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Speaker 4: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 4: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 4: written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every
Speaker 4: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 4: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 4: journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Speaker 3: Good evening. On an October night in nineteen oh five,
Speaker 3: a horrifying scene was found on a wooden vessel off
Speaker 3: the coast of Cape Fear, North Carolina. On board the
Speaker 3: Harry a Berwind, one crewman lay dead, his blood streaming
Speaker 3: down the deck. The four officers were all gone, murdered too.
Speaker 3: It would turn out, their bodies dumped into the sea.
Speaker 3: Only three sailors remained alive, one tied up, all telling
Speaker 3: different stories, all blaming each other. The three sailors were black,
Speaker 3: the dead officers were white. So began a legal spectacle
Speaker 3: that would captivate much of the nation's press and fuel
Speaker 3: a sensational trial in Wilmington. It was in Wilmington, after all,
Speaker 3: that shocking racial violence had occurred not long before, and
Speaker 3: now the city remained in the clutches of white supremacists.
Speaker 3: Most observers could have predicted a quick verdict and a
Speaker 3: triple hanging, if not an even quicker lynching. Yet the
Speaker 3: legal drama would defy predictions, lasting seven years, reaching the
Speaker 3: Supreme Court, pulling in Presidents Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft,
Speaker 3: then eating twisted into a fanciful, big budget movie. In
Speaker 3: the end, so many participants, from jurors to lawyers to politicians,
Speaker 3: acted against type that justice had a fighting chance. The
Speaker 3: book that we're featuring this evening is Ship of Blood,
Speaker 3: Mutiny and Slaughter Aboard the Harry A. Berwin and the
Speaker 3: Quest for Justice, with my special guest, author and attorney
Speaker 3: Charles Oldham. Welcome to the program, and thank you very
Speaker 3: much for this interview. Charles Oldham, Well, thank you for
Speaker 3: having me, Thank you so much, and congratulations on this
Speaker 3: incredible tale.
Speaker 5: Thanks.
Speaker 3: Let's as you do in the book, you introduced this
Speaker 3: area Cape Fear, North Carolina. We all know about the
Speaker 3: movie and the remake of the movie starring Robert de Niro.
Speaker 3: Just tell us a little bit more about Cape Fear
Speaker 3: as you introduce this story.
Speaker 5: Okay, well, for anyone who's not not familiar with North Carolina,
Speaker 5: and I am because this is this is the area
Speaker 5: where I grew up. Really, but these days, anyone who's
Speaker 5: familiar with Wilmington and the Brunswick County area, which is
Speaker 5: where Cape Peer actually is, these days, it's the beach.
Speaker 5: It's a tourist community and that's what that's what all
Speaker 5: of all of life evolves around the beach and seafood
Speaker 5: restaurants and sailing races and that type of thing, which
Speaker 5: is great. It's a wonderful place to vacation, wonderful place
Speaker 5: to live too. But I mean, for this story, we
Speaker 5: kind of have to we have to go back in
Speaker 5: time more than one hundred years, because the case happened
Speaker 5: in the year nineteen oh five. And yeah, back in
Speaker 5: those days, it was you know, life was hard in
Speaker 5: rural North Carolina. Back in that time, it was a
Speaker 5: pretty pretty hard struggle place to live. And Southport Cape
Speaker 5: Fear was a very small, you might say, shipping and
Speaker 5: fishing village where you know, everything revolved around the shipping
Speaker 5: industry and fishing, fishing that type of thing, and life
Speaker 5: was difficult, and the people people back then were very
Speaker 5: very hard folks. You might say, they had a lot
Speaker 5: of They had to deal with a lot of struggles
Speaker 5: in their daily lives, and politics reflected that at the
Speaker 5: same time, early nineteen hundreds were a very very tumultuous
Speaker 5: time in politics of the area back in those days.
Speaker 5: And that's that's also what I try to convey in
Speaker 5: the book.
Speaker 3: Let's get to October tenth, nineteen oh five, and you
Speaker 3: talk about a four masted schooner, the Blanche A. H.
Speaker 4: King.
Speaker 3: Tell Us set the stage as you do with Captain
Speaker 3: John Taylor, eight officers and crew. What happens October tenth,
Speaker 3: nineteen oh five.
Speaker 5: Well, the Blanche King, the sailing ship that you mentioned,
Speaker 5: was sailing along just off the coast of North Carolina,
Speaker 5: not for kick Fear, roughly twenty five miles offshore. They
Speaker 5: were on their way to Philadelphia, carrying a load of
Speaker 5: a load of lumber on board, and they happened to
Speaker 5: come across another another vessel sort of in the same
Speaker 5: shipping path that was also headed towards Philadelphia, and that
Speaker 5: ship was known as the Harry A. Berwin. It's kind
Speaker 5: of interesting because sailing vessels back then, commercial vessels typically
Speaker 5: were named after people, usually former ship captains or businessmen,
Speaker 5: officers in shipping companies and that type of thing. So
Speaker 5: the names of these these vessels were not particularly creative.
Speaker 5: They were just they were just named after people. But anyway,
Speaker 5: the uh I was just called it. The King and
Speaker 5: the Berwin. The King was sailing the Lawn and they
Speaker 5: came across the Berwind, another vessel of very similar size
Speaker 5: and the size and dimensions, and the officers on board
Speaker 5: the King noticed that the Berwind was sailing pretty erratically.
Speaker 5: They were kind of zigging, zagging, batting forth, and they
Speaker 5: didn't have their sails furled properly, and it was just
Speaker 5: it appeared like there was something to miss on board
Speaker 5: the Berwin, And so the King they drew up, drew
Speaker 5: up alongside the other ship, and they came within hailing distance,
Speaker 5: and the guys on board the King shouted out in
Speaker 5: Berwin and said, hey, what's wrong, And somebody shouted back
Speaker 5: from Berwin said we want to be taken off this
Speaker 5: ship because a man has gone crazy and he's killed
Speaker 5: all of the officers on board the ship. So when
Speaker 5: the fellows on board of the King got into their lifeboat,
Speaker 5: they'll call it, and they went over to the other ship.
Speaker 5: They found a bloody scene. There was at least one
Speaker 5: man who was lying dead on board the deck of
Speaker 5: the ship, and there were four others the officers on
Speaker 5: board the ship, who were also deceased. They had been
Speaker 5: shot and killed and their bodies had.
Speaker 3: Been tossed overboard.
Speaker 5: So what they came across was essentially a mass murder scene.
Speaker 3: What did they do as a result, You say, what
Speaker 3: did they exactly find? You say, is they found the
Speaker 3: bloody scene, but they had they experienced something right away
Speaker 3: that they noticed with someone being tied up. So tell
Speaker 3: us what the exchange was and what they did witness.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's true. Originally, on board the Burwind there had
Speaker 5: been eight men on board, four officers and four other
Speaker 5: guys whom I will call lower decks sailors, and all
Speaker 5: four of the officers were missing. It turned out that
Speaker 5: they had been shot and killed and thrown overboard, and
Speaker 5: of the four sailors, one of them also was lying dead.
Speaker 5: They found his body on the dead ship. One of
Speaker 5: them also had been tied up bound hand and foot
Speaker 5: by the other two guys who were still alive. And
Speaker 5: walking around. So it was clear that someone had obviously
Speaker 5: committed some committed some murders, although it wasn't entirely clear
Speaker 5: at first who had done what because there were three
Speaker 5: three people remaining alive on board the ship, and they
Speaker 5: started telling different stories, blaming each other as to who
Speaker 5: did what.
Speaker 3: Okay, so two of the people once Arthur Adams, and
Speaker 3: another one is named Sawyer Robert, and the person tied
Speaker 3: up is named Henry Scott. Yes, so what do Adams
Speaker 3: and Sawyer have to say about what happened?
Speaker 5: Well, they immediately blamed everything on Henry Scott. They claimed
Speaker 5: that Henry Scott had smuggled some weapons on board the ship,
Speaker 5: and they said that this came as a complete surprise
Speaker 5: to them. But they claimed that Henry Scott decided that
Speaker 5: he was going to kill all the officers on board
Speaker 5: the and take over the vessel. And they claimed that
Speaker 5: that is what Henry Scott seeded to do. He pulled
Speaker 5: out his weapons and he went and hunted down each
Speaker 5: of the offers one by one shot and killed him
Speaker 5: and threw them overboard. And at the same time they
Speaker 5: claimed that Henry Scott had held them under the gun,
Speaker 5: claiming that he would kill them, Adams and Sawyer if
Speaker 5: they did not cooperate with it. And they claimed that
Speaker 5: that went on for several hours, and it was not
Speaker 5: until later that they were able to seize the opportunity
Speaker 5: to tackle mister Scott and beat him down and take
Speaker 5: his guns away from him and tie him up. And
Speaker 5: in the process the Scott apparently had shot and killed
Speaker 5: one of the other sales whose name was Cokeley, and
Speaker 5: he was the one who was lying dead on board
Speaker 5: on the deck. That was their story, as you might imagine,
Speaker 5: Henry Scott, the other fellow, told a different story.
Speaker 3: What was a different story that he had.
Speaker 5: Well, mister Scott, as you might imagine, blamed it on
Speaker 5: all the other guys. He claimed that Adams and Sawyer
Speaker 5: and Copley actually were the ones who brought guns on
Speaker 5: board the ship, and Scott claimed he was innocent of that.
Speaker 5: And mister Scott claimed that the other three guys were
Speaker 5: the ones who conspired together to do the very same thing,
Speaker 5: kill all the officers take control of the ship. And
Speaker 5: Scott he essentially, as you might say, he flipped the
Speaker 5: script on the other three guys. He claimed that they
Speaker 5: came up with the idea of seizing the vessel, maybe
Speaker 5: taking it into port and trying to claim that the
Speaker 5: officers had drowned in a storm or something like that,
Speaker 5: and they might use this as a way to try
Speaker 5: to collect a reward from the shipping company for having
Speaker 5: salvaged the ship or something like that. And mister Scott,
Speaker 5: as you might imagine, also claimed that when he objected
Speaker 5: to this plan, that the other guys decided to tagle
Speaker 5: him and tie him down and so forth. So it
Speaker 5: was basically two guys against one telling completely different stories
Speaker 5: about what happened.
Speaker 3: Now you say that Captain Taylor that was in charge
Speaker 3: of the king, he certainly wasn't a detective or law enforcement,
Speaker 3: so he had all three handcuffed. He couldn't sort out
Speaker 3: who was guilty of war, so he did it, played
Speaker 3: it safe and had these people handcuffed, and then escorted
Speaker 3: it into Wilmington. I believe from there what happens in
Speaker 3: terms of law enforcements involvement.
Speaker 5: Well, they escorted the bur Wind into the nearest port,
Speaker 5: which was actually Southport, North Carolina, which is a small
Speaker 5: small town which is just at the mouth of the
Speaker 5: Cape Fear River, just a short distance down river from Wilmington,
Speaker 5: which is the major major city in the area. But
Speaker 5: you're correct, I mean they all both ships were then
Speaker 5: taken into South Fork and Captain Taylor from the King
Speaker 5: then turned all three of those guys over to the
Speaker 5: custody of federal marshals in the area because it was
Speaker 5: a it was a federal case. It was a mutiny
Speaker 5: and a mass murders that took place on board the
Speaker 5: on the on the high seas, So essentially it turned
Speaker 5: into a federal mutiny and murder prosecution, which and the
Speaker 5: trial was held in Wilmington, North Carolina just a few
Speaker 5: weeks afterwards.
Speaker 3: You eventually talk of what is at play at this
Speaker 3: preliminary that starts in nineteen oh five. We alluded to
Speaker 3: it in the introduction about what happened in eighteen ninety
Speaker 3: eight in Wilmington, and obviously this trial is it is
Speaker 3: influenced by what happened in eighteen ninety eight and all
Speaker 3: of the events and the environment and atmosphere that occurred
Speaker 3: before nineteen oh five. So now there's a media at
Speaker 3: play here and the phenomena of people that are interested
Speaker 3: in this case. Tell us about all of that backdrop
Speaker 3: to this preliminary trial.
Speaker 5: Well, it was a very auspicious time because this was
Speaker 5: in nineteen oh five when these murders took place. And
Speaker 5: the critical factor is that these three men, these three
Speaker 5: sailors who were put on trial for these murders, all
Speaker 5: three of them were of African descent. And as it
Speaker 5: turned out, all four of the officers on board the
Speaker 5: Berwin who were murdered were white men. So three black
Speaker 5: guys put on trial for murdering four white men. And
Speaker 5: this was in Wilmington, North Carolina, in nineteen oh five,
Speaker 5: And we have to take account of, as you said,
Speaker 5: what happened in Wilmington in eighteen ninety eight. This is
Speaker 5: a story that has gotten a lot of coverage in
Speaker 5: recent years from historians and the press because it was
Speaker 5: a very shocking event which was really didn't get a
Speaker 5: lot of coverage for a long time, which is unfortunate.
Speaker 5: It's only within the past twenty years so that people
Speaker 5: have really become aware of what we now call the
Speaker 5: eighteen ninety eight insurrection at Wilmington. But the long short
Speaker 5: of it is that in eighteen ninety eight, Wilmington was
Speaker 5: a multi racial city, and very unusual for the South
Speaker 5: in those days. It had a multi racial government that
Speaker 5: had been elected in the say, the mid mid eighteen nineties.
Speaker 5: Around eighteen ninety four, they had black people and white
Speaker 5: people both serving in the city government. And things really
Speaker 5: came to ahead in eighteen ninety eight when something called
Speaker 5: the white supremacist movement spread across North Carolina. The Democratic Party,
Speaker 5: which was a completely different institution back then from what
Speaker 5: we know it as today, was staunchly white premises, and
Speaker 5: in the eighteen ninety eight campaign, they really carved upon
Speaker 5: racial issues as a means of seizing control of the
Speaker 5: state government. And I hate to I try to be
Speaker 5: delicate in the way that I described this, because it's
Speaker 5: so easy to give offense sometimes, but the campaign that
Speaker 5: they ran was absolutely brutal. They spread all kinds of
Speaker 5: rumors about black government officials praying on white women and
Speaker 5: that type of thing, and warning about the perils of
Speaker 5: what they call negro domination in state government. Again, I
Speaker 5: apologize to even use language like this, but that's those
Speaker 5: were the dynamics of the situation. But again, to a
Speaker 5: kind of cut to the chase, in eighteen ninety eight,
Speaker 5: these white supremacist Democrats took complete control of North Carolina,
Speaker 5: state government in that election, and as a result of
Speaker 5: that in Wilmington, there was a very It led to
Speaker 5: a very very bloody situation in which the local white
Speaker 5: supremacists they decided they were going that when the election
Speaker 5: was not enough, they were going to see physical control
Speaker 5: of the city government by killing people. And that's what happened.
Speaker 5: They staged and an armed insurrection in the city where
Speaker 5: they physically evict the white people and a lot of
Speaker 5: the blacks who had been involved in the city government,
Speaker 5: and they marched through the streets with guns and they
Speaker 5: went about killing people. They were probably about about sixty
Speaker 5: people who ended up lying dead in the streets as
Speaker 5: a result of that. It really was a bloody governmental
Speaker 5: coupe tap probably the only, the only documented case where
Speaker 5: that has actually happened in the United States. It's a
Speaker 5: very very regretful thing for anyone who's from North Carolina
Speaker 5: to know about. And that's why that's unfortunately why the
Speaker 5: story remained hidden for so long. A lot of just
Speaker 5: didn't we didn't learn about it in high school because
Speaker 5: it's so so shameful. But as a result of that,
Speaker 5: in eighteen ninety eight, Wilmington, North Carolina, was a completely
Speaker 5: the governmental institutions, the courts, everything was completely dominated by
Speaker 5: white supremacists. And therefore that was the environment that these
Speaker 5: three black guys facing when they were put on trial
Speaker 5: murdering these white men in nineteen oh five.
Speaker 3: You also talk about that it was said that they
Speaker 3: would have two separate trials, that Adams and Adam Lawyer
Speaker 3: and would both have would have a separate trial as
Speaker 3: opposed to Henry Scott. But the thing is that the
Speaker 3: dynamics of those both of those trials would be that
Speaker 3: Scott would be the star witness in the Adams and
Speaker 3: Stewart trial and that the and vice versa, Adams and
Speaker 3: would be witness at the Scott trial. So other than that,
Speaker 3: who if anyone is there to represent talk about the
Speaker 3: representation of Adams and his partner and Henry Scott.
Speaker 5: Well, the interesting thing is, and you're correct, I mean
Speaker 5: there were two trials. Adams and Sawyer were tried together
Speaker 5: because they were telling the same story, they were blaming Scott,
Speaker 5: and then Scott was tried separately because it was just
Speaker 5: the opposite. Scott was alleging that Adams and Sawyer were
Speaker 5: the killers. So yes, there were two separate trials. One
Speaker 5: right after the other, and total three defendants. And one
Speaker 5: thing that is surprising to me is that all three
Speaker 5: of them had defense attorneys and they what's what's really
Speaker 5: ironic is that the defense attorneys who were appointed by
Speaker 5: the court were guys who were who came from the
Speaker 5: white establishment in Wilmington and whose families were staunched Democrats,
Speaker 5: and they had relatives who were actually involved in the
Speaker 5: events of the insurrection in eighteen ninety eight, in fact,
Speaker 5: they had been leaders of it. And yet here they
Speaker 5: were being appointed to represent these black guys in court.
Speaker 5: And what's really surprising is that they actually did their jobs.
Speaker 5: They did not strike from the responsibility of representing these
Speaker 5: fellows and filing the appropriate motions, and I mean they
Speaker 5: did the best they could in court. I mean, given
Speaker 5: the deck that was stacked against them, because they were
Speaker 5: these guys were they were put on trial in federal court,
Speaker 5: and the juries were called from taxpayer roles of and
Speaker 5: the jurors, as you might imagine, we're all white men
Speaker 5: from eastern North Carolina, and so I mean they were
Speaker 5: they had the deck stacked against from the very beginning.
Speaker 5: But despite all of that, the trial procedures we were followed,
Speaker 5: the law was followed, and it was the trial. The
Speaker 5: trial presision was very deliberate and calm and professional, which
Speaker 5: is not exactly what you might expect. The verdicts were
Speaker 5: what you probably would expect, but I was rbally surprised
Speaker 5: by the sense of quorum in the court room was
Speaker 5: actually quite pretty pretty calm and professional.
Speaker 3: You you write about the participation of the press and
Speaker 3: its influence. What did the press consider after hearing the
Speaker 3: very what you write, very very consistent testimony right from
Speaker 3: the very beginning and continuing to trial on Adams and
Speaker 3: uh and Slawyer.
Speaker 5: Well, it's just a little bit of the background. Adams
Speaker 5: and Sawyer were put on trial first, and Scott was
Speaker 5: the primary witness against them, and so the prosecutor, he
Speaker 5: I get the sense that he really wanted to He
Speaker 5: just wanted to get this over with quickly as possible.
Speaker 5: He wanted to try all three of them, and he
Speaker 5: wanted to get death sentences against all three of them
Speaker 5: and then and be done with it. So the prosecutor,
Speaker 5: when he put Adam and Sawyer on trial first, he
Speaker 5: simply brought in Scott to take the stand and give
Speaker 5: his given his testimony and then Adams and Sawyer took
Speaker 5: the stand on their own behalf told their story, and
Speaker 5: people noted that Adams and Sawyer in particular, they were
Speaker 5: very concisient in stories that they told. They seemed calm
Speaker 5: and sincere and so forth. So a lot of the
Speaker 5: press the moment were actually pressed with adamson Sawyer. Despite that,
Speaker 5: they were found guilty and they were immediately sentenced to death.
Speaker 5: After that trial concluded, and the trial of Adams and
Speaker 5: Sawyer took about three days. About a half hour after
Speaker 5: that trial concluded, they simply started the second trial Scott's.
Speaker 5: They just declared the recess. Thirty minutes later. They filled
Speaker 5: the jury box twelve more people and they started the
Speaker 5: second trial. And then the prosecutor then brought in Adams
Speaker 5: and Sawyer to be his witnesses to testify against Scott,
Speaker 5: despite the fact that the same prosecutor had just gotten
Speaker 5: death sentences against them only hours before. Yeah, they now
Speaker 5: became his witness They took stand, told the very same
Speaker 5: story that they had in their own trial. They said
Speaker 5: Scott did it. And then you know, Scott took the stand,
Speaker 5: told his story again in his own defense. This time
Speaker 5: he also was found guilty and sentence to death. So
Speaker 5: it was I mean, the whole thing was I said
Speaker 5: this a moment ago, that the trial process was very
Speaker 5: deliberate and calm, probably a little too much so, because
Speaker 5: there was just a sense that all the all the
Speaker 5: attorneys just wanted to get it over and done with,
Speaker 5: and the judge wanted to be sure that he followed
Speaker 5: all the all the rules, dotted all the eyes and
Speaker 5: crossed all the t's, and so that he wouldn't be
Speaker 5: overturned on appeal. Probably, But I mean, the trials were
Speaker 5: obviously a rush job, and the verdicts and the sentences
Speaker 5: were no surprise and given the given the whole black
Speaker 5: white dynamics of the thing. But what was surprising is
Speaker 5: that a lot of the people, the people in the
Speaker 5: courtroom and especially press in Wilmington who were reporting on this,
Speaker 5: they actually listened to what these people were saying in
Speaker 5: court and they were really impressed with Addatant Sawyer. They
Speaker 5: sounded sincere and I hate to use the languige they
Speaker 5: used in print. They called them like a simple minded,
Speaker 5: which is a racially loaded term, but they meant it
Speaker 5: as a compliment sort of, because they sounded honest, and
Speaker 5: it sounded like they were telling the truth, whereas they
Speaker 5: noted that this guy Scott, on the other hand, was
Speaker 5: he seemed really slit and evasive, and again this is
Speaker 5: a little offensive, but they said that he was unusually
Speaker 5: smart for a black guy, which lived them to think, well,
Speaker 5: he's probably lying and he's probably the guilty one, which
Speaker 5: turned out to be true. But what really surprised me
Speaker 5: was that the press really were that discerning and they
Speaker 5: were willing to They were willing to say, you know,
Speaker 5: all three of these guys probably are not equally guilty,
Speaker 5: and all of them probably did not deserve to hang.
Speaker 5: And in fact, these were the same newspapers who just
Speaker 5: a few years earlier had been advocating in favor of
Speaker 5: the white supremacy movement, and they had all all but
Speaker 5: they had been cheering on the sidelines when that insurrection
Speaker 5: happened and when people were being shot dead in the streets.
Speaker 5: But they were willing to acknowledge that. But you know,
Speaker 5: this probably is a mischaracter justice as far as Adams
Speaker 5: and Sawyer concerned. So that was very surprising to me.
Speaker 3: You noted what the press picked up on, but you
Speaker 3: also write that there was a financial consideration by the
Speaker 3: Burrowwind itself, the owners of the Burwind, to the verdict
Speaker 3: being just as it was. Can you tell us about.
Speaker 5: That, Yeah, the officers in the company that owned the Burwind,
Speaker 5: they did have a bit of a financial motive here
Speaker 5: because they didn't want to want to have to pay
Speaker 5: out any what they would call salvage fees, because if
Speaker 5: it turned out that any of the surviving crew members,
Speaker 5: if any of them have been found not guilty of
Speaker 5: the mutiny and the murder, then conceivably the shipping company
Speaker 5: might have been liable to pay salvage fees to either
Speaker 5: the crew of the King that had intercepted the ship,
Speaker 5: or conceivably even to the surviving sailors Adams and Sawyer.
Speaker 5: So you might say that they had a financial motive
Speaker 5: to come into court and swear that all three of
Speaker 5: the guys had been had been actively involved in the
Speaker 5: mutiny and murders, and the captain of the of the
Speaker 5: King and also the owners of Berwin they also testified
Speaker 5: in the trials to that effect.
Speaker 3: You you talked about the media as well, did they
Speaker 3: not you say that they concluded that somebody must be
Speaker 3: lying out of the three and somebody, if not two
Speaker 3: people were innocent of the three.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, or at least they had doubts about it.
Speaker 5: It seemed like they figured out pretty pretty early on
Speaker 5: that Henry Scott, who was a suspicious character, he just
Speaker 5: didn't look right, he didn't sound right, He just didn't
Speaker 5: sit right, you might say. And they had they had
Speaker 5: doubts about, you know, whether his whether his story really
Speaker 5: held water, and it didn't.
Speaker 3: So you say that the execution was set for shortly
Speaker 3: after for Scott and for Adams and Sawyer. What happens
Speaker 3: next in terms of their future.
Speaker 5: Well, Adams, Adams and Sawyer, their attorney did file an
Speaker 5: appeal on their behalf. So I did I did their
Speaker 5: attorney credit for that, because he didn't. He didn't just
Speaker 5: walked away once they were sentenced. And in fact, at
Speaker 5: that point there was another attorney who came on board
Speaker 5: to represent them, to represent Adams and Sawyer on their appeal,
Speaker 5: which ultimately went to the Supreme Court, the United States
Speaker 5: Supreme Court. And that attorney's name was George Roundtree. And
Speaker 5: that was really fascinating to me because he, in fact
Speaker 5: had been one of the one of the prime ring
Speaker 5: leaders of the insurrection back in eighteen ninety eight. He
Speaker 5: had been walking around in the in the streets. There's
Speaker 5: still some dispute about exactly how he was involved, but
Speaker 5: he probably was involved in coordinating the shootings and the
Speaker 5: demonstrations that ended up killing Hi about sixty people. But
Speaker 5: he didn't have to do it. I can't imagine that
Speaker 5: he was being paid very much. But he willingly came
Speaker 5: into this case and he defended Adams and Sawyer and
Speaker 5: took their case to the US Supreme Court. So again
Speaker 5: that was very surprising to me. Scott's attorney did not
Speaker 5: file an appeal for him because he I think he
Speaker 5: realized that the writing was on the wall as far
Speaker 5: as he was concerned. But yes, the case Adam the Sawyer,
Speaker 5: their case did go to the Supreme Court. They did
Speaker 5: not actually prevail in this Supreme Court because well, the
Speaker 5: issues that their attorneys were able to raise, they just
Speaker 5: the Supreme Court wasn't really looking at issues like the
Speaker 5: advocacy of defense councils, and they weren't looking at racial
Speaker 5: issues at that point in time. You know, it wasn't
Speaker 5: until later, say discotsper of cases and really much later
Speaker 5: in the nineteen fifties and sixties when when the federal
Speaker 5: courts really began to take seriously how racial prejudice interfered
Speaker 5: with due process of law in cases like that. So
Speaker 5: they did not win in Supreme Court. But there was
Speaker 5: a very unforeseen surprise that came along, and I think
Speaker 5: you probably know what I'm referring to. There was the
Speaker 5: anonymous letter that appeared in the jail.
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Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: We talked about Charles about the surprise letter. What was
Speaker 3: contained in this anonymous letter that would help these two characters.
Speaker 5: Well, it happened in the summer of nineteen oh six.
Speaker 5: It was about seven or eight months after the trials,
Speaker 5: when all three guys were in jail. They'd been sentenced
Speaker 5: to death and they were awaiting their execution dates. Somebody
Speaker 5: and we don't know who, wrote a letter to Henry
Speaker 5: Scott in the jail telling him to well, alleging that
Speaker 5: Henry Scott had taken part in some other murders that
Speaker 5: supposedly happened in Alabama a couple of years before. And
Speaker 5: it also contained some hints that Henry Scott was involved
Speaker 5: in some kind of conspiracy of black militants that was
Speaker 5: taking place throughout in different states throughout the South, and
Speaker 5: they were planning to overthrow white supremacist governments. Now that's
Speaker 5: it seems kind of far fetched. And the jailers when
Speaker 5: they read this letter, they didn't they didn't really take
Speaker 5: it seriously, but they thought, you know, we really need
Speaker 5: to look into this. And so what they did they
Speaker 5: got up with this gentleman who was the director of
Speaker 5: one of the episcopal churches in Wilmington and one of
Speaker 5: the he was an African American priest who had been
Speaker 5: been ministering to all three of these guys while they
Speaker 5: were while they were in the jail. So they they
Speaker 5: talked with this this priest and they they basically goaded
Speaker 5: him into crying Henry Scott for some information, trying to
Speaker 5: figure out if there was anything to these these allegation
Speaker 5: of the other murders and the conspiracy and so forth.
Speaker 5: And we don't know exactly what the priests said to
Speaker 5: Henry Scott. He would be really really need to know
Speaker 5: how the how that conversation went, but he did talk
Speaker 5: to Scott and it appears that he he prevailed upon
Speaker 5: Scott to come clean, essentially, and Scott eventually he as
Speaker 5: a result of this. He I don't know his motives precisely.
Speaker 5: But he came around and he did confess to the murders,
Speaker 5: and again his his story was evasive again, and nobody,
Speaker 5: nobody really believed that he could be that he was
Speaker 5: telling the truth about how it actually happened. But he
Speaker 5: did come around and he said Adams and Sawyer in fact,
Speaker 5: were not involved in the murders. He said, I did
Speaker 5: the murders myself. So when when Scott did that, it's
Speaker 5: it immediately brought renewed hope to Adams. Adams and Sawyer,
Speaker 5: but they were still under sentence of death, and they
Speaker 5: were only a few weeks away being hanged. So their
Speaker 5: attorneys then went in overdrive and they started a new
Speaker 5: legal proceeding to try to try to save their lives.
Speaker 3: To save their lives, there was you say, they had
Speaker 3: a petition, but they had to speak to the President
Speaker 3: of the United States, Teddy Theodore Roosevelt. So tell us
Speaker 3: about this journey to be able to achieve this, what
Speaker 3: happens along the way, Well.
Speaker 5: That is true, and Barret might. Of course, it was
Speaker 5: a federal case, so clemency was in the hands of
Speaker 5: the president, who was of Theodore Roosevelt at the time. Roosevelt,
Speaker 5: who Frankie had never been known as being particularly friendly
Speaker 5: towards towards African Americans or civil rights issues in general.
Speaker 5: But his attorneys, you know, like I said, they really
Speaker 5: went into overdrive and they prepared an clemency petition that
Speaker 5: was signed by some of the some of the most
Speaker 5: influential folks in Wilmington's political and financial communities, including the
Speaker 5: very head ring leader of the insurrection. His name was
Speaker 5: Albert Moore Waddell, and this is a really infamous name
Speaker 5: in North Carolina days because he's now known as the
Speaker 5: man who back in eighteen ninety eight, he gave a
Speaker 5: speech that inspired the insurrection. In the riot and I'll
Speaker 5: give you the quote, although it is kind of shocking,
Speaker 5: he said, we were we will take over the city,
Speaker 5: even if we have to choke the kpe Fier River
Speaker 5: with Negro carcasses, which is a very crude thing to say.
Speaker 5: And it resulted in, as I said, about sixty people
Speaker 5: being shot dead in the streets. But Alfred More Waddell,
Speaker 5: who gave that speech and became the mayor of Wilmington
Speaker 5: as a result of the insurrection, he actually signed the
Speaker 5: clemency petition for Sawyer at Adams, which was really astounding
Speaker 5: to me. I was very surprised when I saw that.
Speaker 5: And it took a lot of It took a lot
Speaker 5: of cajoling and some personal visits from the attorneys and
Speaker 5: several other people who were influential in Wilmington at the time.
Speaker 5: They met with Theodore is Well, and it took him
Speaker 5: several months to come around, but he did. He commuted
Speaker 5: the sentences of Adams and Sawyer commuted them from death
Speaker 5: to life in prison. Mister Scott meanwhile, had actually been
Speaker 5: his death sentence had been carried out. He was hanged
Speaker 5: in he it was a pretty pretty dramatic scene. In fact,
Speaker 5: he uh, just a few hours before he was hanged,
Speaker 5: he finally put his put his signature on the written confession,
Speaker 5: which exonerated out of Sawyer. So it was the timing
Speaker 5: was just about as close as you could you could
Speaker 5: make it right.
Speaker 3: So now they avoid being executed. What they go to
Speaker 3: prison these guys and you you titled this chapter the
Speaker 3: Gates of Hell. But this is a federal penitentiary or
Speaker 3: a federal prison, so it's better than if it were
Speaker 3: a state penitentiary. So you described some of the what
Speaker 3: you would call the gates of Hell.
Speaker 5: Well, it's uh, it's kind of in the eye of
Speaker 5: the beholder. They were sent to the Federal prison in Atlanta,
Speaker 5: which was, you know, we've we can see pictures of
Speaker 5: it now. It was a big stone forbidding looking fortress
Speaker 5: type of type of building which had been had been
Speaker 5: built just recently. And you'd have to imagine that the
Speaker 5: condition there could not have been great for especially for
Speaker 5: these three black guys who had been as you know,
Speaker 5: as I said, convicted of killing white men. And this
Speaker 5: is this is arguable one way or the other, but
Speaker 5: you know, the conditions, as tough as they were, they
Speaker 5: probably were better than if they had been sent to
Speaker 5: something like a chain gang working on a working on
Speaker 5: roads or working in a cotton field in North Carolina.
Speaker 5: But again that's again that's that's debatable about which it's worse.
Speaker 5: But one advantage is that because they were in the
Speaker 5: federal prison system, everywhere they went and everything they did
Speaker 5: was actually document in the in the prison files and
Speaker 5: port files, which I was I count myself fortunate that
Speaker 5: I was able to find them, because they're still in
Speaker 5: the National archives these days, and I was able to
Speaker 5: find the letters that they wrote and who they communicated with.
Speaker 5: And because of that, I know that even though they
Speaker 5: were even though they were in prison, they didn't give
Speaker 5: up on the possibility of proving their innocence and they
Speaker 5: kept it up, and they communicated with folks at Wilmington
Speaker 5: who were friendly with them, and they worked really hard
Speaker 5: to get a second presidential clemency proceeding.
Speaker 3: And how do they do that? And who are some
Speaker 3: of the or one of the allies in this fight.
Speaker 5: Well, I don't want to give everything away at this point,
Speaker 5: but I will tell you that there was a just
Speaker 5: a really just a chance encounter Adamson Sawyer. They made
Speaker 5: the acquaintance of a fellow named Henry Warner, who was
Speaker 5: a well known stage actor in the United States and
Speaker 5: Prenti in England also because that's where he was from originally.
Speaker 5: And this mister Warner, for reasons that are not entirely clear,
Speaker 5: he was he was really active in the prison reform
Speaker 5: movement back in those days. He was sort of like
Speaker 5: a sort of a celebrity activist in a way. But
Speaker 5: he somebody, somebody introduced him to the fact that these
Speaker 5: two guys, Adams and Sawyer, were serving a life prison
Speaker 5: prison term for murders that they apparently didn't commit. And
Speaker 5: so eventually mister Warner decided that he was gonna he
Speaker 5: was going to take an interest in their case. And
Speaker 5: he had he had money at his disposal, and he
Speaker 5: had attorneys that he was working with, and so mister
Speaker 5: Warner sent his attorneys down down to Atlanta to meet
Speaker 5: with these guys and collect evidence and uh, basically spearhead
Speaker 5: a second a second clemency edition which they directed to
Speaker 5: William Howard Taft, who was who succeeded Theodore Roosevelt as
Speaker 5: at president.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 5: Just a little bit of trivia here is that Henry
Speaker 5: Warner he was back in the back in the nineteen
Speaker 5: tens nineteen ten. Around that time he was known for
Speaker 5: known for his stage work, but he continued acting in
Speaker 5: the silent film era and uh, you know later in
Speaker 5: the nineteen thirties and forties. He also had a role
Speaker 5: in the well known movie Is a Wonderful Life by
Speaker 5: Frank Capra. And I don't want to give it all away,
Speaker 5: but if you look, uh, if you watch that movie,
Speaker 5: you know, like we all do it Christmas very often.
Speaker 5: If you see in credits Henry Warner you'll you'll recognize
Speaker 5: the name and you'll see him there.
Speaker 3: We don't want to give too much away what happened
Speaker 3: in their fight to be able to be released from prison.
Speaker 3: So let's jump ahead to the to the movie and
Speaker 3: in its relation to any kind of fact.
Speaker 5: Well, there was there was a film version of this
Speaker 5: story that made of nineteen fifties. It was a film
Speaker 5: called The Decks Ran Read. It was made in nineteen
Speaker 5: fifty eight, and it was when the filmmakers did it,
Speaker 5: they said it was a true story. It was based
Speaker 5: upon the mutiny on board then Harry A. Berwin. But
Speaker 5: I have to tell you that they really butchered the
Speaker 5: history to a large extent. The movie was, you know,
Speaker 5: it had potential. I mean it was. It was fairly
Speaker 5: big budget production and it had it had some pretty
Speaker 5: prominent actors in it. James Mason was in it and
Speaker 5: Dorothy Dandridge, who was a emerging as one of the
Speaker 5: one of the better known actresses of the day. But
Speaker 5: they just they changed all the details of the case.
Speaker 5: Whereas the actual actual case occurred on board of the
Speaker 5: sailing vessel in the year nineteen oh five, they updated
Speaker 5: the story to take place on a on a ship
Speaker 5: in the present day being the nineteen fifties, and had
Speaker 5: it take place in the Pacific Ocean off off New
Speaker 5: Zealand on board a liberty ship that had a crew
Speaker 5: of thirty people on it, which was completely different from
Speaker 5: what actually happened. And I mentioned Dorothy Dandridge. She was
Speaker 5: one of the stars of the movie, and she was
Speaker 5: she played this sort of sort of exotic, sexually alluring
Speaker 5: New Zealand Maori character who played the role of the
Speaker 5: temptress temptress, and it added a whole bunch of romantic
Speaker 5: tension in the story, whereas there were no there were
Speaker 5: no women on either of those ships in the real story,
Speaker 5: so that was completely embedded. I had to guess that
Speaker 5: when the filmmakers wrote the street play, they were probably
Speaker 5: basing it on some some detected stories that were written
Speaker 5: for magazines back in the nineteen thirties that really that
Speaker 5: were ostensibly based on the on the true story, but
Speaker 5: they embellished a lot of details. But anyway, this film
Speaker 5: that they made in the nineteen fifties did not do well.
Speaker 5: It was a critical disappointment and a commercial plot. People
Speaker 5: just thought it was laurid. It was over dramatic, and
Speaker 5: it was just kind of silly, which is it's regretful
Speaker 5: because it really did not do justice in the history
Speaker 5: of the events at all. And that's really my purpose
Speaker 5: in writing this book is to go back and really
Speaker 5: really document the events as they occurred, because I think
Speaker 5: in this case, truth is much more interesting than the fiction.
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Speaker 3: When you talked about the events, the incredible events with
Speaker 3: the white supremacists in eighteen ninety eight in Wilmington, and
Speaker 3: then interestingly in nineteen oh five, as you write that
Speaker 3: some people that were responsible for this insurgency then coming
Speaker 3: to the aid at least somewhat of these black people
Speaker 3: that were accused of murder, you said, it really was
Speaker 3: people going against type in this. But as time progressed
Speaker 3: as well, it seemed that I wouldn't say a dramatic change,
Speaker 3: but there were changes in the attitude and in society
Speaker 3: in general that would seem to have helped the future
Speaker 3: of Adams and his partner Sawyer.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the theory for they were again not to give
Speaker 5: too much away, but I can tell you that they
Speaker 5: were released from prison. That happened in nineteen twelve, after
Speaker 5: they had then they'd served more than six years behind bars,
Speaker 5: and they actually moved to New York where they took
Speaker 5: they had jobs with mister Wardour and his attorney, the
Speaker 5: guys had who had been so influential in getting them
Speaker 5: getting clemency right entirely clear on where they went to
Speaker 5: that Unfortunately, the record kind of the records sort of
Speaker 5: sort of go cold on where they moved to and
Speaker 5: where they live after that, but we know they got
Speaker 5: out of they got out of prison. And it's again,
Speaker 5: I mean, I just have to say that it really
Speaker 5: was a striking turn of events for that for that
Speaker 5: time period. We might ask, you know, why why did
Speaker 5: these people act against type? Why did they Why why
Speaker 5: did they put forth so much effort to correct this injustice?
Speaker 5: Why did they why did they work in favor of
Speaker 5: these black guys who had been accused of murdering white people.
Speaker 5: Yet you might you might be tempted to say, well,
Speaker 5: it was just it was all altruistic on their part,
Speaker 5: or they just felt it was appropriate to you know,
Speaker 5: be be kind and merciful and so forth. I suspect
Speaker 5: it's also because by nineteen oh five and nineteen ten,
Speaker 5: just you know, Jim Crow by that time had become
Speaker 5: so entrenched and white supremacy had been so well established
Speaker 5: in the South that the white establishment by that time
Speaker 5: really didn't did not feel that they were under threat
Speaker 5: in any way. They were firmly in control, and so
Speaker 5: you know, maybe they could they could afford to be
Speaker 5: to be merciful in a few cases like this sort
Speaker 5: of as a as a means of maybe trying to
Speaker 5: be benevolent and trying to express a sense of nobless
Speaker 5: oblige in a few a few cases like that. So
Speaker 5: it might be it might be tempting to overstate, you know,
Speaker 5: whether this, whether this really reflects any type any kind
Speaker 5: of benevolence on their part. But you know, if nothing else,
Speaker 5: you know, the reason I wrote this book is to,
Speaker 5: you know, provide a sense of hope, because here's a
Speaker 5: case of the case that occurred in the very worst
Speaker 5: of times, in the very worst of places as far
Speaker 5: as race relations, and how the very worst of times
Speaker 5: as far as race relations are concerned. And here's a
Speaker 5: case where despite all of the bad history and all
Speaker 5: of the bad demographics and the bad racial dynamics, justice
Speaker 5: was actually able to prevail in a sense. So in
Speaker 5: these days, especially when we hear we hear nothing but
Speaker 5: nothing in the media except in your pessimism about race
Speaker 5: relations and oppression, marginalization of white supremacy and so forth. Well,
Speaker 5: times were a lot worse back then, and even then
Speaker 5: it was possible for justice prevailed. So if there's any
Speaker 5: message that I'm trying to convey with this book, then
Speaker 5: that would be that would be it that things were
Speaker 5: it was possible for things to turn out well, even
Speaker 5: in far worse times.
Speaker 3: It's very interesting to talk about altruism and ulterior motives.
Speaker 3: There was and we didn't talk about it, but in
Speaker 3: your book you chronicled this very exciting surprise intervention for
Speaker 3: financial reasons tied to the burwind along the way. And
Speaker 3: what's interesting is a testament to that the media and
Speaker 3: other people involved could see through this seemingly transparent attempt
Speaker 3: to hijack this what the proceedings were going well on
Speaker 3: behalf of Adams and Sawyer.
Speaker 5: Well, that's true. I mean the whole the whole seven
Speaker 5: year dram legal drama was just filled with up and downs.
Speaker 5: It was like a roller coaster. And there were several
Speaker 5: times when Adams and Sawyer felt like they really were
Speaker 5: making progress, that they were gonna that they were going
Speaker 5: to get out of prison. And there were also a
Speaker 5: couple of times when the ship owners they tried to
Speaker 5: intervene in the case again and they tried to make
Speaker 5: up a new story about how, for example, they had
Speaker 5: been they had been threatened by Adams and Sawyer about
Speaker 5: that they supposedly had made threats that if they got
Speaker 5: out of prison, they were going to hunt down and
Speaker 5: try to assassinate the fellows who owned the ship. And
Speaker 5: again I think they probably did that just through their
Speaker 5: own financial selfishness. They didn't want to take a chance
Speaker 5: on them getting out of prison because it might cost
Speaker 5: them money. They'd have to pay pay off their insurers
Speaker 5: or have to pay those salvage fees that I mentioned earlier.
Speaker 5: And it was just just a very very transparent, very
Speaker 5: really really cruel thing for them to do at that stage.
Speaker 5: But fortunately, fortunately, as you said, the courts were able
Speaker 5: to able to see through it.
Speaker 3: It's interesting too, when you talk about the employment after
Speaker 3: they were released, and you mentioned that the attorney Roundtree
Speaker 3: and Popshaw they're employing them, one of them employing Adams
Speaker 3: to be his personal valet and the other one working
Speaker 3: in the law offices. And again testament to saying to
Speaker 3: anyone that would look at this, saying, we trust these
Speaker 3: people enough to work with us and around us, and
Speaker 3: even in fact let one of them go and make
Speaker 3: a deposit at a bank. So a very striking difference
Speaker 3: from the time that they were convicted.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, that's true. And you know when the you know,
Speaker 5: I know about this really from the newspaper accounts that
Speaker 5: were written at the time, and it's again you have
Speaker 5: to cringe a little bit when you when you read
Speaker 5: the language that the journalists use back then, because it's
Speaker 5: it's all very very paternalistic, and even when you see
Speaker 5: that it was written with the best of intentions. But
Speaker 5: they talked about how Adam and Sowry went to work
Speaker 5: for their saviors and their benefactors yea. And they were
Speaker 5: quoted to say how grateful they were for the intervention
Speaker 5: of mister Warner and his attorney, and how they were
Speaker 5: going to pledge their lives to upright living and so forth,
Speaker 5: and it's just you get the sense, of course they
Speaker 5: were expected to be deferential, and they were expected to
Speaker 5: show gratitude and to be essentially they were expected to
Speaker 5: be lifelong servants of these guys because they had done
Speaker 5: this then great and done them this great, great favor
Speaker 5: and so forth. And then again that's a little bit
Speaker 5: a little bit cringe. But the language of the of
Speaker 5: the news reports is still, you know, steeped in racial
Speaker 5: racial prejudice to that extent. But at the same time,
Speaker 5: there's no denying that the outcome was really really exceptional
Speaker 5: and completely unexpected and positive in the end.
Speaker 3: Absolutely and historic as well, very much so, and does
Speaker 3: something to I guess downplay or diminish somewhat again, just
Speaker 3: somewhat the events of eighteen ninety eight and further on
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 5: Well, there's no sugarcoating it happened in eighteen ninety eight.
Speaker 5: But at the very least, I mean this is this
Speaker 5: story is a you might call it sort of a
Speaker 5: flickering candle in the darkness. It's an example of how
Speaker 5: given a given an exceptional confluence of circumstances may given
Speaker 5: the fact that this was a federal case, and because
Speaker 5: it was a case where the President had a chance
Speaker 5: to weigh in, and Alfred clemency and frankly because the
Speaker 5: court procedures were taken more seriously because it was a
Speaker 5: federal case, and also given the fact that I think
Speaker 5: this is also important, the victims in the case, the
Speaker 5: men who were killed, they were not they were not
Speaker 5: Wilmington natives. They didn't have families who lived in that area,
Speaker 5: and they didn't have they didn't have friends were serving
Speaker 5: on the juries. I mean, if that if that had
Speaker 5: been the case, then I'm not sure that the reporters
Speaker 5: in Wilmington would have been as willing to be discerning
Speaker 5: and listen to the descimote as clearly and point out
Speaker 5: the weaknesses in the prosecution case and so forth. But
Speaker 5: these these guys Adams and Sawyer, I mean, as unlucky
Speaker 5: as they were to have been on board that ship
Speaker 5: serving Henry Scott, I mean, they were fortunate in a
Speaker 5: number of other ways that they were able to gain
Speaker 5: favor among so many people in Wilmington, and people in
Speaker 5: Wilmington were willing to listen to them and believe in them.
Speaker 5: That was very, very lucky and very unusual.
Speaker 3: And you also write though that there's an important letter
Speaker 3: written to a very important figure that plays into this.
Speaker 3: And as you say that that letter was typewritten, so
Speaker 3: someone someone that was a supporter at that prison likely
Speaker 3: helped in that. At the end of the book, you
Speaker 3: talk about when you and your brother were young and
Speaker 3: you became acquainted with the story of Sted Bonnett, which
Speaker 3: who was a pirate just a mile from Cape Fear River.
Speaker 3: Tell us why you included this little bit of a
Speaker 3: story and all the help that you had to be
Speaker 3: able to put this credible story together.
Speaker 5: Well, I grew up in North Carolina. I've lived here
Speaker 5: all my life, and when when I was a child
Speaker 5: and you know, even out you know, my family, we
Speaker 5: all we usually spent a good portion of our summers
Speaker 5: down in uh down in Brunswick County along the beaches
Speaker 5: near Southport, because that's that's been one of our favorite
Speaker 5: vacation spots over the years. And you know, one of
Speaker 5: the for tourists who you know, spend time around Southport.
Speaker 5: You know, one of the one of the notable, you know,
Speaker 5: historical tie ins that people associated with Southport is the pirates.
Speaker 5: It used to be a hunting ground with pirates vaguely
Speaker 5: the early early seventeen hundreds and so forth, and that's
Speaker 5: just that's just really neat. It's one of those one
Speaker 5: of those interesting cultural things that cultural tie ins and
Speaker 5: people associated with the area. And you know, when I
Speaker 5: was a kid, you know, I thought pirate stories were
Speaker 5: really cool, and so I became familiar with with some
Speaker 5: of those as I was growing up, and later on
Speaker 5: I came across this particular story sort of by accident.
Speaker 5: This is my second book, and after I finished my
Speaker 5: first one, I knew that I wanted to write another
Speaker 5: another true crime book, and it wouldn't I'd like to
Speaker 5: focus on the area that I know best, which is
Speaker 5: eastern North Carolina, and so I came across this story
Speaker 5: sort of by accent. I came across a historical review
Speaker 5: article that was written about it back in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 5: which covered the basic details of the trials and Adams
Speaker 5: Sawyer and Scott and so forth, and I was really
Speaker 5: amazed that nobody had ever written a definitive book about
Speaker 5: it yet. And so that's what I resolved to do,
Speaker 5: because it was right up my alley, you might.
Speaker 3: Say, absolutely, well, congratulations on Ship of Blood, Thank you
Speaker 3: so much for this interview. Ship of Blood, Mutiny and
Speaker 3: Slaughter aboard the Harry A. Berwind and the Quest for
Speaker 3: Justice Charles Oldham. For those they might want to take
Speaker 3: a look at this, is there an Amazon page, Facebook
Speaker 3: or website that it might take a look?
Speaker 5: Well, actually, the best way to order a copy is
Speaker 5: to order directly from my publisher great and that website, well,
Speaker 5: my publisher is known as Beach Glass Books, and the
Speaker 5: website is www dot beach Glass book all one word
Speaker 5: each class books dot com and they are based in Richmond, Virginia.
Speaker 5: And if for anyone who's interested in copy, that's the
Speaker 5: recommendation that I make is to order directly from my publisher.
Speaker 3: Well that's fantastic. Thank you so much. Thank you so much,
Speaker 3: Charles Oldham, Ship of Blood, Mutiny and Slaughter aboard the
Speaker 3: Harry A.
Speaker 5: Berwin.
Speaker 3: It's been fascinating interview. Thank you so much. You have
Speaker 3: a great evening.
Speaker 5: Thank you. I'm honored that you see you for having.
Speaker 3: Me, Thank you so much. Good night,