A few days after my document request, I was back at the TDOC office picking up a large manila envelope from the helpful clerk.3 I sat down in the first available chair and proceeded to bend back the two metal clips securing the TDOC record of John Randolph Clarke. Inside the envelope, I discovered that my ten dollars had purchased several photocopied pages of Clarke's tenure with the Tennessee Department of Corrections.
In November 1966, when the prison was almost seventy years old, the penitentiary was still in operation and housing hundreds of inmates. After his appeals for a new trial had all been turned down, and twenty-six months after his conviction, Charles Galbreath had driven John Randolph Clarke to the front door of his new home. Clarke stepped out of the car, shook hands with his lawyer, and then, carrying a duffel bag, walked through the gates where he would spend the next nine years of his life enjoying the Tennessee State Prison near downtown Nashville. The accommodations were sparse, a ten-foot private cell, a toilet, mattress, and sink.
It was clear from the documents that the prison system had been thorough with Inmate #62250. Every facet of Clarke had been analyzed: his social history, employment record, marital record, education, military experience, religion, IQ, and arrest record. The sources for the information were noted as well: prison interview, FBI report, family questionnaire, prison physician's findings, chaplain's interview, and a non-verbal IQ test known as a Beta Test, as well as direct observation:
This is a forty-one-year-old white male, standing 5'11” tall and weighing 199 pounds. He has been married for 17 years, but has no children. Subject served in the US Navy from 1943 until 1945 when he received a medical discharge. Family letter indicates subject has blackout spells and a back injury but this is unverified. He has two years of college. No criminal record for other members of the family.
October 1942 charge of forgery.
Unauthorized use of automobile, 1946 in Washington, DC
Disorderly conduct arrest in Nashville.
First-degree murder conviction—Nashville.
Subject's attitude during the interview was friendly and responsive. Subject stated it was hard to describe his feelings about being here. It was different than what he expected it to be. Very intelligent person.
The penultimate item was Clarke's birth date—February 21, 1925. As I read the date, I wondered what Clarke had been doing on his thirty-ninth birthday, the night before Paula Herring had been murdered. The bigger surprise, however, was on the last page of the report, which was a copy of Certificate Number 21746, issued by the Tennessee Board of Pardons and Paroles. After serving less than nine years of a thirty-year sentence, the governor had reduced Clarke's conviction from thirty years to twenty-five years, which in parole board math meant Clarke had already served enough time to be eligible for an early release. And indeed, according to the record, John Randolph Clarke had been released from prison on October 3, 1975. I was astonished at the short term.
The additional language on the certificate indicated that the chairman and director of the Board of Pardons and Paroles were of the opinion that Clarke's release “was not incompatible with the welfare of society” and that the “Board is satisfied he will be suitably employed in self-sustaining employment or that he will not become a public charge on release.”4
After a week of library work and another week visiting various Metro government offices, I discovered that John Randolph Clarke and his wife had purchased a home on Thunderbird Drive in West Nashville for $36,000 following his release from prison. The home was close to what would later become a shopping area known as Nashville West.
Upon inspection, the actual house was on a sloping lot, with a small garage and basement. It was also completely surrounded by a chain-link fence and had gates across the concrete driveway. It had the odd appearance of a home sitting inside a prison yard. A For Sale sign was posted, and the house looked empty.
I rang the doorbell of a neighbor's home, and a sixtyish woman with gray hair and thick glasses answered the door.5 I offered my best version of good morning, quickly followed by, “I'm sorry to bother you. I'm wondering if you could tell me about the house for sale next door?”
“Well it's been for sale for a few weeks now. You can call the realtor listed on the sign.”
As she said this, her demeanor took on a hardened edge.
“Yes, ma'am, I'm actually looking for a former owner of that property. Clarke was his name. John Clarke; John Randolph Clarke, and I think his wife's name was Callie Clarke. Maybe you would remember them living there?”
After I said the name “Clarke,” she stepped out of the doorway and began moving toward me with fire in her eyes and her jaw firmly set. I took a subtle step backward.
“He's dead. Yes, sir, he dropped dead right there in his garage after mowing his yard.”
Her words took the wind out of me, as I instantly ran through the good news, bad news impact of her information. The bad news meant that I would not be posing any questions directly to John Randolph Clarke, which would be a major setback in my quest to answer the two major questions in my research project. The good news was that I probably was avoiding a potentially awkward, even dangerous, attempt at interviewing a convicted murderer.
“I wasn't aware of that,” I said. I cast a wistful, long glance at Clarke's former home. “About how long ago did he die?”
“I think it was 1985 or maybe 1986. I know his wife died about six or seven years later. I'm pretty sure they're both buried somewhere around Smithville, Tennessee. Why do you want to know?”
“Well, I don't know how to explain this, but I'll try. I'm doing some research on the teenage girl that John Clarke was convicted of murdering in 1964.”
“I know that story,” she replied. “He was a bad man. My husband and I kept a close eye on him, because we had a teenage daughter in the house the whole time he lived right there.”
“That must have been stressful,” I replied.
“He got out of prison early, did you know that?”
“Yes, ma'am. I just stumbled across that information not long ago. He was sentenced to thirty years for first-degree murder, but he served less than ten.”
“That's because he paid $10,000 to get out early. He paid that crook of a governor we had, Ray Blanton, for a pardon.”6
“I hadn't heard that part,” I offered, remembering the former governor of Tennessee and his reign of corruption, highlighted by the selling of pardons and liquor licenses, and eventually his own prison sentence for the crimes.
“Did he have a job or do any work while they lived next door?” I inquired.
“Work? I guess you didn't know he was a preacher, did you?”
“No, ma'am. Are you sure about that?” I asked.
“Oh, I'm sure. Some preacher though. He was arrested with a prostitute at one of those seedy motels out on Dickerson Road. It was in the newspaper, but I don't guess that got back to his congregation.”7
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because his church was one of those giant RV parks down in Florida, and he was the so-called chaplain. Every winter, he and his wife would pack up their things and go down there. He was cutting his grass and getting ready to leave for Florida when he had the heart attack.”
Thinking that the neighbor might have been only too happy to spread a rumor about the deceased felon, I attempted to verify her story. And I quickly found that her version was completely accurate. In the summer of 1982, then fifty-seven-year-old Reverend John Randolph Clarke had been arrested after picking up a twenty-two-year-old prostitute at the corner of Dickerson Road and Trinity Lane and then proceeding to a nearby motel room. Clarke was charged with aiding and abetting prostitution and posted a $62.50 bond for his release. He had no comment for newspaper reporters, other than to direct questions to an attorney he hadn't spoken with in fifteen years, Charles Galbreath. When Galbreath was asked by reporters about his former client, he quickly informed them that he would bet his house on the fact that Clarke hadn't ki
lled Paula Herring.8
It was at the intersection of curiosity and geography that I found myself a few days later, taking a drive near Gallatin, Tennessee, in search of Crestview Memorial Gardens. I had written down the name of the cemetery from the Nashville Tennessean's coverage of Paula's graveside service.
For a memorial garden that was essentially located out in the countryside, I was surprised to find an on-site business office: a small wooden building the size of a tiny apartment. And it appeared that I was in luck, given that a pickup truck was parked near the open front door as I eased my car into the driveway.
Stepping onto the front porch, I could see that the one-room office was complete with desk, filing cabinets, and a couple of worn chairs for guests. A mountain of loose papers and time sheets was stacked next to an ancient computer on the work desk.
Inside the office, I was greeted by a thirty-something employee pulling files from an old metal filing cabinet. He introduced himself as part of the management company for the cemetery.1 He was tall and wiry, dressed in work boots, blue jeans, and a sweat-soaked shirt. After a brief exchange, I explained that I was trying to locate Paula Herring's resting place.
After punching a few keystrokes into what must have been one of the first personal computers ever built, the young man surprised me by saying, “Nope, she's not buried here.”
“I'm fairly certain she's here,” I replied.
“Oh, wait a minute, when did she die?”
“February 1964.”
“That's the problem. We computerized all of our records back in the eighties, but for the old ones we still have to look through the card files.”
With that, he moved to a different file cabinet, and quickly produced a small, yellow index card with information about Paula Herring.
Minutes later, I was carrying a photocopied map of the cemetery plots and walking carefully through a grassy area of gravesites located several hundred feet from the office building. Even using the map for reference, and cross-checking it against markers that the office manager had noted for me as being near Paula Herring's gravesite, I still couldn't find it. At least it seemed that way, until I tripped over a rock. But it wasn't a rock. Instead of a headstone noting Paula's final resting spot, I had tripped over a footstone, a small metal plate engraved with the words:
Paula Jenoise Herring
August 21, 1945–February 22, 1964
I stepped back and froze. What happened to the monument? I turned completely around, afraid that I was standing in the middle of her grave and looking in the wrong direction. But it wasn't a mistake. The foot-marker was the only indicator of Paula Herring's presence.
Puzzled, I returned to my car and negotiated the gravel driveway back to the tiny office to inquire about this discovery. Luckily, the front door was still open, and the workman was still shuffling paperwork at his desk. Before I could pose my question, he looked up to ask one of me.2
“Hey, I was just about to come find you. I was wondering if you have a current address on Mrs. Herring?”
“No, I'm sorry I don't,” I replied.
“Well, it looks like it's been a while since we had correspondence with her. I've got her on Timberhill Drive in Nashville. I wanted to see if she'd be interested in selling that other plot?”
“I'm not following you,” I said.
“I looked at the information we have on file for Paula Herring, and I can see a Mrs. Jo Herring bought two cemetery plots back in February 1964.”
“Two?”
“Yep, she bought them both in February of 1964.”
My head was spinning at this unexpected news, but not so much that I was speechless.
“So if Paula Herring is buried in one of the plots, who's buried in the other one?”
“Nobody. It's empty.”
“It was never used?” I asked.
“That's right. She bought them both at the same time, side by side. According to our records, she paid cash, ninety dollars for each. And I'd be interested in buying one back from her, but like I said, the only address I have on the family is Timberhill Drive, in Nashville.”
At this point the office manager stopped studying the paper records and looked up at me. I knew what was coming next.
“Aren't you family?”
“No, but I know the Herrings lived on Timberhill Drive back then. I'm just doing some research on Paula Herring.” Then I remembered my original reason for returning to the office.
“There's no headstone on Paula Herring's grave.”
As I spoke, the manager stood and returned the index card to the open file cabinet before answering. “Oh, that happens sometimes. Most people buy a headstone, but in a few cases they never do, and when it happens, we mark the gravesite with a footstone, that plate you saw. At least that way we can keep up with where they're buried.”
The Beaman Library, on the campus of David Lipscomb University (which would drop the first part of its name in 2005), was a perfect location to work on my new research project.3 In each corner of the upper floor of the library, study rooms could be found, roughly ten feet by ten feet, each furnished with a large work table, wooden chairs, and a dry-erase whiteboard covering most of one wall, and a window with a view of the campus.
After the unusual experience with the cemetery visit, I took the time to sequester myself in the Beaman Library and again review the list of forty stories and descriptions. After a half hour of reading through the list, I could see that the project would be overwhelming due to the amount of time needed to explore each one. More than that, the moral dilemma of replaying some of the worst moments in the lives of Nashville's citizen's seemed highly questionable. Unless there was some new update to share or a hidden truth that needed to come to light, what was the point of reliving these tragic episodes?
It was with this ethical dilemma in mind that I took a hard second look at the babysitter murder. It had certainly grabbed me in a way that the other stories had not. Perhaps it was the unique aspect of a little boy sleeping through his sister's murder that held my mind captive. And my initial research had certainly uncovered some additional questions that I wanted to answer.
With an empty dry-erase board in front of me and a stack of papers and notes littering my work table, I stood and began writing out my questions on the board:
killer spares the little boy why?
missing suicide note?
the mother buys two graves, but only one body?
defense lawyer would bet his house on this client
After taking a seat at the work table and studying the board, I made a decision to spend no more than thirty days attempting to answer the first two questions on the list. To my way of thinking, this would allow enough time to fairly explore the Paula Herring story. If nothing new surfaced after thirty days of research then I would walk away with the knowledge that I had given it a fair effort.
Visiting the Metro Nashville Police Archives wasn't in my original plan. In fact, it wasn't in my plan at all until I had been shut out at every other government office involved in the handling of paperwork for the Paula Herring murder case. The Nashville District Attorney's Office told me that their records had burned in an office fire sometime around 1966, about the time that Harry Nichol had retired and been replaced by the new district attorney general, Thomas Shriver.
The Davidson County Criminal Court was also at a loss for records and suggested that anything they might have had related to the biggest homicide in Metro's young history would have moved right along in the chain of evidence with the prosecution of John Randolph Clarke. Multiple calls to the Metropolitan Police Department were more frustrating than baffling. As long as I had the precise case number to request, they could search for records related to the Paula Herring homicide. But it was a perfect catch twenty-two, as I didn't have a case number until I had a record to review, and they would not search for a record until I provided the exact case number. This maddening process went on for months.
I was unwilli
ng to antagonize the police department with a letter referring to the Tennessee Public Records Act, so after several back and forth exchanges I decided to take a different approach and simply asked to visit the Metropolitan Police Archives. The result? Request granted. Amazing.
It would be many weeks after this session before I realized that the two detectives who had interviewed me were following all of the standard protocols to read my body language, eye movements, and microexpressions, all the while analyzing my verbal responses for deception and assessing whether the Davidson County resident before them was offering honest responses or had something more devious in mind.
After showing identification, signing in at a bulletproof window with the clerk, and completing a lengthy preadmittance document, I was led down a narrow hallway to a small office shared by a couple of detectives. Both men were in their forties, by my guess, and both were wearing white shirts and ties, sans jackets, one thin, the other thickly built, and both armed with large-caliber pistols on their hips. Like any professional who relies on gathering information, they had a natural gift for quickly putting a subject at ease, while asking questions in order to observe the answers.
Mostly, they seemed to be intrigued that an amateur researcher had taken the initiative to show interest in their crime closet. During the visit, I learned that their case files, reports, and evidence, were stored in the Police Archives. As I had accidentally learned in August of 1997, decades later those same records would eventually make their way to the Metro Government Archives for storage.
A Murder in Music City Page 7
