Lost Man's River(36)
“How historical would this gentleman be talking about, girls? Older’n me?” The county clerk threw a wink over his shoulder at his middle-aged staff, and the girls laughed. “1907? Nineteen-ought-seven? Well, sir, I was pretty young back at that time! My daddy hadn’t hardly thought me up yet!” Hearing no giggle, he hastened on. “Excuse me, girls, while I go peruse them terrible murders we got stored up for our perusal right outside the men’s room in the basement!” Mollified by a titillated titter from the office ladies, the county clerk went whistling off, not to reappear for three quarters of an hour, by which time that ancient archivist, Mr. Arbie Collins, had nodded off on a park bench that had somehow come to rest in the outer office.
“We got us a Edgar but we ain’t got no Sam,” the county clerk announced on his return. “It’s D.M. Tolen, and it’s nineteen and oh-eight. That close enough?” From behind his back, as if presenting a bouquet, he whisked a thick file packet stuffed with yellowed papers.
Lucius supposed that some earlier court clerk must have made an error. He sat on the bench, passing the pages to Arbie as he read them. The file included random scraps of testimony from a jury hearing at Lake City on April 27, 1908, and also court orders for changes of venue from Lake City to Jasper and from Jasper to Madison, together with sheriff’s expense vouchers and subpoenas. Though Dr. Herlong had specified Sam Tolen, all these documents concerned the murder a year later of his brother Mike. Also, there was a co-defendant, one Frank Reese. Though neither Lucius nor Arbie could recall any such name in any Watson document they had ever come across, Lucius had a dim and uneasy memory of a “Black Frank” at Chatham Bend—could Reese have been “the Negro” mentioned in Bill House’s deposition?
On April 27, 1908, in Lake City, Sheriff D. W. Purvis had opened the spring term of the Columbia County Court by proclamation.
STATE OF FLORIDA V. EDGAR J. WATSON AND FRANK REESE:
MURDER IN THE FIRST DEGREE
IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE THIRD JUDICIAL CIRCUIT OF FLORIDA, IN AND FOR COLUMBIA COUNTY, SPRING TERM, A.D. 1908.
IN THE NAME OF THE STATE OF FLORIDA:
The Grand Jurors of the State of Florida … upon their oath present that Edgar J. Watson and Frank Reese, on the 23rd day of March, A.D. 1908, in the County and State aforesaid, with force and arms, and with a deadly weapon, to wit: a shotgun, loaded and charged with gunpowder and leaden balls, and which the said Edgar J. Watson had and held in his hands, in and upon one D. M. Tolen, unlawfully of his malice aforethought and from a premeditated design to effect the death of the said D. M. Tolen, did make an assault, and the said Edgar J. Watson … did then and there shoot off and discharge the leaden balls aforesaid out of the shotgun aforesaid, at, towards, against, and into the body and limbs of the said D. M. Tolen, and said Edgar J. Watson did then and there strike, penetrate, and wound the said D. M. Tolen … twenty-two mortal wounds, of and from which said mortal wounds the said D. M. Tolen did then and there die. And the grand jurors aforesaid … do further present that the said Frank Reese was then and there unlawfully of his malice aforethought and of and from a premeditated design to effect the death of said D. M. Tolen, present, aiding, abetting, conspiring, assisting, and advising the said Edgar J. Watson the felony aforesaid to do and commit.
Identical charges had been filed against Reese, with Watson as aider and abettor.
Most of the material in the packet concerned court business in the grand jury indictment and the trial—witness selection, depositions from county residents on both sides of the question of whether or not the accused could receive a fair trial in this county, courtroom disputes over lynching threats to the defendants, motions for and against a change of venue. Following the intervention of Governor Broward, who ordered the defendants removed to “a place of safety,” they were taken to Jasper on the night train, and a change of venue to Hamilton County was granted the next day, May 4. The trial at Jasper commenced on July 27 and ended with a hung jury three days later. On October 2, another change of venue moved the trial to Madison.
All courtroom testimony had apparently been sealed, but a few scraps from an earlier grand jury hearing accompanied the court documents, including a cross-examination of Mr. Jasper Cox, who testified on behalf of the defendants on the day before they were removed to Hamilton County on the night train. Mr. Cox declared that on March 26, three days after the murder of Mike Tolen, he had been approached in front of the courthouse by a member of the grand jury, Mr. Blumer Hunter, who told him “he was helping to get up a mob to get these men and asked if I didn’t want to assist them, and I told him it was out of my line of business.”