand. Who had dinner, you and Jesse Henderson?”
“Yes, and the nurses,” he responded.
“When you say nurses, you mean Lizzie?”
“Her mother, the girl's mother,” he said.
At this news, I stood up and paced the tiny room for a moment, quickly realizing that Vanderpool and Meadows, the men who supposedly had been with Jo Herring on the night of Paula's murder, had been substituted for Jesse and BlueSky as part of the cover up. Vanderpool would have been an easy recruit in exchange for keeping his massage parlor business open and uninterrupted, and Meadows would have gotten the building material he sought at a bargain price.
“You, Jesse Henderson, Lizzie, and Paula's mother were eating dinner after Paula's mother got off of work on that Saturday night?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Where? The Wedgewood Diner?” I continued.
“No, at the Krystal drive-in,” he said.
“You mean the Krystal hamburger place out on Franklin Road near Melrose and Rhea Little's garage?”
“No, on West End near Vanderbilt. They had a drive-up, where you could sit in your car. They brought out hamburgers in little baskets with French fries.”
I could not remember hearing or reading that there was a Krystal near Vanderbilt in the 1960s. This important fact had never once surfaced on my radar screen.
“And after that, you followed Jo Herring out to her house on Timberhill Drive?”
“She didn't look like that when we left,” he said.
“I don't understand,” I said.
He pointed at Paula's photograph. “She didn't look like that when we left.”
I glanced at my watch and decided that someone would soon come to get my witness and wheel him down to the cafeteria for lunch. I don't have long, I thought.
And then I reminded myself that this was real. I was hearing, in person, an old man confessing to being part of a felony murder that had taken place a half century earlier. And no matter how little or how much Carl Raylee had or hadn't done to Paula Herring, as a criminal defense attorney had once told me, “When you're in for the part, you're in for the whole.”5 And Carl Raylee had just put himself in the house on Timberhill Drive the night Paula Herring had been murdered.
No matter that, by all appearances, he was probably a big teddy bear at heart, because of his status and apparent access to wealth, he had been pursued religiously by Jesse and Lizzie whenever someone else's money and assets were required for a night of drinking and partying. He had just put himself at the scene of a fifty-year-old homicide. Carl Raylee mumbled a few words.
“Did you say something?” I asked.
“Looks like she had an accident.” He was still staring at the photo of Paula.
I responded by quoting the words that Jesse Henderson had spoken to me once: “‘That wasn't no accident, whoever did that was mad at her.’ Mr. Raylee, had you ever been to Timberhill Drive before that night?” I asked.
“No, never was out there before.”
“When you got to the house that night, Paula was angry?” I asked.
“Yes, there was a fight.”
“What happened?”
“She bit her,” he replied.
“The girl bit one of the women?”
“She bit Lizzie real bad, and Lizzie shot her.”
I stopped breathing for a long moment.
“No one called the police, and no one took the girl to the hospital to get help. Is that right? Even though a couple of nurses were in the house at the same time, no one offered to help her. Mr. Raylee, is that right?”
“That's right.”
“You drove away and left the little boy in the house with his dying sister?”
“Didn't know about the boy until we went back.”
“Where did you go?”
“A motel for a little while and then back to the house.”
“Why did you go back?”
“The gun was on the floor, and we had to go back and get it,” he said.
“And somewhere during that timeline you ended up fighting with Sam Carlton in the Herring's garage?” I asked.
“I didn't know who he was.”
I knew from a legal perspective that I was leading the witness at this point, but I also knew that the witness wasn't going to lead me anywhere or voluntarily incriminate himself. I was on the verge of leaving, when I thought of additional questions I needed to ask.
“The police didn't come find you after that night?”
“Never did.”
“Mr. Raylee, did you keep on working at Vanderbilt Hospital or did you have to leave after the girl's murder? The reason I ask is that Paula's mother, Jo Herring, the nurse, she was fired from Vanderbilt right after her daughter was killed. They said she was addicted to medication and impaired on the job. Did you have to leave Vanderbilt as well?”
“I went to Oak Ridge,” he said.
“You mean Oak Ridge in East Tennessee. I think I know the answer to this question, but I'll ask it anyway. Did you ever work for the VA Hospital system after y
ou went to Oak Ridge?”
“Yes, I was a hospital inspector for them. It was a good job,” he replied.
“And that's how Lizzie eventually got a job with the VA? You hired her?” I inquired.
“Yes.”
I placed my hand on his shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Mr. Raylee, thank you for helping Paula Herring today. I've been trying to find you for years. You get some rest, okay?” I continued holding onto his shoulder as I stood up to retrieve the newspaper from his lap, and then returned it with the photographs to my portfolio.
As I walked down the main hallway to exit the building, I realized I knew of one person who could verify what I had just heard, and I had no time to waste to get to her. Moments later, I exited through the heavy glass security doors, and then broke into a dead run back to my car.
She was as feisty as ever when she answered the door for me an hour after Carl Raylee had confessed to the role he had played in the Paula Herring slaying. She was dressed in a cloud-blue bathrobe and fuzzy slippers, and her dark hair was taking on a distinctly gray hue.1
“How have you been, Mike?” she asked.
“Doing fine Miss Evelyn, and you look well.”
“Do you need a drink of water? You look like you've been out running this morning,” she said.
After taking a seat on her sofa, I explained why I was back to see her. I began by stating the facts that I had just uncovered. And I wanted an insider's view of the Herring family, of Paula and her mother's relationship. My reasoning was quite simple: in more than one interview, and also on the witness stand in Jackson, Jo Herring had made certain to describe Paula as happy and enjoying her college life, especially so on the weekend of her tragic death. But Evelyn had a different view, one she delivered with surprising intensity.
“They fought all the time, all the time,” she said.
“Paula and her mother?” I asked.
“Oh, my, yes, it was a house full of hell. Jo was on her every day, and Paula gave it right back.”
She paused a moment for a sip of coffee from a large mug, which she held in both hands while sitting in a gray recliner rocker. “And the neighbors felt sorry for Jo. They knew she'd lost her husband to that Noel Hotel incident.”
A Murder in Music City Page 24