April 5, 2022 • 25 mins
As the detectives followed lead after lead, nothing seemed to be panning out. Karen starts following leads of her own, including an attempted robbery of another ticket office that provided a suspect description.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
So h O ship But it doesn't then how to
(00:22):
feel this is the real? This is the new real.
It was stolen out of his office, but he was
locked inside his office. So how did that happen? If
they were going to dump h him a freak? Why
did they drag him across the road? Did they drove
that car all over creation? But if nothing windshield? There
(00:46):
is some question about whether it was an inside job.
How could I have sucked do that? How could I
have not heard dumb shop? Nobody believe that. I thought
that he could have slept through that. Why was Emery
Smith taken from the scene of the crime. Was he
kidnapped or was he in on it? Welcome back to
(01:08):
Shattered Souls The Car Barn Murders. I'm Karen Smith. This
is episode three. This podcast may contain graphic language that
is not suitable for children. Previously on the Car Barn Murders,
My great uncle Emory Smith and his co worker James
Mitchell were both murdered on Monday morning, January one. Montgomery
(01:33):
County detectives Theodore of Bolton and Leroy Rogers began compiling
an extended investigation with the assistance of DC Metropolitan detective
Frank Brass and Baltimore detective Stewart deal. My uncle Emory
was shot four times in the head and his body
was found floating in Rock Creek. The forensic analysis of
(01:54):
a milk bottle and broken glass pieces found at the
Rock Creek Bridge found no fingerprints, and those leads got
left by the wayside. The evidence was destroyed in the
years since the murders, so there's no possibility of forensic
testing with modern technology. Two suspicious cars with blood, bullet
holes and broken glass were stopped then released after a
(02:16):
brief investigation. I spoke with retired Montgomery County detective Jack Toomey,
who said that he worked on the Carborn case in
the nineteen seventies and eighties and he located an eyewitness
to the crime, Ernest Carter, in nineteen seventy seven. Carter
had never spoken about it to anyone. Jack Toomey typed
(02:38):
a report of his findings regarding Ernest Carter's statement, and
he placed it into the dusty case file, which he
now kept in his patrol car. After he learned about
the murderers and realized the case was unsolved, he asked
the inspector for permission to work on it in his
spare time. The inspector told him that was fine as
long as it didn't interfere with his active cases. This
(02:59):
is Jack Toomey's verbatim report from nineteen seventy seven and
his encounter with Ernest Carter. Carter said that he had
been seven years old at the time and had been
waiting for a street car at the hot dog stand
across the street from the car Barn office. He was
waiting for a street car to take him to his
grandfather's farm that was in northeast Washington. Carter recalled that
(03:20):
it was very late at night. He said that he
suddenly heard shots and he hid behind the hot dog stand.
Then he saw two men run out of the office
and get into a green Buick that was driven by
a third man. The car then went north towards Kensington.
The next day, his mother told him that there had
been a murder, but he never told the police what
he saw because he didn't think they would believe a
(03:42):
seven year old boy. He doesn't recall what the men
looked like, but he does recall the green buick. A
green Buick had been stolen on Sunday night from the
area of Fifteenth and Irving Streets in d C. And
it hadn't been found anywhere. The getaway car was never
reported in the papers, so there's no way that Ernest
(04:03):
Carter could have known that the buick was the only
vehicle never recovered. Ernest Carter's comment about hiding behind a
hot dog stand was interesting. There was a hot dog stand, Dan's,
at chevy Chase Lake, and it was a popular place
in the summer because of its proximity to the community pool.
When I first read about Carter's mention of Dans, my
(04:24):
brain auto piloted to a New York esque hand cart,
but I was completely off base. Dan's was a permanent
pavilion type building, and I found a photograph online. I
had to place it into the scene to make sure
that Ernest Carter's line of sight wasn't obscured and that
he could actually see the front of the ticket office
(04:44):
from that vantage point. I didn't distrust what Ernest Carter
told Jack to me, but an eyewitness account, even forty
years after the fact, is a crucial piece of any
investigation that needs really careful scrutiny. I pulled additional photographs
of the ticket office, the car barn, and the pool.
From the chevy Chase Historical Society's website archive. There weren't
(05:07):
any photographs of all the structures together, but there was
one structure that was present in all of them, the
water tower. Using the water tower as a landmark, I
could place Dan's hot dog stand on the same side
of Connecticut Avenue as the car barn, just to the
south of it, almost directly across the street from the
ticket office. Placing Ernest Carter at that hot dog stand,
(05:31):
he would have had a direct line of sight to
the front of the ticket office when he heard the
gunshots and saw two men run out of the front door.
The green buick would have been right in front of
him on Connecticut Avenue when it made that you turn
and went north. Carter's line of sight would have been
lost after the vehicle continued toward the car barn because
the barn and the water tower would have been in
(05:52):
his way. Every witness also said that it was really
foggy that morning with low visibility. Ernest Carter said it
he was scared and he hid behind the hot dog counter,
so he may not have seen the rest of the
crime that involved my uncle emory. As far as Ernest
Carter's memory after forty years, I can imagine that witnessing
a violent crime as a seven year old child would
(06:14):
imprint pretty strongly on his memory. Learning that he witnessed
suspects fleeing a murderer that became headline news for weeks
would become a permanent fixture in his mind. I have
no doubt that his statement was accurate and he was
telling the truth. I also believe that he was incredibly
relieved to offload that secret that he'd kept to himself
(06:35):
for so long to a kind and understanding officer like
Jack Toomey, who would listen to him and take him
seriously and all points. Bulletin was sent to the officers
and detectives in the surrounding districts to check the area
garages and warehouses for a vehicle with broken glass, bullet
holes and bloodstains, just in case the car used in
(06:56):
the murders had been secreted away. Local leaning establishments were
also notified to be on the lookout for bloodstained clothes
that were brought in. Getting back to the reconstruction of
the moments of the crime, sometimes there are questions that
you have to ask that are really difficult. I've tried
hard to keep my personal bias out of this case,
(07:17):
since my great uncle was one of the victims and
my family carried that burden for decades. But there are
questions about this case that are really hard to understand,
and things that don't make sense within the big picture.
The facts are that Emery Smith was shot four times
in the head, at least one of them at very
close range. His body was transported one mile north of
(07:38):
the carborn and dumped from the northwest side of Connecticut
Avenue at the bridge over Rock Creek. The biggest question
I have is why why would the suspects bother to
do that. The first answer I came up with was
that they hid his body in order to buy time
to get away. To kill Emory Smith openly on Connecticut Avenue,
(07:59):
where he would be instantly found by anyone arriving for
work or simply driving by, would hasten the search for
the suspects. James Mitchell's body was at least hidden from
view inside the ticket office, and he might not be
discovered until well after the suspects were gone. But does
that theory really make sense? It took time to drag
(08:19):
Emery Smith's body into the water, and it put the
suspects into a position to be discovered at the bridge.
Were they just disorganized and panicked? This really didn't seem
like the work of organized killers, more like small time
criminals who let the robbery get out of hand. And
I also have more questions about the location at the bridge.
(08:40):
Did they use the headlights of the car to see
where they were going? There were no street lights on
that part of Connecticut Avenue in nine. Where was the
car parked and which direction was it facing? How did
those broken glass pieces end up in the snow. When
was my uncle Emory actually killed out side of the car,
(09:00):
barn in the vehicle on the way to the bridge,
or at the bridge after they stopped. Did the detectives
inadvertently miss any bloodstains at the scene outside of the
ticket office, was obscured by the slush and mud or
by passing cars before they got there. I tried to
piece this together using the information from the witnesses and
(09:22):
the forensic evidence left on my uncle Emory's body. The
one ear witness, Charles Smallwood, a worker from the T. W.
Perry Coal Company down the street, said that he was
in the basement stoking the furnace at about four thirty
five in the morning when he heard shouting and gun
shots from the area across the street. Was that the
moment that Emery was killed. The T. W. Perry Coal
(09:46):
Company was about seventy five yards north of the ticket office.
So it seems doubtful in my mind that Charles Smallwood
could have heard gun shots from James Mitchell's murder over
that large of a distance from a basement with a
fur this roaring in the background. Ernest Carter, the eyewitness,
reported hearing gunshots, shouting, and then saw two men run
(10:07):
out of the office and flee northbound on Connecticut Avenue,
But he didn't report hearing a second set of gunshots
at the car barn. There was one set of shoeprints
at the car barn that abruptly stopped at Connecticut Avenue.
They were just south of the T. W. Perry Coal Company.
Was my uncle Emory shot and killed right there on
(10:28):
Connecticut Avenue? Did Charles Smallwood here my uncle Emory's murder
instead of James Mitchell's at the office. If my uncle
was killed right there, how can I account for the
broken glass in the snow at the bridge? Did the
pieces just fall out of the rubber molding when the
door was opened to get his body out? Did an
elbow or shoulder knocked the shattered pieces loose? And why
(10:52):
would they drag my uncle's body all the way down
the embankment and chance getting caught by a passing car.
My uncle Emory had three gun shots in a tight
grouping at least one of them at close range. A
fourth gun shot was near the top of his head.
His upper denture was missing. Was all of that evidence
(11:12):
of a struggle inside the car as they drove toward
the bridge? Was he kidnapped at gunpoint? Or did the
car stop? And did my uncle get inside it on
his own? I had to consider that one or more
of the suspects knew my uncle Emory. As painful as
this possibility is to admit, I have to front run
(11:32):
it if I'm doing my job the right way. Could
my uncle Emory have been in on it? Could he
have used the key found in his pocket to unlock
the door to the ticket office before going back to
the car barn to punch his TimeClock card? Ato would
he have any motivation to do such a thing. What
if he was told then it would just be a quick,
(11:53):
one off robbery with the promise that no one would
get hurt. But then the suspects killed James Mitchell and
they got into a fight with my uncle Emory as
a result, and then they killed him too. Now, in
my mind, and admittedly I have a bias, my uncle
Emory was not an accomplice. He was a victim. But
I also have to admit that there are holes in
(12:15):
all of the theories I've come up with so far,
But my contention about his innocence does have evidence to
back it up. Uncle Emory and his second wife, Edith,
were doing fine financially. They lived next door to my
grandfather in a middle class home. When Edith's first husband
died in the mid nineteen twenties, he left her some
(12:36):
insurance money. In nineteen thirty eight, three years after the murders,
aunt Edith secured an attorney. She wanted to force her
derelict brother to pay back two hundred dollars that he
borrowed from her all the way back in nineteen twenty
five when her first husband died. In a detailed letter
from Edith's attorney, her brother told Edith that he wouldn't
(12:59):
pay her back. He basically told his sister, tough Ship,
you can't get blood out of a turnip. Her brother
was headed to bankruptcy court. Edith wanted to be present
at the hearing to tell the judge her information and
get her money back with interest with a court order.
And before you think Edith was being petty, two hundred
dollars in nineteen thirty eight was the equivalent of about
(13:20):
four grand to day. If somebody borrowed that from you
with a promise to pay it back and then told you,
tough Ship a decade later, wouldn't you be just a
little piste off? I would? In the letter from the attorney,
Edith stated that her brother had made the comment that
he would never get insurance on himself, so in the
event that his wife cashed it in, another man wouldn't
(13:43):
have access to the money. This guy sounded like a
real d bag. And Edith countered that statement and said
her brother was the only person to ever ask about
the money, and that Emery Smith never asked about it.
When I read that letter the time, I didn't put
much weight on it, since it seemed like an inner
family squabble that had no bearing on the murders. But now,
(14:07):
after considering the possibility of my uncle's complicity, I put
a lot of weight on it because it tells me
about my uncle Emory's character. Aunt Edith said that my
uncle never asked about that insurance money. If Emory was
a money grubber, I have no doubt that Edith would
have said as much to her attorney, but she didn't.
(14:28):
She said that her brother was the only person to
ever ask about that money. If Uncle Emory was desperate
for cash, he had a large family that would have
gladly helped him out. He lived next door to my grandfather,
and two of my other great uncle's also worked for
Capital Transit. He had plenty of people around who would
have given him a financial hand if he needed it.
(14:49):
He was a fifteen year employee of the company, and
he made a higher salary than most of the others
just by virtue of a seniority. There just isn't a
motive for my uncle Emory to be involved in the
rob It was his own workplace. He had everything to
lose and nothing to gain. And now that I've made
the argument for my great uncle, I have to make
(15:10):
the counter argument. The only people who were definitively present
during the robbery and murders were the suspects James Mitchell,
Emory Smith, and Francis Gregory, the man supposedly sleeping on
the bench in the trainman's room. Somebody unlocked the front
door after the evening clerk John Stout left the office
(15:32):
at three forty in the morning to go home. Is
it possible that Emery Smith used the key found in
his pocket to unlock that door? Yeah, that's possible. Is
it possible that Francis Gregory unlocked the door before going
into the trainman's room to sleep. Also possible going back
(15:52):
to the ticket office witnesses. Montgomery County State Attorney James
Pew did some investigating of his own, and he brought
several people into his office for a follow up interview.
There were some holes that James Pew wanted to hem up,
and the first person he talked to was Parker Hannah,
the conductor who found James Mitchell's body. In his initial statement,
(16:15):
Parker Hannah said that the front door was unlocked when
he reported for work at around five ten in the morning.
Hannah and two other employees found Francis Gregory inside the
trainman's room asleep on a bench. The door to that
room was also unlocked. Hannah said that when Gregory was
informed of the murder, he jumped up from the bench
(16:36):
and ran out of the rear door into the snow
in his socks. He said he was sure that Francis
Gregory had his coat and his shoes off. Hannah said
that Lynwood Jones, another employee, ran after Francis Gregory and
brought him back into the office. Parker Hannah also said,
quote I might mention that the door leading to the
(16:57):
trainman's room in the back of the ticket office was
on locked. This door usually was locked by the ticket
office man Mitchell. State Attorney James Pew took Parker Hannah
back to the ticket office to try to refresh his memory,
and they did a walk through. Parker Hannah said that
every single door inside of the ticket office was unlocked,
(17:17):
and in a new twist, he added that the windows
in the locker room on the north side of the
office were also unlocked. There were fresh mud tracks on
the window sill and the screen was broken and laying
outside on the ground. He said there were one man's
tracks fresh in the snow outside of that window. Parker
(17:38):
Hannah added that Francis Gregory's coat was laying on a
table in the middle of the room without prompting. Parker
Hannah also said that he had known Francis Gregory for
a long time, that Gregory wasn't a drinker, and that
Gregory had slept at the office before. He said Gregory
owned a nineteen thirty one Ford Sedan, and he was
(17:59):
positive that Gregory's car was not parked outside of the
office on the night of the murders. State Attorney Pew
asked Hannah about the floor around Gregory's location on the bench.
Hannah said that he didn't notice if the floor was
wet or not because it was stained a dark brown,
but he did say that Gregory's shoes were black and
(18:19):
low cut. James Pew made a notation at the bottom
of Parker Hannah's statement in parentheses he was very impressed
by Gregory's running out of the office when addressed of
Mitchell's murder. Believes in his innocence, although I didn't assume
an attitude of suspicion about Gregory. Parker Hannah was not
(18:39):
the only employee to give a follow up statement to
State Attorney Pew john Stout, the evening clerk, was also
brought back in to be reinterviewed. In his initial statement,
john Stout said that he left the office at three
forty and that James Mitchell bolted the front door behind him.
On his way home, he saw a car the east
(19:00):
side of Connecticut Avenue facing north, about a half mile
south of the ticket office. He said the driver was
a white man and he saw three people inside of
that car. In his subsequent statement, he said that at
around two oh five in the morning, after the last
trolley crew left the office, James Mitchell locked the front
(19:20):
door and went to the back of the office and
locked all of the doors. John Stout said that when
he went into the trainman's room at three o'clock, the
door to that room was unlocked, but he had to
unbolt the back door that led to the porch to
get the empty money bag. When he came back inside,
he rebolted that door shut. He didn't have a reason
to try the door between the trainman's room in the
(19:43):
locker room, but he assumed that James Mitchell had locked it,
and he added that the locker room had no radiator
and that door was kept locked to keep the cold
air out. John Stout said that he had thought long
and hard about Francis Gregory and said that he was
absolutely sure that he would take an o that Francis
Gregory had his shoes on when he saw him on
(20:04):
the bench at three o'clock. Gregory had his coat pulled
over him and it was not on a table in
the middle of the room. Francis Gregory had been employed
at the Chevy Chase office for less than a year.
At that point, he was a trolley conductor and he'd
spent the night inside of the ticket office before since
he would work the late shift and then turn around
(20:24):
and work the early morning shift. He was twenty three
years old in nineteen thirty five, and he lived on
Evart Street in Washington, d C. With his mother, Cora.
Francis Gregory was interviewed on January twenty second, nineteen thirty five,
by Detective Theatre of Bolton and d C Metro Detective
Frank Brass. Francis Gregory talked about taking trolleys back and
(20:46):
forth to the main office car barn at thirty sixth
in m Street in Georgetown. He got back from his
final run. At about one thirty in the morning, he
went into the trainman's room to take a leak and
put his coat down on a bench to go to sleep.
He heard the last trolley crew entered the office at
one fifty four in the morning and said that the
motorman on that last run told Gregory that he'd better
(21:08):
take off his overshoes or his feet wouldn't be worth
a dam. The next day, the motorman pulled off Gregory's overshoes,
meaning his galoshes, and he went to sleep. Gregory said
that at some point during the night he got up
he was hot because he said that my uncle Emory
fixed the fire, so he opened two windows on the
Columbia Country Club side the south side of the building.
(21:32):
During his interview, Francis Gregory told detectives Volton and Brass
that quote, there was a window in the ventilator where
a man could get in, or they might could come
in through the roof. Armed robbers did not enter buildings
through window ventilators or through the roof. Only one time
have I ever dealt with furtive entry of a building
(21:54):
through a roof, and it was committed by an organized
safe cracking burglary ring. Francis Gregory was on a bench
in the trainman's room that was positioned next to the
wall to the money cage where James Mitchell was murdered.
Four gun shots were fired. Francis Greggory told every one
that he slept through the whole thing. I've dealt with
(22:17):
obfuscation by witnesses and suspects and even victims thousands of
times before, and I concluded that Francis Gregory was full
of it. After the Carborn murder story hit the headlines
of the morning papers, the detectives were getting phone calls
and leads as fast as they could run them down.
(22:37):
A woman called in and said that she'd found some
suspicious items on the street by her home in Kensington.
She reported that there were several bloody handkerchiefs and a
man's vest with blood on it. The detectives went to
her house and she gave them the items, which turned
out to be a wet maroon colored vest and just
some old rags. There was no evidence of blood on
(22:58):
any of them. It was a bum lead, the first
of many. Washington d C didn't have a shortage of
robberies at gunpoint, and the detectives put feelers out to
the boots on the ground to see if any previous
robberies matched the modus operandi of the Carborn case. They
all suspected that this was the work of locals rather
(23:21):
than an organized gang killing. And that's said. It's my
contention that two suspects entered the Chevy Chase Lake office
via the unlocked front door and got the jump on
James Mitchell as he worked alone, and forced him to
unlock the cage door at gunpoint. That was not just
an educated guess. A few months before the murders, on
(23:44):
August four, at about three thirty in the morning, there
was an attempt to rob the Brightwood Ticket Office located
on Georgia Avenue in d C. Two suspects entered the
front door and demanded that the night clerk, a man
named Wilbur Balderson, opened the cage door at gunpoint. Balderson
(24:05):
didn't open that door, and instead he jumped into a
steel cabinet to hide, likely saving his own life in
the process. That thwarted the robbery and the suspects fled,
but not before Balderson could get a vague description to
give to the police about an hour and a half later,
a man named Edwin O'Connell was arrested based on that
description a white man about thirty years old, five feet
(24:29):
nine hundred and sixty pounds, dark hair, wearing a dark
colored suit that described about half the men in the district,
but the cops went with it. After Edwin O'Connell was arrested,
his father contacted the detectives and said that his son
had recently been released from Saint Elizabeth's Psychiatric Hospital. After
(24:50):
a little more investigation, the detectives found out that Edwin
O'Connell had hooked up with two other former patients, both
of whom had a pensiant or robbery and murder. If
you have information about the Carborn murders, go to the
Shattered Souls Facebook page and leave me a message. Opening
(25:14):
music by Sam Johnson at Sam Johnson live dot com.
Shattered Souls as produced by Karen Smith and Angel Heart Productions.
So h O ship But it doesn't then how to
(00:22):
feel this is the real? This is the new real.
It was stolen out of his office, but he was
locked inside his office. So how did that happen? If
they were going to dump h him a freak? Why
did they drag him across the road? Did they drove
that car all over creation? But if nothing windshield? There
(00:46):
is some question about whether it was an inside job.
How could I have sucked do that? How could I
have not heard dumb shop? Nobody believe that. I thought
that he could have slept through that. Why was Emery
Smith taken from the scene of the crime. Was he
kidnapped or was he in on it? Welcome back to
(01:08):
Shattered Souls The Car Barn Murders. I'm Karen Smith. This
is episode three. This podcast may contain graphic language that
is not suitable for children. Previously on the Car Barn Murders,
My great uncle Emory Smith and his co worker James
Mitchell were both murdered on Monday morning, January one. Montgomery
(01:33):
County detectives Theodore of Bolton and Leroy Rogers began compiling
an extended investigation with the assistance of DC Metropolitan detective
Frank Brass and Baltimore detective Stewart deal. My uncle Emory
was shot four times in the head and his body
was found floating in Rock Creek. The forensic analysis of
(01:54):
a milk bottle and broken glass pieces found at the
Rock Creek Bridge found no fingerprints, and those leads got
left by the wayside. The evidence was destroyed in the
years since the murders, so there's no possibility of forensic
testing with modern technology. Two suspicious cars with blood, bullet
holes and broken glass were stopped then released after a
(02:16):
brief investigation. I spoke with retired Montgomery County detective Jack Toomey,
who said that he worked on the Carborn case in
the nineteen seventies and eighties and he located an eyewitness
to the crime, Ernest Carter, in nineteen seventy seven. Carter
had never spoken about it to anyone. Jack Toomey typed
(02:38):
a report of his findings regarding Ernest Carter's statement, and
he placed it into the dusty case file, which he
now kept in his patrol car. After he learned about
the murderers and realized the case was unsolved, he asked
the inspector for permission to work on it in his
spare time. The inspector told him that was fine as
long as it didn't interfere with his active cases. This
(02:59):
is Jack Toomey's verbatim report from nineteen seventy seven and
his encounter with Ernest Carter. Carter said that he had
been seven years old at the time and had been
waiting for a street car at the hot dog stand
across the street from the car Barn office. He was
waiting for a street car to take him to his
grandfather's farm that was in northeast Washington. Carter recalled that
(03:20):
it was very late at night. He said that he
suddenly heard shots and he hid behind the hot dog stand.
Then he saw two men run out of the office
and get into a green Buick that was driven by
a third man. The car then went north towards Kensington.
The next day, his mother told him that there had
been a murder, but he never told the police what
he saw because he didn't think they would believe a
(03:42):
seven year old boy. He doesn't recall what the men
looked like, but he does recall the green buick. A
green Buick had been stolen on Sunday night from the
area of Fifteenth and Irving Streets in d C. And
it hadn't been found anywhere. The getaway car was never
reported in the papers, so there's no way that Ernest
(04:03):
Carter could have known that the buick was the only
vehicle never recovered. Ernest Carter's comment about hiding behind a
hot dog stand was interesting. There was a hot dog stand, Dan's,
at chevy Chase Lake, and it was a popular place
in the summer because of its proximity to the community pool.
When I first read about Carter's mention of Dans, my
(04:24):
brain auto piloted to a New York esque hand cart,
but I was completely off base. Dan's was a permanent
pavilion type building, and I found a photograph online. I
had to place it into the scene to make sure
that Ernest Carter's line of sight wasn't obscured and that
he could actually see the front of the ticket office
(04:44):
from that vantage point. I didn't distrust what Ernest Carter
told Jack to me, but an eyewitness account, even forty
years after the fact, is a crucial piece of any
investigation that needs really careful scrutiny. I pulled additional photographs
of the ticket office, the car barn, and the pool.
From the chevy Chase Historical Society's website archive. There weren't
(05:07):
any photographs of all the structures together, but there was
one structure that was present in all of them, the
water tower. Using the water tower as a landmark, I
could place Dan's hot dog stand on the same side
of Connecticut Avenue as the car barn, just to the
south of it, almost directly across the street from the
ticket office. Placing Ernest Carter at that hot dog stand,
(05:31):
he would have had a direct line of sight to
the front of the ticket office when he heard the
gunshots and saw two men run out of the front door.
The green buick would have been right in front of
him on Connecticut Avenue when it made that you turn
and went north. Carter's line of sight would have been
lost after the vehicle continued toward the car barn because
the barn and the water tower would have been in
(05:52):
his way. Every witness also said that it was really
foggy that morning with low visibility. Ernest Carter said it
he was scared and he hid behind the hot dog counter,
so he may not have seen the rest of the
crime that involved my uncle emory. As far as Ernest
Carter's memory after forty years, I can imagine that witnessing
a violent crime as a seven year old child would
(06:14):
imprint pretty strongly on his memory. Learning that he witnessed
suspects fleeing a murderer that became headline news for weeks
would become a permanent fixture in his mind. I have
no doubt that his statement was accurate and he was
telling the truth. I also believe that he was incredibly
relieved to offload that secret that he'd kept to himself
(06:35):
for so long to a kind and understanding officer like
Jack Toomey, who would listen to him and take him
seriously and all points. Bulletin was sent to the officers
and detectives in the surrounding districts to check the area
garages and warehouses for a vehicle with broken glass, bullet
holes and bloodstains, just in case the car used in
(06:56):
the murders had been secreted away. Local leaning establishments were
also notified to be on the lookout for bloodstained clothes
that were brought in. Getting back to the reconstruction of
the moments of the crime, sometimes there are questions that
you have to ask that are really difficult. I've tried
hard to keep my personal bias out of this case,
(07:17):
since my great uncle was one of the victims and
my family carried that burden for decades. But there are
questions about this case that are really hard to understand,
and things that don't make sense within the big picture.
The facts are that Emery Smith was shot four times
in the head, at least one of them at very
close range. His body was transported one mile north of
(07:38):
the carborn and dumped from the northwest side of Connecticut
Avenue at the bridge over Rock Creek. The biggest question
I have is why why would the suspects bother to
do that. The first answer I came up with was
that they hid his body in order to buy time
to get away. To kill Emory Smith openly on Connecticut Avenue,
(07:59):
where he would be instantly found by anyone arriving for
work or simply driving by, would hasten the search for
the suspects. James Mitchell's body was at least hidden from
view inside the ticket office, and he might not be
discovered until well after the suspects were gone. But does
that theory really make sense? It took time to drag
(08:19):
Emery Smith's body into the water, and it put the
suspects into a position to be discovered at the bridge.
Were they just disorganized and panicked? This really didn't seem
like the work of organized killers, more like small time
criminals who let the robbery get out of hand. And
I also have more questions about the location at the bridge.
(08:40):
Did they use the headlights of the car to see
where they were going? There were no street lights on
that part of Connecticut Avenue in nine. Where was the
car parked and which direction was it facing? How did
those broken glass pieces end up in the snow. When
was my uncle Emory actually killed out side of the car,
(09:00):
barn in the vehicle on the way to the bridge,
or at the bridge after they stopped. Did the detectives
inadvertently miss any bloodstains at the scene outside of the
ticket office, was obscured by the slush and mud or
by passing cars before they got there. I tried to
piece this together using the information from the witnesses and
(09:22):
the forensic evidence left on my uncle Emory's body. The
one ear witness, Charles Smallwood, a worker from the T. W.
Perry Coal Company down the street, said that he was
in the basement stoking the furnace at about four thirty
five in the morning when he heard shouting and gun
shots from the area across the street. Was that the
moment that Emery was killed. The T. W. Perry Coal
(09:46):
Company was about seventy five yards north of the ticket office.
So it seems doubtful in my mind that Charles Smallwood
could have heard gun shots from James Mitchell's murder over
that large of a distance from a basement with a
fur this roaring in the background. Ernest Carter, the eyewitness,
reported hearing gunshots, shouting, and then saw two men run
(10:07):
out of the office and flee northbound on Connecticut Avenue,
But he didn't report hearing a second set of gunshots
at the car barn. There was one set of shoeprints
at the car barn that abruptly stopped at Connecticut Avenue.
They were just south of the T. W. Perry Coal Company.
Was my uncle Emory shot and killed right there on
(10:28):
Connecticut Avenue? Did Charles Smallwood here my uncle Emory's murder
instead of James Mitchell's at the office. If my uncle
was killed right there, how can I account for the
broken glass in the snow at the bridge? Did the
pieces just fall out of the rubber molding when the
door was opened to get his body out? Did an
elbow or shoulder knocked the shattered pieces loose? And why
(10:52):
would they drag my uncle's body all the way down
the embankment and chance getting caught by a passing car.
My uncle Emory had three gun shots in a tight
grouping at least one of them at close range. A
fourth gun shot was near the top of his head.
His upper denture was missing. Was all of that evidence
(11:12):
of a struggle inside the car as they drove toward
the bridge? Was he kidnapped at gunpoint? Or did the
car stop? And did my uncle get inside it on
his own? I had to consider that one or more
of the suspects knew my uncle Emory. As painful as
this possibility is to admit, I have to front run
(11:32):
it if I'm doing my job the right way. Could
my uncle Emory have been in on it? Could he
have used the key found in his pocket to unlock
the door to the ticket office before going back to
the car barn to punch his TimeClock card? Ato would
he have any motivation to do such a thing. What
if he was told then it would just be a quick,
(11:53):
one off robbery with the promise that no one would
get hurt. But then the suspects killed James Mitchell and
they got into a fight with my uncle Emory as
a result, and then they killed him too. Now, in
my mind, and admittedly I have a bias, my uncle
Emory was not an accomplice. He was a victim. But
I also have to admit that there are holes in
(12:15):
all of the theories I've come up with so far,
But my contention about his innocence does have evidence to
back it up. Uncle Emory and his second wife, Edith,
were doing fine financially. They lived next door to my
grandfather in a middle class home. When Edith's first husband
died in the mid nineteen twenties, he left her some
(12:36):
insurance money. In nineteen thirty eight, three years after the murders,
aunt Edith secured an attorney. She wanted to force her
derelict brother to pay back two hundred dollars that he
borrowed from her all the way back in nineteen twenty
five when her first husband died. In a detailed letter
from Edith's attorney, her brother told Edith that he wouldn't
(12:59):
pay her back. He basically told his sister, tough Ship,
you can't get blood out of a turnip. Her brother
was headed to bankruptcy court. Edith wanted to be present
at the hearing to tell the judge her information and
get her money back with interest with a court order.
And before you think Edith was being petty, two hundred
dollars in nineteen thirty eight was the equivalent of about
(13:20):
four grand to day. If somebody borrowed that from you
with a promise to pay it back and then told you,
tough Ship a decade later, wouldn't you be just a
little piste off? I would? In the letter from the attorney,
Edith stated that her brother had made the comment that
he would never get insurance on himself, so in the
event that his wife cashed it in, another man wouldn't
(13:43):
have access to the money. This guy sounded like a
real d bag. And Edith countered that statement and said
her brother was the only person to ever ask about
the money, and that Emery Smith never asked about it.
When I read that letter the time, I didn't put
much weight on it, since it seemed like an inner
family squabble that had no bearing on the murders. But now,
(14:07):
after considering the possibility of my uncle's complicity, I put
a lot of weight on it because it tells me
about my uncle Emory's character. Aunt Edith said that my
uncle never asked about that insurance money. If Emory was
a money grubber, I have no doubt that Edith would
have said as much to her attorney, but she didn't.
(14:28):
She said that her brother was the only person to
ever ask about that money. If Uncle Emory was desperate
for cash, he had a large family that would have
gladly helped him out. He lived next door to my grandfather,
and two of my other great uncle's also worked for
Capital Transit. He had plenty of people around who would
have given him a financial hand if he needed it.
(14:49):
He was a fifteen year employee of the company, and
he made a higher salary than most of the others
just by virtue of a seniority. There just isn't a
motive for my uncle Emory to be involved in the
rob It was his own workplace. He had everything to
lose and nothing to gain. And now that I've made
the argument for my great uncle, I have to make
(15:10):
the counter argument. The only people who were definitively present
during the robbery and murders were the suspects James Mitchell,
Emory Smith, and Francis Gregory, the man supposedly sleeping on
the bench in the trainman's room. Somebody unlocked the front
door after the evening clerk John Stout left the office
(15:32):
at three forty in the morning to go home. Is
it possible that Emery Smith used the key found in
his pocket to unlock that door? Yeah, that's possible. Is
it possible that Francis Gregory unlocked the door before going
into the trainman's room to sleep. Also possible going back
(15:52):
to the ticket office witnesses. Montgomery County State Attorney James
Pew did some investigating of his own, and he brought
several people into his office for a follow up interview.
There were some holes that James Pew wanted to hem up,
and the first person he talked to was Parker Hannah,
the conductor who found James Mitchell's body. In his initial statement,
(16:15):
Parker Hannah said that the front door was unlocked when
he reported for work at around five ten in the morning.
Hannah and two other employees found Francis Gregory inside the
trainman's room asleep on a bench. The door to that
room was also unlocked. Hannah said that when Gregory was
informed of the murder, he jumped up from the bench
(16:36):
and ran out of the rear door into the snow
in his socks. He said he was sure that Francis
Gregory had his coat and his shoes off. Hannah said
that Lynwood Jones, another employee, ran after Francis Gregory and
brought him back into the office. Parker Hannah also said,
quote I might mention that the door leading to the
(16:57):
trainman's room in the back of the ticket office was
on locked. This door usually was locked by the ticket
office man Mitchell. State Attorney James Pew took Parker Hannah
back to the ticket office to try to refresh his memory,
and they did a walk through. Parker Hannah said that
every single door inside of the ticket office was unlocked,
(17:17):
and in a new twist, he added that the windows
in the locker room on the north side of the
office were also unlocked. There were fresh mud tracks on
the window sill and the screen was broken and laying
outside on the ground. He said there were one man's
tracks fresh in the snow outside of that window. Parker
(17:38):
Hannah added that Francis Gregory's coat was laying on a
table in the middle of the room without prompting. Parker
Hannah also said that he had known Francis Gregory for
a long time, that Gregory wasn't a drinker, and that
Gregory had slept at the office before. He said Gregory
owned a nineteen thirty one Ford Sedan, and he was
(17:59):
positive that Gregory's car was not parked outside of the
office on the night of the murders. State Attorney Pew
asked Hannah about the floor around Gregory's location on the bench.
Hannah said that he didn't notice if the floor was
wet or not because it was stained a dark brown,
but he did say that Gregory's shoes were black and
(18:19):
low cut. James Pew made a notation at the bottom
of Parker Hannah's statement in parentheses he was very impressed
by Gregory's running out of the office when addressed of
Mitchell's murder. Believes in his innocence, although I didn't assume
an attitude of suspicion about Gregory. Parker Hannah was not
(18:39):
the only employee to give a follow up statement to
State Attorney Pew john Stout, the evening clerk, was also
brought back in to be reinterviewed. In his initial statement,
john Stout said that he left the office at three
forty and that James Mitchell bolted the front door behind him.
On his way home, he saw a car the east
(19:00):
side of Connecticut Avenue facing north, about a half mile
south of the ticket office. He said the driver was
a white man and he saw three people inside of
that car. In his subsequent statement, he said that at
around two oh five in the morning, after the last
trolley crew left the office, James Mitchell locked the front
(19:20):
door and went to the back of the office and
locked all of the doors. John Stout said that when
he went into the trainman's room at three o'clock, the
door to that room was unlocked, but he had to
unbolt the back door that led to the porch to
get the empty money bag. When he came back inside,
he rebolted that door shut. He didn't have a reason
to try the door between the trainman's room in the
(19:43):
locker room, but he assumed that James Mitchell had locked it,
and he added that the locker room had no radiator
and that door was kept locked to keep the cold
air out. John Stout said that he had thought long
and hard about Francis Gregory and said that he was
absolutely sure that he would take an o that Francis
Gregory had his shoes on when he saw him on
(20:04):
the bench at three o'clock. Gregory had his coat pulled
over him and it was not on a table in
the middle of the room. Francis Gregory had been employed
at the Chevy Chase office for less than a year.
At that point, he was a trolley conductor and he'd
spent the night inside of the ticket office before since
he would work the late shift and then turn around
(20:24):
and work the early morning shift. He was twenty three
years old in nineteen thirty five, and he lived on
Evart Street in Washington, d C. With his mother, Cora.
Francis Gregory was interviewed on January twenty second, nineteen thirty five,
by Detective Theatre of Bolton and d C Metro Detective
Frank Brass. Francis Gregory talked about taking trolleys back and
(20:46):
forth to the main office car barn at thirty sixth
in m Street in Georgetown. He got back from his
final run. At about one thirty in the morning, he
went into the trainman's room to take a leak and
put his coat down on a bench to go to sleep.
He heard the last trolley crew entered the office at
one fifty four in the morning and said that the
motorman on that last run told Gregory that he'd better
(21:08):
take off his overshoes or his feet wouldn't be worth
a dam. The next day, the motorman pulled off Gregory's overshoes,
meaning his galoshes, and he went to sleep. Gregory said
that at some point during the night he got up
he was hot because he said that my uncle Emory
fixed the fire, so he opened two windows on the
Columbia Country Club side the south side of the building.
(21:32):
During his interview, Francis Gregory told detectives Volton and Brass
that quote, there was a window in the ventilator where
a man could get in, or they might could come
in through the roof. Armed robbers did not enter buildings
through window ventilators or through the roof. Only one time
have I ever dealt with furtive entry of a building
(21:54):
through a roof, and it was committed by an organized
safe cracking burglary ring. Francis Gregory was on a bench
in the trainman's room that was positioned next to the
wall to the money cage where James Mitchell was murdered.
Four gun shots were fired. Francis Greggory told every one
that he slept through the whole thing. I've dealt with
(22:17):
obfuscation by witnesses and suspects and even victims thousands of
times before, and I concluded that Francis Gregory was full
of it. After the Carborn murder story hit the headlines
of the morning papers, the detectives were getting phone calls
and leads as fast as they could run them down.
(22:37):
A woman called in and said that she'd found some
suspicious items on the street by her home in Kensington.
She reported that there were several bloody handkerchiefs and a
man's vest with blood on it. The detectives went to
her house and she gave them the items, which turned
out to be a wet maroon colored vest and just
some old rags. There was no evidence of blood on
(22:58):
any of them. It was a bum lead, the first
of many. Washington d C didn't have a shortage of
robberies at gunpoint, and the detectives put feelers out to
the boots on the ground to see if any previous
robberies matched the modus operandi of the Carborn case. They
all suspected that this was the work of locals rather
(23:21):
than an organized gang killing. And that's said. It's my
contention that two suspects entered the Chevy Chase Lake office
via the unlocked front door and got the jump on
James Mitchell as he worked alone, and forced him to
unlock the cage door at gunpoint. That was not just
an educated guess. A few months before the murders, on
(23:44):
August four, at about three thirty in the morning, there
was an attempt to rob the Brightwood Ticket Office located
on Georgia Avenue in d C. Two suspects entered the
front door and demanded that the night clerk, a man
named Wilbur Balderson, opened the cage door at gunpoint. Balderson
(24:05):
didn't open that door, and instead he jumped into a
steel cabinet to hide, likely saving his own life in
the process. That thwarted the robbery and the suspects fled,
but not before Balderson could get a vague description to
give to the police about an hour and a half later,
a man named Edwin O'Connell was arrested based on that
description a white man about thirty years old, five feet
(24:29):
nine hundred and sixty pounds, dark hair, wearing a dark
colored suit that described about half the men in the district,
but the cops went with it. After Edwin O'Connell was arrested,
his father contacted the detectives and said that his son
had recently been released from Saint Elizabeth's Psychiatric Hospital. After
(24:50):
a little more investigation, the detectives found out that Edwin
O'Connell had hooked up with two other former patients, both
of whom had a pensiant or robbery and murder. If
you have information about the Carborn murders, go to the
Shattered Souls Facebook page and leave me a message. Opening
(25:14):
music by Sam Johnson at Sam Johnson live dot com.
Shattered Souls as produced by Karen Smith and Angel Heart Productions.
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