May 13, 2022 • 36 mins
A look at a brand new true crime podcast series from former detective Karen Smith. In this podcast, Karen begins reconstructing the moments of the murders of James Mitchell and her great uncle, Emory Smith, which leads to difficult questions. Was it really an inside job like everyone thought?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi everyone. I'm retired Detective Karen Smith, the host of
Shattered Souls The car Barn Murders. Follow my journey as
I work to solve the eighty seven year old cold
case murder of my own great uncle. The first eight
episodes are available now on iHeart Apple Podcasts and wherever
you find your podcasts. Please be sure to download and follow.
(00:21):
And here's episode two of Shattered Souls the car Barn Murders.
Thank you for listening so well, so well, you can
call a dozen bed you feel. This is the this
(00:54):
is the new real. It was a huge deal. It
was headline news. If they were going to dump them
in the priest, why did they drag him across the road.
They wouldn't believe them that he could have swubb through them.
(01:16):
It was stolen out of his office, but he was
locked inside his office, So how did that happen? I
did uncover the witness to the murder and he says,
you know I was there and I said what. Welcome
back to Shattered Zouls the Carbarn Murders. This is episode two.
(01:40):
This podcast may contain graphic language and it is not
suitable for children. Previously on the Carbarn murders. On January
twenty first, nineteen thirty five, two employees of the Capital
Transit Company were murdered during the commission of a robbery.
(02:00):
Accountant James Mitchell was found shot three times in the
head inside of the locked money cage of the Chevy
Chase Lake Ticket office. Night watchman Emory Smith had been
shot four times in the head, and his body was
found hours later floating in Rock Creek just a mile
up the road. At the bridge, detectives found blood, shoeprints,
(02:21):
and drag marks in the snow. They also found an
empty quart milk bottle inside of a dry paper bag,
and several pieces of broken auto glass. The detective surmised
that the broken glass was from the window or windshield
of a car, and based on the blood in the snow,
along with two different sets of shoeprints, that two suspects
(02:42):
dragged Emory Smith into the water from the northwest side
of that bridge before continuing northbound on Connecticut Avenue. This
was strange since most robberies don't involve a kidnapping and
the suspects would just leave the victim in the spot
where they were killed, just like James Mitchell was left
on the floor. Why would the suspects go to the
(03:02):
trouble of kidnapping Emery Smith only to dump his body
a short distance away? And if the car was northbound,
why would they stop on the northwest corner. That means
they either crossed the road and parked against traffic, did
a U turn and went back southbound, or they dragged
Emory Smith's body all the way across Connecticut Avenue, which
(03:25):
makes no sense at all. Back at the ticket office,
the detectives inspected the money cage. The door was locked
when everyone arrived, The only door inside of the ticket
office that actually was locked. The lower half of the
door was covered with a piece of tin to keep
drafts out from the front door being opened and closed
all day long. It was pride open to get to
(03:47):
James Mitchell's body. Apparently nobody at the ticket office had
a key to that cage, and on the floor they
found four bullet casings and one unfired bullet. Both of
the body were transported to Pumphrey's funeral home for autopsies
to be completed that afternoon by doctor Linthiccom and doctor
Hawks of the Health Department. Personal items were secured from
(04:09):
each man's body, which is standard procedure. You'd be surprised
at some of the random stuff that people keep in
their pockets, and those items can tell you a lot
about a person's life and habits. From James Mitchell, they
recovered twenty six dollars and twenty cents, one leather billfold
with a DC driver's license, a small comb, two pen knives,
a handkerchief, some miscellaneous cards, one belt in his eyeglasses,
(04:33):
nothing earth shattering. From Emory Smith, they took one open
faced watch, one dollar bill and another dollar sixty six
in change, eight trolley tokens, a screwdriver, a tobacco pouch,
four pencils, and one large brass key. The description of
the key is large. Didn't read like it was too
a vehicle, more like a house key or to some
(04:54):
other kind of lock. Interviews with the witnesses at the
office continued. Lynn Wood Jones gave his statement. He was
the second man to arrive after Parker Hannah. Jones went
into the ticket office with the third witness, Robert Abersold,
at around five fifteen in the morning. After getting back
from the firehouse. The door to the trainman's room was unlocked,
(05:15):
and another man named Francis Gregory was apparently asleep on
a bench. Lynwood Jones shook Gregory to wake him up
and told him that Mitchell had been murdered. Jones said
that Gregory had his coat off, his shirt was untucked
from his pants, and he believed that Gregory's shoes were off.
Lynwood Jones said that Francis Gregory became nervous, got up,
(05:37):
put his coat on and went out. Came back and
said it was strange that he hadn't heard a shooting,
and he wondered why they didn't see him. Additional employees
were questioned, including Harry Gibbons. He was the daytime clerk.
He said that James Mitchell was always very diligent and
careful about keeping all of the doors and windows locked,
especially when he was alone in the office overnight. Evening
(06:00):
clerk John Stout corroborated that when he said that Mitchell
bolted the front door behind him when he left at
three forty. John Stout had a lot more to add
to the story. He was the last witness to see
James Mitchell and Emory Smith alive. The final trolley left
the barn at two o five, and Mitchell locked the
(06:21):
front door as soon as it was gone. Stout and
Mitchell counted the money and tallied the receipts. At three o'clock,
John Stout left the money cage and he went through
the trainman's room to the back porch where the empty
money bags were kept in a closet. He got another
one and locked that back door. John Stout met with
Emory Smith in the trainman's room and they both saw
(06:43):
a man lying on a bench. John Stout asked Emory
Smith who the man was, and Smith replied, I think
his name is Gregory. John Stout said that Gregory had
his shoes on and his coat was pulled over him.
Stout let Emory Smith out the front door and bolt
at its shut. He went back to the money cage
and he and Mitchell continued to count the bills and
(07:04):
the coins, and the final bag was left unlocked so
that Mitchell could put the paperwork inside. When he was done.
Stout left the office at three forty to go home.
Mitchell locked the front door behind him. John Stout said
that his windshield wipers were broken and he was forced
to drive home with his head hanging out of the
driver's window. On his way home, which was only about
(07:27):
a half mile south of the office, just off Connecticut Avenue,
John Stout said that he saw a dark colored sedan
idling on the east side of the road with its
headlights on facing north. He saw three people in that
car and said the driver was a white man. He
made a left turn onto William's lane just past that car,
(07:49):
and he said he could see the tail lights illuminated.
This was around three fifty in the morning, just forty
five minutes before the gunshots heard by Charles Smallwood. Now
that James Mitchell's body was out of the office, the
detectives collected the four shell casings and unfired bullet from
the floor. They originated from a thirty two caliber semi automatic.
(08:13):
There were three bullet holes in and around the desk
where Mitchell had been working, and two projectiles were recovered.
One was found behind an ink bottle on the desk
and the other was sticking out of the wall plaster
just above the cubby holes. A third bullet had perforated
the right side of the desk and terminated in the
wall stud When they took a closer look at that desk,
(08:35):
they found James Mitchell's handgun inside of a top drawer.
It had been reported that Mitchell had been found lying
on his back with three bullet holes in his head.
All of the shots entered on the left side, two
of them exited on the right, the third remained inside
of his skull. No autopsy report for James Mitchell was
(08:57):
provided to me with the case file, but three photographs
taken at the funeral home were included. They were taken
after the autopsy was finished. James Mitchell was laid out
on this filthy steel table, stained with blood and fluids
from who knows how many bodies. His head rested on
(09:17):
a metal positioner. A glass cabinet in the background held
various bottles of embalming preparations and black boxes filled with
autopsy tools. James Mitchell's wedding ring was still on his
left finger, He was clean shaven, and there were no
bruises evident on his face. The photos clearly showed the
(09:40):
entry and exit wounds. Two entries were just above his
left ear and the third was about four inches above
the other. Two near the top of his head. One
exit wound was near his right temple, the other exited
at the joint of his right mandible about an inch
in front of his right ear. The investigative report said
that two of mitche 's teeth were knocked out and
(10:01):
found inside his mouth. That's consistent with that shot through
the rear of his jaw. There was evidence of a
shored wound, a lump just above his right temple where
a bullet may have failed to exit his head because
it was stopped by a solid surface. I couldn't be
certain without an accompanying report, but that would account for
the third shot without an exit. Mitchell also had some
(10:25):
marks on the back of his left hand, and the
detectives noted that they looked like teeth marks from either
backhanding someone in the mouth or from being bitten. The
photos don't show those details, so I can't be sure
about that, but there are marks that can be identified
the circular indentations left by the rubber bands that held
his shirt sleeves in place. And speaking of James Mitchell's shirt,
(10:49):
there aren't any notations about where it ended up in
the photos. He's wearing dark pants and a white tank
top undershirt. I don't know if his dress shirt was
collected or if it got lost in the shuffle. Without it,
I can't make any determinations about bloodstains or possible gunpowder residue,
so those questions will just remain unanswered. From what I
(11:12):
have been able to reconstruct using the photographs of James
Mitchell and the office, I don't believe that he was
sitting at his desk when he was shot like everyone thought.
In some original newspaper clippings I received from my cousin
that were meticulously glued into an album by our great aunt,
there are photographs of the office taken on the day
(11:32):
of the murders. These weren't provided in the case file
and they can't be found anywhere online. They were a
treasure trove of information for me to work with, and
using those black and white photos, I could see bloodstains
on the floor just to the left of the desk.
They were drip stains, which meant that the source of
the blood James Mitchell's head was above that area before
(11:54):
he collapsed on the floor. There was also an open
upper drawer in the desk on the left side, where
Mitchell kept his gun. John Stout reported that the money
bags were on a table toward the middle of the room.
To the left of the desk. One of those table
legs was visible in these pictures, and that gave me
a basic idea of the office layout. James Mitchell was
(12:17):
shot twice in a close grouping on the left side
of his head. The third shot entered through the upper
left side of his head. Two of the bullets exited,
the third didn't. There were four casings on the floor,
meaning four shots were fired. Three went into Mitchell the
fourth mist There were two projectiles recovered, one behind the
(12:37):
ink bottle on the desk and the other from the
wall plaster above it. The one behind the ink bottle
left a strike mark on the paper ink blotter showing
a trajectory from above and down with a slight angle
from left to right if you were facing the desk.
The one in the wall plaster was about two feet
higher and had the same left to right strike angle.
(13:00):
Based on the missing plaster. The third shot into the
desk went through the right side and went all the
way through into the wall stud There's a reason that
the bullets by the ink bottle and in the wall
plaster didn't go any further. The projectiles lost a lot
of their kinetic energy prior to ending up there because
they traveled through an intermediate surface first James Mitchell's head.
(13:24):
The shot through the right side of the desk was
a miss, which is why it had the energy to
keep going into the wall. Stud If I placed James
Mitchell into that scene using the two gunshot wounds that
exited his head, he was likely almost standing near the
left side of that desk, closer to the table where
the money bags were, and I'll go a step further.
(13:47):
He might have been reaching for his gun inside of
that open top drawer when the first shot was fired.
Mitchell was five feet eleven, so he was likely slightly
bent over when he was struck by two shots in
quick succession a double tap if he only had a
split second to open that drawer and reach for that gun.
I needed more information to complete this reconstruction, so I
(14:10):
did some research to find out the approximate height of
a nineteen thirties roll top desk so that I could
do a rough estimation of the maximum height of the
shots fired into the ink blotter and into the wall
above the cubby holes. The desk would have been approximately
four feet high. Add three vertical inches to the strike
in the wall. The desk chair was standard. The seat
(14:32):
was eighteen to twenty inches high. If James Mitchell had
been sitting in that chair, as alleged, his head would
have been approximately four inches too low for the shot
above the cubby holes to have struck him in the head.
Subtract another four inches from the top of his head
to the area by his left ear where the two
bullets entered, it would have been impossible for him to
(14:54):
have been seated. I placed James Mitchell into the scene
further away from the desk, toward the table where the
money bags were. If he leaned toward that open drawer
where his gun was, it would place both shots directly
into the left side of his head, the first one
into the ink blotterer at an angle and the second
(15:14):
higher into the wall due to the gun recoil. It
would also account for the blood drops on the floor
directly below. The gunman would have been to Mitchell's left,
at least two feet away, maybe on the other side
of that table, which could have been used as a
physical barrier. There's something else to mention, the unfired bullet
(15:35):
on the floor. This told me that the suspect either
didn't know that a round was chambered and racked the
slide to load one, leaving that live round on the floor.
Or it was an intimidation tactic to get Mitchell to comply.
The suspect wasn't used to carrying a semi automatic and
forgot that a round was chambered or the gun jammed.
(15:56):
Could that have been the opportunity that Mitchell took to
try to protect him self before the first shot was fired.
And as to the possible shored wound above his right temple,
to me, that's the final shot through the top of
his head as he lay on his right side on
the floor, just to make sure he was dead. The
description of his body position on his back is unnatural.
(16:19):
When a person is shot in the head, they don't
normally collapse into a position like that. It's an indication
that the victim has been moved post mortem. The suspects
had to make sure he was dead, so one of
them kicked Mitchell over onto his back before they left.
All of this information told me that Mitchell wasn't blitz attacked.
(16:43):
There was time involved, decisions made, movement, conversation, panic, No
furniture was overturned, There was no fight, no struggle, If
James Mitchell acquiesced and told the suspect to just take
the money, why did they kill him? Was he a threat?
(17:05):
Was it a witness elimination? Did James Mitchell know the suspects?
The detailed accounting records were included in the file, along
with a breakdown of the denominations of money taken that morning.
I did some quick calculations to find out how much
those money bags would have weighed, since most of it
(17:26):
was coins, about twenty two pounds. One suspect would have
had his hands full while the other brandished the gun,
so that placed a minimum of two suspects inside that
cage with James Mitchell. I had to consider how the
suspects got entry into that locked money cage. If the
front door to the ticket office was unlocked, as Parker
(17:47):
Hannah reported, the suspects would have had the jump on
James Mitchell as he worked alone, and could have forced
him to unlock that money cage at gunpoint. Once they
were inside. It was two one on. If Mitchell reached
for the gun in the desk, it was over and
they killed him. I also had to answer why the
cage door was locked when the police arrived it's my
(18:09):
opinion that the cage door had a one way spring
lock that could be disengaged by turning a latch from
the inside, and it would lock automatically when it's shut.
You'd need a key to get back inside, and there
were no reports of keys found on James Mitchell's body
or anywhere in the office, which could explain why a
brass key was found safe and sound inside of Emory
(18:32):
Smith's pocket. That led me to consider the possibility that
Emory Smith could have allowed the suspect's entry at gunpoint,
but that scenario didn't make sense within the known timeline.
Emory Smith punched his TimeClock card at four twenty three
at the barn across the street. Ear witnessed Charles Smallwood
(18:53):
heard gunshots and shouting at around four thirty five, which
helped a pinpoint the time of James Mitchell's murder. Several
of the trolley cars headlights were on and Smith was
nearly fifty yards away from the ticket office. Regardless, that
twelve minute window was still unaccounted for, so I just
put that question on the back burner. Only one photograph
(19:15):
was taken of Emory Smith after his autopsy, but it
speaks volumes when it's coupled with the written report, and
there's a lot to unpack. The single photograph is of
the left side of his face and a white sheet
was pulled up to his neck. His autopsy took place
at three o'clock PM on January twenty first. My grandfather
(19:37):
went to the funeral home to identify him around the
same time that this single picture was taken. Looking at
that photo and remaining clinical was difficult, knowing that my
grandfather had the same view under enormous stress and sorrow.
Was my grandfather brought into the room or did he
identify his uncle through glass? Did he smell the putrid,
(20:00):
sweet pungency of death or was he spared that indignity?
Was the sheet nonchalantly tossed off my great uncle or
carefully pulled down to reveal his face. Was my grandfather
granted a moment to compose himself. Did he receive time
alone with Emory's body to say a few words or
was he ushered out immediately after he made the identification.
(20:22):
Did my grandfather cry? Did he vomit? Did he drive
to Walkersville to tell the family. Did he have to
go next door to break the news to Aunt Edith
or did the police visit her personally? I stuffed those
thoughts down and went back to my clinical brain. Emory's
(20:43):
hair was dry, his face was clean shaven. Stitches above
his left ear continued toward the top of his head,
the vestiges of facial reflection when the surgeons pulled his
scalp back to reveal his skull and recover two of
the bullets. Clearly his body had been prepped for this photograph,
and his hair was fluffed over that incision, almost as
(21:04):
if he were to be moved directly into a casket
as soon as the flash bulb went off. The notes
on the report were handwritten in scrawled cursive, but thankfully
the vast majority were legible. Starting with the notes at
the top, it states that Emory Smith was five feet
six inches tall and weighed between one hundred and ninety
and two hundred pounds. Yeah, he was definitely short and chunky.
(21:26):
He wore denters and his upper plate was gone, but
a partial lower plate was in place. He came in
with no clothing, so again I have no idea what
happened to them between the time he was retrieved from
Rock Creek, the items were taken from his pockets and
the time he arrived at the funeral home. He was
shot four times in the head, and each bullet wound
(21:48):
is thoroughly documented, including the trajectory each one took, and
they tell a story. Starting with the gunshot wound in
his left cheek. It has stippling around it, meaning powder burns.
That means the gun was very close to his face
when it was fired. Another entry wound was just above
his left ear, and from the photo it appears like
(22:11):
there might have been additional stippling around it, but I
couldn't be positive because his hair was in the way.
A third entry wound is just behind his left ear,
and a fourth is about four inches above it, near
the top of his head. That's familiar. It's the same
wound pattern they found on James Mitchell. The physicians noted
that the bullet that entered his left cheek traveled slightly
(22:33):
downward and exited through the right side of his neck,
severing the cranial artery. The one just above his ear
didn't exit, it lodged behind his right eye. The one
behind his left ear traveled almost parallel through his head
and exited just above his right ear. The bullet fired
near the top of his head, didn't exit, and they
found it at the base of his skull. There was
(22:55):
no question that the manner of death was homicide by gunshot.
So the ops he didn't include very many notations about
the rest of Emory's body, but one remark at the
bottom of the page got my attention because it confirmed
his death prior to entering Rock Creek. Heart normal in size,
lung's normal air containing air containing no water was found
(23:21):
in his lungs, four gunshots in his head. Whoever killed
Emory Smith had a different motivation than a robbery getaway.
This was vengeance, this was panic, This was someone he knew.
Lieutenant John Fowler, the DC Police forensic specialist, determined that
(23:44):
the gun used to kill Mitchell was the same one
used to kill Smith. A nineteen oh three Colt thirty
two caliber semi automatic, one of the most popular guns
manufactured at the time. It would hold nine rounds, eight
in the magazine, one in the chamber. At the office,
there were four casings and one unfired bullet. Add the
four shots into Emory Smith and you have a total
(24:05):
of nine. The shooter emptied the gun Additionally, there were
no mentions of any shell casings found outside of the
ticket office at the car barn or by the bridge
over Rock Creek. Semi Automatic guns eject the casings, which
is why four of them were found on the office floor.
But what happened to the casings from Emory Smith's murder?
(24:27):
If he was killed in a car, the casings would
have been left inside of the passenger compartment rather than
on the ground, which does add credence to the information
that Smith was killed in a vehicle, And if he
was killed in a car, I believe he was, that
means close quarters, especially if there are multiple suspects and
large money bags already inside. It would also explain how
(24:49):
the stippling got on his cheek. The gunman was either
sitting next to Emory Smith or reached over the seat
to shoot him, And that led to another question, why
was Emory Smith in car in the first place and
how did he get inside? The detectives took notations of
shoeprints in the snow around the ticket office and the
car barn, and they made a detailed diagram. One set
(25:11):
of shoeprints exits the car barn, and they abruptly stop
at Connecticut Avenue, just north of the barn, toward the
tw Perry Coal Company. I think that's the spot where
they took Emory Smith after he exited the barn, when
he heard the shouting and gunshots from the ticket office,
after they forced him in the car. This was my
initial assessment of those events, and as I worked through
(25:33):
the leads, my evaluation evolved. But I'm going to provide
you with my entire thought process. This is from December
of twenty twenty. Someone who didn't go into the ticket
office was driving the getaway driver. The gunmen and the
bagman got into the vehicle, with the gunmen likely in
the front passenger seat and the bagman in the back
so there'd be room for the money bags. Smith was
(25:54):
shoved into the passenger side backseat at gunpoint, and after
a struggle, they stopped at the bridge and they killed
him with three shots in quick succession, breaking the glass
of the window, and the fourth final shot into the
top of his head was fired after they got his
body out of the car. The final gunshot wound wouldn't
bleed really heavily since he was already dead, which aligned
(26:15):
with the detective's notes that the only blood in the
snow seemed to be transferred from bloody clothing. The drag
marks and shoeprints told the rest of that story. Whether
or not my assessment was accurate will likely never be known.
But that was my first attempt at a reconstruction of
Smith's death, and it was the first time that I
really thought about my great uncle as a person instead
(26:37):
of just as a victim. What were his final thoughts.
Did he plead for his life? Did he tell the
suspects he had children and a wife at home? Did
he put up a fight, did he curse the suspects
or did he even have a chance to say anything?
Was it quick or did he see it coming? Twenty
(26:58):
years of training if taught me how to push questions
like that aside, to treat death as a scientific premise
rather than an emotional dilemma. Goddamn, this case was becoming
a real bitch, a daily battle between objectivity and sentiment,
detachment and guilt. But if I were to find the
answers the truth, my job was to keep my head
(27:22):
screwed on straight and stick to the facts. But just
like many times in the past, keeping my feelings out
of this one was really hard to do. Emory Smith's
murder and the questions about what happened opened another can
of worms. The suspects close. If Emory was killed in
the close quarters of a vehicle with three shots to
(27:44):
the head, severing an artery, and then dragged down the
bank of a creek to the water, there's no doubt
in my mind that the suspects would have been covered
in blood, their pants and their shoes would have been
soaking wet. The investigators had gleaned some information from the
autopsy of my uncle Emory. Since one of the gun
(28:04):
shots severed an artery which would bleed really heavily, and
since they were convinced that he was killed in a car,
they knew that any car they found would certainly have
blood stains in it. This is a direct quote from
Detective Bolton's handwritten report. It was believed that Smith was
shot and killed inside of an automobile, as examination of
(28:25):
Smith's body showed that he had been shot at close range.
The bullet that entered Smith's cheek showed a downward course
and severed his vein, which would cause a great amount
of blood to spurt out This belief is substantiated in
that the entire scene around the Carbarn and Carbarn office
and along the route taken to the bridge failed to
disclose any other bloodstain other than that of Mitchell. This
(28:48):
belief is further borne out in that the whole referred
to was at such close range so as to have
excessive powder burns on Smith's cheek, as if the gun
were placed against his cheek. A bloodstain referred to before
in this report where Smith's body was dragged through the
snow were of such a nature as would come off
of blood soaked clothing and showed no signs of excessive bleeding.
(29:12):
Those are incredibly detailed notes, and they're pretty spot on
for detectives in nineteen thirty five with very little experience
in a murder investigation. They're extraordinary. The gun shot into
his left cheek was fired at an intermediate range, not
a hard contact against his skin based on the stippling pattern,
(29:33):
but the detectives understood that the shooter was very close
to Emory Smith when he was shot. In my estimation,
the gun was fired less than three inches from my
uncle's face. An alert for a vehicle with broken glass
bullet holes and bloodstains was sent to the surrounding jurisdictions
(29:54):
of Washington and Baltimore. Meanwhile, District Lieutenant John Fowler processed
the broken glass pieces and milk bottle for fingerprints. He
found nothing. The detectives spoke with the manager of Embassy Derry,
where that quart milk bottle originated. Based on the stamp,
they asked the manager if any of his drivers had
made a sale of a single quart milk bottle overnight
(30:14):
while they ran their routes. All of the drivers reported
back that they hadn't, but the manager said the paper
bag that contained the bottle was from a different manufacturer
than his company used. It could have been purchased at
any number of drug stores. Unfortunately, that lead got dropped
along the way and over the years all of that
evidence got destroyed. Later in the afternoon, Captain Thompson, the
(30:38):
chief of detectives in DC, contacted Montgomery County. Captain Thompson
reported that a patrolman from the second Precinct had located
a car parked in front of six forty three O
Street Northwest. The door glass was broken and there was
blood inside. Detective Frank Brass, one of the district detectives
assigned to help told Captain Thompson that he and the
(31:00):
boys would be over right away. The DC patrolman stood
by and arrested a man when he entered that car.
When the detectives arrived, they located a thirty two caliber
revolver in the door pocket, and they held two more
men for questioning. From the police report, it was ascertained
that these men were from La Plate to Maryland and
couldn't have had any connections with this case. They let
(31:22):
all of them go. The car too. Another car with
a broken windshield was found at an autoglass business. The
detectives rode over to that location and they found marks
in the windshield from a BB gun, not their car either.
A third car was stopped after it was found speeding
on New York Avenue. The car had bullet holes in
it and some of the glass was broken. The investigation
(31:45):
of that car found that it belonged to a Fourteenth
Street used car dealer. He said he allowed the car
to be used for demonstration purposes. The detectives were satisfied
with that explanation and they let it go. They a
list of all of the vehicles that had been stolen
the day and night before the murders. Criminals don't use
(32:06):
their own vehicles, and back in the thirties, just like today,
they'd put a stolen license plate on the one they
did use. And here's a fun fact. There were cases
where career criminals would have a switch under the dashboard
that would flip the license plate over to a different
one from another state when they fled a scene. That
wasn't just the imaginations of Hollywood. Those criminals were innovative.
(32:28):
After the detectives compiled a list of all the stolen cars,
they tracked down all of them except one, a nineteen
twenty six green Buick Coach with DC license plate one
three one nine nine three, stolen from the area of
fifteenth and Irving Street Northwest on Sunday night around ten o'clock.
(32:51):
By Monday, the twenty first, it hadn't been located anywhere.
As I was doing my initial read through of the case,
I posted a question about the Carbarn murders on a
Facebook page that focuses on Chevy Chase, Maryland history. Someone
had put up a photograph of the Carbarn with the
trolleys inside. A notification popped up from retired Montgomery County
(33:13):
detective Jack too me. Jack said he knew all about
the Carbarn case because he'd worked on it for a
number of years back in the nineteen seventies and eighties.
I reached out to Jack and he told me a
story that left me stunned. He located an eyewitness to
the robbery and murders over forty years later. The man's
(33:35):
name was Ernest Carter, and he was just seven years
old in nineteen thirty five. I'll let Jack tell the
rest of that story. In nineteen seventy seven, I was
a fairly new patrol when I had been on department
six years by that time. And it was lay at
the end of November, and we were white on the
(33:56):
doorstep of one of the coldest winners Washingtons ever had.
And I was sitting in the parking lot of the
Columbia Country From and I heard a cap on my
window and they're standing there was the man drest in
a security guard. You from some tipe and we chit chatted,
and I said, why don't you come sit in my
cards to pull them? And he sat in the front seat.
(34:18):
We were talking about how things have changed over the years.
He brought up that they never did find out who's
killed his ben down the street. I said what then?
And he told me the story of the Carbarn murders.
And I said, I have lived here all my life
with him, three miles of that building, and I don't
(34:38):
know what you're talking about. And I said, well, this
has used to me. And he says, you know I
was there And I said what, and he says, yes,
I was waiting for a street cart some one of
his relatives that dropped him off. He was waiting for
the first trolley car all the morning and he's waiting
(35:00):
the trance stop. At all of a sudden years gun shots,
people shouting, running. He scared. He runs somewhere and hides
behind the building and he sees a green Buerku making
you turn on Connecticut Avenue. The car had been parked
facing southbound. The car made a you turn across Connecticut
(35:23):
Avenue and went north on Connecticut Avenue. And that's the
last he ever saw the car. And naturally, I said, well,
what did the police say when you talked to them,
thinking that they'd be all over him, and he said, officer,
they didn't talk to us black people in those days.
(35:46):
And I said, so, you've never been interviewed, and he
said never. Ernest Carter saw a green duing. If you
have information about the Carbar murders, go to the Shattered
Souls Facebook page and leave me a message. Opening music
(36:08):
by Sam Johnson at Sam Johnson live dot com. Shattered
Souls The carbar Murders as produced by Karen Smith and
Angel Hart Productions
Hi everyone. I'm retired Detective Karen Smith, the host of
Shattered Souls The car Barn Murders. Follow my journey as
I work to solve the eighty seven year old cold
case murder of my own great uncle. The first eight
episodes are available now on iHeart Apple Podcasts and wherever
you find your podcasts. Please be sure to download and follow.
(00:21):
And here's episode two of Shattered Souls the car Barn Murders.
Thank you for listening so well, so well, you can
call a dozen bed you feel. This is the this
(00:54):
is the new real. It was a huge deal. It
was headline news. If they were going to dump them
in the priest, why did they drag him across the road.
They wouldn't believe them that he could have swubb through them.
(01:16):
It was stolen out of his office, but he was
locked inside his office, So how did that happen? I
did uncover the witness to the murder and he says,
you know I was there and I said what. Welcome
back to Shattered Zouls the Carbarn Murders. This is episode two.
(01:40):
This podcast may contain graphic language and it is not
suitable for children. Previously on the Carbarn murders. On January
twenty first, nineteen thirty five, two employees of the Capital
Transit Company were murdered during the commission of a robbery.
(02:00):
Accountant James Mitchell was found shot three times in the
head inside of the locked money cage of the Chevy
Chase Lake Ticket office. Night watchman Emory Smith had been
shot four times in the head, and his body was
found hours later floating in Rock Creek just a mile
up the road. At the bridge, detectives found blood, shoeprints,
(02:21):
and drag marks in the snow. They also found an
empty quart milk bottle inside of a dry paper bag,
and several pieces of broken auto glass. The detective surmised
that the broken glass was from the window or windshield
of a car, and based on the blood in the snow,
along with two different sets of shoeprints, that two suspects
(02:42):
dragged Emory Smith into the water from the northwest side
of that bridge before continuing northbound on Connecticut Avenue. This
was strange since most robberies don't involve a kidnapping and
the suspects would just leave the victim in the spot
where they were killed, just like James Mitchell was left
on the floor. Why would the suspects go to the
(03:02):
trouble of kidnapping Emery Smith only to dump his body
a short distance away? And if the car was northbound,
why would they stop on the northwest corner. That means
they either crossed the road and parked against traffic, did
a U turn and went back southbound, or they dragged
Emory Smith's body all the way across Connecticut Avenue, which
(03:25):
makes no sense at all. Back at the ticket office,
the detectives inspected the money cage. The door was locked
when everyone arrived, The only door inside of the ticket
office that actually was locked. The lower half of the
door was covered with a piece of tin to keep
drafts out from the front door being opened and closed
all day long. It was pride open to get to
(03:47):
James Mitchell's body. Apparently nobody at the ticket office had
a key to that cage, and on the floor they
found four bullet casings and one unfired bullet. Both of
the body were transported to Pumphrey's funeral home for autopsies
to be completed that afternoon by doctor Linthiccom and doctor
Hawks of the Health Department. Personal items were secured from
(04:09):
each man's body, which is standard procedure. You'd be surprised
at some of the random stuff that people keep in
their pockets, and those items can tell you a lot
about a person's life and habits. From James Mitchell, they
recovered twenty six dollars and twenty cents, one leather billfold
with a DC driver's license, a small comb, two pen knives,
a handkerchief, some miscellaneous cards, one belt in his eyeglasses,
(04:33):
nothing earth shattering. From Emory Smith, they took one open
faced watch, one dollar bill and another dollar sixty six
in change, eight trolley tokens, a screwdriver, a tobacco pouch,
four pencils, and one large brass key. The description of
the key is large. Didn't read like it was too
a vehicle, more like a house key or to some
(04:54):
other kind of lock. Interviews with the witnesses at the
office continued. Lynn Wood Jones gave his statement. He was
the second man to arrive after Parker Hannah. Jones went
into the ticket office with the third witness, Robert Abersold,
at around five fifteen in the morning. After getting back
from the firehouse. The door to the trainman's room was unlocked,
(05:15):
and another man named Francis Gregory was apparently asleep on
a bench. Lynwood Jones shook Gregory to wake him up
and told him that Mitchell had been murdered. Jones said
that Gregory had his coat off, his shirt was untucked
from his pants, and he believed that Gregory's shoes were off.
Lynwood Jones said that Francis Gregory became nervous, got up,
(05:37):
put his coat on and went out. Came back and
said it was strange that he hadn't heard a shooting,
and he wondered why they didn't see him. Additional employees
were questioned, including Harry Gibbons. He was the daytime clerk.
He said that James Mitchell was always very diligent and
careful about keeping all of the doors and windows locked,
especially when he was alone in the office overnight. Evening
(06:00):
clerk John Stout corroborated that when he said that Mitchell
bolted the front door behind him when he left at
three forty. John Stout had a lot more to add
to the story. He was the last witness to see
James Mitchell and Emory Smith alive. The final trolley left
the barn at two o five, and Mitchell locked the
(06:21):
front door as soon as it was gone. Stout and
Mitchell counted the money and tallied the receipts. At three o'clock,
John Stout left the money cage and he went through
the trainman's room to the back porch where the empty
money bags were kept in a closet. He got another
one and locked that back door. John Stout met with
Emory Smith in the trainman's room and they both saw
(06:43):
a man lying on a bench. John Stout asked Emory
Smith who the man was, and Smith replied, I think
his name is Gregory. John Stout said that Gregory had
his shoes on and his coat was pulled over him.
Stout let Emory Smith out the front door and bolt
at its shut. He went back to the money cage
and he and Mitchell continued to count the bills and
(07:04):
the coins, and the final bag was left unlocked so
that Mitchell could put the paperwork inside. When he was done.
Stout left the office at three forty to go home.
Mitchell locked the front door behind him. John Stout said
that his windshield wipers were broken and he was forced
to drive home with his head hanging out of the
driver's window. On his way home, which was only about
(07:27):
a half mile south of the office, just off Connecticut Avenue,
John Stout said that he saw a dark colored sedan
idling on the east side of the road with its
headlights on facing north. He saw three people in that
car and said the driver was a white man. He
made a left turn onto William's lane just past that car,
(07:49):
and he said he could see the tail lights illuminated.
This was around three fifty in the morning, just forty
five minutes before the gunshots heard by Charles Smallwood. Now
that James Mitchell's body was out of the office, the
detectives collected the four shell casings and unfired bullet from
the floor. They originated from a thirty two caliber semi automatic.
(08:13):
There were three bullet holes in and around the desk
where Mitchell had been working, and two projectiles were recovered.
One was found behind an ink bottle on the desk
and the other was sticking out of the wall plaster
just above the cubby holes. A third bullet had perforated
the right side of the desk and terminated in the
wall stud When they took a closer look at that desk,
(08:35):
they found James Mitchell's handgun inside of a top drawer.
It had been reported that Mitchell had been found lying
on his back with three bullet holes in his head.
All of the shots entered on the left side, two
of them exited on the right, the third remained inside
of his skull. No autopsy report for James Mitchell was
(08:57):
provided to me with the case file, but three photographs
taken at the funeral home were included. They were taken
after the autopsy was finished. James Mitchell was laid out
on this filthy steel table, stained with blood and fluids
from who knows how many bodies. His head rested on
(09:17):
a metal positioner. A glass cabinet in the background held
various bottles of embalming preparations and black boxes filled with
autopsy tools. James Mitchell's wedding ring was still on his
left finger, He was clean shaven, and there were no
bruises evident on his face. The photos clearly showed the
(09:40):
entry and exit wounds. Two entries were just above his
left ear and the third was about four inches above
the other. Two near the top of his head. One
exit wound was near his right temple, the other exited
at the joint of his right mandible about an inch
in front of his right ear. The investigative report said
that two of mitche 's teeth were knocked out and
(10:01):
found inside his mouth. That's consistent with that shot through
the rear of his jaw. There was evidence of a
shored wound, a lump just above his right temple where
a bullet may have failed to exit his head because
it was stopped by a solid surface. I couldn't be
certain without an accompanying report, but that would account for
the third shot without an exit. Mitchell also had some
(10:25):
marks on the back of his left hand, and the
detectives noted that they looked like teeth marks from either
backhanding someone in the mouth or from being bitten. The
photos don't show those details, so I can't be sure
about that, but there are marks that can be identified
the circular indentations left by the rubber bands that held
his shirt sleeves in place. And speaking of James Mitchell's shirt,
(10:49):
there aren't any notations about where it ended up in
the photos. He's wearing dark pants and a white tank
top undershirt. I don't know if his dress shirt was
collected or if it got lost in the shuffle. Without it,
I can't make any determinations about bloodstains or possible gunpowder residue,
so those questions will just remain unanswered. From what I
(11:12):
have been able to reconstruct using the photographs of James
Mitchell and the office, I don't believe that he was
sitting at his desk when he was shot like everyone thought.
In some original newspaper clippings I received from my cousin
that were meticulously glued into an album by our great aunt,
there are photographs of the office taken on the day
(11:32):
of the murders. These weren't provided in the case file
and they can't be found anywhere online. They were a
treasure trove of information for me to work with, and
using those black and white photos, I could see bloodstains
on the floor just to the left of the desk.
They were drip stains, which meant that the source of
the blood James Mitchell's head was above that area before
(11:54):
he collapsed on the floor. There was also an open
upper drawer in the desk on the left side, where
Mitchell kept his gun. John Stout reported that the money
bags were on a table toward the middle of the room.
To the left of the desk. One of those table
legs was visible in these pictures, and that gave me
a basic idea of the office layout. James Mitchell was
(12:17):
shot twice in a close grouping on the left side
of his head. The third shot entered through the upper
left side of his head. Two of the bullets exited,
the third didn't. There were four casings on the floor,
meaning four shots were fired. Three went into Mitchell the
fourth mist There were two projectiles recovered, one behind the
(12:37):
ink bottle on the desk and the other from the
wall plaster above it. The one behind the ink bottle
left a strike mark on the paper ink blotter showing
a trajectory from above and down with a slight angle
from left to right if you were facing the desk.
The one in the wall plaster was about two feet
higher and had the same left to right strike angle.
(13:00):
Based on the missing plaster. The third shot into the
desk went through the right side and went all the
way through into the wall stud There's a reason that
the bullets by the ink bottle and in the wall
plaster didn't go any further. The projectiles lost a lot
of their kinetic energy prior to ending up there because
they traveled through an intermediate surface first James Mitchell's head.
(13:24):
The shot through the right side of the desk was
a miss, which is why it had the energy to
keep going into the wall. Stud If I placed James
Mitchell into that scene using the two gunshot wounds that
exited his head, he was likely almost standing near the
left side of that desk, closer to the table where
the money bags were, and I'll go a step further.
(13:47):
He might have been reaching for his gun inside of
that open top drawer when the first shot was fired.
Mitchell was five feet eleven, so he was likely slightly
bent over when he was struck by two shots in
quick succession a double tap if he only had a
split second to open that drawer and reach for that gun.
I needed more information to complete this reconstruction, so I
(14:10):
did some research to find out the approximate height of
a nineteen thirties roll top desk so that I could
do a rough estimation of the maximum height of the
shots fired into the ink blotter and into the wall
above the cubby holes. The desk would have been approximately
four feet high. Add three vertical inches to the strike
in the wall. The desk chair was standard. The seat
(14:32):
was eighteen to twenty inches high. If James Mitchell had
been sitting in that chair, as alleged, his head would
have been approximately four inches too low for the shot
above the cubby holes to have struck him in the head.
Subtract another four inches from the top of his head
to the area by his left ear where the two
bullets entered, it would have been impossible for him to
(14:54):
have been seated. I placed James Mitchell into the scene
further away from the desk, toward the table where the
money bags were. If he leaned toward that open drawer
where his gun was, it would place both shots directly
into the left side of his head, the first one
into the ink blotterer at an angle and the second
(15:14):
higher into the wall due to the gun recoil. It
would also account for the blood drops on the floor
directly below. The gunman would have been to Mitchell's left,
at least two feet away, maybe on the other side
of that table, which could have been used as a
physical barrier. There's something else to mention, the unfired bullet
(15:35):
on the floor. This told me that the suspect either
didn't know that a round was chambered and racked the
slide to load one, leaving that live round on the floor.
Or it was an intimidation tactic to get Mitchell to comply.
The suspect wasn't used to carrying a semi automatic and
forgot that a round was chambered or the gun jammed.
(15:56):
Could that have been the opportunity that Mitchell took to
try to protect him self before the first shot was fired.
And as to the possible shored wound above his right temple,
to me, that's the final shot through the top of
his head as he lay on his right side on
the floor, just to make sure he was dead. The
description of his body position on his back is unnatural.
(16:19):
When a person is shot in the head, they don't
normally collapse into a position like that. It's an indication
that the victim has been moved post mortem. The suspects
had to make sure he was dead, so one of
them kicked Mitchell over onto his back before they left.
All of this information told me that Mitchell wasn't blitz attacked.
(16:43):
There was time involved, decisions made, movement, conversation, panic, No
furniture was overturned, There was no fight, no struggle, If
James Mitchell acquiesced and told the suspect to just take
the money, why did they kill him? Was he a threat?
(17:05):
Was it a witness elimination? Did James Mitchell know the suspects?
The detailed accounting records were included in the file, along
with a breakdown of the denominations of money taken that morning.
I did some quick calculations to find out how much
those money bags would have weighed, since most of it
(17:26):
was coins, about twenty two pounds. One suspect would have
had his hands full while the other brandished the gun,
so that placed a minimum of two suspects inside that
cage with James Mitchell. I had to consider how the
suspects got entry into that locked money cage. If the
front door to the ticket office was unlocked, as Parker
(17:47):
Hannah reported, the suspects would have had the jump on
James Mitchell as he worked alone, and could have forced
him to unlock that money cage at gunpoint. Once they
were inside. It was two one on. If Mitchell reached
for the gun in the desk, it was over and
they killed him. I also had to answer why the
cage door was locked when the police arrived it's my
(18:09):
opinion that the cage door had a one way spring
lock that could be disengaged by turning a latch from
the inside, and it would lock automatically when it's shut.
You'd need a key to get back inside, and there
were no reports of keys found on James Mitchell's body
or anywhere in the office, which could explain why a
brass key was found safe and sound inside of Emory
(18:32):
Smith's pocket. That led me to consider the possibility that
Emory Smith could have allowed the suspect's entry at gunpoint,
but that scenario didn't make sense within the known timeline.
Emory Smith punched his TimeClock card at four twenty three
at the barn across the street. Ear witnessed Charles Smallwood
(18:53):
heard gunshots and shouting at around four thirty five, which
helped a pinpoint the time of James Mitchell's murder. Several
of the trolley cars headlights were on and Smith was
nearly fifty yards away from the ticket office. Regardless, that
twelve minute window was still unaccounted for, so I just
put that question on the back burner. Only one photograph
(19:15):
was taken of Emory Smith after his autopsy, but it
speaks volumes when it's coupled with the written report, and
there's a lot to unpack. The single photograph is of
the left side of his face and a white sheet
was pulled up to his neck. His autopsy took place
at three o'clock PM on January twenty first. My grandfather
(19:37):
went to the funeral home to identify him around the
same time that this single picture was taken. Looking at
that photo and remaining clinical was difficult, knowing that my
grandfather had the same view under enormous stress and sorrow.
Was my grandfather brought into the room or did he
identify his uncle through glass? Did he smell the putrid,
(20:00):
sweet pungency of death or was he spared that indignity?
Was the sheet nonchalantly tossed off my great uncle or
carefully pulled down to reveal his face. Was my grandfather
granted a moment to compose himself. Did he receive time
alone with Emory's body to say a few words or
was he ushered out immediately after he made the identification.
(20:22):
Did my grandfather cry? Did he vomit? Did he drive
to Walkersville to tell the family. Did he have to
go next door to break the news to Aunt Edith
or did the police visit her personally? I stuffed those
thoughts down and went back to my clinical brain. Emory's
(20:43):
hair was dry, his face was clean shaven. Stitches above
his left ear continued toward the top of his head,
the vestiges of facial reflection when the surgeons pulled his
scalp back to reveal his skull and recover two of
the bullets. Clearly his body had been prepped for this photograph,
and his hair was fluffed over that incision, almost as
(21:04):
if he were to be moved directly into a casket
as soon as the flash bulb went off. The notes
on the report were handwritten in scrawled cursive, but thankfully
the vast majority were legible. Starting with the notes at
the top, it states that Emory Smith was five feet
six inches tall and weighed between one hundred and ninety
and two hundred pounds. Yeah, he was definitely short and chunky.
(21:26):
He wore denters and his upper plate was gone, but
a partial lower plate was in place. He came in
with no clothing, so again I have no idea what
happened to them between the time he was retrieved from
Rock Creek, the items were taken from his pockets and
the time he arrived at the funeral home. He was
shot four times in the head, and each bullet wound
(21:48):
is thoroughly documented, including the trajectory each one took, and
they tell a story. Starting with the gunshot wound in
his left cheek. It has stippling around it, meaning powder burns.
That means the gun was very close to his face
when it was fired. Another entry wound was just above
his left ear, and from the photo it appears like
(22:11):
there might have been additional stippling around it, but I
couldn't be positive because his hair was in the way.
A third entry wound is just behind his left ear,
and a fourth is about four inches above it, near
the top of his head. That's familiar. It's the same
wound pattern they found on James Mitchell. The physicians noted
that the bullet that entered his left cheek traveled slightly
(22:33):
downward and exited through the right side of his neck,
severing the cranial artery. The one just above his ear
didn't exit, it lodged behind his right eye. The one
behind his left ear traveled almost parallel through his head
and exited just above his right ear. The bullet fired
near the top of his head, didn't exit, and they
found it at the base of his skull. There was
(22:55):
no question that the manner of death was homicide by gunshot.
So the ops he didn't include very many notations about
the rest of Emory's body, but one remark at the
bottom of the page got my attention because it confirmed
his death prior to entering Rock Creek. Heart normal in size,
lung's normal air containing air containing no water was found
(23:21):
in his lungs, four gunshots in his head. Whoever killed
Emory Smith had a different motivation than a robbery getaway.
This was vengeance, this was panic, This was someone he knew.
Lieutenant John Fowler, the DC Police forensic specialist, determined that
(23:44):
the gun used to kill Mitchell was the same one
used to kill Smith. A nineteen oh three Colt thirty
two caliber semi automatic, one of the most popular guns
manufactured at the time. It would hold nine rounds, eight
in the magazine, one in the chamber. At the office,
there were four casings and one unfired bullet. Add the
four shots into Emory Smith and you have a total
(24:05):
of nine. The shooter emptied the gun Additionally, there were
no mentions of any shell casings found outside of the
ticket office at the car barn or by the bridge
over Rock Creek. Semi Automatic guns eject the casings, which
is why four of them were found on the office floor.
But what happened to the casings from Emory Smith's murder?
(24:27):
If he was killed in a car, the casings would
have been left inside of the passenger compartment rather than
on the ground, which does add credence to the information
that Smith was killed in a vehicle, And if he
was killed in a car, I believe he was, that
means close quarters, especially if there are multiple suspects and
large money bags already inside. It would also explain how
(24:49):
the stippling got on his cheek. The gunman was either
sitting next to Emory Smith or reached over the seat
to shoot him, And that led to another question, why
was Emory Smith in car in the first place and
how did he get inside? The detectives took notations of
shoeprints in the snow around the ticket office and the
car barn, and they made a detailed diagram. One set
(25:11):
of shoeprints exits the car barn, and they abruptly stop
at Connecticut Avenue, just north of the barn, toward the
tw Perry Coal Company. I think that's the spot where
they took Emory Smith after he exited the barn, when
he heard the shouting and gunshots from the ticket office,
after they forced him in the car. This was my
initial assessment of those events, and as I worked through
(25:33):
the leads, my evaluation evolved. But I'm going to provide
you with my entire thought process. This is from December
of twenty twenty. Someone who didn't go into the ticket
office was driving the getaway driver. The gunmen and the
bagman got into the vehicle, with the gunmen likely in
the front passenger seat and the bagman in the back
so there'd be room for the money bags. Smith was
(25:54):
shoved into the passenger side backseat at gunpoint, and after
a struggle, they stopped at the bridge and they killed
him with three shots in quick succession, breaking the glass
of the window, and the fourth final shot into the
top of his head was fired after they got his
body out of the car. The final gunshot wound wouldn't
bleed really heavily since he was already dead, which aligned
(26:15):
with the detective's notes that the only blood in the
snow seemed to be transferred from bloody clothing. The drag
marks and shoeprints told the rest of that story. Whether
or not my assessment was accurate will likely never be known.
But that was my first attempt at a reconstruction of
Smith's death, and it was the first time that I
really thought about my great uncle as a person instead
(26:37):
of just as a victim. What were his final thoughts.
Did he plead for his life? Did he tell the
suspects he had children and a wife at home? Did
he put up a fight, did he curse the suspects
or did he even have a chance to say anything?
Was it quick or did he see it coming? Twenty
(26:58):
years of training if taught me how to push questions
like that aside, to treat death as a scientific premise
rather than an emotional dilemma. Goddamn, this case was becoming
a real bitch, a daily battle between objectivity and sentiment,
detachment and guilt. But if I were to find the
answers the truth, my job was to keep my head
(27:22):
screwed on straight and stick to the facts. But just
like many times in the past, keeping my feelings out
of this one was really hard to do. Emory Smith's
murder and the questions about what happened opened another can
of worms. The suspects close. If Emory was killed in
the close quarters of a vehicle with three shots to
(27:44):
the head, severing an artery, and then dragged down the
bank of a creek to the water, there's no doubt
in my mind that the suspects would have been covered
in blood, their pants and their shoes would have been
soaking wet. The investigators had gleaned some information from the
autopsy of my uncle Emory. Since one of the gun
(28:04):
shots severed an artery which would bleed really heavily, and
since they were convinced that he was killed in a car,
they knew that any car they found would certainly have
blood stains in it. This is a direct quote from
Detective Bolton's handwritten report. It was believed that Smith was
shot and killed inside of an automobile, as examination of
(28:25):
Smith's body showed that he had been shot at close range.
The bullet that entered Smith's cheek showed a downward course
and severed his vein, which would cause a great amount
of blood to spurt out This belief is substantiated in
that the entire scene around the Carbarn and Carbarn office
and along the route taken to the bridge failed to
disclose any other bloodstain other than that of Mitchell. This
(28:48):
belief is further borne out in that the whole referred
to was at such close range so as to have
excessive powder burns on Smith's cheek, as if the gun
were placed against his cheek. A bloodstain referred to before
in this report where Smith's body was dragged through the
snow were of such a nature as would come off
of blood soaked clothing and showed no signs of excessive bleeding.
(29:12):
Those are incredibly detailed notes, and they're pretty spot on
for detectives in nineteen thirty five with very little experience
in a murder investigation. They're extraordinary. The gun shot into
his left cheek was fired at an intermediate range, not
a hard contact against his skin based on the stippling pattern,
(29:33):
but the detectives understood that the shooter was very close
to Emory Smith when he was shot. In my estimation,
the gun was fired less than three inches from my
uncle's face. An alert for a vehicle with broken glass
bullet holes and bloodstains was sent to the surrounding jurisdictions
(29:54):
of Washington and Baltimore. Meanwhile, District Lieutenant John Fowler processed
the broken glass pieces and milk bottle for fingerprints. He
found nothing. The detectives spoke with the manager of Embassy Derry,
where that quart milk bottle originated. Based on the stamp,
they asked the manager if any of his drivers had
made a sale of a single quart milk bottle overnight
(30:14):
while they ran their routes. All of the drivers reported
back that they hadn't, but the manager said the paper
bag that contained the bottle was from a different manufacturer
than his company used. It could have been purchased at
any number of drug stores. Unfortunately, that lead got dropped
along the way and over the years all of that
evidence got destroyed. Later in the afternoon, Captain Thompson, the
(30:38):
chief of detectives in DC, contacted Montgomery County. Captain Thompson
reported that a patrolman from the second Precinct had located
a car parked in front of six forty three O
Street Northwest. The door glass was broken and there was
blood inside. Detective Frank Brass, one of the district detectives
assigned to help told Captain Thompson that he and the
(31:00):
boys would be over right away. The DC patrolman stood
by and arrested a man when he entered that car.
When the detectives arrived, they located a thirty two caliber
revolver in the door pocket, and they held two more
men for questioning. From the police report, it was ascertained
that these men were from La Plate to Maryland and
couldn't have had any connections with this case. They let
(31:22):
all of them go. The car too. Another car with
a broken windshield was found at an autoglass business. The
detectives rode over to that location and they found marks
in the windshield from a BB gun, not their car either.
A third car was stopped after it was found speeding
on New York Avenue. The car had bullet holes in
it and some of the glass was broken. The investigation
(31:45):
of that car found that it belonged to a Fourteenth
Street used car dealer. He said he allowed the car
to be used for demonstration purposes. The detectives were satisfied
with that explanation and they let it go. They a
list of all of the vehicles that had been stolen
the day and night before the murders. Criminals don't use
(32:06):
their own vehicles, and back in the thirties, just like today,
they'd put a stolen license plate on the one they
did use. And here's a fun fact. There were cases
where career criminals would have a switch under the dashboard
that would flip the license plate over to a different
one from another state when they fled a scene. That
wasn't just the imaginations of Hollywood. Those criminals were innovative.
(32:28):
After the detectives compiled a list of all the stolen cars,
they tracked down all of them except one, a nineteen
twenty six green Buick Coach with DC license plate one
three one nine nine three, stolen from the area of
fifteenth and Irving Street Northwest on Sunday night around ten o'clock.
(32:51):
By Monday, the twenty first, it hadn't been located anywhere.
As I was doing my initial read through of the case,
I posted a question about the Carbarn murders on a
Facebook page that focuses on Chevy Chase, Maryland history. Someone
had put up a photograph of the Carbarn with the
trolleys inside. A notification popped up from retired Montgomery County
(33:13):
detective Jack too me. Jack said he knew all about
the Carbarn case because he'd worked on it for a
number of years back in the nineteen seventies and eighties.
I reached out to Jack and he told me a
story that left me stunned. He located an eyewitness to
the robbery and murders over forty years later. The man's
(33:35):
name was Ernest Carter, and he was just seven years
old in nineteen thirty five. I'll let Jack tell the
rest of that story. In nineteen seventy seven, I was
a fairly new patrol when I had been on department
six years by that time. And it was lay at
the end of November, and we were white on the
(33:56):
doorstep of one of the coldest winners Washingtons ever had.
And I was sitting in the parking lot of the
Columbia Country From and I heard a cap on my
window and they're standing there was the man drest in
a security guard. You from some tipe and we chit chatted,
and I said, why don't you come sit in my
cards to pull them? And he sat in the front seat.
(34:18):
We were talking about how things have changed over the years.
He brought up that they never did find out who's
killed his ben down the street. I said what then?
And he told me the story of the Carbarn murders.
And I said, I have lived here all my life
with him, three miles of that building, and I don't
(34:38):
know what you're talking about. And I said, well, this
has used to me. And he says, you know I
was there And I said what, and he says, yes,
I was waiting for a street cart some one of
his relatives that dropped him off. He was waiting for
the first trolley car all the morning and he's waiting
(35:00):
the trance stop. At all of a sudden years gun shots,
people shouting, running. He scared. He runs somewhere and hides
behind the building and he sees a green Buerku making
you turn on Connecticut Avenue. The car had been parked
facing southbound. The car made a you turn across Connecticut
(35:23):
Avenue and went north on Connecticut Avenue. And that's the
last he ever saw the car. And naturally, I said, well,
what did the police say when you talked to them,
thinking that they'd be all over him, and he said, officer,
they didn't talk to us black people in those days.
(35:46):
And I said, so, you've never been interviewed, and he
said never. Ernest Carter saw a green duing. If you
have information about the Carbar murders, go to the Shattered
Souls Facebook page and leave me a message. Opening music
(36:08):
by Sam Johnson at Sam Johnson live dot com. Shattered
Souls The carbar Murders as produced by Karen Smith and
Angel Hart Productions
Host
Nancy Grace
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