The short, unhappy life of Willie Tines
by Jack Neely
It's a tall, straightbacked antique in Nashville, old-fashioned in style: cushioned but intended more for show than for comfort, very much like an Episcopal rector's chair. When William Tines was seated there, almost 40 years ago, he had no way of knowing his name would appear in hundreds of newspaper magazine articles. The complicated path that brought him here had commenced unexpectedly, on a pleasantly cool Sunday evening in Knoxville, 15 years earlier.
In the final months of World War II, Willie Tines didn't seem like the sort of guy who'd ever be famous. He was an ex-con living by his limited wits in Carson Alley in Mechanicsville, hanging out evenings around the poolhalls of College St. He was about 21, short, stocky, impulsive man who struck some as boy-like.
Arrested for petty theft when he was 11, he landed in a reform school, where a teacher beat him unconscious with her shoe. He apparently suffered some brain damage in the encounter; for the rest of his life, Tines was subject to epileptic fits.
His father had died in Brushy Mountain when Willie was 14, about when Willie got in trouble again for stealing a horse. At 17, Willie Tines got sent to Brushy Mountain himself, for robbery. Released in 1944, he settled in his favorite neighborhood and lived quietly for about eight months.
There wasn't much to do on a Sunday night in 1945. Knoxville's movie houses and burlesque shows and beer joints were closed Sundays. About all there was to do on a Sunday night in Knoxville was listen to Life of Riley on the radio, or, maybe, get in trouble.
On that cool evening, Willie Tines and his pals George Carr and Wash Poole were hanging on a corner, not far from Ralph's Sports Center, the poolhall where Poole worked. They got in an argument with a couple of older fellows, working guys in their 30s. One was John Johnson, a presser at Nick's, the Greek hat-restoring shop downtown. The other was Marshall Kyle, a married man who was a porter at the Union Bus Terminal.
Somebody broke the fight up, but then Johnson returned to the corner brandishing a shotgun. Patrolman Tom Nowlin was on the scene and told Johnson and his neighbor Kyle to take his shotgun and leave. Call a taxi and go home, he said. That they did, or tried to.
In was about midnight when the cab driver took them a mile out Western Ave., over Knoxville College's hill and down into Lonsdale. It wasn't much farther. Johnson and Kyle lived near Stonewall Street on Delaware, where all the cross streets are named for Civil War generals.
They were almost home, at the place where several streets run into Western. When something happens there, police can choose from a variety of intersections to describe the spot: Schofield, Beaumont, Mississippi, Keith, the railroad tracks. Road work has since blocked Mississippi into a dead end, but it's still one of the most complicated intersections in town, an interesting jumble of acute and obtuse corners.
They were right there when, from behind, a prewar sedan appeared and forced the taxi over to the Western Avenue curb.
In that car was Willie Tines. With pistols in both hands, he leaned out and shot the taxicab's passengers. Johnson died that night; Kyle died a few days later.
Tines turned himself in and pleaded guilty. Convicted of first-degree murder, Tines got a life sentence at Brushy Mountain.
For 12 years, the world outside changed; the war ended, the arms race began, the Korean War came and went, television and rock 'n' roll arrived. Tennessee began to desegregate. Tines was a model prisoner.
He earned special privileges as a trusty, and by the spring of '57, was up for parole in 18 months. Still, when Tines saw a chance to escape, he took it. Cutting timber outside on a hot day in April, he and two other convicts saw the guard look away. He scampered east, toward the only town he knew. After a day's walking with nothing to eat, he entered a countryside house near Harriman, looking for food and civilian clothes.
Surprised by a 45-year-old housekeeper who began screaming, Tines knocked her down and beat her. Then, apparently, he raped her. Police captured him nearby soon afterward; he'd been free for not quite 24 hours.
His victim earned a spot on the Grand Jury that indicted him, one of several peculiarities of his case. Though illiterate, Tines signed a confession which read, "I didn't mean to rape her but I had been in the pen so long that when I saw her I just lost my head."
After a five-hour trial, a jury decided that raping a white woman was a more serious crime than killing two black men. This time, Tines was sentenced to death.
At the state pen in Nashville, even fellow inmates were astonished at Tines' ignorance. They said he seemed like a grade-school child, no older than 11, the age of the kid who was beaten with a shoe. When it came time to go to the death house, Tines was asked if he had a last request. He said yes, he'd like to watch some TV.
In November, 1960, Tines was electrocuted in that old chair, the 125th man to die in it since 1916, the 85th black man. He became the 36th man—and the 36th black man—to be executed for rape.
Tines was also the last man executed in Tennessee for almost 40 years. He was strapped into the chair without knowing that distinction, the only reason his name would appear in dozens of newspaper stories decades later. He had earned a degree of fame he never enjoyed in life, the gravity that only execution can convey.
Tines was buried alone at the melancholy Oddfellows Cemetery on Bethel Ave. in East Knoxville. That's according to local legend; his grave is unmarked.
March 23, 2000 * Vol. 10, No. 12
© 2000 Metro Pulse
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