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Speaker 3: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 3: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 3: written about them. Gaesy Bundy Dahmer The Nightstalker VTK. Every week,
Speaker 3: another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous
Speaker 3: killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host
Speaker 3: journalist and author Dan Zufanski, Good.
Speaker 5: Evening, the stunning true story of a murder that rocked
Speaker 5: the Mississippi Delta and forever shaped one author's life and
Speaker 5: perception of home. In nineteen forty eight, in the most
Speaker 5: stubbornly dixified corner of the Jim Crow South Society, matron
Speaker 5: Idella Thompson was vicious murdered in her home, stabbed at
Speaker 5: least one hundred and fifty times, and left face down
Speaker 5: in one of the bathrooms. Her daughter, Ruth Dickens, was
Speaker 5: the only other person in the house. She told authorities
Speaker 5: a black man she didn't recognize had fled the scene,
Speaker 5: but no evidence of the man's presence was uncovered. When
Speaker 5: Dickens herself was convicted and sentenced to life in prison,
Speaker 5: the community exploded. Petitions pleading for her release were drafted,
Speaker 5: signed and circulated, and after only six years that Governor
Speaker 5: of Mississippi granted Ruth Dickens an indefinite suspension of her sentence,
Speaker 5: and she was set free In Deer Creek Drive. Beverly Lowry,
Speaker 5: who was ten at the time of the murder and
Speaker 5: lived mere miles from the Thompson's home, tells a story
Speaker 5: of white privilege that still has ramifications today and reflects
Speaker 5: on the brutal crime, its aftermath, and the ways it
Speaker 5: clarified her own upbringing in Mississippi. The book of her
Speaker 5: featuring this evening is Deer Creek Drive, A Reckoning of
Speaker 5: Memory and Murder in the Mississippi Delta, with my special guest,
Speaker 5: journalist and author, Beverly Lowry. Welcome to the program, and
Speaker 5: thank you very much for this interview Beverly Lowry.
Speaker 6: Thank you for having me on Dan.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much. And congratulations. I know this is
Speaker 5: the paperback edition of this book that came out last
Speaker 5: year in twenty twenty two. Congratulations on this extraordinary book.
Speaker 6: Thank you.
Speaker 5: Let's start off with something I think is very important
Speaker 5: again for this very very important book. You put you
Speaker 5: have a little thing that you write in the introduction.
Speaker 5: Tell us give us that introduction if you don't mind.
Speaker 4: Deer Creek Drive is fundamentally a story about the attitudes, behavior,
Speaker 4: and language of Mississippi in the nineteen fifties. This was
Speaker 4: the decade of Brown versus Board of Education of mm
Speaker 4: attil and at the beginning of the end of Jim Crow.
Speaker 4: While this material is often difficult, my aim was always
Speaker 4: to illuminate and reconnoize the reality of living and growing
Speaker 4: up at that section of the state we called the
Speaker 4: Delta during this time. As such, the book uses a
Speaker 4: number of primary sources documents, court testimony, newspaper articles, as
Speaker 4: well as the reliance on memory, much of which reflects
Speaker 4: the demeaning and problematic language that was used so freely
Speaker 4: and unsparingly at the time.
Speaker 6: It is both my.
Speaker 4: Story and the story of an unreconstructed South and how
Speaker 4: both of us were destined to change.
Speaker 5: Thank you now. You grew up in Greenville, Mississippi, which
Speaker 5: is nine miles from Leland, Mississippi, in a section of
Speaker 5: Mississippi people called the Delta. Yeah, you had moved away
Speaker 5: when you were young and went on to become a
Speaker 5: best selling novelist and nonfiction author. But you were back
Speaker 5: in Greenville in twenty eighteen. Tell us about encounter with
Speaker 5: the realtor and what that encounter with the realtor made
Speaker 5: you realize about a story that occurred in November seventeenth,
Speaker 5: nineteen forty eight.
Speaker 4: I had begun to think about the murder that occurred
Speaker 4: in nineteen forty eight, and had gone to Leland where
Speaker 4: the murder took place, to look around and try to
Speaker 4: see what I could find was left of the houses
Speaker 4: that played a part and just the basic scene of
Speaker 4: the town. A realtor who'd been introduced to me drove
Speaker 4: me around and we drove past the house where Idella
Speaker 4: Thompson had been murdered, slashed to death with printing shares,
Speaker 4: and we drove by other homes that had to do
Speaker 4: with this story, and she said that she could get
Speaker 4: me into the house she had she knew the owner.
Speaker 4: The owner said absolutely not. And she also said, this
Speaker 4: house is on the best street in town, Deer Creek Drive,
Speaker 4: but it's actually on the wrong side of Deer Creeks.
Speaker 4: And I said, what does that mean? And she said,
Speaker 4: the north side. The real estate is higher there, It's pricier.
Speaker 6: And more in demand.
Speaker 4: And I said why and she said, because black people
Speaker 4: lived on the other side. This was twenty eighteen, when
Speaker 4: things supposedly had changed.
Speaker 5: Now you say this story, everybody knew this story you
Speaker 5: were ten years old on November seventeenth, nineteen forty eight.
Speaker 5: So you go back in writing this book and go
Speaker 5: back to what was report ordered at that time, what
Speaker 5: was in the media, and of course, as you spoke
Speaker 5: in the introduction of the language of the time, reflecting
Speaker 5: the mentality at the time. So this Idella Stoval Long Thompson,
Speaker 5: you tell the story that she had just been released
Speaker 5: from a hospital. Tell us who Idella Stovell Long Thompson
Speaker 5: is before we talk about what happens that day.
Speaker 4: Adela Thompson was what's known as a society nator in
Speaker 4: the town.
Speaker 6: She came from.
Speaker 4: The Mississippi Dela family is very important. Ancestry is probably
Speaker 4: still but certainly certainly was at that time important who
Speaker 4: you're not just grandfather was, but great grandfather was if
Speaker 4: he fought in the Civil War and such as that,
Speaker 4: and she came with all of that heritage that was
Speaker 4: important to the town. So for somebody like a Della
Speaker 4: Thompson to be murdered was particularly newsworthy and shocking. Not
Speaker 4: just to the town. This murder was retold time and
Speaker 4: again and newspapers all over the country.
Speaker 5: So let's talk about the day in question and who
Speaker 5: was there? And Ruth Dickens is her daughter. She's forty
Speaker 5: two years old. Tell us a little bit about her
Speaker 5: before we talk about the attack that she reports first
Speaker 5: the police, but she reports. Tell us a little bit
Speaker 5: about Ruth Dickens.
Speaker 6: Okay, Ruth Thompson.
Speaker 4: Dickens was one of four children that Idella Thompson and
Speaker 4: Ruth lived. And I called her by her first name
Speaker 4: because everybody calls her called her by her first name.
Speaker 4: Ruth lived three doors down from her mother and basically
Speaker 4: took care of her to a great extent. And so
Speaker 4: Idella had been in the hospital for weeks. It's basically
Speaker 4: high blood pressure which she had suffered chronically, and had
Speaker 4: brought her home that day November seventeenth, nineteen forty eight,
Speaker 4: and helped her eat lunch, and by the time the
Speaker 4: afternoon rolled around, the murder had been committed. But Idella
Speaker 4: Thompson depended on Ruth Dickens to a great extent.
Speaker 5: You talk about the situation in terms of these people
Speaker 5: owning a lot of acreage and what we could be
Speaker 5: called plantations at once upon a time, but big estates,
Speaker 5: and also that the Thompson's and the Dickens were very
Speaker 5: wealthy and owned a lot of land, but there was
Speaker 5: a land transfer of sorts, a situation where Ruth Dickens
Speaker 5: was in trouble business wise. Tell us a little bit
Speaker 5: about the situation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean the land was in was it had
Speaker 4: been in the father's name, the father of Ruth Dickens,
Speaker 4: the husband of Idella Thompson, and so when he was
Speaker 4: he himself either committed suicide or was murdered. The land
Speaker 4: transfer basically went to Idella Thompson, but it was a
Speaker 4: difficult transfer because he had not been in on the
Speaker 4: ownership of the land. Ruth Dickens then with her brother,
Speaker 4: took over the maintenance of the land and the money
Speaker 4: of getting loans, as everybody in the Delta who farmed
Speaker 4: had to get loans, and Ruth was in charge of
Speaker 4: any of the money transactions that took place. She had
Speaker 4: secretly borrowed money from friends to payoff debts that were
Speaker 4: increasing year by year and until they could not management.
Speaker 4: Her husband, John Dickens, then managed to take possession of
Speaker 4: the land. It's a very complicated set of actions, but
Speaker 4: the land at the time of the murder of Idella
Speaker 4: Thompson was in the name of John and Ruth Dickens,
Speaker 4: not in the Thompsons, and Idella Thompson clearly was not
Speaker 4: happy about this. The land had been had come actually
Speaker 4: from her side of the family, and it had always
Speaker 4: been in that side in her name, and then her
Speaker 4: husband's name, and now it was in the name of
Speaker 4: her son in law and daughter.
Speaker 5: Now Ruth. During this time of turbulence in her and
Speaker 5: her brother's business, she conducted herself a certain way. She
Speaker 5: was used to certain things. How did she conduct herself
Speaker 5: while business was declining and they were blee money?
Speaker 4: She just kept it all a secret. And it's there
Speaker 4: are a lot of theories as to why she did this.
Speaker 4: It's not obvious or she never said, and nobody in
Speaker 4: the family dead. But my sense of it was, I mean,
Speaker 4: her husband said Ruth always liked to have her own business.
Speaker 4: My sense of it was that Ruth was a very
Speaker 4: self determined woman that she wanted to do it on
Speaker 4: her home, and so she didn't want her husband, who
Speaker 4: was making plenty of money to be in on to
Speaker 4: help her out to take over, and so she secretly
Speaker 4: borrowed money, didn't pay it back, and the deaths were
Speaker 4: piling up and nobody knew it except her and her brother.
Speaker 4: And her brother was the one to throw in the towel.
Speaker 4: He said, can't go on. He didn't have the income
Speaker 4: to do it. And as he said, Ruth had done,
Speaker 4: she had her husband to support her and her family,
Speaker 4: and he did not have that infant, so she borrowed money.
Speaker 6: How much this has.
Speaker 4: To do with Idella Thompson's murder is again up to speculation.
Speaker 5: In terms of this was said later by her sister Mildred.
Speaker 5: But in terms of all appearances and just again behavior,
Speaker 5: how was Ruth as a daughter towards her mother Idella?
Speaker 4: The family line is she was a perfect daughter. She
Speaker 4: was the one who took care of me. She was
Speaker 4: not Idella Thompson's favorite child. That went to her son Jimmy,
Speaker 4: but Ruth was. Both of these women were known to
Speaker 4: be difficult. I can't tell you how many times I've
Speaker 4: heard people who knew both of them say how they
Speaker 4: could be difficult, and they were both strong willed. So
Speaker 4: whatever went on between them that the people didn't know about,
Speaker 4: you know, remains a mystery. And since the book is out,
Speaker 4: I've heard stories about screaming fights between the two women.
Speaker 4: So it's I mean, the murder is over seventy years
Speaker 4: old and people still can talk about it if they will,
Speaker 4: and they have things to say about, especially these two women.
Speaker 5: So let's talk about Ruth. Ruth had visited her mother
Speaker 5: in the hospital, I think for that week, and she
Speaker 5: was there all the time, every day. She even picked
Speaker 5: her up from the hospital. The brothers are at home
Speaker 5: as well and making Idella comfortable, but Ruth ends up
Speaker 5: being there. They leave and so Ruth is there with
Speaker 5: her mother Idella. November seventeenth, nineteen forty eight, there is
Speaker 5: a call to doctor Kinney Whitty, which is a friend
Speaker 5: of the family. Tell us what the first word is
Speaker 5: about what happened to Idella Thompson her mother.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Ruth called doctor Whitty and said she tried to
Speaker 4: talk to her mother's main doctor, couldn't get him, and
Speaker 4: so she talked to the elder doctor Whitty, and what
Speaker 4: she said was something's happened to mother. She and Idella
Speaker 4: Thompson had just gotten out of the hospital, which was
Speaker 4: the Witty Hospital, and so the doctor assumed she had
Speaker 4: a stroke because of her medical problem, and he said
Speaker 4: in court he did not hesitate. He put on his
Speaker 4: coat and hat and went straight there. The hospital is Leland's,
Speaker 4: a very small town, and the hospital is perhaps or
Speaker 4: was three minutes from Idella Thompson's house, so he arrived
Speaker 4: there very quickly.
Speaker 5: Now she had a story for him. He tells them
Speaker 5: what happens. So he's the first person to hear her
Speaker 5: account of what happened to the mother, and he also
Speaker 5: recognizes that she has been injured in this Maine as well. Right.
Speaker 4: She says she walked in on a black man who
Speaker 4: was murdering her mother with printing shoes, and that she
Speaker 4: confronted him and was able to rest the printing shoes
Speaker 4: away from him, and but she that's how she got injured,
Speaker 4: and that he then ran took off out the backscreen door.
Speaker 4: What doctor Whittie saw was printing shoes that had been
Speaker 4: washed clean, and the body of Missus Thompson, who he
Speaker 4: said clearly was no longer alive. So it wasn't that
Speaker 4: something had just happened to her had been murdered. And
Speaker 4: Boo's Dickenson is the only person in the house. And
Speaker 4: so later he said he thought immediately that there had
Speaker 4: not been a black man in the house.
Speaker 5: Tell Us who doctor Kenny Whitty is in terms of
Speaker 5: relation to the family.
Speaker 4: You know, again it's a small town, and the Witty
Speaker 4: Hospital is also became the Leland Hospital was where everybody went.
Speaker 4: And the Witty's were the Thompson's doctors, and so they
Speaker 4: were close. And also Miss Thompson's doctor. Whitty's wife was
Speaker 4: Idella Thompson's sister, so Adela Thompson was by marriage part
Speaker 4: of the Witty family. These were very close relationships. And
Speaker 4: Leland is a place where the original founding families of
Speaker 4: the town still lived there, certainly in nineteen forty eight,
Speaker 4: and many of them lived there to this day. These
Speaker 4: are white families now.
Speaker 5: The first law enforcement to arrive are the chief of
Speaker 5: Police of Leland, Frank Aldridge and his partner, Philip Gorman.
Speaker 5: I mean, you talk about Leland, a real small, quiet
Speaker 5: town of about five thousand. You say, back in the time,
Speaker 5: not much crime. But there is a sheriff named Sheriff
Speaker 5: Huey Foot. Tell us about the first officers to arrive,
Speaker 5: what they find, and why shareff Foot isn't there, well.
Speaker 4: Because he's the sheriff of the county. When Aldridge and
Speaker 4: his partner arrived, you know, they the scene was horrific
Speaker 4: and without mystery. The woman had been murdered and she
Speaker 4: was lying to catastrophically cut to death. And so this
Speaker 4: was beyond a city chief of police's duty to investigate.
Speaker 4: So he called the county sheriff, who is to a
Speaker 4: or everybody calls him huge Foot, who was in Greenville,
Speaker 4: And because it's the county seat and that's where I lived,
Speaker 4: so huge Foot got in his car and drove the
Speaker 4: nine miles and showed up that afternoon. But then she
Speaker 4: had been dead for almost two hours.
Speaker 5: What was the condition that they found? The police found
Speaker 5: Ruth Dickens in and where was she soon taken to?
Speaker 4: Well, she was, as one person said, a mess. Her
Speaker 4: hair was a mess. She had missing buttons from her
Speaker 4: clothes and blood on her clothes. And she was a
Speaker 4: very tidy person. Her hair was always immaculately combed and
Speaker 4: groomed and cut short. And so she was taken pretty
Speaker 4: soon after the sheriff arrived back to the clinic, the
Speaker 4: Witty Clinic, to because she had a few cuts that
Speaker 4: needed stitching, nothing life threatening, but you know, she needed
Speaker 4: some stitches.
Speaker 5: Now regarding her account, because that's what police have to
Speaker 5: go by what evidence can they gather to support what
Speaker 5: she has said? What evidence is there to support what
Speaker 5: she had said?
Speaker 4: You know, this is still even with Greenville was much
Speaker 4: bigger than Leland, but we're still talking about small town,
Speaker 4: smallish towns. Greenboll was almost forty thousand, so it was
Speaker 4: in Mississippi terms, it was.
Speaker 6: A big time.
Speaker 4: But they actually did a lot of good work. They
Speaker 4: didn't no crime scene like this, it's perfectly examined. But
Speaker 4: they searched for any sign of a black person or
Speaker 4: a man, a stranger, a person with bloody who had
Speaker 4: drops of blood, or had bloody feet and left footprints behind.
Speaker 4: They looked at every hair they could come up with,
Speaker 4: and found no sign of a black person's hair. They
Speaker 4: found basically nothing that indicated that. In the idella, Thumks
Speaker 4: and Everybody had a maid who lived on Deer Creek
Speaker 4: Drive and the maid was black, but she was picking
Speaker 4: cotton at the time. She had not been in the
Speaker 4: house for a week. So they found no evidence. And
Speaker 4: as Oogie Foot later said, Miss Dickens said, it was
Speaker 4: a black man, and so I was looking for a
Speaker 4: black man.
Speaker 5: Regarding these pruning shares, which were the murder weapon and
Speaker 5: later with the autopsy was one hundred and fifty to
Speaker 5: two hundred strikes on Idella Thompson with these bruning shears.
Speaker 5: But what did Ruth say in terms of who brought
Speaker 5: those bruning shears and why.
Speaker 6: She brought them?
Speaker 4: Ruth did because her mother wanted her to pring some
Speaker 4: rose bushes, and so she had gone down to her house,
Speaker 4: which is only three doors down, to get the printing
Speaker 4: shoes and bring them back, and then she went back
Speaker 4: down to her house to get a couple of other items.
Speaker 4: So the printing shoes were there in the house when
Speaker 4: Ruth came back from that second trip to her house,
Speaker 4: and so she said they were there, and her story
Speaker 4: was that the man picked them up and went at
Speaker 4: missus Thompson.
Speaker 5: Part of her story was that even though she was
Speaker 5: five foot four, she was athletic, but she fought this
Speaker 5: man that wasn't supposedly much bigger than her and wrestle
Speaker 5: those shears away from him. Was that her story, That.
Speaker 4: Was her story. It's the reason I know all this.
Speaker 4: We know all this is Ruth herself tell that story
Speaker 4: the same week of the murder to the investigative team.
Speaker 5: Let's juss as an opportunity to stop for a second
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Speaker 5: Forensically, these police have to gather their evidence though clothes
Speaker 5: that Ruth Dickens was wearing. Where do they find those clothes?
Speaker 5: Before we talk about Idella's clothes and where they get
Speaker 5: to right Ruth.
Speaker 4: After the sheriff arrived and started doing his own investigation,
Speaker 4: he sent Ruth to the clinic to get her stitches,
Speaker 4: and she stopped off at her own home to change
Speaker 4: clothes and take off the bloody clothes she was wearing.
Speaker 4: Her cleaning lady took the clothes, and it is not
Speaker 4: clear whether Ruth told her to do this or the
Speaker 4: cleaning lady did it on her own. She put the
Speaker 4: bloody clothes in a bucket of water to soak, to
Speaker 4: soak out the blood, and Ruth changed her clothes and
Speaker 4: went to the clinic. And this is one thing the
Speaker 4: sheriff and his people missed. There were several teams. Nobody
Speaker 4: even considered Ruth's close as possible crime scene evidence because
Speaker 4: she said she didn't. She said somebody else did it,
Speaker 4: and they believed her because they knew her, they were
Speaker 4: friends with her, and the people saw it. She would
Speaker 4: never do anything like this. The likelihood was it was
Speaker 4: an intruder, and the bigger likelihood was it was a
Speaker 4: black man.
Speaker 5: Let's talk about how she explains the murder weapon being
Speaker 5: wipe clean of prints or blood. How does she do that?
Speaker 4: Well, she said that he had time to wipe them off.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's not clear why she saw it they
Speaker 4: were clean.
Speaker 5: Now, meanwhile, the media is reporting on this story right away,
Speaker 5: and you talk about the Democrat Times, the Delta is
Speaker 5: it the Delta Democrat Time Times? And also how they
Speaker 5: report that in the language they use for that, but
Speaker 5: also that meanwhile, this Sheriff Foot is trying to get
Speaker 5: an interview with Ruth, isn't he yes?
Speaker 4: And the family says, when the family says she's not
Speaker 4: up to it, she's not well, she's hurt. You know,
Speaker 4: this man has damaged her. He said he went away.
Speaker 4: So it was again a lot of this has to
Speaker 4: do with it being a small town of people who
Speaker 4: know one another and are in on one another in
Speaker 4: ways that says, I trust her. She wouldn't say that
Speaker 4: it weren't true, and so he had to wait until
Speaker 4: after the burial of Idella Thompson to talk to Ruth Dickens,
Speaker 4: and it was the conversation. The questioning was done in
Speaker 4: Ruth's home, with Ruth in bed and the investigative team
Speaker 4: aligned in around her. Her husband always allowed to be
Speaker 4: in on the interview.
Speaker 5: The question you talk about this Ae Crawford a private eye,
Speaker 5: and you talk about Sheriff Foot wanting to hire this
Speaker 5: guy as a private eye and a detective. And he
Speaker 5: found out very very soon that this Crawford was already
Speaker 5: hired by Ruth Dickens family and so he couldn't be
Speaker 5: hired by Sheriff Foot. And that at this bizarre inquiry,
Speaker 5: he doesn't even lead the inquiry, but the privately hired A.
Speaker 5: Crawford conducts the inquiry, doesn't he It's just.
Speaker 4: It's written truly bizarre. He leads off of the personal
Speaker 4: question and he's basically in charge. He is known as
Speaker 4: a guy who cracks crimes and he finds the murderer.
Speaker 4: He lives in Jackson, Mississippi, has his own investigative company.
Speaker 4: And the thing about Hueyfoot is he knew he was
Speaker 4: in over said, but he had only been sheriff for
Speaker 4: about eight months, and he had this was way beyond
Speaker 4: his experience. He had not had any evidence training. Back
Speaker 4: then you had to go to Washington to get any
Speaker 4: kind of training like that, and fingerprint training, any kind
Speaker 4: of forensics training. So he felt like he needed in
Speaker 4: somebody who's specialized in this, and he tried to get
Speaker 4: another investigator who was already engaged, and this man said,
Speaker 4: you should talk to AE Crawford. He called and found
Speaker 4: that not only was A. E. Crawford hired by the family,
Speaker 4: he was that moment in the Thompson backyard looking for clues.
Speaker 4: And so it's the whole thing is just a set
Speaker 4: of circumstances that you have to really step back and
Speaker 4: look at once again and blink and say, okayle's consider this.
Speaker 4: Do you believe because there's so many bizarre parts of
Speaker 4: the story.
Speaker 5: You provide this dialogue, which is truly again part of
Speaker 5: the bizarre nature. Crawford would ask a question and she
Speaker 5: would answer in it that didn't you think so? She
Speaker 5: would look at Crawford after you'd ask a question and
Speaker 5: say when she would provide a vague description of this
Speaker 5: black man, and then he would ask a question related
Speaker 5: to that, she would say, don't you think so?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 4: Don't you think he would have done that? And she
Speaker 4: especially did that also with huge foot, because you know
Speaker 4: he was from the area and this was this was
Speaker 4: white person's knowledge of what a black person would be.
Speaker 4: Don't you think he would have done that?
Speaker 6: Huge?
Speaker 4: And so she would answer questions with questions, and this
Speaker 4: was never pointed out to her. Today's a tough cop
Speaker 4: would say, please answer the question. But at that time,
Speaker 4: and because they assumed she was innocent, as I said,
Speaker 4: you defoot the sheriff and it was his investigation officially
Speaker 4: said she said it was a black man, and so
Speaker 4: I was looking for a black man.
Speaker 5: Now you talk about your family living in Greenville at
Speaker 5: the time, you had just got back to Greenville, but
Speaker 5: you had again mentioned that you had grown up in
Speaker 5: Greenville and you were ten years old. So you say
Speaker 5: you don't remember the specific day and reading it in
Speaker 5: the newspaper, but you do give what actually was said
Speaker 5: in the newspaper, the reaction from the public, and also
Speaker 5: that you shared a passion with your mother for and
Speaker 5: it is very popular, the depiction of this crime in
Speaker 5: detective magazines.
Speaker 4: Well, we liked two detective magazines, and I mean some
Speaker 4: of this.
Speaker 6: Was beyond ten years.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure I was reading two detective magazines at ten,
Speaker 4: but it certainly was at twelve, and keeping up, I
Speaker 4: mean the horror of what went on in the world,
Speaker 4: the salacious events that I could learn about, I had
Speaker 4: a great appetite for, and so did she, and it
Speaker 4: was something we shared. I didn't think it was even
Speaker 4: that unusual among girls my age, and at the time
Speaker 4: I do not remember that day, but the next day
Speaker 4: it came out in the newspaper, the Delas Democrat Times,
Speaker 4: and it was huge. It went all over that part
Speaker 4: of Mississippi in a flash, and people were Nobody was
Speaker 4: talking about anything else, including my friends and me. We
Speaker 4: didn't know Ruth Dickens, we didn't know Idella Thompson, but
Speaker 4: we had a sense of what had gone on and
Speaker 4: that it just was the most horrible thing that we
Speaker 4: could imagine. So we wanted to know more about it,
Speaker 4: more and more.
Speaker 5: Now, let's talk about the grand jury and what its
Speaker 5: decision is. Tell us what happens in the progress of
Speaker 5: the case and leads up to the grand jury, and
Speaker 5: what happens in concerning an indictment.
Speaker 6: You know, for this.
Speaker 4: Case, which Wood was thought to be a verse degree
Speaker 4: murder from the beginning, for it to be brought before
Speaker 4: a grand jury some two and a half months later
Speaker 4: is pretty amazing. But when a reporter talked to huge
Speaker 4: Foot and he was interviewed, I mean people, the newspaper
Speaker 4: was it was front page headlines every day, and a
Speaker 4: newspaper reporter in December, the month after she was killed,
Speaker 4: Miss Housing was killed, asked about the search for the
Speaker 4: black man, and huge foote said there is no black man,
Speaker 4: which I found true astounding that he went all the
Speaker 4: way from saying, you know, he was only looking from
Speaker 4: a black man too, there was no black man. And
Speaker 4: he said, then we expect to have a case before
Speaker 4: the grand jury, which was going to open up in
Speaker 4: January early January. So there was only one person anybody
Speaker 4: thought could have done it. There was just nobody else there.
Speaker 4: The family was all accounted for, they all had been
Speaker 4: someplace they could prove there was only Russ And so
Speaker 4: by this time the rumors were hot and heavy all
Speaker 4: over that Ruth Dickens had killed them other. So it
Speaker 4: went before the grand jury. The printing seers were taken there,
Speaker 4: the back door was taken there with some bloody smears,
Speaker 4: all kinds of evidence, and they indicted her.
Speaker 5: Let's use this as an opportunity to stop. To hear
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Speaker 5: about John Dickens being supportive of Ruth, his wife right
Speaker 5: from the get go, but also hiring a couple of attorneys.
Speaker 5: Tell us about who he hires and who these attorneys are.
Speaker 4: He hired was famous go to be the best defense
Speaker 4: attorney in the state, and his nephew it would take
Speaker 4: over to his practice when he died. Benjamin Wilkes and
Speaker 4: his nephew B. B. Wilkes, they were known. Benjamin Wilkes
Speaker 4: in particular was no all of the state. He had
Speaker 4: been prosecutor and now he was a highly regarded and
Speaker 4: highly paid defense attorney. And it was thought that Ben
Speaker 4: Wilkes would certainly get missus Dickens off because he knew
Speaker 4: what he was doing and he was going to Before.
Speaker 5: You talk about the prosecutor again, someone to match wits
Speaker 5: with the Wilkes But his name was Standy Sanders, prosecutor.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and Sanders was young.
Speaker 4: He had just been elected to office, as had the
Speaker 4: state in the county attorney who was his second, and
Speaker 4: so they were young and experienced, and so the situation
Speaker 4: was seemed like a no brainer. It seemed like, well,
Speaker 4: this you'll be back teaching Sunday school at the Baptist
Speaker 4: church next week, because there's no way it was a circumstantial.
Speaker 4: That evidence was circumstantial, and so it was thought that
Speaker 4: this was going to be an easy win for the Wilkeses.
Speaker 5: Right away. There's an interesting little event that happens, and
Speaker 5: it's the you right it's the importance of Beatrice Smith.
Speaker 5: She is the black cook of Missus Dickens and apparently
Speaker 5: supposedly the key defense witness. But she has something happened
Speaker 5: to her coincidentally right at that time.
Speaker 6: Well I don't know how coincidentally it was.
Speaker 4: She had what was then widely known as a nervous breakdown.
Speaker 4: It was something that I've heard all in my child
Speaker 4: mostly women, had nervous spread dans. And her doctor said
Speaker 4: she was terrified to come to court, she was terrified
Speaker 4: to testify, and she was having nightmares that were essentially
Speaker 4: about being lynched. That's not what he called it, but
Speaker 4: that's essentially what her nightmare was, and that she was
Speaker 4: in no shape to testify, and that if she did,
Speaker 4: she might end up in the state insane asylum for life.
Speaker 4: It might set her off into a psychosis she couldn't
Speaker 4: come out of. She was to testify about Ruth, that
Speaker 4: she washed theories closed, and also something about which never
Speaker 4: was clear to me how much it meant. That Ruth
Speaker 4: had yes taken the printing shoes to cut miss her
Speaker 4: mother's rose pushes, but she'd only been home once. Just
Speaker 4: that part didn't really work for either King prosecutor or defense,
Speaker 4: but she was so she caused the trial to be postponed.
Speaker 4: It was going right into court soon after the indictment,
Speaker 4: but they postponed it until you write.
Speaker 5: That they return in six months, Ruth and John have
Speaker 5: to mortgage your house to pay legal fees, and then
Speaker 5: you say that everyone knows what Ruth. The condition of
Speaker 5: Ruth during this time, Ruth.
Speaker 4: Was kind of an oddball in some ways, you know.
Speaker 4: And I actually admired her spirit in dressing the way
Speaker 4: she liked to dress and ruining herself the way she
Speaker 4: liked to room herself. But in the trial and in
Speaker 4: the note newspapers, she was always described her hair was
Speaker 4: described as a manish bob, because she did have a
Speaker 4: kind of masculine look about her. There were all kinds
Speaker 4: of rumors about why missus and perhaps angered Ruth to
Speaker 4: the extent that it caused her to go at her
Speaker 4: mother and eventually kill her. That it enraged Ruth, and
Speaker 4: one of them was her sexuality, her sexual preference. That
Speaker 4: was one of the rumors about Ruth. She was not
Speaker 4: She didn't dress like the women of her time, and
Speaker 4: in court she wore what newspapers described as a golfing
Speaker 4: dress and clunky shoes, no jewelry, no hat. So there
Speaker 4: were a lot of things said about Ruth during that time,
Speaker 4: and some of which, I mean one of which was
Speaker 4: that she was pregnant and when she killed her mother,
Speaker 4: as if that would cause her to go nuts and
Speaker 4: kill her mother. So a lot of the rumors were ridiculous,
Speaker 4: and you know, rumors build on rumors. It became sort
Speaker 4: of a local sport to come up with something new.
Speaker 5: Let's get to this amazing trial started June twenty first,
Speaker 5: nineteen forty nine, and one of the most amazing things
Speaker 5: is the spectator's reaction. You talk about the spectators jamming doorways.
Speaker 5: Tell us more about the reaction from people that want
Speaker 5: to get in and watch this trial.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: They they lined up outside from early in the morning,
Speaker 4: and a lot of people brought lunches because they didn't
Speaker 4: want to leave their seat to go home, to go
Speaker 4: someplace to have lunch and not have a seat when
Speaker 4: they got back. And so a friend of mine said
Speaker 4: her aunts would come. They My friend lived close to
Speaker 4: downtown where the courthouse was, and so her aunts would
Speaker 4: come by the house with their lunches and some lemonade.
Speaker 4: Rice Tea to take to the trial and stand in
Speaker 4: line every day and to get in line, and they
Speaker 4: the first they crammed the doors, so the judge host
Speaker 4: poned the opening of the doors till ten minutes before,
Speaker 4: and which didn't really help. It was it was like
Speaker 4: a circus. Everybody, I've talked to you, and I talked
Speaker 4: to a couple of people who were alive and went
Speaker 4: and they verified all those stories, and they were in
Speaker 4: the newspapers over and over again about the wild abandon
Speaker 4: of people and how it was mostly filled with women,
Speaker 4: and they were really have to say, enjoying the spectacle.
Speaker 5: Part of the spectacle is that Stannie Sanders very dramatic
Speaker 5: order as well. He has Frank Aldridge, the sheriff, read
Speaker 5: Ruth's bedside statement out loud in the core say that
Speaker 5: wouldn't happen today.
Speaker 6: No, of course, I mean it would.
Speaker 4: First of all, it would have been filmed or video dape,
Speaker 4: so there would have been pictures and it would have
Speaker 4: been recorded, but at that point it wasn't. And actually
Speaker 4: what he had the two prosecutors took different parts. One
Speaker 4: played Ruth and the other played the investigators to read
Speaker 4: her statements, and they were, so she was all over
Speaker 4: the place in those statements and basically incriminated herself along
Speaker 4: the way. And there were no lawyers. She had no
Speaker 4: lawyers there at the time because her husband, John Dickons said,
Speaker 4: we don't need lawyers. We're innocent, we have nothing to
Speaker 4: hide or need to have lawyers help us with.
Speaker 5: So, needless to say that Stannie Sanders out say a
Speaker 5: very good and like I said, dramatic prosecution of Ruth Dickens,
Speaker 5: gets all of the witnesses that were there to try
Speaker 5: to shelter her initially, and blows holes and Ruth Dickens's
Speaker 5: account of what happened. Obviously there is no black there
Speaker 5: is no evidence anything of the sort. They do have
Speaker 5: a motive, they say it's a financial motive. It seems
Speaker 5: to be at the core. Tell us what happens after
Speaker 5: this incredible trial and the extraordinary media coverage every day
Speaker 5: of it. What happens in regarding the verdict? And there
Speaker 5: are five options in terms of verdict. What happens in
Speaker 5: terms of verdict?
Speaker 4: Well, the jury, I mean at that point a black
Speaker 4: man could serve on a jury woman of any race
Speaker 4: could not. But very few black men in the Delta
Speaker 4: had served on jury Chariles and none murder trial, so
Speaker 4: there were few who were in the jury pool, but
Speaker 4: the jury was all white males, and it's sort of
Speaker 4: I've always found it stunning that they came up out
Speaker 4: with not manslaughter, which even the prosecution Willard Macklamore, who
Speaker 4: was the other prosecutor, reminded the jury that manslaughter was
Speaker 4: a possible verdict that they could come up with, but
Speaker 4: they did not. They found ruthtik AND's guilty of first
Speaker 4: degree murder, and it's unclear how they were able to
Speaker 4: do this. When the foreman of the jury was questioned
Speaker 4: by a newspaper reporter, he said, the two things that
Speaker 4: got them were, first of all, her statement and other things.
Speaker 4: There were a couple of other things, but it's thing
Speaker 4: and he never mentioned this financial possibility as a motive.
Speaker 4: So it's from today's perspective look back and think why
Speaker 4: did they do that? And I think, you know, the
Speaker 4: court room trial is a drama, and I think you
Speaker 4: had the leading character in this courtroom drama, I e.
Speaker 4: The defendant, rus Dickens. She was kind of an unlikable
Speaker 4: person and she dressed in an improper way, and I
Speaker 4: think she didn't help herself with this jury, and the.
Speaker 6: Judge had no option but.
Speaker 4: To sentence her to life in a state prison, which
Speaker 4: is a parchment kind of pretty well known prison in
Speaker 4: the country is known as being pretty horrific, so it
Speaker 4: was an ending many people did not expect.
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Speaker 5: Now she sent like you just mentioned the infamous parchment prison,
Speaker 5: and she starts to do her time. Her husband has
Speaker 5: been supportive all the way through. He was at the trial.
Speaker 5: He testified at the trial he was supportive, completely with her,
Speaker 5: supportive with her at the trial, he continues to be supportive,
Speaker 5: and so he what does he do? What is his strategy?
Speaker 5: What are some of the things he tries to do
Speaker 5: gain Roof's freedom.
Speaker 4: He goes on a campaign to get people of the
Speaker 4: community Greenville and Leland behind getting her back home and
Speaker 4: saying she suffered enough, she should come home and be
Speaker 4: with her children and live. She'd never done anything violent before.
Speaker 4: And he got collected signatures. He had boays going around.
Speaker 4: I think probably for an ease to collect signatures. I've
Speaker 4: heard of papers by the cash retr in restaurants saying
Speaker 4: sign sign this petition. And so he was pretty much nonsense.
Speaker 4: And he did every kind of legal appeal. He had
Speaker 4: the lawyers doing appeals that was possible. When the appeals
Speaker 4: ran out, he kept going with the petitions. So, I mean,
Speaker 4: you got to hand it to him. He was stalwarts.
Speaker 4: He never let down in his belief that Ruth did it.
Speaker 4: And some people have said, do you think he knew
Speaker 4: she did it and just didn't think she ought to
Speaker 4: stay in prison? And I actually think he believes she
Speaker 4: didn't do it. I don't think he knew was in it.
Speaker 4: I don't think she told him, but that's my theory,
Speaker 4: my speculation.
Speaker 5: It's interesting that a person that has this certain credibility,
Speaker 5: I guess Ae Crawford continues to work for the family
Speaker 5: and always believe that he could maybe find the suspect
Speaker 5: for and believe Ruth was innocent and worked accordingly along
Speaker 5: the way for this with these appeals, even though there
Speaker 5: was supposed to be a life sentence with no possibility
Speaker 5: to parole. John Dickens approaches the governor, and then when
Speaker 5: a new governor comes in another governor and also along
Speaker 5: the way, bizarre a couple black people come into the story,
Speaker 5: where a guy named Charlie Ferguson is a convicted killer,
Speaker 5: serial killer, and the desperate team behind Ruth. Dickens uses
Speaker 5: this as an opportunity to maybe reignite the story that
Speaker 5: she had given originally about the black intruder.
Speaker 4: It's the Charlie Ferguson story is amazing because this woman
Speaker 4: was tried. Whatever you want to say about the trial
Speaker 4: or anything, she was face a jury of her peers,
Speaker 4: and the whole thing was conducted in a reasonable legal manner.
Speaker 4: But they the governor allowed Ruth to leave prison and
Speaker 4: go to the state asylum mental asylum to view a
Speaker 4: lina to see if Charlie Ferguson was there he had
Speaker 4: been locked up there, and to identify him, which she did.
Speaker 4: He had family who had testimony, who had proof that
Speaker 4: he was not there when this crime was committed. But
Speaker 4: the fact that she actually got out of prison to
Speaker 4: go over there, I mean, it's just not a privilege
Speaker 4: that many incarcerated people were given. She was a white
Speaker 4: lady of privilege, herself of standing, and so she was
Speaker 4: given special, special privileges. She was allowed to do things
Speaker 4: that other people certainly were not.
Speaker 5: Yes, she was given furloughs where she would go home
Speaker 5: to visit her family for extended periods of time, and
Speaker 5: also during those she used in it as an opportunity
Speaker 5: because the only way he could likely get out of
Speaker 5: prison was on some kind of a medical decision, and
Speaker 5: so she would try as much as she could. Seems
Speaker 5: kind of absurd that you had talked about having a
Speaker 5: nasty rash and being allergic as the reasons for her
Speaker 5: possibly being released from prison.
Speaker 4: Yeah, she and the amazing thing is that made she
Speaker 4: did have surgery one time at one point, and but
Speaker 4: once she had recovered from and she was allowed to
Speaker 4: go home and have the surgery.
Speaker 6: The reason she was allowed to.
Speaker 4: Go home and have her own doctor perform the surgery
Speaker 4: is the family assured the governor, and the governor assured
Speaker 4: the boarding of the of the penitentiary that the family
Speaker 4: would pick up all expenses so the state. That meant that,
Speaker 4: you know, the state wasn't out any money to pay
Speaker 4: for the surgery. And after that she was, they would
Speaker 4: the doctor would write in and say she's not ready yet,
Speaker 4: and then again she's not given extension. She's not ready yet.
Speaker 4: So she spent a good part of one year at
Speaker 4: home and visiting with her friends and you know, seeing
Speaker 4: her daughters and such, so that she eventually got out
Speaker 4: because governors wasn't a pardon the first time. It was
Speaker 4: a suspended sentence, which meant she could be re arrested
Speaker 4: and in prison on the same charge. Did she messed up,
Speaker 4: and second governor pardon which meant she could not be
Speaker 4: arrested on this charge again and she could vote. She
Speaker 4: got her voting privileges back. And this all happened after
Speaker 4: she'd been in prison for about less than six years.
Speaker 4: Fad had six years.
Speaker 5: Yes, you right that this governor, even the governor of
Speaker 5: the two governors that were responded to John Dickens, she
Speaker 5: had exhausted all her legal avenues and so this appeal
Speaker 5: you righte, it was really appealing for special treatment.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, I mean, there's no question about it. And interestingly,
Speaker 4: neither she was she was not exonerated. She neither governor
Speaker 4: said she was not guilty. One said it should have
Speaker 4: the charge should have been manslaughter, and other governors said
Speaker 4: that she seemed to have been completely rehabilitated, which implies
Speaker 4: that she I mean, what was she rehabilitated from if
Speaker 4: she didn't do this, if she was innocent. But so
Speaker 4: it was all just you know, figured out how to
Speaker 4: do it and then done.
Speaker 5: You write about that. Her life continues, and the depiction
Speaker 5: in the media after that six years was what how
Speaker 5: did this story? What was reflected in the media, Well.
Speaker 4: It was just sort of you know, wasn't a big surprise,
Speaker 4: a big surprise because the original stories, every story, no
Speaker 4: matter where it ran in the country, whether it was
Speaker 4: east coast or west coast, certainly all over the south.
Speaker 4: She would the family class. What's mentioned her mother was
Speaker 4: a society matron and she was a society lady, and
Speaker 4: so it.
Speaker 6: But there were.
Speaker 4: People in the States who weren't society. People who weren't
Speaker 4: didn't belong to the country club or the Daughters of
Speaker 4: the Confederacy wrote in and said, you know, you might
Speaker 4: as well let everybody out of person. If you're going
Speaker 4: to let somebody out, enough undo the jury system, if
Speaker 4: the jury's verdict is not going to be honored. So
Speaker 4: there was there was enough that the governor said he
Speaker 4: had gotten very little backlash about a decision to let
Speaker 4: her out, but he exaggerated on that point because he did.
Speaker 4: He got a fair amount, but it's clearly didn't count.
Speaker 5: You're right that she goes on to somehow regain her
Speaker 5: status societal wives and her privilege and some of the
Speaker 5: things that she had lost in terms of her status
Speaker 5: at church or her ability to go back to the church.
Speaker 4: Yeah, she became she was a I heard a number
Speaker 4: of women say she was. There's something in a Baptist arches,
Speaker 4: the girls group for young teenage girls, and that's who
Speaker 4: she taught. Those were her classes, and they say that
Speaker 4: she was wonderful to them and a wonderful teacher. And
Speaker 4: she went right back to being accepted in church. I
Speaker 4: mean she went back in parts. One of the reasons
Speaker 4: is she had been home on those medical leads, so
Speaker 4: people got used to having or around again, and so
Speaker 4: when she got out, it was just sort of an
Speaker 4: extension of those furloughs and leaves, and it was Ruth's back.
Speaker 4: But I did talk to people who never got over
Speaker 4: being afraid of her. These were not her friends or
Speaker 4: the families that she considered themselves friends of her family.
Speaker 4: They did not want to go around her. They did
Speaker 4: not want to walk past her house, for instance.
Speaker 6: So the rumors that never died.
Speaker 4: The stories never died, but who she was and who
Speaker 4: she had been, whatever motive was, to this day, they'll
Speaker 4: kind of roam around town.
Speaker 5: What we haven't spoken about in your extraordinary book is that, meanwhile,
Speaker 5: of all these things going on the account of the
Speaker 5: incredible change that is arising in Mississippi, Mississippi is the
Speaker 5: last state to adopt some of these things, but the
Speaker 5: background of the ingrained racism, the fight for continued segregation,
Speaker 5: all in the midst of while the world is changing
Speaker 5: and there's this resistance in Mississippi. I want to thank
Speaker 5: you very much for coming on and talking about your
Speaker 5: extraordinary book, Deer Creek Drive, A Reckoning of Memory and
Speaker 5: Murder in the Mississippi Delta. For those that might want
Speaker 5: to check out this book on I'm sure they just
Speaker 5: go to Amazon and look at your author page there
Speaker 5: for all your novels and also your three other nonfiction books.
Speaker 5: Tell us about your Facebook page?
Speaker 6: Well, I do have a Facebook page.
Speaker 4: I am not terribly active on it, but I would
Speaker 4: I certainly if somebody goes there and ask me a question,
Speaker 4: I certainly answer it. There's also another side called You're
Speaker 4: from the Delta, ain't you? Ai n c Chu And
Speaker 4: I sometimes go there and I get questions there which
Speaker 4: I certainly won't be happy to respond to.
Speaker 2: You.
Speaker 4: I'm happy to hear from anybody who would like to
Speaker 4: get in touch.
Speaker 5: Yes, thank you. Deer Creek Drive, A Reckoning of Memory
Speaker 5: and Murder in the Mississippi Delta with Beverly Lowry. Thank
Speaker 5: you so much for this interview. Beverly Lowry, you have
Speaker 5: a great evening and good night, thank you, good night,
Speaker 5: good night,