Anjette and Ben Lyles are a young married couple with two children. Ben is a WW2 veteran and together he and Anjette work in his family restaurant in Macon, Georgia. When Ben sells the restaurant for below market value to settle a gambling debt, Anjette is furious. A few months after selling the restaurant, Ben gets very sick, very fast, and dies without doctors figuring out what killed him. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack discuss the death of Ben Lyles as well as Anjette's new husband, Buddy Gabbert, Anjette's first mother-in-law, Julia Lyles, and Anjette's daughter, Marcia. Joe explains how Anjette Lyles got away with murder, at first, and what led to her ultimate arrest, conviction, and death sentence.
Transcript Highlights
00:00.21 Introduction
02:09.23 Eating at Hospital cafeteria
05:02.11 Ben Lyles sells restaurant to settle gambling debt, Anjette is furious
06:45.30 Ben Lyles dies, doctors don't know why
09:21.66 Diagnosis by symptoms
14:43.53 Ben's mother worked at Restaurant
18:26.54 Anjette buys the restaurant
20:01.78 Anjette marries Buddy Gabbert
25:07.03 Doctors not looking for arsenic
30:08.42 Symptoms were miserable, Buddy dies
35:32.05 Anjette seen lighting black candle and talking to it
40:00.01 Coroner's Inquest
44:51.91 Coroner gets anonymous letter about Anjette using arsenic ant poison to kill
50:09.65 One month after Marcia dies, Anjette is arrested, charged with murder
51:25.26 Sentenced to death. Sentence commuted to life in prison
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Quality dunts, but Joseph's gotten more being a Southerner. People
will say, well, why do you continue to live in
Oh There's any number of reasons. Climate, I love the people.
I've had opportunities to live elsewhere. But one of the
(00:23):
things that I think kind of anchors not just myself
but many of us down here, it's food. And yeah,
it's the food that's before you when you're eating, but
it's also the fact that so much of our life
is tied up in food. I guess many people could
say that, but we make a I don't know, a
(00:45):
big deal out of just the preparation. We're not big
on excluding people from our kitchens while we're preparing things.
Being from Louisiana in particular, you're taught from a young
age how to cook, and in my opinion, I probably
make one of the best gumbows around. I take a
(01:05):
lot of pride in my room.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
But you know, food.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Is a pathway. It's a pathway to deliver nutrition, it's
a pathway to fellowship with those that you love, but
many times it could be a pathway to death. I'm
(01:33):
Joseph Scott Morgan and this is bodybags Dave. Unfortunately, you
and I over the past I guess fourteen months, have
spent more time than we care to mention at hospitals.
(01:54):
And there was a time, and I remember from my
childildhood where after church on Sundays we would go to
eat at the hospital in the cafeteria and there was
that sounds weird, but in our town the food at
the hospital cafeteria was fantastic. But yeah, I know, right,
(02:17):
but weird.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
It is weird.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
And I can't say that for all hospitals, but I
think hospital food is notorious for being really bad, particularly
if you're a patient, and if you're in a room
with somebody that you're sitting by their bedside for hours
and they're not eating their food, you begin to pick
at their trade because you know you don't have time
(02:42):
to leave and all those sort of things, and it's
absolutely horrible. I don't know if too many ways you
can actually improve it, because they tell you they're they're
feeding you the food in order for you to feel better.
I never really felt better after I eat the food.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
See, I thought you going to go with the after
church going to the hospital for visitation. I didn't know
it was because that was the nice restaurant, you know,
very cool.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
My family wasn't big on visits. I'm sick.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Well, you know, it's interesting how as you and I
were looking at this story and it brought about other
stories that we were talking about, which we will now
include into our list of upcoming shows. But today's story
of and Jet is that how you pronounced her name?
And Jet Lyles? Jet? Yeah, I'd never seen that name before, yea.
And anyway, and Jet Lyles is a woman who born
(03:37):
in nineteen twenty five into an upper middle class family
in Georgia, the Making area, and grows up normal, you know,
or whatever we pass for normal in the South. And
she's about twenty two years old when she meets and
(03:58):
Mary's Ben, Ben is a World War Two veteran. They
get married in nineteen forty seven, and the Lyles family
owns a restaurant in downtown Macon, very popular family restaurant.
And so Ben is there and he's now the head,
(04:18):
you know, he's in charge of the restaurant. And he's
been known to toss a few back adult beverages and
to gamble a little bit. Now and Jet and Ben
have not been married that long, and I know that
back then things were a little different in how we
went about getting married and having children at the ages
(04:40):
you know. Now we would look at somebody in their
early twenties having children as wow, they're young, you know,
But back then it was not that uncommon. And so
very early on in the relationship they have children. Their
first daughter is born shortly after they get married, and
after she is I'm guessing potty training hect I don't know,
(05:02):
but she and Jett ends up working in the restaurant
with Ben with her husband, and so they're working together,
married a couple of years, and right as and Jet
has their second child, Marcia, Ben decides to sell the restaurant,
and Ben sells it for below market value and doesn't
(05:25):
consult with a Jet before he does that. And the
reason he does is because he's in Hawk to the
to the Sharks. He's made some bad gambling decisions apparently,
And we're not casting as versions on the man's character.
It's just the reality of what happened, apparently. So Ben
sells the family style restaurant, pays the gambling debt, and
(05:48):
Jet is mad, and so here we go. It is
now December nineteen fifty one. Ben starts to get very
very sick, very fast. He ends up in the hospital.
Doctors don't know what's going on, can't figure out why
is this man sick. A month or so after he's
in the hospital, January twenty fifth, nineteen fifty two, Ben
(06:12):
Lyles dies. Now, Joe, you're a history guy, and I'm
feel confident in asking you this. Was it an uncommon
occurrence for somebody to die in the hospital in the
early fifties and have doctors not be able to figure
out what killed them.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
I don't know how common it was. I don't think that.
And listen, this the information we're about to get off
into is when you begin to think about the diagnostic
testing that we have today heir to what they had
back then. And this is what has always fascinated me
(06:54):
about the Lyles cases. It doesn't require it doesn't require
you to even draw blood or to take urine to
run through a toxicology screen. There is symptomology that manifests
(07:16):
itself externally on these people's bodies. And so, you know,
you look at an individual as a physician and pretty
quickly you begin to kind of try to understand, well,
first off, why are they having this gastro intestinal discomfort,
(07:37):
can't keep any food down, and they're having severe diarrhea,
terrible abdominal pain. They've got these very non specific rashes
all over their body. There's change in their pallor, which
is a term. It's kind of an old term, but physicians,
(08:00):
even pathologists will use it, and it's the color of
the skin. They kind of current turned like a gray color.
You'll have people that are in talk about historic, historic perspective.
There's an old term, and I love this term. They'd
say they were adult. Adult means that you're kind of
(08:21):
acting like a lunatic. And it's it's all part of
the symptomology of a bigger picture, particularly when you begin
to get these in clusters. One person though, I can
see early on because this man died in the early
(08:44):
fifties and he would only be the first in a succession.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Of deaths and you don't know what's coming. So just
in an isolated incident, you've got a fairly young man, yeah,
and you know, married like kids, and all of a sudden,
very quick illness, I mean dies in d goes into
the hospital in December with this. As you mentioned, a
lot of different symptoms and is dead a month later.
(09:12):
It's not a long time to really diagnose what's going on,
because don't in the hospital when you're dealing with this,
I mean, we're looking at it with hindsight. Would they
be looking at each symptom alone and saying, well, this
can bring on this type of gastro intestinal distress, and
this can bring on a rash, this can bring on
(09:35):
a fever. I mean, is that how they're looking at
this then, or are they looking at it in totality?
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Yeah, they're they're trying to you know, they're what they're
doing is they're they're checking off a list and they
have a list that you know, in the kind of
cluster cluster these things together, and they'll say, well, he's
having these. I think one of the most striking things
is probably going to be the skin responses when you
(10:01):
begin to see this bloody rash that comes up, you know,
all over people. Uh. Sometimes you'll even see changes, you know,
in the palms of the hands, that sort of thing,
and skin the skin will begin to present uh with
(10:23):
they some some people that have these presentations on their skin, DAVE.
In a clinical standpoint, clinical perspective, they'll have to be
strapped to the bed so they don't scratch themselves.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Yeah, it's it's a horrific kind of kind of uh presentation.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Is that something that still goes on now?
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Yeah? Yeah, And you know, I'll be very specific here. Uh,
I don't feel like I'm bearing the lead, but we're
talking about arsenic and rs think is is has been
known to man, you know, for I don't know, three
four thousand years, and it's a naturally occurring standalone element.
(11:06):
It's on the elemental chart. It's something that has been mined.
And as a matter of fact, I think it may
have been the Romans that used it to blend it
with copper in order to strengthen copper and because they
could mine it in one of their territories, you know,
if they came across it. But even back then, Dave,
(11:27):
they they recognized that the people that were working in
the minds were presenting with with symptomology and they would die.
They would die. And even the Romans, you know, we
think of them in a very brutal sense, they shut
(11:49):
the minds. Now, they were like, we've got to find
something else in order to blend with copper to make
it stronger and so they walked away from it. It
has it's been known to be a toxic substance forever,
and it's not just in like the Near East or Europe.
(12:11):
I'm always fascinated by this because from you know, you're
taking a long view of this, the stuffs had, the
same thing is happening in the Far East as well.
The Chinese knew about it and they have, uh you know,
the Chinese are very impressive with their written history. It
goes back much further, I think than even Western history
(12:34):
in many circumstances as far as how they wrote things down,
and they've got you know, they've got examples of arsenic
poisoning going back, you know, a thousand years, thousands of years,
and so it's been around for a long time, and
it's it's something that has been used in industry over
(12:55):
the years, but primarily primarily arsenic has been used in
the most recent sense as a pesticide. David, I think
(13:22):
that probably if someone wanted to kill somebody in the
most stealthy way possible so that they could try to
get away with it. Poison for many I think is
at the top of the list. You know, poisoners are
(13:43):
interesting compared to all other killers out there. There was
a there was something I read not too long ago
talking about the personality of someone that prefers to poison
and one of the lines and it was they come
to you with a smile, but they leave death in
(14:07):
their wake, and you never see them coming. And it's
the stealth nature of it. The trick, I think, is
how do you get access to an individual to apply
something that's going to be toxic in their system? And
with a jad Lyles even though Ben had sold this restaurant,
(14:28):
and by the way, Ben's mama worked there as well
in the wake of Ben's death, and Jet kept working
at the restaurant, and by all accounts, she was a
real floor show if you will. She's kind of bombastic.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
Yeah, and you've got a big personality and likes to be.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Big personality, likes to flirt. She's got platinum blonde hair.
Think of kind of a you are set in Marilyn Monroe.
You know how the women would kind of I think
they called it bobbing their hair, and it was it
was short, but it was like when you saw it
was striking. You know, she was a striking And they
(15:14):
talked about her where she would warmly greet everybody that
came into the restaurant, throw their arms, throw arms around
them and hug them and sit and just engage engage
with people. You know what's really fascinating about the Lyles Restaurant, Dave,
is that if you ever go to Macon's kind of
(15:36):
an interesting little town. I'm a fan of it because
Votis Reading and the Almond Brothers, but making in and
of itself, aside from its musical heritage, it's an interesting
little town that's tried to rebound several times. But going
down the main street, and literally the main street is
(15:58):
the name of one of my favorite Doctor Seuss books
when I was a little is Mulberry Street. I think
the name of the book it was called I can't
believe it, or it happened on Mulberry Street or something
like that. But on Mulberry Street sat the Lyles Restaurant,
and guests take a guess where it was positioned across
(16:18):
the street from no clue the county courthouse. So back then,
during the fifties, during the fifties, there was no such
thing as drive through food. McDonald's was at some point
in time was just starting up in some place that
(16:41):
was far far away from making Georgia. So if you
were going to go out to eat, and back then,
going out to eat was a big deal. Across the
street from the courthouse, when they'd go on break, the judges,
the lawyers, probably even defendants, they come in to Anget's
(17:04):
restaurant and they would they would eat. And we've got
a couple of these places around where we live, Dave.
They're generally carthouse cafe. Yeah, very well that they're called
what's the term. I'm probably gonna get a meat in three,
I think that's what it's. Where you get you get
a meat of some kind, whether it's cube steak, you know,
(17:27):
country fried steak, mashed potatoes, lima beans and black eyed
peas or collars or something like that. So you get
one big hunk of fried protein, and then you get
vegetables along with it. And these are still prevalent around
these parts. I can't speak to the rest of it.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
And I still put those vegetables on the side of
my plate next to the napkins, and nobody can see
I didn't eat them. I hate those things. But you
know you mentioned that that and Jack continued working, you know,
at the restaurant after Ben's passing, and she's there with
her mother in law. And by the way, remember now
her mother in law Julia Lyles, Ben's mom. Well that's
(18:05):
the grandmother t and Jet's little girls, you know. So
there's a real connection here now and Jet. After the
death of Ben, and Jet moves in with her parents
for a couple of years while she continues working and
saving her money. Now, remember Ben sold the restaurant and
(18:27):
sold it fronder market value. And Jet was very clever
in that she saved money and learned all she could
about the restaurant business. And after a couple of years
she buys it back. And Jet buys back. This is
not a common thing to have happen with women in
the South in the fifties. This is not your normal thing.
(18:49):
And she's very cagy in that. As soon as she does.
You know, the first thing, she hires back Ben's mom,
her mother in law, Julia, because she wanted to attract
some of the old Lyle's restaurant crowd that remembered Julia.
So she brings her back and there they are now
and Jet and Julia working together in the restaurant and
(19:11):
it's everything's going fine. People really like her. You mentioned
that she's got that big personality, always hugging people when
they come in and saying hello. And after a jet
is in control of the restaurant, she meets a guy
named Buddy Gabbert. Now Buddy was a pilot and he
(19:31):
had been going there for a while, to the restaurant,
and he and a jet strike up a friendship and
end up, you know, I guess casually dating. I'm sure
she was very busy with work and the girls. But
she announces, and jet does they're going on vacation. She
and Buddy are going to take a vacation and when
she comes back.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Wait, hang on back during that time too, she's not
married to him. This would have been very scandalous.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Way I was going to ask you how that How
you thought that played out, because I didn't want to
blow past it. But I thought, am I the one
thinking it's a big deal?
Speaker 1 (20:05):
No? How did they position the Yeah they're not married,
they're going to Yeah, I can tell you the board
of deacons gonna be talking about this.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Well, they go on this vacation, and I can hear
the preamble is, well, we've got separate hotel rooms and
separate every you know, but we're going together. But anyway
you look at it. When they came back from vacation,
they announced, Hey, we got married. So now Buddy and
and Jet are married. So here we are. We're now
(20:34):
in nineteen fifty five. Now remember her husband Ben sold
the restaurant to settle a gambling debt in nineteen fifty one.
He then dies after a month long illness between December
and January and nineteen fifty two. So we're a couple
of years down the road. She's bought the restaurant back
and her mom, her mother in law, works there with her.
(20:57):
She gets married to Buddy Gabbert. Well that's in July
of nineteen fifty five when they go on vacation and
return married. A couple of months later October nineteen fifty five,
Buddy has minor surgery. Oh I need to add this.
Buddy is a pilot and he's gone a lot. He
travels a lot, and so there were some rumors flying
(21:17):
around town about a Jet and her flirty personality. Okay,
I'll leave it at that. You guys fill in the blanks.
Buddy comes back and he has his minor surgery in October,
and when he goes home to convalesce after the surgery,
he develops a fever and then a rash that covers
(21:38):
his entire body. Joe, this is October nineteen fifty five,
and doctors they can't figure out what's going on. I'm
going to ask you a very specific question. Sure, in
nineteen fifty five, what would they have been testing for
with those types of symptoms fever and rash?
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Yeah, fever and rash. Back then, they would have thought.
The first thing they would have thought about is probably
exposure to something, something that is going to present with
I don't know, for lack of better terms, some kind
of dermatitis. Now, the trick is to try to understand
is this something like most people have heard of a
(22:22):
there's a term called contact dermatitis, Like if you touch
something okay with you know, your hand, or you brush
up against something, you'll get kind of a focal area
of your body that will be impacted by whatever agent
it is you've come in contact with, and sometimes it
can spread. That's the first thing you know, because I
(22:45):
still this is a parlism. My grandmother one of her
favorite things to say back then, is if you if
you had a rash or you know, you would you
know there was something going on with you. She'd say, boy,
what have you gotten in to? You know so, and
so that's that's one of the things. You know, you're
kind of thinking about here as from a diagnostic standpoint,
(23:09):
But you have to account for the fever, all right.
Just because you have a contact dermatitis doesn't mean that
you're going to be presenting in a fibrill state. It's
just it's not going to not going to Those two
things don't match up. So then you turn to, well,
is this some kind of internal internal thing that's going
(23:32):
on and it's manifesting externally now along with this, if
I'm not mistaken, he again, like his predecessor, the first husband,
had horrible gastro intestinal discomfort and it's they would have
diagnosed it as gastro entritis back then. And again another
(23:55):
it's very kind of nonspecific. A lot of the symptom
homology with this is non specific. But when you're maintaining
in in that state and you're declining and they're hanging
ivs on you, and they've got everybody and their brother
coming in to take a look at you. It's not
(24:18):
surprising that they would miss common signs that might be
associated with arson arsen.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Well, they're not thinking that, right, I mean, you're not
a nobody.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
I mean, nobody's thinking that when it's it's always I
try to cut medical staff a lot of slack because
there are people that present at hospitals all the time
and they will suddenly die. Clinicians are not Clinicians are
(24:47):
not looking at a patient and thinking with a forensic mind.
They're they're thinking with a clinician's mind, with a healer's mind,
what do I have to do to get this person
from point A to point B? And so they're going
down a checklist. Trust me, arsenic is not popping up
(25:10):
on the radar. That's just not something that you think.
It's the old adage about you know, you might have
that one person that when they hear hoof beats they
think camel as opposed to horses. But they're an outlier,
to say the very least from a diagnostic standpoint. One
(25:31):
of the interesting things about and Jet is that she
made a fuss over everybody in her family that gets sick.
And when you kind of dig into the mind of
someone that might be poisoning someone. You want to get
(25:56):
that kind of and particularly if you're going for the
sympathy vote. I'll look at her. They just have gotten married,
they're just starting their life. She's got these she's a widow,
she's got these two little girls that lost their daddy.
She's taking care of her former husband's mother in law.
(26:17):
What this lady, this lady is she's going to be
declared a saint, right And so every day when any
of these family members wind up presenting with any kind
of symptomology, she's there. She's there at their bedside. Dave. Now,
(26:38):
when you put that in perspective, that's chilling, because at
the end of the day, having a jet Lyles adjacent
to your bedside was kind of the equivalent of having
the specter of death with their scythe hanging over their shoes,
(27:00):
older sitting. You know, when you read the Bible, there's
one there's one individual in a Bible that always comes
(27:23):
to mind when you're going through hard times, and that's Job.
You don't want to sit there and say I'm just
like Job. Nobody can be just like Job. You would
not wish that, well, I don't know some folks might
wish that on their worst enemy. I wouldn't when you
think about and it's, you know, part of our vernacular
we say the trials of I'm going through the trials
(27:44):
of job. A lot of people don't understand that. But
when you're surrounded by family members that are dying left
and right and you're still trying to struggle, I think
spiritual standpoint, any folks will look up to the heavens
and shake their fists and say, you know, why are
(28:05):
you allowing this to happen to me? And wasn't the
case with a jet Lyaeleso, She continued to Sally Forth Dave,
and you know, put on the put on the face
of being a strong independent woman running the restaurant, taking
care of her family. And now you've got second second husband.
(28:27):
That's you know, one foot in the grave and one
foot on a banana peel.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Well, you know, it's interesting that as we look at this,
you know, it's very condenced period of time, you know,
from getting married in nineteen forty seven to having children,
the restaurant, selling, the restaurant, husband dies. I mean, there's
a lot going on in this woman's life in a
very very short window of time, and I think about
(28:51):
those two girls being raised in that environment of what
it must have been like. But after the death, y'all
know that. I mean, obviously Buddy died after a very
brief illness. Now he had that surgery in October of
nineteen fifty five and home convalescing by the end of
the month. So he's sick in November, and on December
(29:13):
second Buddy dies. So he's got a five or six
week recovery period and death.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
So let me just interject to Buddy's death was miserable.
It was miserable. And this is you remember Dave how
was saying second ago, being tied to the bed. Yeah
that in his particular instance, they had to restrain his arms.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Can you imagine because of the rash?
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Yeah, yeah, And you know it's bad enough. You know,
if you're if you've got stomach discomfort, which he would
have had tremendous stomach discomfort coming out, as they say,
coming out of both ends, anything that you ingest, you
would and plush your your itching all over your What
(30:01):
a horrible way. And this this misery lasted for this
particular period of time. But my understanding that a jet
was the one constant in this universe. She was always
coming to take care of him. And well, yes, kind
of a portent of things to come. Buddy didn't eat
(30:22):
hospital food. He ate food from the restaurant.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
Right, we know, ninety days after they get married, think
about that, Joe you're talking about. They go on a
vacation and come back married in July, and ninety days later, Buddy,
you know, has this minor surgery that turns into death
by December twod that's a that is a whirl wind
of highs and lows. So after Buddy's death and Jet
(30:54):
changes her name back to Lyles, that was kind of
interesting to me. It really did make me one her. Well,
anyway you look at it, she did it. And she
also collected some insurance money and in town the size
of making when you're running a restaurant in downtown where
you meet everybody and talk to everybody. Well, and Jet
(31:14):
bought herself a brand new Cadillac and bought a new
house and moved her mother in law, Julia, into the
home with her. I'll take care of the client. Yes,
look at this woman, she's taking care of everybody. And
now Julia the grandma gets to be there to help
take care of the children. This is what we just
need to go ahead and make a statue of a
(31:36):
Jet right now and put it downtown and you know.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
On mulber Street.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Yeah, right there. And well, the thing is is that
after Julia, the mother in law, moves in with and Jet,
they didn't get along. And I'm thinking, now, I mean,
here we are. It's a lot much different time than
it was in the nineteen fifties. Not getting along with
your mother in law seems like like there could be
(32:01):
a fix, you know, move her out, but she doesn't.
Instead of trying to rectify the situation, and Jet tries
to get Julia to write out a new will. You
need a will, Julia, you need a will. Now, I'm
gonna be honest with you. Joe, somebody who's got a
couple of dead people in their recent past is telling
you to get a will. Yeah, I'm thinking there's got
(32:25):
to be an apartment somewhere I can rent, you know.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
Or maybe you have a pause and say, wow, and
Jet's really proactive. Yeah, it all depends on how you
look at it.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Wow. Well there was also you know, there are a
couple of things being talked about about and Jet at
the hospital. At the restaurant, the workers said that, you know,
they were a little weirded out by her some black magic,
voodoo type stuff. And in a town the size of
Making Georgia, if you're talking to black candles when nobody
(32:58):
you think nobody's looking, that's going to get a I
mean it will.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
And let me tell you one more thing about that.
The employees, and this really plays a big part in this.
The employees at this restaurant that work behind the counter,
we're all African American, Okay, so generationally, generationally better than
(33:21):
let's say, the white folks out there, they understood kind
of this ominous thing that's going on with her in
black black candles because they've seen it. They've seen it,
they talk about it. It's not something that the white
community necessarily talks about. In the African American community, though,
this is something that's real. And I experienced this in
(33:44):
New Orleans because down there you actually do have a
voodoo culture that is real. Wow, it doesn't matter if
you believe in it or not. They believe in it.
You also have Santa Rio as well, and a lot
of this stuff comes about the Caribbean. It goes back
generations even you know, during the slave era and this
sort of thing when things are brought over and practiced.
(34:06):
You know, all you have to do is just go
to the go to the east of Making and wind
up in Savannah and midnight in the garden of Good
and Evil. And you know, uh, voodoo played played a
large part in that case. And someday we're going to
cover that case.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
Actually witch trial. You know, the sailing witch trials had Titchuba.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
The exactly and she was from the Islands, I think
that's the way they referred to her as. And she
was a servant.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
So you know, if you're if you're an African American
and it's in the fifties in the Deep South, because
you are in the heap South and you are dependent
upon the white folks to provide your living, you're going
to keep your mouth shut because you never know how
it's going to wind up for you. You know you're going
(34:57):
to be out on the bricks and you're not going
to have a job any more. But can you imagine
you're sitting there in this woman, this bombastic woman with
the blonde hair who's driving a caddy is in the
back room and she's got a black candle and she
lights it and they'll see her whispering to the candle.
(35:22):
And that's enough to terrify anybody. And let me tell
you one more thing. They have proof in their eyes
because she's driving a big white Cadillac through town. You
might not know this day about making, but making Georgia.
The main industry in making Georgia back then were textile
(35:43):
mills and cotton, and so people that lived in making.
You had very few people that were really wealthy. Most people,
if they had a car, would come to town and
they would be driving an old truck or an old
beat up car. You've got this bombastic woman with stark
(36:05):
white hair that's riding around in a caddie. You're gonna
she's gonna draw attention the people that knew about kind
of the voodoo element here that are watching her. Can
you imagine it's really easy to put two and two together.
You think that because of her whispering to the candle,
(36:27):
because of her involvement in this, she's now experiencing wealth.
She's able to This is a woman in the fifties
that is recovering from the loss of a husband. Two
husbands and all of a sudden, these great riches fall
into her lap. Well, you know, to me, this is
like being at the crossroads in Mississippi and somebody signed
(36:50):
to deal.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
With the devil. Wow. I actually did look up Little
Richard Tenneman came from Making Joy and worked at a
restaurant in nightclub there. It was called tiktoks I think,
or tick tacked. But anyway, I was. I was in
my back of my head when you were talking about
how and Jet actually had employed African Americans. You know,
(37:14):
I thought, well, I wonder if little Richard was there.
You know, it wasn't, but I was looking it up
just in case. But Joe, after the death of her
second husband and moving in her mother in law, Julia
into her home, they don't get along, and all of
a sudden, Julia becomes sick. It's now nineteen fifty seven.
She went and Jet did the entire year of nineteen
(37:35):
fifty six without anyone close to her dying that we're
aware of. And I'm sure she, you know, was celebrating, Oh,
bad times were over. Well maybe that's what people thought,
because in nineteen fifty seven, Julia becomes ill. She's hospitalized
and dies September twenty ninth, and nobody knows why, don't
know what happened. She got sick and died. Holy moly, So, Joe,
(38:00):
as they're doing what they had done previously, doctors don't
mean they're got to think at some point somebody's going
to look at this and go, hey man, we got
three adults dead in what a five six year period
of time. Who's what's the common denominator? I mean, is
nobody looking at this? Well, they did when Marcia got sick.
(38:24):
Little Marchia is nine years old. It's March nineteen fifty
eight and a Jett's daughter gets sick in the restaurant.
It is so sad she's hospitalized with hallucinations and her
kidneys shutting down. What does that tell a doctor at
(38:46):
that point in time?
Speaker 1 (38:47):
Joe, Well, it didn't tell them arsenic for whatever reason.
I can't understand. I think from when and again, you
don't know how many of these physicians had the history
to rely upon too. We're kind of looking at this
(39:08):
in our rearview mirror. So you've got this succession of husbands,
You've got a mother in law. Was it the same
clinical staff that had treated the other people to put
two and two together. The one central figure though, Dave
in this that I still cannot wrap my brain around
is corner. How could the corner make a determination because
(39:33):
they did a corner what they used to refer to
as a corner's in quest?
Speaker 2 (39:37):
What actually is I've heard the term used many times.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
It's kind of a formalized term to mean that the
corner is doing an investigation. I think that it's it's
kind of a media thing that they used to do. Oh,
the corners involved, Well, yeah, anybody that dies particularly acutely,
there's going to be an inquest by the corner. But
you know, corners also many people don't understand this. They
(40:01):
can panel a corner's jury. They actually paneled a corner's
jury with Bonnie and Clyde. Yeah, I know, right, didn't
know that. For those who didn't know that, I just
saw the expressional day's space and you have a jury
of people that are impaneled because corner does have judicial authority.
And so going back, that's another story for another time.
(40:25):
They're very powerful. People really don't understand that. Next to
the sheriff. Matter of fact, in many places, if the
sheriff is removed from office, the corner replaces the sheriff.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
You know what quick funny story Alabama several years ago
in Walker County, Alabama, home city of Jasper, You know
how we get those calls that come in scam calls
and where somebody there was a scam for a while
where people somebody would call you and say, you know,
you've got a warrant for your arrest and you have
to pay five hundred dollars or whatever and do it
(40:59):
right now, or we're gonna We're knocking on your door.
We're coming to get you. If you don't do it
right now, we're gonna arrest you. And the flim Flammers
actually made the mistake of calling the county sheriff, the
Walker County sheriff, and he gets on the phone and
he says, well, I'll tell you what, son, go ahead
and pick up the county corner because he's the only
one that can arrest me.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
Yep, that's right, yeah, we and I don't again. Going
far field. In New Orleans, the sheriff, who has to
be served with papers cannot serve themselves. Corner investigator would
go over and serve the sheriff papers. Wow in civil
civil things and all that sort of thing. So wow, yeah.
(41:40):
But the one combon denominator is that the bib County corner,
because this is in making, is located in Bibb County, Georgia.
One famous person we know in common that is from
Bibb County is NaNs Grace, by the way, And so
they he would rule these that it was just some
(42:02):
kind of non specific natural disease that had gotten them,
and I think like gastro into ritis was at the
top of the list, you know, throughout all of this,
And I think back to the husband, the second husband
being tied to the bed, and I'm thinking, dude, how
(42:23):
can you look at this and not not want to
delve further if for no other reason, not necessarily you're
thinking homicide. You're thinking, my god, is this guy a
public health risk? Because I'm thinking if he's exposed to something,
and I'm a servant of the people, I don't want
everybody else to be, you know, exposed to this as well.
(42:45):
And then you have the mother in law that dies
again pretty quickly. And one of the things with arsenic
Dave is that it screws up the rhythm of your
heart as well. And so you've got someone like Julia
who's an advanced age by this point in tom, it's
(43:05):
not necessarily surprising that she died. If she's if she
is exposed to arsenic, then in in her in her world,
her death might happen relatively quicker because she's already compromised physically,
just simply based on age. Okay, but when you get
to Marcia and this precious little girl, how do you
(43:30):
how do you actually explain that?
Speaker 2 (43:32):
Man? Well, it was actually an anonymous letter. They didn't
have it explained. They didn't have an answer. All the
medical people, i'm sure were talking about it, but it
actually came down to an anonymous letter from an employee
of the restaurant that actually had his or her fill
and actually sent a letter to the coroner. And in
(43:54):
that letter, the employee noted that a Jett kept poison
at the restaurant. Not uncommon to have ant poison in
a restaurant. However, there's arsenic in this ant poison terry
and terror ant poison, yep. And so that was what
the employee wrote to the corner, and the corner then went, hey,
(44:16):
wait a minute, now, would that be, like, I'm not
knocking anyone. I don't know what it would take. I
mean to come to that conclusion independently, But at that
point it was the anonymous letter that actually went ding
ding ding light is on.
Speaker 1 (44:30):
Yeah, well, you begin to string these together. And here's
another little insight, you know, and I kind of mentioned
this earlier. The person that wrote this letter was an
African American lady that worked in the restaurant. She didn't
sign her name to it. And here's why because if
she had. If she had, then they would have dismissed her.
(44:55):
Because she's an African American lady in the nineteen fifties
making these accusations toward a prominent white lady. And so
this is a brilliant move on the part. I can
only imagine how terrified she was because she's born witness
(45:15):
to the black candle thing. She's actually knows that the
she understands the kind of the timeline here. She's born
witness to all of these people dying. You begin to
think about those kids too. You know. It's not one
(45:38):
of my favorite restaurants that I've was actually here in Jacksonville.
It's no longer open. It was owned by Greek family
and it had been around for years and years. It
was on the square in Jacksonville. It was a pizza joint,
but they also served meeting three. The thing that was
so charming to me about the restaurant is that they
brought all of their children to work with them. They
(46:00):
even had play pens in there with toys. It didn't
bother me at all. As a matter of fact, it
was kind of endearing. The grandmother was always in the
restaurant and she was speaking in Greek, and they were
just really sweet people. I missed that restaurant. They're always there.
They're part of the fabric of this environment. So these
kitchen workers would have seen those two little girls in
(46:23):
this environment. You know, they get out of school, they
come to the restaurant. Julia is there in the restaurant
every single day. So they have a different perspective than
somebody that's just kind of coming and going. Even if
the corner which he probably did, had come in to
eat meals there. And what this led to was they
(46:45):
had to get orders of exhamation and go back and
disenter these bodies.
Speaker 2 (46:53):
And that's not an easy thing to do, is it.
Speaker 1 (46:55):
No it's not. Yeah, and judges are notorious for not
wanting to crack up graves. It is if you've never
been involved in it, folks, it is you're moving heaven
and hell in order to convince this judge that is
in the community's best interest and the legal system's best
(47:16):
interest to crack open a grave and take out a body.
First off, most people that are, you know, not around
the dead like I am, they find it abhorrent, okay,
and it's something that's that's not done. You know. You
think about again, going back in time, you think about
Tammy Dabell. They had to have her exhumed, and we've
(47:40):
had a number of cases like these. But David, the
thing about it is with arsenic poisoning, the one thing
that you look for in arsenic poisoning is you're going
to do sampling from multiple locations in the body. Even
after a body has been embalmed, you can still pick
up on it. Because it's a heavy metal. It will
(48:03):
actually go into You'll find it in the hair, You'll
find it in the nails.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
And one of the answer in the fingernail test, yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:12):
Yeah, And so you look at that and the nails
themselves developed these weird kind of horizontal lines on them
that you know, and if your clinician, you don't think
about that. I've been in the hospital a couple of
times in my life. I don't ever remember a physician
or a nurse saying, let me see your fingernails. It's
(48:34):
just like, well, here, you know, here, doc, look on
my fingers. It's not something they commonly do. But Dave,
as a result of the exhamation, they were able to
go to a jet's home and not only did they
have this and it's called tarot ant poisoning companies still
in existence today. Back then they were putting arsenic in
(49:02):
the ant poisoning and for fifty years now arsenic is foreboden.
But back then it was everywhere day, it was everywhere.
It was part of pest control. You had rats in
the barn, you put out arsenic, you had ants, You
just sprinkle the taro around, they come and eat it,
put a little sugar with it, and you got dead
ants at this point in time. And so they went
(49:24):
to her home. Not only did they find more of
the ant poison at home, guess what else they found, Well,
they found all kinds of objects connected with voodoo there
as well inside of her home. The way this case
kind of spun out was it was a real show
(49:45):
in the courtroom, Dave. You had multiple people in this
case because of Lyle's restaurant that had to recuse themselves
because they knew an jail, they knew her, and they
couldn't you know, they couldn't involve themselves in case. Can
you imagine, I mean, the sheriff, The sheriff ate regularly there,
the da ate regularly there. The judges, one of whom
(50:09):
was distantly related to a Jet, had to accuse themself.
He was a state district judge said I can't be
a part of this because she's kin to me.
Speaker 2 (50:19):
Dave, Right, that's just unbelievable. But when everything is said
and done, Joe, I'm still shocked that Marcia, at nine
years old, was dead. And a month after that when
they it took a month. And this is kind of
quick in my book, because after Marsh's passing the letter,
(50:40):
anonymous letter arrives, they get the exhamation and when and
Jet is actually in the hospital being treated for vericas veins,
which I don't know what they did back then to
treat vericas veins. But she was in the hospital for
that and that's where they arrested her. They arrested and
Jet at the hospital and charged her with murder.
Speaker 1 (51:00):
And I think she made one of her initial court
appearances in a wheelchair. You know, we talking about trying
to trying to get sympathy vote here. But here's what's fascinating, Dave.
And Jet was actually tried by jury of her peers
and she was found guilty. She had the death penalty
(51:25):
imposed upon her. And I think back to those workers
in that restaurant. If one of them had committed a
crime like this, and I'm thinking one of these African
American women that worked there, the local constabulary, the judicial system,
and the governor himself would not have given it a
(51:46):
second thought of putting them on death row. But the
governor famously said that that he's not going to be
a part of a white woman being executed because I
got to tell you, regardless of how you feel about
the death penalty, she deserved it. I Mean, when you
(52:07):
think about the pain and suffering that people went through,
and the exposure as well, when can you imagine the
chill that would go up and down your spine you're thinking,
I ate there on a regular basis. This woman is
poisoning the food she's taken at the hospital to continue
the poisoning. How many other people were exposed well in
her world. She winds up going to prison and at
(52:31):
some point in time, Dave and this is fascinating, they
declare her to be insane. And Georgia had this infamous
hospital for the criminally insane that was located in Millersville,
and Militville, Georgia is like the main interest, the main industry.
There used to be prisons. There were multiple prisons in
(52:54):
the town, and they had this place that was notorious
to treat the criminally insane. As a matter of fact,
when we were kids, you know, a slur that you
could direct at somebody as a child would be, man,
you need to be in Millageville, and you just kind
of understood that in Louisiana was you need to be
in Jackson. And so you know, those things creep up.
(53:16):
But and yet wound up dying in this place in Militiville,
Georgia in nineteen seventy seven. Interestingly enough, the last prison
job she had she worked in the kitchen. I'm Joseph
(53:39):
Scott Morgan and this is body backed
Quality dunts, but Joseph's gotten more being a Southerner. People
will say, well, why do you continue to live in
Oh There's any number of reasons. Climate, I love the people.
I've had opportunities to live elsewhere. But one of the
(00:23):
things that I think kind of anchors not just myself
but many of us down here, it's food. And yeah,
it's the food that's before you when you're eating, but
it's also the fact that so much of our life
is tied up in food. I guess many people could
say that, but we make a I don't know, a
(00:45):
big deal out of just the preparation. We're not big
on excluding people from our kitchens while we're preparing things.
Being from Louisiana in particular, you're taught from a young
age how to cook, and in my opinion, I probably
make one of the best gumbows around. I take a
(01:05):
lot of pride in my room.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
But you know, food.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Is a pathway. It's a pathway to deliver nutrition, it's
a pathway to fellowship with those that you love, but
many times it could be a pathway to death. I'm
(01:33):
Joseph Scott Morgan and this is bodybags Dave. Unfortunately, you
and I over the past I guess fourteen months, have
spent more time than we care to mention at hospitals.
(01:54):
And there was a time, and I remember from my
childildhood where after church on Sundays we would go to
eat at the hospital in the cafeteria and there was
that sounds weird, but in our town the food at
the hospital cafeteria was fantastic. But yeah, I know, right,
(02:17):
but weird.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
It is weird.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
And I can't say that for all hospitals, but I
think hospital food is notorious for being really bad, particularly
if you're a patient, and if you're in a room
with somebody that you're sitting by their bedside for hours
and they're not eating their food, you begin to pick
at their trade because you know you don't have time
(02:42):
to leave and all those sort of things, and it's
absolutely horrible. I don't know if too many ways you
can actually improve it, because they tell you they're they're
feeding you the food in order for you to feel better.
I never really felt better after I eat the food.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
See, I thought you going to go with the after
church going to the hospital for visitation. I didn't know
it was because that was the nice restaurant, you know,
very cool.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
My family wasn't big on visits. I'm sick.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Well, you know, it's interesting how as you and I
were looking at this story and it brought about other
stories that we were talking about, which we will now
include into our list of upcoming shows. But today's story
of and Jet is that how you pronounced her name?
And Jet Lyles? Jet? Yeah, I'd never seen that name before, yea.
And anyway, and Jet Lyles is a woman who born
(03:37):
in nineteen twenty five into an upper middle class family
in Georgia, the Making area, and grows up normal, you know,
or whatever we pass for normal in the South. And
she's about twenty two years old when she meets and
(03:58):
Mary's Ben, Ben is a World War Two veteran. They
get married in nineteen forty seven, and the Lyles family
owns a restaurant in downtown Macon, very popular family restaurant.
And so Ben is there and he's now the head,
(04:18):
you know, he's in charge of the restaurant. And he's
been known to toss a few back adult beverages and
to gamble a little bit. Now and Jet and Ben
have not been married that long, and I know that
back then things were a little different in how we
went about getting married and having children at the ages
(04:40):
you know. Now we would look at somebody in their
early twenties having children as wow, they're young, you know,
But back then it was not that uncommon. And so
very early on in the relationship they have children. Their
first daughter is born shortly after they get married, and
after she is I'm guessing potty training hect I don't know,
(05:02):
but she and Jett ends up working in the restaurant
with Ben with her husband, and so they're working together,
married a couple of years, and right as and Jet
has their second child, Marcia, Ben decides to sell the restaurant,
and Ben sells it for below market value and doesn't
(05:25):
consult with a Jet before he does that. And the
reason he does is because he's in Hawk to the
to the Sharks. He's made some bad gambling decisions apparently,
And we're not casting as versions on the man's character.
It's just the reality of what happened, apparently. So Ben
sells the family style restaurant, pays the gambling debt, and
(05:48):
Jet is mad, and so here we go. It is
now December nineteen fifty one. Ben starts to get very
very sick, very fast. He ends up in the hospital.
Doctors don't know what's going on, can't figure out why
is this man sick. A month or so after he's
in the hospital, January twenty fifth, nineteen fifty two, Ben
(06:12):
Lyles dies. Now, Joe, you're a history guy, and I'm
feel confident in asking you this. Was it an uncommon
occurrence for somebody to die in the hospital in the
early fifties and have doctors not be able to figure
out what killed them.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
I don't know how common it was. I don't think that.
And listen, this the information we're about to get off
into is when you begin to think about the diagnostic
testing that we have today heir to what they had
back then. And this is what has always fascinated me
(06:54):
about the Lyles cases. It doesn't require it doesn't require
you to even draw blood or to take urine to
run through a toxicology screen. There is symptomology that manifests
(07:16):
itself externally on these people's bodies. And so, you know,
you look at an individual as a physician and pretty
quickly you begin to kind of try to understand, well,
first off, why are they having this gastro intestinal discomfort,
(07:37):
can't keep any food down, and they're having severe diarrhea,
terrible abdominal pain. They've got these very non specific rashes
all over their body. There's change in their pallor, which
is a term. It's kind of an old term, but physicians,
(08:00):
even pathologists will use it, and it's the color of
the skin. They kind of current turned like a gray color.
You'll have people that are in talk about historic, historic perspective.
There's an old term, and I love this term. They'd
say they were adult. Adult means that you're kind of
(08:21):
acting like a lunatic. And it's it's all part of
the symptomology of a bigger picture, particularly when you begin
to get these in clusters. One person though, I can
see early on because this man died in the early
(08:44):
fifties and he would only be the first in a succession.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Of deaths and you don't know what's coming. So just
in an isolated incident, you've got a fairly young man, yeah,
and you know, married like kids, and all of a sudden,
very quick illness, I mean dies in d goes into
the hospital in December with this. As you mentioned, a
lot of different symptoms and is dead a month later.
(09:12):
It's not a long time to really diagnose what's going on,
because don't in the hospital when you're dealing with this,
I mean, we're looking at it with hindsight. Would they
be looking at each symptom alone and saying, well, this
can bring on this type of gastro intestinal distress, and
this can bring on a rash, this can bring on
(09:35):
a fever. I mean, is that how they're looking at
this then, or are they looking at it in totality?
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Yeah, they're they're trying to you know, they're what they're
doing is they're they're checking off a list and they
have a list that you know, in the kind of
cluster cluster these things together, and they'll say, well, he's
having these. I think one of the most striking things
is probably going to be the skin responses when you
(10:01):
begin to see this bloody rash that comes up, you know,
all over people. Uh. Sometimes you'll even see changes, you know,
in the palms of the hands, that sort of thing,
and skin the skin will begin to present uh with
(10:23):
they some some people that have these presentations on their skin, DAVE.
In a clinical standpoint, clinical perspective, they'll have to be
strapped to the bed so they don't scratch themselves.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Yeah, it's it's a horrific kind of kind of uh presentation.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Is that something that still goes on now?
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Yeah? Yeah, And you know, I'll be very specific here. Uh,
I don't feel like I'm bearing the lead, but we're
talking about arsenic and rs think is is has been
known to man, you know, for I don't know, three
four thousand years, and it's a naturally occurring standalone element.
(11:06):
It's on the elemental chart. It's something that has been mined.
And as a matter of fact, I think it may
have been the Romans that used it to blend it
with copper in order to strengthen copper and because they
could mine it in one of their territories, you know,
if they came across it. But even back then, Dave,
(11:27):
they they recognized that the people that were working in
the minds were presenting with with symptomology and they would die.
They would die. And even the Romans, you know, we
think of them in a very brutal sense, they shut
(11:49):
the minds. Now, they were like, we've got to find
something else in order to blend with copper to make
it stronger and so they walked away from it. It
has it's been known to be a toxic substance forever,
and it's not just in like the Near East or Europe.
(12:11):
I'm always fascinated by this because from you know, you're
taking a long view of this, the stuffs had, the
same thing is happening in the Far East as well.
The Chinese knew about it and they have, uh you know,
the Chinese are very impressive with their written history. It
goes back much further, I think than even Western history
(12:34):
in many circumstances as far as how they wrote things down,
and they've got you know, they've got examples of arsenic
poisoning going back, you know, a thousand years, thousands of years,
and so it's been around for a long time, and
it's it's something that has been used in industry over
(12:55):
the years, but primarily primarily arsenic has been used in
the most recent sense as a pesticide. David, I think
(13:22):
that probably if someone wanted to kill somebody in the
most stealthy way possible so that they could try to
get away with it. Poison for many I think is
at the top of the list. You know, poisoners are
(13:43):
interesting compared to all other killers out there. There was
a there was something I read not too long ago
talking about the personality of someone that prefers to poison
and one of the lines and it was they come
to you with a smile, but they leave death in
(14:07):
their wake, and you never see them coming. And it's
the stealth nature of it. The trick, I think, is
how do you get access to an individual to apply
something that's going to be toxic in their system? And
with a jad Lyles even though Ben had sold this restaurant,
(14:28):
and by the way, Ben's mama worked there as well
in the wake of Ben's death, and Jet kept working
at the restaurant, and by all accounts, she was a
real floor show if you will. She's kind of bombastic.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
Yeah, and you've got a big personality and likes to be.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Big personality, likes to flirt. She's got platinum blonde hair.
Think of kind of a you are set in Marilyn Monroe.
You know how the women would kind of I think
they called it bobbing their hair, and it was it
was short, but it was like when you saw it
was striking. You know, she was a striking And they
(15:14):
talked about her where she would warmly greet everybody that
came into the restaurant, throw their arms, throw arms around
them and hug them and sit and just engage engage
with people. You know what's really fascinating about the Lyles Restaurant, Dave,
is that if you ever go to Macon's kind of
(15:36):
an interesting little town. I'm a fan of it because
Votis Reading and the Almond Brothers, but making in and
of itself, aside from its musical heritage, it's an interesting
little town that's tried to rebound several times. But going
down the main street, and literally the main street is
(15:58):
the name of one of my favorite Doctor Seuss books
when I was a little is Mulberry Street. I think
the name of the book it was called I can't
believe it, or it happened on Mulberry Street or something
like that. But on Mulberry Street sat the Lyles Restaurant,
and guests take a guess where it was positioned across
(16:18):
the street from no clue the county courthouse. So back then,
during the fifties, during the fifties, there was no such
thing as drive through food. McDonald's was at some point
in time was just starting up in some place that
(16:41):
was far far away from making Georgia. So if you
were going to go out to eat, and back then,
going out to eat was a big deal. Across the
street from the courthouse, when they'd go on break, the judges,
the lawyers, probably even defendants, they come in to Anget's
(17:04):
restaurant and they would they would eat. And we've got
a couple of these places around where we live, Dave.
They're generally carthouse cafe. Yeah, very well that they're called
what's the term. I'm probably gonna get a meat in three,
I think that's what it's. Where you get you get
a meat of some kind, whether it's cube steak, you know,
(17:27):
country fried steak, mashed potatoes, lima beans and black eyed
peas or collars or something like that. So you get
one big hunk of fried protein, and then you get
vegetables along with it. And these are still prevalent around
these parts. I can't speak to the rest of it.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
And I still put those vegetables on the side of
my plate next to the napkins, and nobody can see
I didn't eat them. I hate those things. But you
know you mentioned that that and Jack continued working, you know,
at the restaurant after Ben's passing, and she's there with
her mother in law. And by the way, remember now
her mother in law Julia Lyles, Ben's mom. Well that's
(18:05):
the grandmother t and Jet's little girls, you know. So
there's a real connection here now and Jet. After the
death of Ben, and Jet moves in with her parents
for a couple of years while she continues working and
saving her money. Now, remember Ben sold the restaurant and
(18:27):
sold it fronder market value. And Jet was very clever
in that she saved money and learned all she could
about the restaurant business. And after a couple of years
she buys it back. And Jet buys back. This is
not a common thing to have happen with women in
the South in the fifties. This is not your normal thing.
(18:49):
And she's very cagy in that. As soon as she does.
You know, the first thing, she hires back Ben's mom,
her mother in law, Julia, because she wanted to attract
some of the old Lyle's restaurant crowd that remembered Julia.
So she brings her back and there they are now
and Jet and Julia working together in the restaurant and
(19:11):
it's everything's going fine. People really like her. You mentioned
that she's got that big personality, always hugging people when
they come in and saying hello. And after a jet
is in control of the restaurant, she meets a guy
named Buddy Gabbert. Now Buddy was a pilot and he
(19:31):
had been going there for a while, to the restaurant,
and he and a jet strike up a friendship and
end up, you know, I guess casually dating. I'm sure
she was very busy with work and the girls. But
she announces, and jet does they're going on vacation. She
and Buddy are going to take a vacation and when
she comes back.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Wait, hang on back during that time too, she's not
married to him. This would have been very scandalous.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Way I was going to ask you how that How
you thought that played out, because I didn't want to
blow past it. But I thought, am I the one
thinking it's a big deal?
Speaker 1 (20:05):
No? How did they position the Yeah they're not married,
they're going to Yeah, I can tell you the board
of deacons gonna be talking about this.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Well, they go on this vacation, and I can hear
the preamble is, well, we've got separate hotel rooms and
separate every you know, but we're going together. But anyway
you look at it. When they came back from vacation,
they announced, Hey, we got married. So now Buddy and
and Jet are married. So here we are. We're now
(20:34):
in nineteen fifty five. Now remember her husband Ben sold
the restaurant to settle a gambling debt in nineteen fifty one.
He then dies after a month long illness between December
and January and nineteen fifty two. So we're a couple
of years down the road. She's bought the restaurant back
and her mom, her mother in law, works there with her.
(20:57):
She gets married to Buddy Gabbert. Well that's in July
of nineteen fifty five when they go on vacation and
return married. A couple of months later October nineteen fifty five,
Buddy has minor surgery. Oh I need to add this.
Buddy is a pilot and he's gone a lot. He
travels a lot, and so there were some rumors flying
(21:17):
around town about a Jet and her flirty personality. Okay,
I'll leave it at that. You guys fill in the blanks.
Buddy comes back and he has his minor surgery in October,
and when he goes home to convalesce after the surgery,
he develops a fever and then a rash that covers
(21:38):
his entire body. Joe, this is October nineteen fifty five,
and doctors they can't figure out what's going on. I'm
going to ask you a very specific question. Sure, in
nineteen fifty five, what would they have been testing for
with those types of symptoms fever and rash?
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Yeah, fever and rash. Back then, they would have thought.
The first thing they would have thought about is probably
exposure to something, something that is going to present with
I don't know, for lack of better terms, some kind
of dermatitis. Now, the trick is to try to understand
is this something like most people have heard of a
(22:22):
there's a term called contact dermatitis, Like if you touch
something okay with you know, your hand, or you brush
up against something, you'll get kind of a focal area
of your body that will be impacted by whatever agent
it is you've come in contact with, and sometimes it
can spread. That's the first thing you know, because I
(22:45):
still this is a parlism. My grandmother one of her
favorite things to say back then, is if you if
you had a rash or you know, you would you
know there was something going on with you. She'd say, boy,
what have you gotten in to? You know so, and
so that's that's one of the things. You know, you're
kind of thinking about here as from a diagnostic standpoint,
(23:09):
But you have to account for the fever, all right.
Just because you have a contact dermatitis doesn't mean that
you're going to be presenting in a fibrill state. It's
just it's not going to not going to Those two
things don't match up. So then you turn to, well,
is this some kind of internal internal thing that's going
(23:32):
on and it's manifesting externally now along with this, if
I'm not mistaken, he again, like his predecessor, the first husband,
had horrible gastro intestinal discomfort and it's they would have
diagnosed it as gastro entritis back then. And again another
(23:55):
it's very kind of nonspecific. A lot of the symptom
homology with this is non specific. But when you're maintaining
in in that state and you're declining and they're hanging
ivs on you, and they've got everybody and their brother
coming in to take a look at you. It's not
(24:18):
surprising that they would miss common signs that might be
associated with arson arsen.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Well, they're not thinking that, right, I mean, you're not
a nobody.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
I mean, nobody's thinking that when it's it's always I
try to cut medical staff a lot of slack because
there are people that present at hospitals all the time
and they will suddenly die. Clinicians are not Clinicians are
(24:47):
not looking at a patient and thinking with a forensic mind.
They're they're thinking with a clinician's mind, with a healer's mind,
what do I have to do to get this person
from point A to point B? And so they're going
down a checklist. Trust me, arsenic is not popping up
(25:10):
on the radar. That's just not something that you think.
It's the old adage about you know, you might have
that one person that when they hear hoof beats they
think camel as opposed to horses. But they're an outlier,
to say the very least from a diagnostic standpoint. One
(25:31):
of the interesting things about and Jet is that she
made a fuss over everybody in her family that gets sick.
And when you kind of dig into the mind of
someone that might be poisoning someone. You want to get
(25:56):
that kind of and particularly if you're going for the
sympathy vote. I'll look at her. They just have gotten married,
they're just starting their life. She's got these she's a widow,
she's got these two little girls that lost their daddy.
She's taking care of her former husband's mother in law.
(26:17):
What this lady, this lady is she's going to be
declared a saint, right And so every day when any
of these family members wind up presenting with any kind
of symptomology, she's there. She's there at their bedside. Dave. Now,
(26:38):
when you put that in perspective, that's chilling, because at
the end of the day, having a jet Lyles adjacent
to your bedside was kind of the equivalent of having
the specter of death with their scythe hanging over their shoes,
(27:00):
older sitting. You know, when you read the Bible, there's
one there's one individual in a Bible that always comes
(27:23):
to mind when you're going through hard times, and that's Job.
You don't want to sit there and say I'm just
like Job. Nobody can be just like Job. You would
not wish that, well, I don't know some folks might
wish that on their worst enemy. I wouldn't when you
think about and it's, you know, part of our vernacular
we say the trials of I'm going through the trials
(27:44):
of job. A lot of people don't understand that. But
when you're surrounded by family members that are dying left
and right and you're still trying to struggle, I think
spiritual standpoint, any folks will look up to the heavens
and shake their fists and say, you know, why are
(28:05):
you allowing this to happen to me? And wasn't the
case with a jet Lyaeleso, She continued to Sally Forth Dave,
and you know, put on the put on the face
of being a strong independent woman running the restaurant, taking
care of her family. And now you've got second second husband.
(28:27):
That's you know, one foot in the grave and one
foot on a banana peel.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Well, you know, it's interesting that as we look at this,
you know, it's very condenced period of time, you know,
from getting married in nineteen forty seven to having children,
the restaurant, selling, the restaurant, husband dies. I mean, there's
a lot going on in this woman's life in a
very very short window of time, and I think about
(28:51):
those two girls being raised in that environment of what
it must have been like. But after the death, y'all
know that. I mean, obviously Buddy died after a very
brief illness. Now he had that surgery in October of
nineteen fifty five and home convalescing by the end of
the month. So he's sick in November, and on December
(29:13):
second Buddy dies. So he's got a five or six
week recovery period and death.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
So let me just interject to Buddy's death was miserable.
It was miserable. And this is you remember Dave how
was saying second ago, being tied to the bed. Yeah
that in his particular instance, they had to restrain his arms.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Can you imagine because of the rash?
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Yeah, yeah, And you know it's bad enough. You know,
if you're if you've got stomach discomfort, which he would
have had tremendous stomach discomfort coming out, as they say,
coming out of both ends, anything that you ingest, you
would and plush your your itching all over your What
(30:01):
a horrible way. And this this misery lasted for this
particular period of time. But my understanding that a jet
was the one constant in this universe. She was always
coming to take care of him. And well, yes, kind
of a portent of things to come. Buddy didn't eat
(30:22):
hospital food. He ate food from the restaurant.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
Right, we know, ninety days after they get married, think
about that, Joe you're talking about. They go on a
vacation and come back married in July, and ninety days later, Buddy,
you know, has this minor surgery that turns into death
by December twod that's a that is a whirl wind
of highs and lows. So after Buddy's death and Jet
(30:54):
changes her name back to Lyles, that was kind of
interesting to me. It really did make me one her. Well,
anyway you look at it, she did it. And she
also collected some insurance money and in town the size
of making when you're running a restaurant in downtown where
you meet everybody and talk to everybody. Well, and Jet
(31:14):
bought herself a brand new Cadillac and bought a new
house and moved her mother in law, Julia, into the
home with her. I'll take care of the client. Yes,
look at this woman, she's taking care of everybody. And
now Julia the grandma gets to be there to help
take care of the children. This is what we just
need to go ahead and make a statue of a
(31:36):
Jet right now and put it downtown and you know.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
On mulber Street.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Yeah, right there. And well, the thing is is that
after Julia, the mother in law, moves in with and Jet,
they didn't get along. And I'm thinking, now, I mean,
here we are. It's a lot much different time than
it was in the nineteen fifties. Not getting along with
your mother in law seems like like there could be
(32:01):
a fix, you know, move her out, but she doesn't.
Instead of trying to rectify the situation, and Jet tries
to get Julia to write out a new will. You
need a will, Julia, you need a will. Now, I'm
gonna be honest with you. Joe, somebody who's got a
couple of dead people in their recent past is telling
you to get a will. Yeah, I'm thinking there's got
(32:25):
to be an apartment somewhere I can rent, you know.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
Or maybe you have a pause and say, wow, and
Jet's really proactive. Yeah, it all depends on how you
look at it.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Wow. Well there was also you know, there are a
couple of things being talked about about and Jet at
the hospital. At the restaurant, the workers said that, you know,
they were a little weirded out by her some black magic,
voodoo type stuff. And in a town the size of
Making Georgia, if you're talking to black candles when nobody
(32:58):
you think nobody's looking, that's going to get a I
mean it will.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
And let me tell you one more thing about that.
The employees, and this really plays a big part in this.
The employees at this restaurant that work behind the counter,
we're all African American, Okay, so generationally, generationally better than
(33:21):
let's say, the white folks out there, they understood kind
of this ominous thing that's going on with her in
black black candles because they've seen it. They've seen it,
they talk about it. It's not something that the white
community necessarily talks about. In the African American community, though,
this is something that's real. And I experienced this in
(33:44):
New Orleans because down there you actually do have a
voodoo culture that is real. Wow, it doesn't matter if
you believe in it or not. They believe in it.
You also have Santa Rio as well, and a lot
of this stuff comes about the Caribbean. It goes back
generations even you know, during the slave era and this
sort of thing when things are brought over and practiced.
(34:06):
You know, all you have to do is just go
to the go to the east of Making and wind
up in Savannah and midnight in the garden of Good
and Evil. And you know, uh, voodoo played played a
large part in that case. And someday we're going to
cover that case.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
Actually witch trial. You know, the sailing witch trials had Titchuba.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
The exactly and she was from the Islands, I think
that's the way they referred to her as. And she
was a servant.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
So you know, if you're if you're an African American
and it's in the fifties in the Deep South, because
you are in the heap South and you are dependent
upon the white folks to provide your living, you're going
to keep your mouth shut because you never know how
it's going to wind up for you. You know you're going
(34:57):
to be out on the bricks and you're not going
to have a job any more. But can you imagine
you're sitting there in this woman, this bombastic woman with
the blonde hair who's driving a caddy is in the
back room and she's got a black candle and she
lights it and they'll see her whispering to the candle.
(35:22):
And that's enough to terrify anybody. And let me tell
you one more thing. They have proof in their eyes
because she's driving a big white Cadillac through town. You
might not know this day about making, but making Georgia.
The main industry in making Georgia back then were textile
(35:43):
mills and cotton, and so people that lived in making.
You had very few people that were really wealthy. Most people,
if they had a car, would come to town and
they would be driving an old truck or an old
beat up car. You've got this bombastic woman with stark
(36:05):
white hair that's riding around in a caddie. You're gonna
she's gonna draw attention the people that knew about kind
of the voodoo element here that are watching her. Can
you imagine it's really easy to put two and two together.
You think that because of her whispering to the candle,
(36:27):
because of her involvement in this, she's now experiencing wealth.
She's able to This is a woman in the fifties
that is recovering from the loss of a husband. Two
husbands and all of a sudden, these great riches fall
into her lap. Well, you know, to me, this is
like being at the crossroads in Mississippi and somebody signed
(36:50):
to deal.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
With the devil. Wow. I actually did look up Little
Richard Tenneman came from Making Joy and worked at a
restaurant in nightclub there. It was called tiktoks I think,
or tick tacked. But anyway, I was. I was in
my back of my head when you were talking about
how and Jet actually had employed African Americans. You know,
(37:14):
I thought, well, I wonder if little Richard was there.
You know, it wasn't, but I was looking it up
just in case. But Joe, after the death of her
second husband and moving in her mother in law, Julia
into her home, they don't get along, and all of
a sudden, Julia becomes sick. It's now nineteen fifty seven.
She went and Jet did the entire year of nineteen
(37:35):
fifty six without anyone close to her dying that we're
aware of. And I'm sure she, you know, was celebrating, Oh,
bad times were over. Well maybe that's what people thought,
because in nineteen fifty seven, Julia becomes ill. She's hospitalized
and dies September twenty ninth, and nobody knows why, don't
know what happened. She got sick and died. Holy moly, So, Joe,
(38:00):
as they're doing what they had done previously, doctors don't
mean they're got to think at some point somebody's going
to look at this and go, hey man, we got
three adults dead in what a five six year period
of time. Who's what's the common denominator? I mean, is
nobody looking at this? Well, they did when Marcia got sick.
(38:24):
Little Marchia is nine years old. It's March nineteen fifty
eight and a Jett's daughter gets sick in the restaurant.
It is so sad she's hospitalized with hallucinations and her
kidneys shutting down. What does that tell a doctor at
(38:46):
that point in time?
Speaker 1 (38:47):
Joe, Well, it didn't tell them arsenic for whatever reason.
I can't understand. I think from when and again, you
don't know how many of these physicians had the history
to rely upon too. We're kind of looking at this
(39:08):
in our rearview mirror. So you've got this succession of husbands,
You've got a mother in law. Was it the same
clinical staff that had treated the other people to put
two and two together. The one central figure though, Dave
in this that I still cannot wrap my brain around
is corner. How could the corner make a determination because
(39:33):
they did a corner what they used to refer to
as a corner's in quest?
Speaker 2 (39:37):
What actually is I've heard the term used many times.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
It's kind of a formalized term to mean that the
corner is doing an investigation. I think that it's it's
kind of a media thing that they used to do. Oh,
the corners involved, Well, yeah, anybody that dies particularly acutely,
there's going to be an inquest by the corner. But
you know, corners also many people don't understand this. They
(40:01):
can panel a corner's jury. They actually paneled a corner's
jury with Bonnie and Clyde. Yeah, I know, right, didn't
know that. For those who didn't know that, I just
saw the expressional day's space and you have a jury
of people that are impaneled because corner does have judicial authority.
And so going back, that's another story for another time.
(40:25):
They're very powerful. People really don't understand that. Next to
the sheriff. Matter of fact, in many places, if the
sheriff is removed from office, the corner replaces the sheriff.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
You know what quick funny story Alabama several years ago
in Walker County, Alabama, home city of Jasper, You know
how we get those calls that come in scam calls
and where somebody there was a scam for a while
where people somebody would call you and say, you know,
you've got a warrant for your arrest and you have
to pay five hundred dollars or whatever and do it
(40:59):
right now, or we're gonna We're knocking on your door.
We're coming to get you. If you don't do it
right now, we're gonna arrest you. And the flim Flammers
actually made the mistake of calling the county sheriff, the
Walker County sheriff, and he gets on the phone and
he says, well, I'll tell you what, son, go ahead
and pick up the county corner because he's the only
one that can arrest me.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
Yep, that's right, yeah, we and I don't again. Going
far field. In New Orleans, the sheriff, who has to
be served with papers cannot serve themselves. Corner investigator would
go over and serve the sheriff papers. Wow in civil
civil things and all that sort of thing. So wow, yeah.
(41:40):
But the one combon denominator is that the bib County corner,
because this is in making, is located in Bibb County, Georgia.
One famous person we know in common that is from
Bibb County is NaNs Grace, by the way, And so
they he would rule these that it was just some
(42:02):
kind of non specific natural disease that had gotten them,
and I think like gastro into ritis was at the
top of the list, you know, throughout all of this,
And I think back to the husband, the second husband
being tied to the bed, and I'm thinking, dude, how
(42:23):
can you look at this and not not want to
delve further if for no other reason, not necessarily you're
thinking homicide. You're thinking, my god, is this guy a
public health risk? Because I'm thinking if he's exposed to something,
and I'm a servant of the people, I don't want
everybody else to be, you know, exposed to this as well.
(42:45):
And then you have the mother in law that dies
again pretty quickly. And one of the things with arsenic
Dave is that it screws up the rhythm of your
heart as well. And so you've got someone like Julia
who's an advanced age by this point in tom, it's
(43:05):
not necessarily surprising that she died. If she's if she
is exposed to arsenic, then in in her in her world,
her death might happen relatively quicker because she's already compromised physically,
just simply based on age. Okay, but when you get
to Marcia and this precious little girl, how do you
(43:30):
how do you actually explain that?
Speaker 2 (43:32):
Man? Well, it was actually an anonymous letter. They didn't
have it explained. They didn't have an answer. All the
medical people, i'm sure were talking about it, but it
actually came down to an anonymous letter from an employee
of the restaurant that actually had his or her fill
and actually sent a letter to the coroner. And in
(43:54):
that letter, the employee noted that a Jett kept poison
at the restaurant. Not uncommon to have ant poison in
a restaurant. However, there's arsenic in this ant poison terry
and terror ant poison, yep. And so that was what
the employee wrote to the corner, and the corner then went, hey,
(44:16):
wait a minute, now, would that be, like, I'm not
knocking anyone. I don't know what it would take. I
mean to come to that conclusion independently, But at that
point it was the anonymous letter that actually went ding
ding ding light is on.
Speaker 1 (44:30):
Yeah, well, you begin to string these together. And here's
another little insight, you know, and I kind of mentioned
this earlier. The person that wrote this letter was an
African American lady that worked in the restaurant. She didn't
sign her name to it. And here's why because if
she had. If she had, then they would have dismissed her.
(44:55):
Because she's an African American lady in the nineteen fifties
making these accusations toward a prominent white lady. And so
this is a brilliant move on the part. I can
only imagine how terrified she was because she's born witness
(45:15):
to the black candle thing. She's actually knows that the
she understands the kind of the timeline here. She's born
witness to all of these people dying. You begin to
think about those kids too. You know. It's not one
(45:38):
of my favorite restaurants that I've was actually here in Jacksonville.
It's no longer open. It was owned by Greek family
and it had been around for years and years. It
was on the square in Jacksonville. It was a pizza joint,
but they also served meeting three. The thing that was
so charming to me about the restaurant is that they
brought all of their children to work with them. They
(46:00):
even had play pens in there with toys. It didn't
bother me at all. As a matter of fact, it
was kind of endearing. The grandmother was always in the
restaurant and she was speaking in Greek, and they were
just really sweet people. I missed that restaurant. They're always there.
They're part of the fabric of this environment. So these
kitchen workers would have seen those two little girls in
(46:23):
this environment. You know, they get out of school, they
come to the restaurant. Julia is there in the restaurant
every single day. So they have a different perspective than
somebody that's just kind of coming and going. Even if
the corner which he probably did, had come in to
eat meals there. And what this led to was they
(46:45):
had to get orders of exhamation and go back and
disenter these bodies.
Speaker 2 (46:53):
And that's not an easy thing to do, is it.
Speaker 1 (46:55):
No it's not. Yeah, and judges are notorious for not
wanting to crack up graves. It is if you've never
been involved in it, folks, it is you're moving heaven
and hell in order to convince this judge that is
in the community's best interest and the legal system's best
(47:16):
interest to crack open a grave and take out a body.
First off, most people that are, you know, not around
the dead like I am, they find it abhorrent, okay,
and it's something that's that's not done. You know. You
think about again, going back in time, you think about
Tammy Dabell. They had to have her exhumed, and we've
(47:40):
had a number of cases like these. But David, the
thing about it is with arsenic poisoning, the one thing
that you look for in arsenic poisoning is you're going
to do sampling from multiple locations in the body. Even
after a body has been embalmed, you can still pick
up on it. Because it's a heavy metal. It will
(48:03):
actually go into You'll find it in the hair, You'll
find it in the nails.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
And one of the answer in the fingernail test, yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:12):
Yeah, And so you look at that and the nails
themselves developed these weird kind of horizontal lines on them
that you know, and if your clinician, you don't think
about that. I've been in the hospital a couple of
times in my life. I don't ever remember a physician
or a nurse saying, let me see your fingernails. It's
(48:34):
just like, well, here, you know, here, doc, look on
my fingers. It's not something they commonly do. But Dave,
as a result of the exhamation, they were able to
go to a jet's home and not only did they
have this and it's called tarot ant poisoning companies still
in existence today. Back then they were putting arsenic in
(49:02):
the ant poisoning and for fifty years now arsenic is foreboden.
But back then it was everywhere day, it was everywhere.
It was part of pest control. You had rats in
the barn, you put out arsenic, you had ants, You
just sprinkle the taro around, they come and eat it,
put a little sugar with it, and you got dead
ants at this point in time. And so they went
(49:24):
to her home. Not only did they find more of
the ant poison at home, guess what else they found, Well,
they found all kinds of objects connected with voodoo there
as well inside of her home. The way this case
kind of spun out was it was a real show
(49:45):
in the courtroom, Dave. You had multiple people in this
case because of Lyle's restaurant that had to recuse themselves
because they knew an jail, they knew her, and they
couldn't you know, they couldn't involve themselves in case. Can
you imagine, I mean, the sheriff, The sheriff ate regularly there,
the da ate regularly there. The judges, one of whom
(50:09):
was distantly related to a Jet, had to accuse themself.
He was a state district judge said I can't be
a part of this because she's kin to me.
Speaker 2 (50:19):
Dave, Right, that's just unbelievable. But when everything is said
and done, Joe, I'm still shocked that Marcia, at nine
years old, was dead. And a month after that when
they it took a month. And this is kind of
quick in my book, because after Marsh's passing the letter,
(50:40):
anonymous letter arrives, they get the exhamation and when and
Jet is actually in the hospital being treated for vericas veins,
which I don't know what they did back then to
treat vericas veins. But she was in the hospital for
that and that's where they arrested her. They arrested and
Jet at the hospital and charged her with murder.
Speaker 1 (51:00):
And I think she made one of her initial court
appearances in a wheelchair. You know, we talking about trying
to trying to get sympathy vote here. But here's what's fascinating, Dave.
And Jet was actually tried by jury of her peers
and she was found guilty. She had the death penalty
(51:25):
imposed upon her. And I think back to those workers
in that restaurant. If one of them had committed a
crime like this, and I'm thinking one of these African
American women that worked there, the local constabulary, the judicial system,
and the governor himself would not have given it a
(51:46):
second thought of putting them on death row. But the
governor famously said that that he's not going to be
a part of a white woman being executed because I
got to tell you, regardless of how you feel about
the death penalty, she deserved it. I Mean, when you
(52:07):
think about the pain and suffering that people went through,
and the exposure as well, when can you imagine the
chill that would go up and down your spine you're thinking,
I ate there on a regular basis. This woman is
poisoning the food she's taken at the hospital to continue
the poisoning. How many other people were exposed well in
her world. She winds up going to prison and at
(52:31):
some point in time, Dave and this is fascinating, they
declare her to be insane. And Georgia had this infamous
hospital for the criminally insane that was located in Millersville,
and Militville, Georgia is like the main interest, the main industry.
There used to be prisons. There were multiple prisons in
(52:54):
the town, and they had this place that was notorious
to treat the criminally insane. As a matter of fact,
when we were kids, you know, a slur that you
could direct at somebody as a child would be, man,
you need to be in Millageville, and you just kind
of understood that in Louisiana was you need to be
in Jackson. And so you know, those things creep up.
(53:16):
But and yet wound up dying in this place in Militiville,
Georgia in nineteen seventy seven. Interestingly enough, the last prison
job she had she worked in the kitchen. I'm Joseph
(53:39):
Scott Morgan and this is body backed
Host
Nancy Grace
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