MURDER ON SECOND STREET: THE JACKSON WARD MURDERS (Book Series #1)
Copyright © 2013 Rebekah L. Pierce
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ISBN -13: 9781492269212
ISBN -10: 149269212
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Murder on Second Street: The Jackson Ward Murders
By Rebekah L. Pierce
Novel Synopsis
It's 1929 and a local Negro neighborhood called Jackson Ward in Richmond, Virginia is booming. In fact, it's called "The Black Wall Street of America" by economists of the day. Things are booming financially and socially for the Negro community, but then a series of what appears to be random murders of poor working class Negro women begins to happen and everyone is on edge, especially the Negro business owners. The Ward is a very tight community – strangers cannot move freely about in this segregated town. They hire haunted World War I veteran and alcoholic Sy Sanford to catch the cold-blooded murderer, but murder is not the only thing threatening to destroy "The Black Wall Street of America." The real Wall Street is about to come tumbling down and plunge Jackson Ward and its infamous 2nd Street into a debilitative financial and social state it may never recover from.
Tribute
The distinguished author of Murder on Second Street: The Jackson Ward Murders truly followed the definition of a novel by inventing a prose narrative that deals with human experiences through a connected series of events. In reading the manuscript, before publication, I was reminded of the observation of Voltaire, who said, “History is truly a record of crimes and misfortunes.” In looking back as an historian, the novelist had a balanced account of Negro professional and entrepreneurial activities and “rehearsals of discomposure” in the community.
Major characters in the novel depicted reality in the “Roaring Twenties”: “segregation,” “two societies,” “violation of civil rights,” “dehumanization,” etc. The “system” had to be changed. The novel depicted another chapter in the story of moving from slavery to freedom.
That’s a part of “our story” that must be remembered.
The novel was good reading in bringing out the “epicurean mentality” of “eating,” “drinking,” and “making merry,” which was evident in the “Roaring Twenties.” That there was a secularization of society is not an understatement. Though Article 18 of our national
Constitution made for Prohibition Law against drinking alcoholic beverages, drinking actually increased in America, including Jackson Ward. Even “bootlegging” increased.
Drinking, partying, dancing in Johnson Hall and homes, listening to “hot” jazz music, gambling in alleys, use of guns (Virginia has loose gun laws to this day) all contributed to “loose living” in Jackson Ward in the twenties. So, the novelist is right on target in writing this novel, Murder on Second Street. The mentioning of St. Philips Hospital and A.D. Price Funeral Home in the novel are historical evidences of cause and effect.
Economically, the stock market crash of October 1929 affected the fall of Jackson Ward as an economic center. The Depression of the 1930s was real, not fiction. The economic crash made a climate for the “New Deal World” of the Roosevelt Administration, proving once again that time is a great legalizer, even in the field of morals.
Murder on Second Street is good, racy reading. It has my recommendation.
The Rev. Dr. E. D. McCreary, Jr., Historian & Scholar
Chapter 1
She was found floating in the James River. A local fisherman found her in the wee hours of the morning of October 1, 1929, on the east side of the City of Richmond, near one of the factories in the Shockoe Bottom. Her name was Annie Hilks, a nursing student at the Medical College of Virginia’s St. Philip School of Nursing for Negro women by day, prostitute by night. As far as her classmates knew, she had lived a solitary existence in a small, rented room on Second Street. So, when she was found floating face down in the James, it took them by surprise.
She was a pretty girl from South Boston, Virginia, with honey brown sugar legs. That’s what had attracted him to her. Her lover – her murderer - liked brown girls; they were softer and easier to tame, he felt. She had been servicing him for about two months and had grown quite fond of him. He never hit her or asked her to do things that she felt were perverted or unclean -- unlike the others. They made her feel ashamed, guilty even, for what she was doing. Annie had never planned on selling her body, but nursing school was expensive and she had no family to help, this poor, born of low birth country girl.
So, when he showered her with bracelets and necklaces, dime store although she never knew it – she who had never had a man buy her anything nor ever seen real jewelry – she was in awe. He even brought her food to eat –not the sort of food she ate in the school’s cafeteria: cold sandwiches and bean soup. No, he brought her hot food like steak and potatoes. He once remarked that she needed to fatten up –she was too skinny. Annie took that comment as a sign of caring and concern, a secret promise, perhaps, not what it really was: the fattening up of the sacrificial lamb.
Which is ironic because he had not planned to kill her; he just wanted her to trust him so that he could have his way with her. He had certain needs that required fulfilling and she had already expressed that she would only go so far with him. He had other girls that would do what he wanted and some had, but he wanted Annie to do them – his honey brown doll. He had to break down her defenses, this so-called nurse. He would often giggle inwardly at the thought of his brown doll extolling medication on patients.
So the night she died, he had brought her another lavish meal of steak and potatoes, and after dinner, he asked her to do a need for him. He had been preparing for this moment. Annie hesitated, and that’s when he removed a little ring box from his coat pocket. Her eyes bulged. Could it mean what she thought it meant? A ring box, for her, the student nurse by day, prostitute by night? Tears began to roll down her brown face. She who had never had anything but her nursing dreams was going to be someone’s wife … finally.
When he slipped it on her finger, the less than a 1/8 carat diamond glowed like a strong fire. That was all he needed; he asked her again. This time, she agreed to perform his needs, after all, they were going to be married in a few weeks, she had reasoned as she stared down hungrily at the fire ring. She was going to have the wedding she’d always dreamed of, she reflected as he tossed her onto her knees, back to him.
Her soft pink lips trembled as he invaded her anus. She cried out in pain and started to have second thoughts about it all. But it was really too late. She now found her hands tied to her bedposts and now not able to move at all. Her mouth was free, though, and she began to beg him to stop, all the while staring at her ring. When he didn’t, and he began to pound into her savagely like dough, she started to scream.
He had to shut her up. He was almost free of his own fire and wanted desperately to see it through to the end. He needed it more than ever now, so he just meant to quiet her with the pillow. He pushed her face
into it and held it there until he exploded inside of her anus. He didn’t notice that she had stopped breathing until he had untied her, rolled over and her body fell nearly off of the bed. Her pink lips were blue and cracked now. Her soft brown breasts stood still like a terrified soldier at the command of his drill sergeant. He had killed his honey brown doll.
Tears rolled down his face, not tears of sadness for Annie, but rather tears for the realization that his life would be exposed by the police. His family name ruined. He thought – no! – he knew that he could not bear the sight of his mother’s stone face as she’d listen to the courts drag their name through the mud. No, he had to get rid of her.
He dressed himself slowly and carefully as he thought hard about his next move. He then placed Annie’s lifeless body onto the floor by the bed and rolled her into the rug. Lucky for him, Annie’s room was located by the back door of the rooming house and led into a small alleyway where had he parked his car. That’s how he had been able to visit her undetected the past two months.
He pushed the door ajar and peeked out onto the hallway. It was empty as usual. It was easy to carry her body as she had only weighed 105 pounds when she was alive. So, he quickly walked out of the back door with Annie over his shoulders and to his car parked a few doors down. It was three in the morning and no one save the night walkers were about.
He was sweating profusely now, but full of energy. He drove Annie down to the east end of the James River below Church Hill as the moon hid behind a blanket of clouds. It was going to rain in Richmond tonight. He parked along the edge of the James and quickly and carelessly removed Annie from his trunk. He unrolled her from her carpet coffin and carried her out onto one of the many docks where old slave ships would drop off their precious cargo and replace them with an even more valuable passenger: tobacco. Something glistened in the dark. It was the ring he had given her just a few hours earlier. He quickly laid her down on the ground and removed it from her finger and placed it in his jacket pocket. He then picked her up again, kissed her cold blue lips and threw Annie into the river. Annie and her dreams of being a nurse one day and having a family of her own slowly floated down the James River along with the tide, he hoped towards the Chesapeake.
And he … he just stood on the dock and watched her float away. A sense of pride and excitement ran through his veins. He had killed and would probably get away with it. After all, he was smart, handsome and rich. No one would ever suspect that he – born of a wealthy family – could kill. But Annie knew. Alas, his honey brown doll would never tell.
Chapter 2
Annie Hilks’ murder probably would have gone unnoticed and unsolved for a long time if it weren’t for the fact that two more women’s bodies were found within two weeks of her death. This time, though, they were not found floating in the James River, but in the heart of Jackson Ward, the booming Negro neighborhood known to many economists of the day as “The Black Wall Street of America.” Built by freedmen and European immigrants in the 1790s, by the end of the Civil War, and as a result of a large influx of ex-slaves, it boasted of being one of Richmond’s largest minority neighborhoods.
Mary Pollard’s body was found in the back alleyway behind Perditia’s Kitchen and Salon on Second Street on a quiet Sunday morning a week after Annie was found. One of the waiters had gone out back to take out the trash and spied a pair of portly legs with holes in the black stockings behind the trashcans. He lost his breakfast after he caught a glimpse of her broken nose and swollen eyes. She had been raped and brutally beaten to death.
Mary had worked at a local cookie plant as a flour girl. She had only been at the job for a week having come to Richmond from Caroline County seeking solid work. Her father was a sharecropper who had taken ill. Eighteen-year-old Mary had come to Richmond in the hopes of making enough money to send back home to help her five sisters and two brothers take care of themselves and the farm. It would be weeks before they realized that Mary was never coming home again and years before any of them found out why.
The body of Sheritha Bills, a maid for one of Richmond’s wealthy white families in the Fan District, was found badly beaten behind a local food store just a few days after Mary. She was so badly beaten that her family was only able to identify her by the ring she wore on her right hand. It had been a family heirloom, passed down from mother to daughter after her 18th birthday. Mrs. Bills fainted upon hearing the news and was later said to have been committed, she was so distraught by the brutal murder of her only precious daughter, Sheritha.
Both women had been raped and brutally beaten. Both women were working women from good families, unlike Annie Hilks. These deaths started rumors around Jackson Ward. There was a killer on the loose and he was dumping bodies around the Ward like it was his own personal trashcan.
The headline for the local paper, the Richmond Planet, read, “Killer Stalks the Ward!” The newspaper publisher and owner Raymond Turner read the headline for what seemed like the hundredth time with a scowl etched on his dark, wrinkled face as he sat at his, worn cherry wood desk. Old brown eyes that had seen more than their fair share of death and hate stared doggedly at the paper as a rather strained smile crept into the corner of thin red lips.
Mr. Turner was 64 years old and literate, unlike his parents who had been slaves. The Richmond Planet was his legacy to those who had died in chains – physically and mentally. He loved the Ward, and he was determined that his paper should be a force for change and education in the community. He had prided himself on knowing the ins and outs of the neighborhood – knew all of the families, poor and wealthy. To have to report on the brutal deaths of these women was a pain to his soul. He had to do something about this, he was thinking just as Preston Miller walked into his office.
“Turner, was this necessary?” Miller charged as he threw the Planet onto Turner’s desk. A vein pulsed in the center of Miller’s high yellow forehead. He wiped away the sweat that was rolling down his cheek. Miller was one of the richest men in the Ward, having made his wealth off of the patrons of one of the most successful theatres in the South – the Hippodrome.
Turner kept his weary brown eyes on the headlines glaring up at him from his desk as he motioned for Preston Miller to have a seat. A stiff silence filled the room as Miller waited for Turner to respond to his charge. Miller may have been the richest man in the Ward, but Turner was the elder, and Miller knew he could only go but so far. People in the Ward respected their elders and their positions.
Turner exhaled slowly. “It’s my job to report the news and warn the community, Preston. We’ve got a serious problem here that ain’t gonna be swept under the rug.”
“I understand that Mr. Turner, but did it have to be so, so—“
“So what?” yelled Turner as he slammed his fat, dark hands down on his desk. “So factual? Cause that’s what’s happenin’ here! The Ward is being stalked. Someone is preyin’ on our women’s and we sit here powerless to do somethin’ about it. Well, no more! Today, we’s gonna wake up the people of the Ward with the truth!” His old body shook with rage as he stared down a now chagrined Preston Miller.
“What do you propose we do, Mr. Turner?” he asked sheepishly, squirming in discomfort now, regretting having come in to chasten the old cougar.
Turner slowly sat back into his chair and stared hard at Preston. “Call a meeting. We’ve got to organize ourselves, figure out a way to protect our women—“
“And our businesses!” interjected Miller enthusiastically.
This was bad business for “The Black Wall Street of America.” The rumors were starting to affect local businesses, especially those that operated at night like Preston Miller’s Hippodrome Theatre, the local clubs and the Slaughterhouse Hotel, whose drinking parlor, now illegal thanks to the Prohibition movement, was frequented by big Hollywood stars and musicians of the day – Negroes, of course.
***
After the meeting called by Raymond Turner and Preston Miller, two of the prominent Negro b
usinessmen in Jackson Ward had gone to see Sheriff Dick Mason about what he was doing to solve the murders. They wanted answers and justice, but they wouldn’t be so lucky today. Richmond’s fine sheriff didn’t share in their fears. In fact, he didn’t want to share anything with Negroes: not even air.
Cigar smoke smothered the air in the Sheriff’s office as Preston Miller and Mrs. Jones sat patiently waiting to hear his response to their pleas for assistance. The dirty-blond haired man with a gap as wide as the James River in his front teeth sneered at the two uncomfortably hot Negroes sitting sternly in the chairs in front of him. The murder of women was horrific, but the murder of Negro women was not horrific enough for Sheriff Mason to do anything about it.
He’d been the Sheriff of Richmond for more than ten years now, having been elected primarily by the whites of the city. Short in stature for a man of his position, he was quick tempered and mean, especially towards anyone who did not fit his definition of a human being - and that meant the Negroes of Jackson Ward. He found them to be too uppity and demanding. He wasn’t there to protect them, he felt. He was there to keep them in line. Sheriff Mason was reveling in this scene.
Preston and his companion sat there and waited. They had no choice, and they were desperate. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, he spoke.
“That’s your problem down there. The city is not gonna waste its time on this,” he cooed as he puffed on his cigar and placed his shoes on top of his desk, leaning back casually in his chair. It was no secret that Sheriff Mason was a prominent supporter of a local Ku Klux Klan group which operated out of Chesterfield County, an area south of the James River. Some say he was once its president, before he became the sheriff of Richmond. He never denied the rumors. He didn’t have to.
Murder on Second Street: The Jackson Ward Murders (Sy Sanford Series Book 1) Page 1
