A Murder in Music City

by Michael Bishop

  “So you thought he did it? Killed the girl?” I asked.

  “My opinion has always been that Carlton either did it or he knew something about it. I always thought he knew the girl's mother. She was a nurse. Is she still living? And where's Sam Carlton today?” Hogan inquired.

  “No, Paula's mother died about a dozen years after the murder. And Carlton died in 1987 of a heart attack,” I said.

  Hogan was undeterred at this news. “Sam had that old automobile that made a noise and people heard him drive away that night. He gave it to that professional wrestler, the Belkas fellow,” he noted.

  As the lunch traffic picked up, customers started sitting at the tables nearby, and I began to wonder if our topic of conversation might ruin the appetite of the diners closest to us.

  “Charlie Galbreath and I went up to Kingsport, Tennessee, and took a deposition from that wrestler, Belkas. Charlie was a notary, so the paperwork was good. And both the wrestler and his wife thought Sam had something to do with the girl's murder. Sam hung around wrestlers a lot,” Hogan said.

  At this point, I mentioned my theory of identifying Paula Herring's killer by verifying the rumor that was being spread after the slaying.

  Hogan took a long sip of iced tea, and then said, “Oh, the one where the dead girl was supposed to have bitten off a penis?”

  “Yes, that's the one,” I replied.

  “At the time, they said she bit it totally off. So how would you go about confirming that rumor?”

  “I was thinking about just asking Sam Carlton's widow if Sam maybe had an injury to his uh, ‘member’ after that Saturday night. But I haven't had the courage to do that yet.”

  Hogan didn't hesitate. “Why not? I'll talk to her. She'd probably tell you all about him. Remember, surprise is your best offense. Just knock on the door. ‘Are you Sam Carlton's widow? I'd like to talk to you,’ simple as that. We can go see her today if you want to. I'd be happy to help you. I don't have a lot to do these days, and it would be good for me to help out on something like this.”

  I responded that the offer was a gracious one, but I hadn't thought about hiring an attorney to help with the research. Hogan noted that he would help out with the conversation with Sam Carlton's widow for no other reason than to know, once and for all, if Sam Carlton had killed the Herring girl. Moments later, W. B. Hogan and I made a quick plan to meet up again the following week and go knock on the widow's door. Two days before the planned visit, the old lawyer was mentioned in the morning newspaper. Unfortunately, he was mentioned in the obituary list. W. B. Hogan was dead.

  If only to honor W. B. Hogan's planned visit with Sam Carlton's wife, it was with much trepidation that I found myself waiting for the bloody man's widow at a restaurant a short distance from the Herring home on Timberhill Drive. I had not suggested my preferred meeting location, a certain Krystal hamburger restaurant on nearby Franklin Road.

  The bloody man's widow had volunteered to meet me for a cup of coffee at 10:00 a.m., and I decided that she must have had at least some level of suspicion about my interest, only because there was no sane explanation as to why an elderly woman would want to meet a complete stranger at a local restaurant to discuss her deceased husband's truck stop career.

  Sitting at a table positioned near the entrance of the restaurant, I was surprised to see not one, but two women entering the establishment with a look on their faces that said they weren't interested in seeing a menu. The older woman, in her early seventies I surmised, was of medium build and wearing a comfortable one-piece dress with short sleeves. Her hair was gray and mostly pushed behind her ears and away from her face. In her right hand, carried loosely at her side, appeared to be a large picture frame. Our eyes met as I stood to greet her. The widow then introduced me to the younger woman, who turned out to be her oldest daughter, Deborah. I guessed mid-forties for her age. Deborah was tall, curvaceous, and yet powerfully built. She had shoulder-length blond hair and was wearing a polo shirt and blue jeans.

  “Thank you for taking the time to meet with me,” I offered, in my most soothing “I come here in peace” voice. “Please have a seat. How about some coffee, or something cold to drink?” As I inquired about the coffee, a friendly waitress wearing a white apron and carrying an order pad appeared at our table and offered assistance. One glass of ice water, and two glasses of iced-tea were selected. Both women were seated opposite me, with the older woman directly across from me and Deborah sitting to her mother's left, next to the restaurant's front window.

  “Now tell me again why you wanted to meet me? I was trying to explain it to Deborah, and she was curious about you.”16

  As my gaze met Deborah's, I decided it would be a very good time to calculate the number of steps from my chair to the front door and whether I was still fast enough to sprint to my car and drive away before being chased down by my dining companions.

  “Ah, yes, ma'am. The reason for my call was that I'm interested in the Red Ace gasoline company. I'm working on some stories from Nashville that took place back in the 1960s, and a couple of former Red Ace employees mentioned Mr. Sam Carlton to me.”

  As soon as I spoke, Mrs. Carlton reached for the framed photo and presented it to me. The photograph turned out to be a framed certificate of appreciation from the Red Ace gasoline company to the big bloody man himself, Sam Carlton.

  “Clearly, he played a major role in the Red Ace gasoline business through the sixties, maybe longer,” I offered. “And if I understand the history correctly, back in the pre-interstate days just about every truck traveling through Nashville had to come through First Avenue right past the place where your husband was working. Does that sound about right?”

  This early conversational tactic appeared to be successful. I could see a bit of relaxation in their jawlines, and the shift in body language was in my favor. There's no way you're going to be asking the “bitten” question, I told myself, absolutely no way.

  For the next few minutes, we talked of the fuel company, the owner's family, and his affection for “Big Sam.” And according to the widow, Sam Carlton had practically mentored the young business owner on the more practical aspects of the fuel distribution business. After a few more minutes passed, I decided to venture toward the dark side.

  “Well, I don't know how to bring up this next topic, so let me just say that I will share with you how I stumbled upon it, and I can share an update with you that may be of interest.”

  As my words filled the air, both women shifted their position as if this were the bad mojo they had been expecting. Deborah took a long sip of her drink and gazed out the window. Her mother looked down at her own glass, avoiding direct eye contact with me.

  So I began by explaining how I had found the Paula Herring documents, and then mustering a bit of courage, I offered that it appeared to me that Sam Carlton possibly had been setup in an initial attempt to make him the patsy in the murder of an eighteen-year-old. Deborah was the first to speak, and she surprised me when she said that she remembered the night of the Herring girl's murder.

  “How is it that you remember so clearly?”

  “I was babysitting my younger brothers,” she said.17

  “Really? Another babysitter,” I muttered.

  And then she looked at her mother and said, “And because I remember that you and daddy went out to dinner that night and then came home early, a lot earlier than I was expecting, and he got a phone call from some woman and had to go right back out after ya'll got home.”

  I looked at Mrs. Carlton for a response, and her facial expression was troubling. Her nostrils flared for a brief moment, but then she regained her composure long enough to utter words that I hadn't expected to hear:

  “I know where he went that night, and that's all that matters.”

  The widow's eyes narrowed to a laser focus, and, as her words filled the air, she slowly moved her right arm across the table top and clamped a hand firmly on Deborah's forearm. The message was crystal clear, and Debo
rah didn't offer another sound, but the widow wasn't finished.

  “Is that what you're going to write? You're going to put my husband in the middle of this story just like they did back then? Is that what you're going to do?”

  For the next several minutes, I attempted to describe a ream of information pointing to what I believed to be an accurate assessment of Sam's appearance at the Krystal hamburger restaurant on the night of the slaying. But the widow was not to be persuaded, and after a few more uncomfortable moments she and her daughter left the restaurant.

  Among the list of character witnesses in the trial of John Randolph Clarke, I found his personal physician, Dr. Ed Tarpley. It didn't take me long to locate the aged physician and I invited him to lunch at a restaurant near his home, a location across from Saint Thomas Hospital on Harding Road.

  At noon, I found myself seated at a small table mid-restaurant, opposite an older gentlemen dressed in a plaid sports jacket, white shirt, and wire-rimmed glasses. Before he sat down, I guessed the height of his slight frame at five-foot-six, and he didn't look like much of an eater. Given his thin frame, I thought he might sip a cup of coffee or, at most, indulge in a bowl of soup. After the introduction, Dr. Tarpley made a quick glance at the menu, placed an order with the waitress, and, over the next hour, downed a salad that would have fed two hungry people, along with a large sandwich and an ample portion of fries.1

  “So, Dr. Tarpley, you're retired?”

  “Oh, heavens, no. I still do physicals for the local military inductees.”

  Tarpley was curious as to my interest in his friend John Randolph Clarke. The aged doctor proffered that Callie Clarke was a delightful person who simply loved John as he was. “She didn't try to remake him or anything like that. I think if she were here, she'd tell you that John was a teenager in a forty-year-old man's body.”

  According to the elderly physician, Callie Clarke had a graduate degree in education and was working toward a doctorate at the time of her husband's unfortunate arrest.

  “You spent time socially with John and Callie Clarke?” I asked.

  “Yes, from time to time we played bridge with them and also with another physician friend and his wife.”

  Wanting to bear down on the main topic I had in mind, I asked whether or not John Clarke had been bitten during the melee on Timberhill Drive, especially given that Clarke had admitted to seeing his physician within hours of the murder, and that multiple trial attorneys had offered up the “he was bitten” story.

  If John Clarke had been bitten, or worse, I was hoping that Dr. Tarpley would be willing to share that information with me. Could Tarpley have some exculpatory information available? Maybe there was an internal need to release some long-held evidence against his friend? Perhaps he had held Clarke's wife, Callie, in such high regard that he hadn't wanted to embarrass her in 1964, and he instead had used the doctor-patient privilege to hold onto some less than flattering information regarding his infamous client? Perhaps the good doctor was simply doing the math in his head to ensure that whatever he might have said in 1964 wasn't putting him in jeopardy of a perjury charge decades later?

  “Dr. Tarpley, there's a rumor that I recently heard related to the Paula Herring case, and that was that the killer had been bitten by the victim.”

  “Bitten? How so?”

  “Well, as the story goes, Paula Herring had bitten her assailant and inflicted such damage that she may have bitten off his member.”

  “I never heard that.”

  “So part of the reason I wanted to meet you is to ask about John Clarke's visit with you, just hours after Paula Herring's murder, on the Monday after the weekend slaying. Monday, February 24, 1964. I know that was a long time ago.”

  “Oh, no. I remember it. John had a bad heart. So did Callie. Both were under my care. He came to me after that weekend, when the Herring girl was killed, very agitated as I remember it,” the doctor noted.

  “Was he injured? Did he complain of anything related to a potential bite or other injury, perhaps?” I asked.

  “No, not at all. He wasn't injured in any way. He was just agitated, and his blood pressure and heart were the only problems.”

  “I read somewhere that he had blackout spells?”

  “That was an occasional symptom, yes. When I saw him on that Monday, I had prescribed some sedatives to calm him down. He was emotionally upset, with a rapid heartbeat.”

  “And the blackout spells, perhaps a war-related injury?” I asked.

  “No, cardiac related.”

  “You testified that you saw him again the morning after his all-night interrogation?”

  “Yes, and he was very agitated and fatigued.”

  “Just curious—was the Monday morning visit to you already scheduled or something that John Clarke requested on the fly?”

  “He called me. It wasn't a regular checkup. Seems like it was Tuesday after his all-night trip to the police station I put him in Parkview Hospital for a few days. After word leaked out in the newspaper that he was the primary suspect in the Herring girl's death, the head of staff at the hospital called me and said, ‘This man is wanted for murder, get him out of the hospital.’ And I said, ‘Well, he's my patient.’ Then the chief of police and one of the newsmen wanted to know if I would release John from the hospital. They wanted him. I said, ‘You've certainly got enough police to take him, why don't you just go right on in and do that?’ But they backed off. They had those large searchlights parked right in front of the hospital, I remember that.”

  “And the newspapers reported that John Clarke soon left Parkview and then was transferred to the old Nashville General Hospital, does that sound correct?” I asked.

  “Yes, and from there he went over to Vanderbilt for some brain tests to see if we could uncover the reason for the seizures.”

  “I know he went back to General Hospital after the testing at Vanderbilt because that's where the police served him with the warrant for murder and attempted rape. How did the hospitalization turn out for your patient?”

  “I told him he was going to need a pacemaker and, sadly, I was correct. He ultimately died of a coronary while mowing the yard.”

  “And his wife?” I inquired.

  “Callie took John a basket of food every week to the prison. She never believed he killed that girl, nor did any of his family believe it either.”

  “I saw that you may have testified at the trial in Jackson, Tennessee? At least you were subpoenaed, right?”

  “Yes. I said I had no knowledge of this affair. I remember the lawyer for John demanded $10,000 in advance. They had to mortgage their house and borrow from family to pay the fee.”

  “You don't see John Clarke as having committed this murder?”

  “Oh, definitely not,” the physician replied.

  “The victim's mother was a nurse. Did you know Jo Herring?” I asked.

  “No. John was stupid. He brought a lot of this on himself.”

  “You mean seeing other women while married to Callie?”

  “Yes, and playing around with the mother and daughter.”

  Time stood still and all restaurant conversation came to a screeching halt, at least in my mind.

  “Excuse me?”

  “He was seeing the mother and the daughter.”

  “I hadn't heard that story. That would be unusual, don't you think? You mean John Clarke was having sex with both mother and daughter. That's hard for me to believe,” I responded.

  “That was the story I heard at the time.”

  “Do you remember how you came to hear that information, perhaps directly through John Clarke or his wife?”

  “No. It wasn't through either of them. But it was what I heard, perhaps through one of the defense attorneys. That, I don't remember.”

  “Mother and daughter, that's amazing,” I responded.

  I kept wondering about the early newspaper reporting of three gunshot wounds at the time of Paula's murder and then only two gunshot w
ounds being noted on the witness stand in September of 1964. The photographs that Hubert Kemp had retained were in agreement with the three-shot theory. Those photographs were taken with a purpose in mind, to show, in tragic black and white, that Paula Herring had been shot exactly three times. The investigating officers in the photograph were each pointing at the wounds on Paula's body and flashing a “three” sign with their fingers. It made me wonder what was so important to them that they needed to show solidarity regarding their theory of the crime. And it appeared that they wanted photographic evidence for backup.

  But when the Nashville medical examiner, old Dr. Core, was on the witness stand, he only spoke of the two gunshot wounds in Paula's back. The front collarbone wound never came up for discussion, though it had clearly been mentioned in the initial newspaper stories. Perhaps Dr. Core had focused on the two gunshots in the back that had ended Paula's life and simply chose not to dwell on the other one.

  More disturbing to me was a conversation I had had with a former police lieutenant, who informed me that no autopsy had been needed for Paula Herring because they knew that two gunshots through the heart had killed her.2

  On the topic of what an autopsy might have revealed, I knew that Paula Herring would have been weighed, measured, and inspected for scars and wounds. Hair and nail samples would have been taken from her, and evidence of any gun powder residue could have been noted, if, for example, Paula had fired a gun while defending herself during the attack.

  All of her organs would have been removed, weighed, and then examined. Tissue samples would have been taken and notes made about the contents of her stomach, as well as body fluids tested to determine if any drugs or infection were present.

  The deliberate skipping of Paula's autopsy made me wonder if someone was concerned that it might reveal a surprise. Not having a handy rolodex of forensic experts on hand, I felt emboldened enough to call the man described by many as the world's leading forensic expert, the legendary Dr. Henry C. Lee.