by Bill James
* * *
At the far, far end of the wealth-and-privilege spectrum, President Teddy Roosevelt’s daughter Alice was married to Nicholas Longworth III on the morning of Saturday, February 17, 1906, which was the day after the crime. It was the closest America has ever had to a royal wedding, a beautiful young woman marrying a charismatic bald man destined to become Speaker of the House. The marriage was not great; she would have affairs whenever she chose, and she would survive him by almost half a century, living almost to the end of the Carter administration and presiding over Washington’s social registry as no one else ever has. She was a close friend of the Nixons.
Late in the day on February 17, Big Bill Haywood was arrested in Idaho in connection with the murder of former governor Steunenberg. I know The Man from the Train did not kill Steunenberg; I am just trying to help those of you whose knowledge of history is mostly from crime books keep track of where we are in time.
CHAPTER XXX
The Worst One Ever
What may have been The Man from the Train’s worst murder ever, in terms of the body count, occurred near Allentown, Florida, in May 1906.
About no other case in our book is the absence of solid information so frustrating. It is exactly as if the Villisca murders had happened, but no one had bothered to write about them. Allentown, to begin with, is not and never was a town, a village, or anything of the sort; it is, rather, a name used for an area where someone once had ambitions of building a city, but failed. The area has a general outline but does not have a downtown or streets or city services. There are roads, and the roads have names, but in 1906 the houses had no addresses. The Ackermans lived not in Allentown, but near Allentown—but we don’t really know where; obviously their house was rural, but then Allentown itself is rural. It is a rural area which has a name as if it were a town.
Allentown is in Santa Rosa County. Less than five miles southeast of Allentown is now Whiting Field, which is the busiest naval air station in the world. The railroad apparently never went through Allentown, although it went up to where Whiting Field now is. Whiting was built during World War II. According to the US Navy’s official Web site (http://www.mybaseguide.com/Navy/1-539):
Once known as the most industrialized county in Florida, Santa Rosa’s history is abundant with the lore of the logging, sawmill and shipbuilding industries around which life evolved. The area around Milton gained distinction as the site of the first cotton textile mill in the South. The Shortline Railroad was the primary hauler of the nation’s first paper-mill supply of logs, run by the Bagdad Land and Lumber Co., in operation from 1828 until 1939.
The name of the railroad is another wrinkle. A “shortline” railroad is a generic term applied to thousands of little railroads that once existed and some of which still exist, but in this case it is also the actual name of the railroad. This makes the railroad difficult to research; it is a little like researching a person whose name is “name” or a town which is named “town.” Anyway, when they built Whiting Field in the late 1930s they built it to where the railroad ran, for obvious reasons, and later, when they needed to expand their runways, they tore up part of the old railroad to make room.
More relevant to our story is not what Allentown is now but what it was in 1906—a quiet rural area of indefinite dimensions, nestled inside the vast pine forest that still covers large areas of the south. Ackerman was a preacher, much more successful at making babies than at gathering a flock. The family, like the Stetkas, lived in extreme poverty, with nothing worth stealing. They were murdered on the night of May 13 to May 14, 1906—a Sunday night. I will quote the account of the crime from a wire service story, since the account is straightforward, and I don’t see how I can improve upon it:
Nine Are Murdered
Whole Family Wiped Out in Santa Rosa County, Florida
Then Fiends Apply Torch
Skull of Each Victim is Crushed, and Body of the Wife with her Infant Child is Found Outside the House—Head of Family was an Itinerant Preacher
PENSACOLA, FLA, MAY 15—One of the most horrible crimes in the history of the State, if not the history of the South, was committed in Santa Rosa County, ten miles north of Milton, Sunday night, when a man by the name of Ackerman, an itinerant preacher, and his wife and several children, the oldest 14 years of age, were murdered and their bodies cremated in the home, which was fired by the assassins. The crime was discovered yesterday by parties with whom Ackerman had an appointment, who found the home a mass of ruins and the charred bodies of Ackerman and his family among the ruins.
Details indicate that the father, mother, and each of the seven children was murdered before the building was fired, as the skull of each was crushed and the body of Ackerman was found near the location of the door leading from the location in which he slept. By his side was a revolver.
The body of Mrs. Ackerman, who gave birth to a child on Friday last, was found with that of her infant child outside of the sill at the front of the house. The oldest child was found near the door leading out to the front porch. All of the bodies were badly burned, practically only the trunks remaining. The bodies of the three boys were found practically where the bed upon which they slept had stood previous to the conflagration.
When a party from Milton reached the scene about 11 o’clock the sills were still burning, which seemed to indicate that the fire had been started several hours after midnight. The country nearby is sparsely settled, the nearest neighbor residing about one and a quarter miles away. This neighbor says he knew nothing of the fire until early this morning, when he saw that the building had been destroyed and notified other neighbors before trying to ascertain the damage.
The feeling in Santa Rosa County is high over the act and every effort is being made to apprehend the guilty parties.
Ackerman moved to the settlement which is known as Allentown from Opp., Ala., about three years ago and has always been considered a good and peaceful citizen. While he had no regular charge it was his custom to preach throughout that section of Santa Rosa county. He was not known to have had any enemies, and the motive for the atrocious crime is a mystery.
—Quoted from Herald, Tuesday Evening May 15, 1906, Syracuse, N.Y.; extremely similar stories appeared in many other papers.
Other articles specifically state that the murder weapon was an axe, although this article does not. The article refers to “fiends” and “assassins” because that is what you would ordinarily think in these circumstances, that multiple criminals would be required to do this work. The Hutchinson (Kansas) News of May 23, 1906, used the sub-headline “How the Family was Killed Will Probably Never be Known.” It won’t, but with your indulgence, let me speculate. The Man from the Train entered the house from the rear, we assume, and we assume this because:
1. He almost always did.
2. The mother and oldest child ran toward the front of the house, presumably trying to escape from him.
No doubt he broke into the house quietly, noiselessly; he was quite good at that. It was Florida in May, long before air-conditioning; a window was surely open. He expected to find what he usually found inside a house—about four people, two adults and two children. It was probably about 1:00 a.m.
The Ackermans had probably left a kerosene lamp burning in a back bedroom, and likely the first thing he did was to take the shade off the lamp and put it quietly on the floor, then start to examine the layout of the house. Mrs. Ackerman, however, was awake nursing her baby, inside one of the other rooms. I am speculating that she was awake, if you have ever had a two-day-old baby, you will know why, and also her body was found outside the front door, which indicates that she was attempting to flee. The Man from the Train probably killed three or perhaps even four of the children very quickly, probably within sixty seconds of beginning the attack, although, I am guessing, he probably took a couple of minutes to find the lamp and to place it on the floor where it would shed light on what he was doing. Let us assume there are three dead. Mrs. Acke
rman now heard something; she heard unfamiliar sounds coming from down the hallway, and poked her head out of whatever room she was in. She screamed, awakening the oldest child and her husband.
Four people are now awake—the parents, the two-day-old baby, and the oldest child. The situation is on the brink of chaos. The father grabs his gun but doesn’t have time to load it before he is hit with the axe. He is hit in the side of the head with the blade of the axe; we know this from other accounts. It is not The Man from the Train’s “controlled” swing, which is an overhead power strike with the blunt side of the axe, but he is running down the hallway, simultaneously pursuing two people and fending off an attack from a third (the father). He does this with a backhand blow. The mother and the oldest child run for the front door, pursued by an axe-swinging maniac in full flower. He catches the fourteen-year-old at the door, and fells him with one blow. The mother, carrying her baby, looks back for a second in horror, and then she, too, is hit by the axe.
We are assuming a very competent murderer, but he is a lumberjack; he swings an axe a thousand times a day. The axe, to him, is an extension of his body. He is outnumbered nine to one, yes, but the nine include seven children, as young as two days old. He is the only person in the conflict who is fully awake, the only one who actually knows what is going on. He is the only one wearing shoes. He is the only one who has been through events like this before. He is a professional, contending with half-asleep amateurs.
There are now six people in the house who have been hit by the axe, and the two-day-old baby is obviously not a problem. Only two children and the bloodied father now remain. Some of the victims may not have been killed by the first blow, but once they are out, they’re no longer problems. The entire assault was probably over, I would guess, five minutes after it began. At least one of those still alive is a prepubescent female, and he does what he does with her. The skulls of all nine victims had been crushed before the house was set on fire.
By the time he is done it is 3:00 a.m. He sets the house on fire, watches it burn for a while, and walks back toward the railroad track—which, in this case, we do not know where it is; we don’t know whether the railroad is a hundred yards away, a mile away, or two miles. But as he always does, he will hop a train and be out of the area before the crime is discovered. (Some news stories describe this crime as being near Allentown; others, as near Milton. The Shortline Railroad ran north of Milton but not all the way to Allentown. It is possible, though not certain, that this crime occurred close to the railroad.)
Again, this is my speculation about what happened, and it is surely not accurate on every point. From various other newspapers we learn: (1) Ackerman’s first name may have been “Edward” (although other names are also given), and (2) that of the seven children, three were girls and four were boys. The oldest girl was thirteen; the oldest boy was fourteen. Two of the girls slept in the same bed and had been murdered in their bed. One source says that Mrs. Ackerman’s maiden name was Mary Simmons and that she was Ackerman’s fourth wife; that source, however, is spectacularly unreliable.
Within a week of the tragedy Allentown residents had raised $1,000 toward the solution of the case, while others—probably the governor’s office—had kicked in another $2,000. According to the Hutchinson News, “The suspicion is that shiftless negroes traveling from one turpentine camp to the other committed the crime, inspired simply by a fiendish desire to take human life.” Pretty sure he was a white guy.
On May 6, 1907—about a year after the murders—a private detective named R. C. Beagle filed a warrant for the arrest of two men on a charge of having murdered the Ackermans. The two men were named Joe Stanley and M. C. Smith, both white men; both had lived in the Allentown area at the time of the crime but had since moved away. Stanley was arrested in “Samson,” which we are guessing may be Sampson, Florida—north of Gainesville—while Smith was arrested in Gonzalez, Florida, fifteen miles west of Milton. In that there are no reports of the men having been prosecuted, we assume that they were released within the next few days.
CHAPTER XXXI
The Lyerly Family
This is a horrible story to tell, but it is true so far as words can reproduce the scene, and its record should not be lost from the annals of crime.
—John Charles McNeill, Salisbury, North Carolina, July 14, 1906
Barber Junction, North Carolina, was a railroad intersection with a name. There was a line going east and west, and a line going north and south, and where they met in a rural area of Rowan County, eleven miles west of Salisbury, there was a small depot, where passengers riding in one direction could change trains and wait out the time difference. The depot still exists; it was moved to Salisbury, a little north of Salisbury, in the 1980s. If a westbound train stopped at Barber Junction and a tramp hopped off the back end of a long train, he would have seen the house of Isaac and Augusta Lyerly just across the road, perhaps a hundred yards from the spot where his feet hit the ground.
Let us say that on the evening of July 13, 1906, a man hopped off the train at Barber Junction. It was Friday the thirteenth. The Lyerlys lived in a somewhat run-down hundred-year-old plantation house that had been in their family through generations of slaveholders and generations of sharecroppers. A family of seven lived there in 1906—Isaac and Augusta, a young boy and a young girl, and three older girls who worked hard on the farm during the day and slept on the second floor at night.
Sometime before midnight Addie Lyerly awoke to the smell of smoke. Addie was the middle of the three older girls. She had asthma, and the least amount of smoke would disturb her breathing. She ran down the stairs into a nightmare. Her father was dead; he had been hit in the head with the blunt side of an axe. Her mother lay dead, halfway out of the bed; she had been hit, apparently, both with the blunt side of the axe and the sharp edge, although Addie did not see all of this at first, since Augusta, her mother, had been covered by a pillow.
I will spare you the ghastly descriptions of her brother, John; let us just note that he was dead. John slept in the bed with his father, a common practice of the time, and that bed was on fire. A bureau drawer had been saturated with kerosene, dumped over John’s body, and set ablaze. The youngest daughter, Alice, was not dead but dying, moaning in pain; Alice apparently slept in the bed with her mother. The other bed in the room was not on fire, and the room was not on fire. Not certain who was alive or dead, Addie pulled her father and brother off of the blazing bed, and ran screaming up the stairs.
The three girls poured pitchers of water on the fire. The house did not have indoor plumbing, but they got the fire under control with the water that was inside the house, and threw the smoldering bedding into the yard. They carried Alice, the six-year-old girl who was clinging to life, into the yard, and tried to tend to her wounds, but the bedding was setting fire to the yard, so they had to draw water from the well to put out the fire.
The front door had been left open, and a window was also open. Money and other valuables were left in the house, a good bit of money, actually. Some of the money was in plain view, in the bedroom where the murders had occurred. A lamp that had been on the bureau in the murder room—and which had been seen there by two of the daughters after Isaac Lyerly was sound asleep—had been moved to the mantel. A bloody axe, last seen resting in the woodpile nearby, had been discarded near the open door.
The girls pulled themselves together and went for help. Carrying Alice, they walked in a group to the house of Filmore Cook, a neighbor who lived about three-quarters of a mile away. Alice would die at the Cook house the next afternoon. Other neighbors lived closer (including a son of Isaac Lyerly, a half-brother of the sisters, who did not get along with his father’s second wife, the murdered Augusta), but the Cooks were people that the daughters knew well and trusted. Their pathway through the night took them right past the house of a sharecropper, Jack Dillingham, close enough to reach out and touch the house. As they passed the Dillingham cabin they fell silent, fearing tha
t it could have been Dillingham who had attacked their family. When they reached the Cook house near midnight, the Cooks loaded up horses and rushed back to the Lyerly home.
By the early hours of the morning a crowd of neighbors had encircled the house. There was a grove of huge sycamores and elms in the front yard; a reporter on the scene early in the morning reported the grove filled with buggies and saddle horses, the crowd murmuring softly. A telegram was sent to the county sheriff, who drove to the scene at breakneck speed, arriving about four-thirty a.m. A telegram to the governor’s office put in motion an effort to get bloodhounds, which arrived about 8:00 a.m. At least two sets of bloodhounds were brought to the house, but the hounds proved useless, perhaps due to the crowd that had encircled the property or, more probably, because the scent could only have led as far as the railroad line, which was across the road.
Before the sheriff was even on the scene, suspicion had settled on the sharecroppers. The sharecroppers, of course, were all black. The Lyerly girls mentioned that they had tiptoed quietly past the Dillingham house, and it was discussed as well that there had been some words passed in the previous week between Isaac Lyerly and another sharecropper, Nease Gillespie. Jack Dillingham was arrested about 5:00 in the morning of July 14, about six hours after the murders. Nease Gillespie’s cabin was raided, and some of his possessions seized, about 6:00 a.m. Reporters from at least three newspapers were on scene not long after sunup.
Nease Gillespie was not quite likeable enough to be called a “character.” Whereas most of the other sharecroppers in the area had lived near Salisbury for generations, Nease had moved there (or moved back there) after he had matched up with Fannie Gillespie. He took her name, probably because her name was known in the area. Fannie had an eleven-year-old grandson named Henry Mayhew. Henry Mayhew had a white father, was blue-eyed, and looked almost white, but he lived with Fannie and Nease. (The book about this case, A Game Called Salisbury, insists, apparently based on a census record, that Mayhew was Fannie’s son, rather than her grandson, but this cannot be correct.)
