Episode Seven: "Pants on Fire"

DC Jail inmate Horace Davis provided the first solid lead to investigate, but was he telling the truth? Karen has more names to investigate and finds the first bombshell from an unlikely source. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So so what she's so well bad ship. But it
doesn't then how to feel. This is the new realm.

(00:26):
This is the new realm. I don't want a single
word when about that date. You understand there is some
question about whether it was an inside job. I would

(00:46):
say he's ruthless. It can become deadly. He's given certain circumstances.
Welcome back to Shadowed Souls the car Barne Murders. I'm
your host, Karen Smith. This is a episode seven. This
podcast may contain graphic language and is not suitable for children.

(01:10):
Previously on the Carbarn Murders, a trip to Philadelphia in
pursuit of Tony the Stinger, Kjino and his mob had
been a bust. Interviews with Kensington natives Arthur Waugh, his brothers,
and uncle Luke Johnson failed to neet anything worthwhile, other
than some rambling answers about who was staying where the

(01:31):
night of the murders. Another interview with a man who
claimed his name was Harry Simon proved that Simon was
a DC racket insider with ties to Philadelphia and New York,
but his answers failed to give any direct links to
the murders and his alibi about being in Baltimore at
the time checked out. The Carborn case was put on

(01:52):
the back burner for several months until January ninety six,
nearly a year to the day since the murder, when
Detective Theodore Volton got a note on his desk regarding
an inmate of the DC Jail named Horace Davis. Davis
had already contacted the U S Attorney, the Department of Justice,
and the Superintendent of the DC Penal Institutions about his intel,

(02:16):
and they all believed his story held water. Horace Davis
claimed to have inside information about the Carbarn case, information
he was willing to provide in exchange for a transfer
from the DC Jail to another location to serve out
his sentence. He claimed that once the newspapers got a
hold of his story, that his life would be in

(02:37):
danger because he would be labeled a stool pigeon a rat.
Detective Bolton interviewed him and got all the details. Horace
Davis provided a handwritten statement during that visit with Bolton
and said an old friend of his named Walter Oliver,
had picked him up on a corner in downtown d C.

(02:57):
Both he and Walter Oliver were out on pear Ole
back in August nineteen thirty five when they met up,
and apparently Davis had gotten himself tossed back in jail
in the months since. During their conversation, Walter Oliver confessed
to being involved in the car Barn murders. Rather than
parsing down the details, I'll let Horace Davis's own words

(03:21):
tell the story. This is what he wrote. My full
name is Horace E. Davis. I'm twenty eight years old
and I lived at First Street, Northwest. I make this
statement of my own free will and have been made
no threats, promises, or inducements of any kind honor. About
the nineteenth of August nineteen thirty five, I was standing

(03:43):
at tenth and E Streets, Northwest when a man in
a hub coop drove up and said, I'll take you home.
I knew this man. His name is Walter Oliver and
he lives at Capital Heights, Maryland. He and I had
been drinking and he had enough to make him talkative.
When we got to First in Rhode Island Avenue, we
stopped and I said, let's go buy a beer. He

(04:05):
said he'd been drinking gin and he was afraid it
would make him sick. We talked a while and I
asked him what he was doing and he said nothing
since I pulled the car barn job. And I said
did you do that? And he answered hell yes. Then
I asked him why did you kill both men? And
Oliver said I couldn't get anymore for killing a hundred

(04:26):
as I could for killing one. Then I got out
of his coupe and Oliver wrote out Rhode Island Avenue
towards Mount Rainier. I knew Walter Oliver in the Maryland
Training School for Boys, as he and I did a
stretch together there in the early twenties. When I first
read Horace Davis's statement, my first thought was that Walter
Oliver was just a blow hard trying to get some

(04:49):
street cred with his blatant admission to another criminal. Then
I remembered the case of Roy Andrews that I detailed
in Season one, where Roy Andrews steps Robert Peterson did
the same thing on a wire tapped confession to his
drug dealer. Was Horace Davis telling the truth and did

(05:09):
Walter Oliver really admit to being involved in the murders? Well,
there's more a lot more. Skipping ahead to April seven, nineteen,
Horace Davis was taken from jail into downtown Washington to
give his statement again. The title of the page reads

(05:31):
State of Maryland versus Walter Oliver at All Murder of
Lawrence Emery Smith and James Mitchell u S. District Attorney's Office, Washington,
d C. Statement of Horace E. Davis, thirty one years old.
They were going after Walter Oliver at All Meeting and

(05:51):
others for the car Barn murders, and they wanted to
hear Davis's story one more time. During the nineteen thirty
eight interview You, Horace Davis added a few more details
to his initial story, and he was up for conditional
release the following week. On April four, he gave the
same details about being at the corner of tenth and

(06:13):
E Streets when Walter Oliver pulled over and offered him
a ride. Oliver asked Horace Davis how he'd been getting
along on the outside. Davis said he was making out
the best he could. He was on parole from Lorton Reformatory,
and he was trying to keep his nose clean. Horace
Davis said that he could smell liquor on Oliver's breath

(06:34):
and that he'd been drinking pretty heavily. Davis hopped in
the car and they rode out to First and Rhode Island,
and on the way, Davis asked Walter Oliver what he'd
been up to. Oliver replied, well, you can see what
I've got here with me. I'm just trying to put
a little bread on the table and make ends meet.
I haven't pulled anything since we pulled the carbarn job.

(06:56):
Davis replied, you mean to tell me that you pulled
at John. Oliver then said hell yes. Davis asked who
was with him that night in Chevy Chase, and Walter
Oliver said a couple of fellows. Davis didn't press him
on the issue of who else was involved, but he
did ask Oliver how much money they got out of it.

(07:18):
Oliver told him either eighteen hundred or hundred. He couldn't
recall the exact number, but he did tell the U
S District attorney that Walter Oliver was more likely to
inflate the number anyway, and just to refresh your memory,
close to hundred dollars was stolen from the ticket office,
so that figure from Oliver was inflated, but the amount

(07:40):
had also been misreported numerous times in the newspapers. Davis
asked Walter Oliver about my great uncle Emery Smith, who
he called the man in the Creek, and asked Oliver
why they killed him. Walter Oliver replied he recognized one
of us. We had already killed one, and we might

(08:00):
as well have killed a hundred. I've been laying low.
Things have been too damn hot. Walter Oliver also said
that they didn't go back through Chevy Chase, but took
Connecticut Avenue northbound through Kensington, which was the direction of
the bridge over Rock Creek. Horace Davis ended his nineteen

(08:20):
thirty eight affidavit by swearing that what he said was
the absolute truth and he would appear as a witness
for the prosecution voluntarily whenever he was needed. Going back
to Volton's interview with Davis in January of nineteen thirty six,
he didn't take Horace Davis's story at face value. Volton

(08:41):
asked Davis why Walter Oliver would feel comfortable enough to
confess a murder to him, and Davis said that he
would have to admit to another crime to prove his point,
and he gave Bolton all of the details. Horace Davis
described another robbery that he committed in nineteen thirty three
with Walter Oliver. He said that Oliver had been in

(09:03):
the bootlegging racket and knew a man up in rural
Maryland that kept a wallet filled with cash in his
back pocket. The man was an easy mark, and Walter
Oliver asked Horace Davis to drive the car while Oliver
robbed the man at gunpoint. Davis told Oliver he was crazy.
The man would recognize him and squawk to the cops.

(09:25):
Walter Oliver said that wouldn't be an issue because he'd
just kill him. Horace Davis told Oliver that now he
knew he was nuts, and that Oliver could drive and
Davis would rob the man without having to bump him off.
Horace Davis said they drove to the house up in
seat Pleasant, Maryland, and he robbed the man of twenty

(09:45):
seven bucks. There was no shooting. Detective Volton thought that
the cheese had slid off of Horace Davis's pizza crust
to admit to another robbery that had never been reported,
so he followed up on his story. Vol and went
to Seat Pleasant and found Will Godfrey, the bootlegger that
Davis and Oliver had robbed three years prior. When Bolton

(10:09):
confronted Godfrey about it, Godfrey was stunned and said, who
told you that? I've never mentioned it to anyone? Volton
had hit pay dirt. If Davis was telling the truth
about an unreported robbery that he had committed, he must
be telling the truth about what Walter Oliver confessed about
the car barn case. Horace. Davis added that Oliver owned

(10:33):
a red LaSalle touring car and a peerless coup to
really expensive luxury cars along the lines of our Mercedes
or a BMW today. He also said that Oliver ran
a bootlegging place at one Street Northwest. He and Oliver
didn't want to take that flaming red Lasale on Will

(10:54):
Godfrey's robbery since it was easily spotted, so they borrowed
a Ford coupe from a woman and who lived next door.
After the robbery, they went to one Street into a
back room to split up the money thirteen bucks apiece
for Oliver and Davis, and they gave the extra dollar
to the woman for the use of her car. Detective

(11:15):
Volton needed to find out everything he could about Walter Oliver,
so he went to the DC Vice Squad along with
Sergeant Leroy Rogers, and they found an officer who had
known Oliver since they were kids. The officer said that
Walter Oliver would do anything, including murder, and he'd heard
that Walter Oliver carried a thirty two caliber gun. Horace

(11:37):
Davis said that the gun that Oliver gave him during
will Godfrey's robbery was a thirty two caliber semi automatic.
That's the same caliber gun used in the Carborn case.
Continuing to follow leads on Walter Oliver, they went to
the Identification Bureau and found out the woman's name who
had lent them the Ford coupe. Her name was Mildred

(11:58):
Oliver and she was married to Walter Oliver's cousin, Douglas.
They all ran that speakeasy together. Now the detectives knew
where to find Walter Oliver, but they had to get
more information on him before they confronted him about the murders.
The detectives went to the Commissioner of Motor Vehicles to
check the registrations of ANNIE cars under Walter Oliver's name,

(12:21):
especially that red LaSalle and Peerless coupe that Horace Davis mentioned.
There was no listing for either of those cars, but
they did find a registration for a nineteen thirty five
Hup Coop. Horace Davis said that Walter Oliver picked him
up in a hup coup that day at Tenthany Street.
With that information, they went to the house listed to

(12:45):
Walter Oliver's wife, posing as agents from the Motor Vehicle
Commission and told her that there had been a mix
up on the license plate numbers and they needed to
check all of the cars in the yard to make
sure things were correct. They found seven cars in Oliver's yard.
Two of them were registered to Walter Oliver's father, another

(13:06):
belonged to Oliver's wife, The Red Lassalle, the Peerless, and
a whipp At sedan had no registration, and a Hup
Coop was the only one in Walter Oliver's name, but
the tag on it was stolen and belonged on a
Ford coupe that was registered to a known criminal who
traded in hot cars and stolen parts. Why would Walter

(13:28):
Oliver have seven cars and why was there a stolen
plate on the only one in his name. Walter Oliver
and his wife had only been married since January second,
ninety six, and they were now living in Capitol Heights, Maryland.
Walter Oliver was looking really good for the Carbarn case,

(13:48):
and they dug a little further into his past. Walter
Oliver was friends with two men who had been found
guilty of bootlegging and counterfeiting, and they'd been released on
parole in November of nineteen thirty four, just two months
before the murders. Bootlegging, counterfeiting, stolen cars, bogus tags, multiple vehicles,

(14:10):
a speakeasy robbery convictions. It seemed like Walter Oliver had
quite a few connections to various DC rackets. Horace Davis
wrote down all of the information he knew in a
sworn affidavit with the promise to testify against Walter Oliver
if charges were proffered against him. That was on January

(14:32):
nineteen thirty six. On January there was a story in
the Washington Post. It was reported that two thousand people
stood in the street as seven fire companies battled a
huge blaze at the former Capitol Heights Town Meeting Hall.
The new owners came home at two o'clock in the
morning to find their second floor apartment completely engulfed in flames.

(14:56):
Two firemen were seriously hurt as they battled the fire
for our. The interior of the two story frame building
that used to be a movie theater was a complete loss,
as was the brand new electrical shop on the first floor.
That electrical shop was owned by Walter Oliver. Oliver and
his wife said that they'd been at dinner and came

(15:18):
home to find their brand new apartment and his electrical
shop in flames. This happened just five days after Horace
Davis gave his information to Volton. It seemed like Walter
Oliver might have torched his own place, but for what purpose.
The fire marshal concluded that a portable heater had tumbled

(15:38):
against the bed and set the sheets on fire, and sadly,
the Oliver's dog, Mickey, was found dead on the second floor.
Did Mickey knock the heater over or was there something
more nefarious going on? Detective Volton found out that Oliver
had opened up that electrical shop shortly after the Chevy

(15:59):
Chase murders robbery, and surmised that if the thirty two
caliber handgun was inside it was gone, along with everything
else the Oliver's owned. Detective Volton had gotten the information
about Oliver's electrical shop from the Capital Heights town officer,
who was unimpressed by Bolton and didn't care to share

(16:20):
much information about Walter Oliver at all, other than the
location of the shop and that the Olivers had just
gotten married a couple of days after they talked to
that town officer the building burned to the ground. Was
that town officer receiving payoffs from Walter Oliver's bootlegging gig?
Was that why he was so superficial with his information
to Bolton. It's possible that the town officer tipped Walter

(16:44):
Oliver off that he'd had a visit from detectives about
the Carborn case. To me, that fire is way too
coincidental to be an accident, but there's just no way
to prove it. So what happened after the U S
District Attorney got Horace David has sworn Affi David in
ninety eight on what appeared to be the state's pending

(17:04):
case against Walter Oliver for the Carbarn murders. Absolutely nothing.
The detective spent weeks both in nineteen thirty six and
again in nineteen thirty eight building a case against Walter
Oliver for the murders, But there's no interview with him
in the case file, no follow up to that U. S.
District Attorney's meeting with Horace Davis, no further information on

(17:27):
Walter Oliver at all. It just evaporated and he was
never arrested or indicted on the charges. Why do all
of that leg work only to let it go? Was
it because they had no other evidence against Oliver other
than the statement of a known felon what happened with
all of the vehicles in his yard, the speakeasy at Street.

(17:52):
Did Walter Oliver go on the run after his shop
burned down? Did they look for that thirty two caliber
gun in the rubble? Did they try to question Oliver's
wife at any point? Did the detectives ever confront Oliver
with Horace Davis's statement about his confession to being involved anything? No,

(18:13):
they didn't. Something about this case file isn't right. Volton,
brass deal Rogers, McAuliffe and all of the other detectives
seemed like they were chasing their tails, and every time
they got a good lead on a potential suspect. It
just faded away with no explanation. They stopped looking for

(18:34):
the missing green Buick that was stolen the night before
the murders. They let George Bruffy and Lawrence Pettit off
the hook after they went to jail for planning the
robbery of the main office at thirty six and M Street,
even after Bruffy told Petted he talked too much when
the Carbarn case was brought up by the informant. What
about getting a statement directly from kW Gettings about him

(18:57):
seeing William Clark outside of the fourteenth and Niece Capital
Street ticket office on the morning of the murders. There
was no follow up at all on Walter Oliver, despite
Horace Davis has sworn up at davitt an interview at
the U. S District Attorney's office and the mysterious fire
at Oliver's electrical shop just days after they went to
Capitol Heights to ask about him. Arthur Waugh was released

(19:20):
without getting to the bottom of exactly where he was
on the night of the murders. Harry Simon had ties
to the underworld, and although his alibi had checked out,
what else did he know? And what the hell happened
to Francis Gregory, the man who supposedly slept through four
gunshots in the next room at the Chevy Chase ticket office.
What else did he know? And why wasn't he pressed

(19:41):
harder for information? Why were all of these men let
go without any further investigation into their alibis or to
gather more information about what they really knew about the
car Barn case? What made this case so damned difficult
to solve back then? And why was it shelved for decades?
Was it really an inside job like everyone thought? Or

(20:04):
was there more to it? The further I dug, the
more questions I had, and none of it made any sense.
For months on end, I tried to put the pieces together,
and I kept coming up empty. I was becoming obsessed
with this case, just hell bent on figuring out who
killed these men and why. I was falling back into

(20:25):
a familiar trap, just like I did years before when
a case became too close. But this one is close.
This is my family, my relative who didn't get justice.
I continued my research on the information provided by Horace Davis,
and I finally started to make some headway. Horace Davis

(20:48):
did give another name in his initial January nineteen thirty
six statement. The man was a good friend of Walter Oliver's,
who was currently serving eight years at the Earland State Penitentiary.
Oliver's friend's name was Robert Janny. I found out that
he had a laundry list of arrests. Janny and his mother,

(21:11):
Josephine Graham, had been arrested for trafficking heroin in July
of nineteen thirty in what was termed the biggest narcotics
bust in the history of the East Coast. The heroine
was being shipped to Washington via New York and New
Jersey by two gangsters, and Robert Janny and his mother,
Josephine were the main distributors in the district. Robert Janny

(21:35):
had ties to both New York and New Jersey in
the drug racket. When they were arrested, Robert Janny fought
three federal agents who wrestled into the ground and they
found heroine in his pocket. His mother, Josephine, was arrested
as well, and Janny tried to get her off the
hook by insisting that the drugs found in her purse

(21:55):
were his, but the investigators didn't buy it. They were
both taken to d C jail. That was in July
of nineteen thirty The charges were either dropped or they
both received very short sentences, because just two years later,
on July two, Robert Jenny was arrested for d u
I and reckless driving on July six. The next day,

(22:19):
he managed to bend the bars of a window at
the Prince George's County jail and escaped. A few hours later,
he was found at his house and taken back with
the added charge of escape. His mother, Josephine, died in
nineteen thirty three. Janny was released from that jail sentence,
and in October of nineteen thirty five, he was arrested again,

(22:41):
this time for breaking his wife's nose during a domestic
While he was serving three months in jail for that.
An investigation into an armed robbery and assault that happened
the week prior to the domestic netted Jenny eight years.
The victim of the robbery, a man named Samuel Weiss,

(23:01):
was on the steps of his house at around eleven
o'clock at night. Two men snuck up on him and
he felt the muzzle of a revolver against his head.
The two men took three hundred dollars from Samuel Weiss's
wallet and ran down an alley. One suspect, Ernest Tyler,
was arrested first because he was employed by Samuel Weiss

(23:21):
and was identified by the victim. Ernest Tyler eventually came
off the name of his accomplice, Robert Jenny. The police
got a signed statement from Jenny which said that Ernest
Tyler planned the hold up and purchased the gun that
Robert Jenny used, while Tyler took the money. Jenny was
charged as the gunman. That is quite a rap sheet.

(23:43):
Continuing their investigation into the statements of Horace Davis about
Walter Oliver's friendship with Robert Jenny, Detective Volton went to
Baltimore to talk with Robert Jenny's wife, Lillian. She was
twenty four years old and living on Afford Street with
their daughter, Josephine, no doubt named after Robert's mother. Lillian

(24:06):
was still pretty piste off at her husband for breaking
her nose, and she was more than willing to talk
with the detectives about what she knew. Lillian said that
Robert Jenny had been employed at the Baltimore Salesbrook Company
as a watchman, and he never worked on Sunday nights
or Mondays during the day. Recall that the murders happened

(24:26):
early Monday morning, January one. When the detectives asked Lilian
if she could remember anything unusual about her husband back
in January of nineteen thirty five, she said that one
morning did stand out in her mind. Robert Janny came
home early one morning and his pants were wet all
the way up to the knees. She said. He sat

(24:49):
around all day staring at the walls, acting very nervous.
That afternoon, an insurance salesman knocked on the door and
Janny about jumped out of his chair. Detective Volton asked
her if she could remember any of the names of
the men that Janny ran around with, either in Baltimore
or in d c. And he showed Lilian an array

(25:10):
of photographs on the coffee table. Lilian looked the photos
over carefully, and she picked one up. She said, isn't
this a Baltimore man? I have seen him with my
husband at Baltimore in gay streets. He introduced us, and
I think he said his name is Clarklin or Franklin.
It was William Franklin Clark. If you have information about

(25:38):
the Carborn murders, go to the Shattered Souls Facebook page
and leave a message. Opening music by Sam Johnson at
Sam Johnson Live dot com. Underscore music by Kevin McLoud
at incompatech dot com. Shattered Souls the Carborn Murders as
produced by Karen Smith and Angel Hart Productions. Back