A late-summer murder story; Part 1
by Jack Neely
All summer, Knoxvillians looked forward to September 1. It was the day that saloons deemed it was safe to serve oysters again. "The festive oyster is with us for eight months," proclaimed the Journal. That night, by the glow of gaslights and the quarter moon, crowds of oystereaters came and went among downtown's oyster saloons.
One group was a gang of young single men that ladies avoided but bartenders of 1885 were happy to see, always with the time and cash for a whiskey or a game of cards or pool or a plate of oysters. There was Will Hall, Herd Lones, Ike Wright and Lee Sellers.
They had scrapes every now and then. Lee Sellers may have been the worst of them. Though he was a policeman's brother, he was out on bail for shooting a man in a Crozier Street bar a few months ago. But all in all, they seemed like a jolly bunch, regulars at Conner's, Schubert's, Mankel's, Ogle's, and Stanley's bars on Gay Street. They'd been in Stanley's that Monday night, drinking and playing cards, when there arose a dispute between Hall and Lones. They argued about how to settle it, but ended up out on Broadway, at the stable on the northern end of the mule-drawn streetcar tracks. Lones punched Hall right in the face, but Hall didn't return the blow. He said he didn't want to fight. That seems to have been OK with Lones. They were chums again.
Just then that they were startled by a well-dressed stranger who emerged from the shadows. He was a tall, good-looking young man, maybe 25, built like an athlete. He implored the men not to fight, and suggested they go back to town for some whiskey or wine, his treat.
The man was vague about his identity, once claiming to be named Jones. The street guys just called him "the stranger." They did notice that he had a whole lot of money.
Around midnight the jolly bunch returned downtown to Vine Street, where the new public library was under construction, and down to McGuire's, an all-night Irish place just east of State, that served oysters and sardines and whiskey and wine. The men had a good time by all accounts, shooting pool, eating and drinking for hours. The stranger wasn't shy about the money he had with him: a bag of gold coins, more than a dozen $20 pieces, and a roll of greenbacks "as thick as a man's head." It looked like more than $1,000.
If the stranger noticed some of the Knoxvillians whispering to one another, it didn't bother him much. He called them old friends. At one point he declared himself "John L. Sullivan," and squared off as if to box. He left after 3 a.m. with Lee Sellers, and wound up down Crozier Street, a few years before it would be renamed South Central. It was a section well known for prostitution.
The paperboys were already out, selling the Tuesday morning Journal. On the front page was a bizarre story about a transient fresco painter who'd hopped a freight into town just last week. He'd found some work at the Staub's Opera House renovation. While there, he happened to look at an old newspaper he was using as a tarp, and discovered that he had won $15,000 in a lottery.
Sellers had never been so lucky. But he had the stranger along when he knocked on the door where a former girlfriend, Lizzie Hickman, lived with her roommate, Patsy Foust. She had grown up in a shack near the jail, "a sharp and spritely child" who caught the attention of uptown ladies who sent her off to finishing school in Nashville to "elevate" her. But she always slipped back down due, they said, to "an innate drive to go to the bad." Now she was perhaps 17 or 18, still slender, with light hair and blue eyes, and seemingly bright, but "withal, not very attractive."
When Hickman had dated Lee Sellers, she thought him "fun." She was also a little scared of him.
The stranger decided he wanted another quart of whiskey. It was easy to find at 5 a.m. in downtown Knoxville; Sellers fetched some. Soon Ike Wright came by looking for Sellers and the stranger. Sellers shouted that he'd shoot him through the door. Wright was persistent. He recognized Foust's voice inside and shouted, "Is that you, Pat?"
"Yes, go away," Patsy Foust replied, elaborating: "Lee Sellers is talking about shooting you through the door."
Sellers proposed a dawn excursion along the riverside and insisted that Lizzie come along. She demurred, insisting she might be arrested, a single woman walking with a man on the streets early in the morning. Sellers insisted. Come along, he beseeched, or I'll kill you.
She put on her blue gingham bonnet, and they proceeded toward the late-summer sunrise. You could still set out from downtown and take a nice walk in the country. Two armed men and a woman and a quart of whiskey.
Later that morning, a farmer found the body of a well-dressed man, face down beside a fence on the McCammon property, about a mile upriver from downtown. In a quart bottle on the other side of the fence was maybe a jigger of whiskey. There was a hole in the back of the man's head; the coroner found a lead slug in his brain. In his pockets was 60 cents.
The stranger's name was Edgar Maines. He lived in McMinn County, but was a traveling agent for the prominent Knoxville wholesale firm of Cowan, McClung. He had just returned from a two-week railroad trip, selling wholesale goods, and collecting cash from his quarries.
Arriving in Knoxville the previous evening, he checked into the Lamar House and asked the desk clerk if he could stash it in the house safe. The desk clerk apologized that he didn't have the key. Maines went to his room, number 18, but emerged around midnight, saying he couldn't sleep. He walked out onto the Gay Street sidewalk, and the clerk never saw him again.
Maybe six hours later, several people saw Maines and two other people, a man and a woman in a pink dress with white trim and a blue gingham bonnet, walking near the river at dawn. It took Sheriff Homer Gilmore and the police only a day to come up with the names of suspects: Wright and Sellers. They nabbed Sellers at his father's house in Shieldstown and later caught Wright downtown. They also caught up with Lizzie Hickman, who was staying in the cabin home of Lincoln Day. They tracked down the rest of the McGuire's Bar party—and a German immigrant, who explained through a translator that he'd seen a mysterious, heavily bearded man with a strange sideways look in his eye, playing with a large knife near where the body was found.
Wright and his chums Hall and Lones confessed that they had plotted to rob the stranger, but claimed that Wright and Sellers lost the others so they'd have a better share of the loot. Then Sellers double-crossed Wright by shaking him off at Lizzie's door.
All the stories agreed in their basic details—except that of Sellers, who insisted that, last time he saw the stranger, Wright had been with him. And except for the strange bearded man with the giant knife described by the eccentric German. Every case has its red herring.
Wright was released. Then Lizzie, who said she'd been praying about it, made a confession. She'd been walking in the country with Maines and Sellers. When Sellers left them alone for a moment, Maines handed her two bucks—a typical fee for a prostitute in 1885—and put his arm around her. She told him that "would not do." Such a gesture in public, she said, might get her "indicted."
Later, after Sellers returned, Maines leaned over to button his shoe, and Sellers shot him in the back of the head. Then, reminding Hickman that she'd always wanted a gun, Sellers handed her a two-barrel Remington .41. He told her he was going to go into town to get drunk.
It seemed clear, everybody downtown agreed. They still hadn't found the Cowan McClung loot, but Sellers was in jail on Hill Avenue, and he deserved to die. There was no point to having a trial. Each evening that week, Sheriff Gilmore was wary of sullen men loitering under gaslights in the cool night, smoking cigarettes.
(To be continued)
August 28, 2003 * Vol. 13, No. 35
© 2003 Metro Pulse
| 
