May 3, 2023 • 48 mins
The Moore's Ford lynchings, or the 1946 Georgia lynching, refer to the brutal murders of four young African Americans by a mob of white men on July 25, 1946.
The incident took place near Moore's Ford Bridge in Walton and Oconee counties, Georgia. The victims were two married couples: George W. and Mae Murray Dorsey, and Roger and Dorothy Malcolm. The case attracted national attention, prompting large protests in Washington, D.C., and New York City.
President Harry Truman created the President's Committee on Civil Rights and introduced anti-lynching legislation in Congress, but it was blocked by the Southern Democratic bloc. The FBI investigated the case in 1946 but could not find sufficient evidence to charge anyone. The cold case was reopened in the 1990s, but the state of Georgia and the FBI closed their cases in December 2017 without any prosecution.
In this episode of Zone 7, Crime Scene Investigator Sheryl McCollum is joined by Judge Holly Hughes and Assistant District Attorney Claire Farley, two experienced legal professionals and advocates for justice.
Together, they discuss a historical cold case involving sharecropping, economic servitude, and a flawed investigation. The team shares their experiences uncovering crime scene artifacts that remained hidden for decades and the challenges they faced when working with the FBI.
The conversation also covers the importance of unsealing grand jury records to gain invaluable insights and the search for truth and justice in this long-forgotten case.
Show Notes:
- [0:00] Welcome back to Zone 7 with Crime Scene Investigator, Sheryl McCollum. Sheryl details the last mass lynching in the United States. The Moore’s Ford Bridge lynchings, July 25th,1946
- [7:17] Sheryl introduces her guests, Judge Holly Hughes and Assistant District Attorney Claire Farley, who have extensive legal experience and are advocates for justice
- [10:21] Holly explains the concept of sharecropping, which was a system that kept people in a cycle of economic servitude similar to slavery
- [15:30] The discussion begins with the recovery of objects from the crime scene, highlighting the magnitude of the event
- [16:00] Sheryl shares a story about growing up hunting arrowheads with her Granfather.
- [17:24] Cold Case Investigative Research Institute
- [19:30] The team describes the process of cleaning up the site and setting up grids for a more detailed examination
- [20:38] The discovery of over a hundred bullets, fragments, casings, and artifacts, many dating back to pre-1950, is revealed
- [24:02] It is noted that over 50 years later, the evidence was still waiting to be discovered
- [29:42] Question: Claire, you made a phone call because as an active DA, you said, let me call and see if they will come out and collect this evidence. Who did you call and what was their response?
- [30:07] Claire shares her experience of calling the FBI to collect the evidence they found but encounters a lack of enthusiasm and support from the agent she spoke with
- [33:06] Question: Claire, can you walk us through what happened with the 11th Circuit?
- [33:17] Fire in a Canebrake: The Last Mass Lynching in America
- [33:44] Claire explains her desire for justice and truth in the case, emphasizing the importance of unsealing records to get closer to the truth and encouraging family members to come forward and tell their stories
- [37:12] Question: Holly, how important would it be for us to be able to
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
It's known as the last mass lyncheon in the United States.
The moor's Ford Bridge Lynchions July twenty fifth, nineteen forty six,
four young African Americans are stopped on the moors Ford Bridge,
drug out of their car and murdered. They were shot
(00:31):
over one hundred times a piece by the mob that
stopped them on the bridge. Now, let's talk about lynching,
because I'm asked a lot when I speak about the
morris Ford Bridge lynching, people will say, but they weren't lynched.
By definition, a lynchon is a public killing of an
(00:52):
individual that did not receive due process. It doesn't have
to be a rope, it does have to be a gun,
it doesn't have to be a knife, it doesn't have
to be a stony. All of that is a lynching.
So the fact that they were pulled from a vehicle,
tied together with rope, shot over one hundred times a piece,
(01:17):
with seventy different weapons is absolutely allching. So there's five
main characters. There is Lloy Harrison, who owns more land
than anybody else, and the Malcolms and the Dorseys worked
for him. Dorothy and Roger Malcolm are married on July
(01:38):
twenty fifth, nineteen forty six. It was Dorothy's twentieth birthday.
They're best friends. George and May Murray Dorsey worked the
same farm as the Malcolms. They did a lot of
socializing together. They cared for each other and when you
found one, you usually found the other three. Lloyd Harrison
(02:02):
was a powerful man. He had connections to bankers, to
law enforcement, to clergy, and to people involved with the Klan.
This case is a civil rights case. It's a case
that the town became immediately divided by and in some
(02:24):
regards still today is divided by the Malcolm's. In the Dorseys,
they were sharecroppers, so they would work mister Harrison's farm
and then sometimes they would work for other people if
they needed help. And this particular situation came about because
mister Malcolm became jealous when Miss Malcolm was shown some
(02:50):
attention by a neighboring farmer. And this other farmer, mister Hester.
The story goes, he picked Miss Malcolm up and swung
her around, and mister Malcolm became so enraged that he
went over and he stabbed the man in the stomach.
Now mister Hester didn't die immediately and mister Malcolm tried
(03:13):
to run and get away, but he was captured and
arrested and taken to jail. Well, Miss Malcolm and Miss
Dorsey repeatedly asked Lloyd Harrison to please bail him out,
because you're the largest landowner in this county and if
you bail him out, they won't kill him. But if
he's left in jail, they were afraid that a lynch
(03:34):
mob would go get him out of the jail and
kill him. For eleven days, Lloy Harrison said no, I'm
not going to go get him now. Mister Hester never died,
He recovered somewhat from his injuries. He always had some
issues throughout his life from being stabbed in the stomach.
(03:54):
But all of a sudden, eleven days later, Lloy Harrison
he goes to Miss Malcolm miss Dorsey and say, y'all
get in the car, let's go get him. So mister
Dorsey and Miss Dorsey and Miss Malcolm get into Lloyd
Harrison's car and they drive to town. Lloyd Harrison says,
(04:15):
y'all go down to the cafe, get you something to eat.
I've got some other business to take care of in town.
Then I'm going to baileym out, so y'all meet me
back here about five and they said okay. So they
went and got something to eat. They walked around town
a little bit and all of a sudden they see
Lloyd Harrison coming with mister Malcolm. They're elated. They're like,
(04:39):
this is going to save his life. They get into
mister Harrison's car and instead of going back home the
way he brought them, he went the long way on
the unpaved one lane road toward the Moorsford Bridge. When
they reached the bridge, there was a car parked across
(05:00):
the street and other cars blocking them going through. As
he slowed down because the road was obstructed with a vehicle,
there was a man standing there in a straw hat
and a three piece suit that put his hands up
for him to stop the car. When he did, there
were a couple of cars that now pulled up behind him,
(05:21):
so he's blocked in. The man in the straw hat
in a three piece suit said we want mister Malcolm
get him out of the car, and the women immediately
knew what was happening and started to beg please don't
take him, and they said give us the other guy
to So now mister Malcolm and mister Dorsey are outside
of the car. They're being drugged down the embankment on
(05:43):
the side of the water, and they're being tied together.
Miss Dorsey recognizes several men on the bridge, caused them
by name and says, please don't hurt him, and in
the man in the straw hat in a three piece
suit said get the women out to they recognize. Now
all four are down the embankment, all four are tied together.
(06:04):
The man in the straw hat the three piece suit
counts one, two, three, and everybody in the mob shoots
at the four victims, and the man in the straw
hat a three piece suit does this over and over.
They ensure that everybody shoots, so everybody's equally as guilty.
(06:26):
And then mister Harrison is allowed to go on his way,
and literally everybody in that mob was home in time
for supper. Now, Lloyd Harrison tells law enforcement, I didn't
recognize anybody. So the largest landowner, arguably the richest man
in that county, don't recognize nobody in a group of
(06:48):
twenty five or thirty men, But your sharecropper female does.
That's hard to believe. This case is the coldest case
I've ever worked. I've never worked case seventy years old
or more. This case is not only inactive right now,
the FBI closed it with no arrest and nobody named
(07:13):
as a person of interest. Tonight I am joined by
not just two people that are in my Zone seven
and have been for over twenty years, but alone they
are remarkable legal geniuses in our community and abroad for
that matter. But we are joined by Judge Holly Hughes
(07:36):
and Assistant District Attorney Claire Farley. Both of them have
such a vast legal knowledge they are both advocates at heart.
Holly started as a prosecutor, then went into private practice
as a defense attorney, and today she's a judge. Claire
(07:57):
clerked for some of the best legal minds out there.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
There.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
She was in Atlanta and Fulton County in the major
Case Division. Then she was a prosecutor in the community.
And when you are assigned to open up an office
as a district attorney in a community, the word advocate
doesn't cover it. She's got just a servant's heart. And
(08:22):
now she is in Savannah, Georgia, where she's in the
Chatham County DA's office. So Claire, Holly, welcome, Thank you
for being here.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
Thank you very much, Cheryl for having us. Speaking for
myself and for Holly. Holly taught me everything I know,
so not everything she knew, but.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Not everything I know exactly. So Mac, we're thrilled, both
of us are thrilled to be here because we were
lucky enough and blessed enough to be present with you
at the crime scene. And I think anybody who works
in the legal field will tell you there is nothing
better than being on the scene because you are going
(09:03):
to get the smells, the taste, the experience that the
victims had when they were there. So I am absolutely
open the moon to be able to talk about this
great adventure with you again.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
As am I as am I, and I think Holly
said it very well. And let me just fire back
at you, Cheryl and say that you are also the
greatest servant to these poor souls who have been afflicted
by this terrible tragedy so many years ago.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Well, thank you, Claire, But I'll tell you I say
it all the time. I ain't done nothing of significance
by myself. Every time I've done something, You've been to
my right and Holly's been to my left or others.
I mean, we have I think one of the greatest
communities to live our life through, and that is other
people that are willing to in a second's notice help somebody. So,
(09:54):
you know, we're surrounded by heroes. And whenever somebody asked me,
you know, I can't believe you haven't out, I always
say I can't imagine that's possible. I mean, how do
you burn out when you're surrounded by people that are
loving and carrying in kind and fearless and fun for
that matter. Now, Holly, let's talk a little bit about
(10:17):
what the Malcolms and the Dorseys did for a living.
They were sharecroppers. What does that mean?
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Basically, you are working on someone else's land and not
for a whole lot of compensation. It is almost like
an indentured servant and just one step above slavery, where
you are just at that person's beck and call and
you are not paid the true value of your work.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
So it's kind of like somebody figured out a way
to have legal slavery.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
It's as close as you can get.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Mac. Because Claire, when we were talking to some of
the family members, I remember them saying that the farmer
charged them for seeds if they broke a two, if
they didn't have a real good year, there were just
nothing to split for their room and board. But they
made them live on the land. They made them live
(11:09):
on their property. But then they charged them for living there.
They charged them for the food they ate. So I
don't know how you would ever get your head above
water to get out of there.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
And I think that was the purpose too, mac that
was the purpose to keep It was a form of
economic entrenchment, economic servitude that was so rigged by the
farmers or the landowners. They did it on purpose to
purposely keep them in indentured servitude and or economically distressed slavery.
(11:44):
I mean they left. They kept the prices too high,
they kept the payments too low, in order to keep
folks staying on the land, working there the landowner's land.
It was very much slavery of a different form.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
And if they tried to leave or run away, they
were basically charged with theft because you owed that man money.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
You owe the man money, and you were not going
to get away from him. You just you couldn't escape it.
Even if you left the land, he would hunt you
down and call it an economic crime and have you
locked up. It was a vicious cycle, even post reconstruction era.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
And that's my favorite thing. If you were arrested, he
would go bail you out, and he would add that
to your tab.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
He would add it to the tab. He would create
ways to keep you. If you were working on his
land for thirty cents an hour or thirty cents a day,
he would create ways to.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Keep you doing that.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
And so there was no end in sight.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Now, Holly, there was a meet in a couple of
days after the stabbing down in the Toller's Woods, but
nothing ever came of it, and there's no documentation of
what occurred. But I always believed that's where they were
planning their revenge.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Of course they were. This was a concerted effort. And
what is so disturbing about this case in particular is
that there were so many people involved. This wasn't a
small number of men who are saying, hey, we're not
going to put up with this. This is an entire town.
When this whole thing went down. There were men, women
(13:27):
and children out there to witness what happened. And to
this day, Max seventy seven years later, nobody is talking.
This was a planned crime, a concerted effort, and an
execution that even now as we seek answers, we can't
get them because people are so either scared or reluctant,
(13:52):
or quite frankly, just entrenched in their side. They just
don't want to give it up. They have this way
of life, they have this philosophy, they have this idea
that what they did was justified and that they're superior.
And as sad as it is to say, seventy seven
years after this crime was planned and executed, there are
(14:16):
still people who feel that way and will not help
and will not give up names.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
But let me tell you, this is a story.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Everybody talked about, and somebody out there knows exactly who
did this.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
So George and May Murray, Dorothy and Roger and Dorothy Malcolm.
They were all in their twenties and Dorothy was reported
to be seven months pregnant when these crimes occurred. And
you know, to me, it was just a story until
we went out there. And there's something about walking it,
(14:51):
looking at it, like you say, Holly, breathing it in,
taking it all in, you know, and really understanding the times.
Because the area from the main road to the Moorsford
Bridge hadn't changed at all.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
The most astonishing thing to me when you took the
students out to the woods, Toller Woods, and we all
were out there with very very famous civil rights activists
and other elected officials and some other people and your students.
I think the most astonishing thing when I was with
(15:29):
you was the recovery of those objects. If you could
tell everyone what you found, how many pieces of bullets, shellcasings,
that was just to me it was proof positive that
something terrible, at the very least from an evidentiary standpoint,
something terrible happened out there where you had your students
(15:53):
set up the grid.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
My grandfather, or Watts, hunted airheads. It was always such
an amazing afternoon spent with him because he would drive
us way out in the middle of nowhere to some
old place that he knew about, or a known place
where there had been Native American history made. He would
survey the land, and then he would talk to us
(16:22):
and walk us through what he was looking for and
how he could spot the perfect place to hunt for
these artifacts. It was important for him to make sure
that we knew how people used to live hunt, and travel,
and if you understood those three things, you had a
better chance of finding some type of artifact, whether it
(16:44):
was an airhead or a piece of a clay pot
or anything. He would tell us things like, now, you girls,
go look for water, because everything happened near water. They
were either hunting or building their homes or gathering by
water for a multitude of reasons. He would also tell
(17:04):
us things like, you look for where two or more
creeks or rivers come together, and that's where animals would
feed or drink. So again, that's where hunters were going
to go, and we would find pottery or some type
of stone or some type of airhead. Anywhere there's good hunting,
you're going to find artifacts. That's what he would tell us.
(17:28):
So y'all may be wondering why a crime scene investigator
and a podcaster keeps referring to her students. Back in
twenty ten, when we were working the moors Ford Bridge
through the Cold Case Investigative Research Institute, I was a
college teacher. So the Cold Case Investigative Research Institute is
(17:49):
a nonprofit that uses experts in college students at different
colleges and universities to look at cold cases and find
sevil ability factors. So the moors Ford Bridge was one
of our cases at the institute, So that's how I
first got involved. So I am a crime scene investigator
(18:11):
for a living, but I run the Cold Case Investigative
Research Institute as an aside as volunteer work. Within our
work at the institute, one thing I used to always
tell the students and I still remind them today, nothing
that I was going to do with them was going
to be mock or fake. Everything we did was real.
(18:32):
So when it came time to go look for evidence,
we had to leave the college. We had to go
to the crime scene. You cannot understand a crime scene
if you don't walk it, if you don't touch it,
if you don't smell it, if you don't just immerse
yourself with it. If you look at photographs two dimensional,
(18:55):
that's all the help they're ever going to be to you.
You can only focus on what is in that picture.
But if you go to the scene, you can see
where it took place, you can see what's across the street,
through the woods, down the road. It's a whole different ballgame.
So for the students and the experts, it was necessary
(19:19):
that we went to the crime scene. Well, I think
that's another thing. Having you and Holly there as prosecutors.
Holly would tell the students over and over and over
if this were to ever go to trial, what is
it I need? And they would name things and they
would say what they would want to happen in a
(19:39):
perfect world, and Holly would always say, well, then go
get it. Go figure out how to do that. So
when we made the decision that we were going to
go out there, one of the things that happened pretty
quickly is Holly said, well, you don't need a warrant
if you get permission. Well, let's go talk to the
farmer and get permission. So that's the first thing we did.
And then once he said y as, you you know,
(20:01):
can come and you can figure out the area, and
you want to look, you know, look at when we
did that. It was not an open field, It was
not clean, it was not for you know, it was
full of debris and trees, and there were mattresses and
beer cans. Because again, this is a place that is
known to locals. It is known to people that want
(20:23):
to go out there and shoot their own gun and
drink beer and be in that type of environment where
to me it would be I don't even know how
to say it, y'all, because again you're going out drinking
and shooting guns at a place where you know, four
people were murdered. So again we had to get rid
of all that stuff. We moved mattresses, My son Hug
was cutting down trees, Caroline was taking trash bags, you know,
(20:46):
up to the truck. And once we got it all
cleaned out and cleared out and you started to be
able to see the ground everywhere. That's when we had
the archaeologists from Kennessou and their students and the ex
experts from dn R and the students from Georgia State
with their computer system and we went to work and
within the first forty five minutes we had our first
(21:09):
shell casing. After three days we had over one hundred bullets, fragments,
casings or artifacts that with the experts, most of them
were able to be predated, you know pre nineteen fifty.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
Didn't you have Also a former GBI forensics firearms forensics
expert I came out and it was clear that people
had as any I think any place that is tragically
imbued with horrible history, I think the locals come out
(21:43):
and use it after that as well as a gathering
place young people. I think that it was clear that
they had used it as target practice of some type.
I remember that.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
In the bridge had graffiti. They had KKK all over
the bridge. So again it's young people not truly understanding,
because if they truly got it, that's not what they
would do. I mean, it was clearly the graffiti was juvenile.
It was placed so you couldn't miss it if you tried.
But again, they're out there and they're misguided. That's all
(22:15):
there is to it.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
Well, speaking of being out there, I know we keep
saying the students, the students, but what actually touched my
heart was these are students who were volunteering. They were
not getting college credit for this, they were not getting
paid for this. They literally were doing this seeking knowledge
(22:38):
for the fact that it was knowledge, seeking history, learning
what happened because the Malcolms and the dor Seas mattered.
And so when we went out there in twenty ten,
you know, fifty some years after the crime, these students
were out there just to learn and to help. They
were being rewarded in any other way. It was knowledge
(23:01):
for the sake of knowledge. It was help and volunteerism
for the sake of making a difference.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
One hundred percent. And so were you, and so was Claire,
and so was Chris, and so was you know, the
good doctor from Kennessall, and so was the guy from DNR.
I mean, all of these people came together and we
had a group of family members that came up. Do
you remember that? And they wanted to see what we
(23:29):
were finding. And they were astonished because they had been told, oh,
there's nothing here, there'll be no evidence, and if there is,
it's just because other people were doing target practice. But
then we started to find things like, you know, cardboard
shell casings and a nickel from nineteen forty six and
(23:51):
a button pre nineteen fifty and Georgia States said, hey, look,
these bullets are like two inches straight down into the ground,
like somebody stood right over and shot them. Well, that
made more sense. These bullets weren't going in at an angle.
They weren't like a misshot like you missed the tree.
(24:12):
They were all right there. And then at one point Hollymember,
we walked over and there were four sets of what
I would call like a cluster, a center mass the
size of a sausle plate, like that's where the four
people were laying. You could almost see it.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
That also speaks to the fact that we were able
fifty some years later to go out and gather it
at evidence tells me that nobody looked for it in
the first place. We should have gone out there and
searched that property and found nothing. If in fact, law
enforcement at the time had done their job and had
gathered those you know, you wouldn't be digging down two
(24:49):
inches into the dirt. You would actually see where it
was and recover it at the time. So I just
fifty some years later, over one hundred artifacts, over one
hundred whether it be shellcasings or fragments, or bullets or buttons.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
All of that evidence was sitting there almost.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
Like it was just waiting to be discovered, like waiting
for someone to care enough to tell the story.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
And Claire mentioned Chris, who we all know from the
crime lab, and he took several bullets that were recovered
in casings and he was pointing out the striations and
he was like, you have at least five different thirty eighths,
and at that time that would have been considered a
(25:37):
police weapon. We have a witness that said there was
a police car on the bridge. So it's like you start,
you know, slowly putting these tiny pieces together, but it
paints the same sinister picture.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
I had forgotten that. It's been several years since we
were out there, but it never left my mind. It
has been a story that had haunted me since you
took us out there, Ryl, and I had forgotten that
there were clear signs of multiple different guns, I think
even multiple rifles.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Absolutely did you.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
Not find rifles bullets and shell casings from rifles? And
we talked about at the time, we talked about there
must have been as is reputed through historical documentation, there
were several shooters. They didn't have a chance. There was
no way they were not going to be bullet ridden
(26:36):
against that tree.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Yeah, they didn't set a chance. And you know, and
I think when even the autopsies were happening and they
started to, you know, give information for people that you
know they were beaten first and then they were mutilated.
I mean, this wasn't a fast We're going to make
sure because you almost killed somebody that you're not going
to have a chance to kill anybody else. If that's
(27:00):
what it was, it would have been one person. They
went back and got mister Dorsey, and then they went
back and got the two women. And they got the
two women because they were naming them by a name,
pleading with them not to kill their men. And Lloy Harrison,
if you remember, Lloy Harrison, didn't recognize anybody.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
Mister Dorsey, George Dorsey hadn't he wasn't he coming home
from the war. I think he was returning from the
war fighting for his country.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
Correct, he had been in World War Two. Now, Holly,
I do remember one thing about you. So everybody told
us once we stopped at the gas station, or once
we stopped and got something to drink or made our
present stone, that it would go through the town. Well,
we weren't out there long before there was a red
truck that would come down the hill pretty quick, then
(27:54):
slow down right where we were, and then speed up again,
do a k turn, come back down, deliberately, backfire the truck.
And this went on for a minute. And then we
had several students that were eager to get to their vehicles,
not to drive away, by the way, And so you
(28:15):
and Claire, of course did a great job and gave
some quick legal advice on the scene that hey, we're
not going to do that.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
I think it amounted to duck.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
That's just duck, hit the ground, hit the ground. But
you know that you don't need to get to your
truck and try to get anything to do anything. We're
going to do this the right way. And that's something
I always appreciated because I think they learned a lot
in that moment of how you do the right thing
and you know, you want to carry this through with
(28:44):
all the professionalism that you can. And after that great
speech you gave them, I'm looking back toward the grid
and I'm talking to doctor you know, Palace, and then
I turn around and you are standing in the middle
of the street, Honting. Tell them what you did well.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
First of all, it just made me angry that they
would try to intimidate these students when they're out there
just learning and trying to help family members get closure.
And I thought, we are not we're not abused, let's
start with that. But we're also not intimidated. We're not
afraid of you. So I just pulled out my phone
(29:26):
and started getting pictures and recording and taking pictures of
the license plate and the people driving the truck, because
if anything did happen, God forbid, that's evidence. That's what
you build your case on. That's how I know who
was here on that bridge that day in twenty ten.
We may not have discovered yet exactly who was on
the bridge back in forty six, but damn it, we
(29:48):
knew who was on that bridge in twenty ten because
I made sure we had documentary evidence.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
We knew without question who was on the bridge in
twenty ten. And then after Holly got the video evidence
and we had all of our findings and everything was
bagged and tagged properly. Claire, you made a phone call
because as an active DA you said, let me call
(30:18):
and see if they will come out and collect this evidence.
Who did you call and what was their response?
Speaker 2 (30:24):
I called.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
I was concerned about chain of custody and preservation of
the evidence. I called the FBI directly, and I ended
up getting in touch with an agent and he seemed
very frustrated and or not anxious to deal with me
at the moment, and I think he was trying to
(30:52):
ascertain what it was we were talking about. But I
was very clear that we had some artifacts that we've
felt were important to log in as a potential evidence
in a cold case, and that's what I called a
cold case. I think the reception was a little bit
(31:14):
less than enthusiastic.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
And they didn't come I do.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
Not recall them coming out there.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
No, But again, like I sometimes try to tell my
own children, it's illegal to run a red light, it
is not illegal to stop on green. So you just
got to figure out another way to do something.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
That was thirteen years ago. I didn't know as many
folks over there as I do now, and I was disappointed,
to say the least. I think Mac you ended up
having a further or shall we say, journey to try
to reach there get their attention right.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
They finally showed up at my office and retrieved them,
but I mean they made me feel like they were
going to walk out of there and toss it in
a dumpster. I mean, I didn't get the feeling they
were going to even try to look at them for
research or look at them for the historical part that
they may play in this whole thing. Because there was
some extraordinary evidence there. And when I say evidence, I
(32:15):
mean even evidence of nineteen forty.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
Six extraordinary extraordinary.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
That was one of the fascinating things about the shotgun
cartridges that were left behind is that our ballistics expert, Chris,
was able to date them because there was such a
huge concern about you know, are these bullet casings and
fragments from the crime or are they subsequent when people
were out there shooting and drinking on the land. And
(32:41):
I think what really hit home for me was when
our ballistics expert was able to examine and say, after
a certain date, they did not make cartridge casings anymore.
So we are not out of cardboard, so we know
for sure that these artifacts are related to this specific
period in time. And the FBI had a Civil Rights
(33:03):
Bureau at that time. They had lawyers and investigators who
should have been jumping up and down saying, oh my gosh,
we can look into this cold case. And it was disappointing,
I think, to realize that they weren't prioritizing it and
they weren't really interested because again, what do we say,
(33:25):
these people mattered, the malcolms the door seas they mattered,
they deserve better.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
And talking about lawyers jumping up and down, Claire Well
goes through what happened with the Eleventh Circuit.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
It was fascinating from a legal standpoint. Laura Wexler, who
wrote I think the definitive book on Morris Ford Lynching
Fire in the Cane Break. She and Anthony Pitch, who
is also a historian, hired Joe Bell of Bell and
Chievas and they mister Bell filed a series of motions
(34:00):
that eventually to shortened long procedural boring lecture eventually made
it to the Eleventh Circuit, and it was interesting prior
to that, in the U s District Court, Middle District,
they actually won the decision to have the grand jury
and records opened unsealed, the grand jury records, there was
(34:23):
a lot of investigation. Laura documents that thoroughly in her
book Fire in the cambrig The FBI had been involved,
they had interviewed people, and they sealed the grand jury records.
So the grand jury records have been sealed for seventy
plus years. They the historians, through mister Bell, filed a
(34:44):
petition to have them opened, and they won in the
Middle District US Court. Unfortunately, the entire decision was then
appealed by at that time the US Department of Justice,
and they took it up to the higher circuits Eleventh Circuit,
(35:05):
and they had an en banc decision, which is everybody
in the room. They put all the judges in the
room and asked the Eleventh Circuit why did you go
back on this decision? Why why not allow us to
open these grand jury records? And the court you could tell?
The Eleventh Circuit subsequently held after oral argument on October
(35:30):
twenty second, twenty nineteen, the Court was really conflicted by
having those grand jury records, whether they had the judicial
authority to actually have those grand jury records unsealed. They
seemed to focus on the Civil Rights Records Act of
(35:55):
twenty eighteen, which had just been passed, and they seemed
to say, you haven't, mister Bell, you haven't exhausted your
efforts to go back before the Congress and see if
the law applies. I think mister Bell was arguing that
they were historically significant, which would fall within the exceptions
as to why the judges would have the authority to
(36:17):
open the grand jury records. It's very complicated argument, but
suffice it to say, mister Bell, as of August of
twenty twenty, he had petitioned for search to the United
States Supreme Court, and as we know what happened in
twenty twenty, I'm sure COVID caused a delay in the
(36:37):
Court actually reaching any kind of decision making as to
whether they will hear that petition. It is astonishing to
me that the United States Department of Justice argued to
keep the grand jury records sealed, and that to me
is where we should focus our attention from a legal standpoint.
(36:59):
I'm not talking about from an evidential area or a
historical or electoral should I say standpoint, but I am
talking about from a legal standpoint. We should do everything
possible we can to support mister Bell if he is
(37:19):
continuing with these actions to ask the Supreme United States
Supreme Court to allow those grand jury records to be
unsealed for historical significance in cold cases, particularly this one.
There is no other case to me that demonstrates the
need for that more than this case, Amen and Holly.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
How important would it be for us to be able
to read actual testimony invaluable?
Speaker 2 (37:48):
It reminds me of those you know, MasterCard or Visa commercials.
You know, what is this ten dollars? What is that
twenty dollars? What is this priceless? It's priceless. You cannot
quant to find how important it would be to number one,
who were the witnesses. Let's just get the names, and
then if they are deceased, which is highly likely after
(38:10):
all this time, then you talk to their family members.
This is an event that has been talked about. You
do not execute four people, including a pregnant woman, and
then go home and never mention it. Of course they
told people. Of course, some of those families probably still
have the guns in the hope chest or under the bed.
(38:32):
It's probably a family heirloom at this point. So you
cannot quantify the importance of looking at the original investigation
because I go back to how much of an investigation
did you get due when we pulled out one hundred
artifacts from the ground fifty years after the fact. So
the most important thing we need to know is who
(38:54):
was spoken to and who spoke, who talked, who said what,
and then can start to track those family members through
time and find out what story were you told about
this horrible event.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
Well, I read where Lloyd Harrison testified to the grand
jury for eight hours. That's an awful long time for
somebody that don't know nothing.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
That's a whole lot of talking.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
I mean, all you did was drive from town to
the bridge, didn't recognize nobody, didn't participate at all, and
was told to go home for supper.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
Yeah, in a little bit of town like that, you
know everybody.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Of course, But what's he talking about for eight hours?
I want to know. I want to be able to
read that. I want to know what every witness said
that they brought in. They brought in what one hundred
and something.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
Witnesses and got nowhere with it.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
And you know, our court houses are supposed to be open.
It's not supposed to be a secret.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
That's exactly right. And that's what I had such a
hard time struggling with. Why with the government, why with
the federal government have any interest in keeping those records sealed?
I did not see the purpose behind that. I Laura
Wexler asked me. She said, I know what I want
out of this. I know, you know, I've written a book.
(40:13):
I want attention paid, and I know other people are
here for other reasons. What do you want? And I
thought about it for a minute, and I thought, I
don't think I ever adequately answered her question. And I
started thinking about it, and I thought, I really want justice,
and if not justice, you know, Mac, you and I
talked about if we can't get justice, could we at
(40:35):
least get the truth. Let's just hear the truth. And
I think if we could unseal those records and hear
the or see the investigation, as Holly mentioned, see the witnesses,
hear what the witnesses had to say, hear what Lloy
Harrison had to say, I think that we will come
closer to the truth than ever before. I don't think
(40:55):
that we are ever going to be able to prosecute
from a prosecute her standpoint, I think right now, and
I can tell you growing up from in a small town,
there are some family members who are probably ashamed, who
are probably ashamed of what has occurred in their family tree.
And if that's the case, please just consider the golden
(41:21):
reward that you may have in heaven someday if you
would just tell the truth.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
Holly, when we went back you and I did something.
I think it was super cool to me. Whenever you
can walk a scene, that's great, and it's to me
it's imperative to know the route the killer took. And
we went back out with drones, and the drone was
eye level of an average adult person. And that drone
(41:52):
went right down from the roadway down the embankment at
the bridge, all the way through the woods, down along
the river and back up the farm.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
When you have a really good storyteller, they can use
words to paint a picture for you. And now our
technology has advanced that we don't just have to rely
on that, but we can transport. And Claire mentioned this,
We're never going to see a prosecution. All of the
players are dead. We're just looking for the truth what
(42:26):
happened out there. But I still think about the value
of that drone footage because if you can show that
in a courtroom or two people who were not there,
you are painting that picture and you don't just have
to use words. We can now send you. I mean,
Claire's probably done this. I know I personally have as
(42:48):
a prosecutor. I've gone up in the helicopter to get
aerial shots. And this is pre drone technology. Okay, this
is me with my little ada suit on, hop it
in the you know, into a helicopter with the police
department and going up and saying I need aerial shots
and they're using, you know, like a long range camera.
(43:08):
There were no drones back in the day. I mean,
that's showing my age, but okay, And so to actually
have a technology where you and I are standing on
the bridge and we are looking down into that field
where those poor people lost their lives, and then you
bring the drone up and the drone shows you this
is the viewpoint, this is the passageway, this is the
(43:32):
traveling route. It's just invaluable to telling the story.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
And since it hasn't really changed, and you still have
one farm connected to the next farm connected to the woods,
then the river breaks it and then you've got more
farms and more land and more woods. When that drone
went up, you also knew they had nowhere to run.
Speaker 3 (43:54):
Oh, that's definitely true. I mean the river was on
one side, the road was facing them. They had nowhere
to go, and there was farmland to their left that
was open field, which even if they had run and
or been allowed to run, they would have been just
shot to pieces.
Speaker 1 (44:14):
And you know, there's so many photographs. This made the
Atlanta Journal Constitution and there's several with Lloy Harrison, the
coroner and the sheriff in the photographs I have pointed out,
the sheriff is not wearing a firearm. He didn't have
a hole star at all. Well, there's one quote where
(44:36):
he says, well, let somebody borrow it.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
Now.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
I don't know if y'all hear that as sinister and
horrible as I do. But is he trying to tell
us he gave that weapon to somebody on that bridge,
because that's how it sounds.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
Well, either let somebody take it or used it himself
and didn't want it for comparison purposes any longer.
Speaker 3 (44:56):
I think that there is. I don't know any sheriff
in the world except maybe Andy Griffith.
Speaker 2 (45:04):
Dandy the deputy would be the one to lose it.
Speaker 3 (45:07):
No, no, but I don't say and didn't wear one exactly.
There's no sheriff in the world that doesn't know exactly
where his thirty eight is at all times.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
Yep. And then the other thing that caught me on
that photo shoot that they did was Number One, how
fast the newspaper showed up and how would the newspaper
know that Lloyd Harrison was walking the sheriff through what
happened at that moment? So that bothered me that they
would even know this was going on. And Lloyd Harrison
(45:38):
is literally there's a couple of pictures where he is
showing the sheriff how they were bound and he's got
his wrists together showing him this is how they were
tied together. So you saw all that, you witnessed all
that you tried, of course, to not stop anything. You
didn't go run for help when they let you go,
You didn't run to the sheriff. Once you got to safety,
(46:01):
you let it happen. And that was about it. But
when you look at those photographs, to me, they tell
a bigger part of this whole story.
Speaker 3 (46:10):
I think your point is well taken. I saw those
photographs as well. I think that they had some sort
of there was some sort of arrogance to the photographs,
some sort of sinister arrogance, which I have always thought
that the coincidences were so bizarre. You can fill in
the facts from the gaps in information about how did
(46:34):
someone know when mister Dorsey and his friends and his
wife were leaving the jail, you know, things of that nature.
How did they know and remember the back road that
was taken as opposed to the straight road.
Speaker 1 (46:50):
Yes, when they get into town. Lloyd Harrison tells the
Dorseys and miss Malcolm, y'all go get some deep. I'm
going to go take care of some other business, and
then I'm going to go get Roger. Why is he
using all this time up? Why is he delaying it?
Why didn't he go there, bail the man out and
go straight home if they were worried about somebody coming
(47:13):
to revenge Barnett Hester and killing him, I wouldn't have
wasted a whole lot of time if I thought people
were going to be mad at me for bailing this
man out that tried to kill a fellow farmer.
Speaker 2 (47:25):
Well, and that's the flip side to it, is that meeting,
that prior meeting, what were they talking about. They had
time to plan this, and I think what you can
infer from the facts is that he had no intention
of taking them home. They were never going home again,
and he needed to delay it so that things worked
(47:46):
on a time clock that somebody else was watching. He
was watching his clock. But let me tell you something.
There was a whole other crowd of people in a
different location trying to get it together so they could
be that execution squad up on that bridge.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
Right, John Well. I cannot thank y'all enough for being
with me tonight and talking about some of our old days.
And I'm going to end Zone seven the way that
I always do with a quote from somebody in my
Zone seven and tonight that comes from Joseph Hunter, a
moor's Fordbridge resident and victim. Have a lot of emotion
(48:23):
left from the days of the murders. My whole family
still carries scars. I'm Cheryl McCollum and this is Zone seven.
It's known as the last mass lyncheon in the United States.
The moor's Ford Bridge Lynchions July twenty fifth, nineteen forty six,
four young African Americans are stopped on the moors Ford Bridge,
drug out of their car and murdered. They were shot
(00:31):
over one hundred times a piece by the mob that
stopped them on the bridge. Now, let's talk about lynching,
because I'm asked a lot when I speak about the
morris Ford Bridge lynching, people will say, but they weren't lynched.
By definition, a lynchon is a public killing of an
(00:52):
individual that did not receive due process. It doesn't have
to be a rope, it does have to be a gun,
it doesn't have to be a knife, it doesn't have
to be a stony. All of that is a lynching.
So the fact that they were pulled from a vehicle,
tied together with rope, shot over one hundred times a piece,
(01:17):
with seventy different weapons is absolutely allching. So there's five
main characters. There is Lloy Harrison, who owns more land
than anybody else, and the Malcolms and the Dorseys worked
for him. Dorothy and Roger Malcolm are married on July
(01:38):
twenty fifth, nineteen forty six. It was Dorothy's twentieth birthday.
They're best friends. George and May Murray Dorsey worked the
same farm as the Malcolms. They did a lot of
socializing together. They cared for each other and when you
found one, you usually found the other three. Lloyd Harrison
(02:02):
was a powerful man. He had connections to bankers, to
law enforcement, to clergy, and to people involved with the Klan.
This case is a civil rights case. It's a case
that the town became immediately divided by and in some
(02:24):
regards still today is divided by the Malcolm's. In the Dorseys,
they were sharecroppers, so they would work mister Harrison's farm
and then sometimes they would work for other people if
they needed help. And this particular situation came about because
mister Malcolm became jealous when Miss Malcolm was shown some
(02:50):
attention by a neighboring farmer. And this other farmer, mister Hester.
The story goes, he picked Miss Malcolm up and swung
her around, and mister Malcolm became so enraged that he
went over and he stabbed the man in the stomach.
Now mister Hester didn't die immediately and mister Malcolm tried
(03:13):
to run and get away, but he was captured and
arrested and taken to jail. Well, Miss Malcolm and Miss
Dorsey repeatedly asked Lloyd Harrison to please bail him out,
because you're the largest landowner in this county and if
you bail him out, they won't kill him. But if
he's left in jail, they were afraid that a lynch
(03:34):
mob would go get him out of the jail and
kill him. For eleven days, Lloy Harrison said no, I'm
not going to go get him now. Mister Hester never died,
He recovered somewhat from his injuries. He always had some
issues throughout his life from being stabbed in the stomach.
(03:54):
But all of a sudden, eleven days later, Lloy Harrison
he goes to Miss Malcolm miss Dorsey and say, y'all
get in the car, let's go get him. So mister
Dorsey and Miss Dorsey and Miss Malcolm get into Lloyd
Harrison's car and they drive to town. Lloyd Harrison says,
(04:15):
y'all go down to the cafe, get you something to eat.
I've got some other business to take care of in town.
Then I'm going to baileym out, so y'all meet me
back here about five and they said okay. So they
went and got something to eat. They walked around town
a little bit and all of a sudden they see
Lloyd Harrison coming with mister Malcolm. They're elated. They're like,
(04:39):
this is going to save his life. They get into
mister Harrison's car and instead of going back home the
way he brought them, he went the long way on
the unpaved one lane road toward the Moorsford Bridge. When
they reached the bridge, there was a car parked across
(05:00):
the street and other cars blocking them going through. As
he slowed down because the road was obstructed with a vehicle,
there was a man standing there in a straw hat
and a three piece suit that put his hands up
for him to stop the car. When he did, there
were a couple of cars that now pulled up behind him,
(05:21):
so he's blocked in. The man in the straw hat
in a three piece suit said we want mister Malcolm
get him out of the car, and the women immediately
knew what was happening and started to beg please don't
take him, and they said give us the other guy
to So now mister Malcolm and mister Dorsey are outside
of the car. They're being drugged down the embankment on
(05:43):
the side of the water, and they're being tied together.
Miss Dorsey recognizes several men on the bridge, caused them
by name and says, please don't hurt him, and in
the man in the straw hat in a three piece
suit said get the women out to they recognize. Now
all four are down the embankment, all four are tied together.
(06:04):
The man in the straw hat the three piece suit
counts one, two, three, and everybody in the mob shoots
at the four victims, and the man in the straw
hat a three piece suit does this over and over.
They ensure that everybody shoots, so everybody's equally as guilty.
(06:26):
And then mister Harrison is allowed to go on his way,
and literally everybody in that mob was home in time
for supper. Now, Lloyd Harrison tells law enforcement, I didn't
recognize anybody. So the largest landowner, arguably the richest man
in that county, don't recognize nobody in a group of
(06:48):
twenty five or thirty men, But your sharecropper female does.
That's hard to believe. This case is the coldest case
I've ever worked. I've never worked case seventy years old
or more. This case is not only inactive right now,
the FBI closed it with no arrest and nobody named
(07:13):
as a person of interest. Tonight I am joined by
not just two people that are in my Zone seven
and have been for over twenty years, but alone they
are remarkable legal geniuses in our community and abroad for
that matter. But we are joined by Judge Holly Hughes
(07:36):
and Assistant District Attorney Claire Farley. Both of them have
such a vast legal knowledge they are both advocates at heart.
Holly started as a prosecutor, then went into private practice
as a defense attorney, and today she's a judge. Claire
(07:57):
clerked for some of the best legal minds out there.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
There.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
She was in Atlanta and Fulton County in the major
Case Division. Then she was a prosecutor in the community.
And when you are assigned to open up an office
as a district attorney in a community, the word advocate
doesn't cover it. She's got just a servant's heart. And
(08:22):
now she is in Savannah, Georgia, where she's in the
Chatham County DA's office. So Claire, Holly, welcome, Thank you
for being here.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
Thank you very much, Cheryl for having us. Speaking for
myself and for Holly. Holly taught me everything I know,
so not everything she knew, but.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Not everything I know exactly. So Mac, we're thrilled, both
of us are thrilled to be here because we were
lucky enough and blessed enough to be present with you
at the crime scene. And I think anybody who works
in the legal field will tell you there is nothing
better than being on the scene because you are going
(09:03):
to get the smells, the taste, the experience that the
victims had when they were there. So I am absolutely
open the moon to be able to talk about this
great adventure with you again.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
As am I as am I, and I think Holly
said it very well. And let me just fire back
at you, Cheryl and say that you are also the
greatest servant to these poor souls who have been afflicted
by this terrible tragedy so many years ago.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Well, thank you, Claire, But I'll tell you I say
it all the time. I ain't done nothing of significance
by myself. Every time I've done something, You've been to
my right and Holly's been to my left or others.
I mean, we have I think one of the greatest
communities to live our life through, and that is other
people that are willing to in a second's notice help somebody. So,
(09:54):
you know, we're surrounded by heroes. And whenever somebody asked me,
you know, I can't believe you haven't out, I always
say I can't imagine that's possible. I mean, how do
you burn out when you're surrounded by people that are
loving and carrying in kind and fearless and fun for
that matter. Now, Holly, let's talk a little bit about
(10:17):
what the Malcolms and the Dorseys did for a living.
They were sharecroppers. What does that mean?
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Basically, you are working on someone else's land and not
for a whole lot of compensation. It is almost like
an indentured servant and just one step above slavery, where
you are just at that person's beck and call and
you are not paid the true value of your work.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
So it's kind of like somebody figured out a way
to have legal slavery.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
It's as close as you can get.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Mac. Because Claire, when we were talking to some of
the family members, I remember them saying that the farmer
charged them for seeds if they broke a two, if
they didn't have a real good year, there were just
nothing to split for their room and board. But they
made them live on the land. They made them live
(11:09):
on their property. But then they charged them for living there.
They charged them for the food they ate. So I
don't know how you would ever get your head above
water to get out of there.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
And I think that was the purpose too, mac that
was the purpose to keep It was a form of
economic entrenchment, economic servitude that was so rigged by the
farmers or the landowners. They did it on purpose to
purposely keep them in indentured servitude and or economically distressed slavery.
(11:44):
I mean they left. They kept the prices too high,
they kept the payments too low, in order to keep
folks staying on the land, working there the landowner's land.
It was very much slavery of a different form.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
And if they tried to leave or run away, they
were basically charged with theft because you owed that man money.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
You owe the man money, and you were not going
to get away from him. You just you couldn't escape it.
Even if you left the land, he would hunt you
down and call it an economic crime and have you
locked up. It was a vicious cycle, even post reconstruction era.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
And that's my favorite thing. If you were arrested, he
would go bail you out, and he would add that
to your tab.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
He would add it to the tab. He would create
ways to keep you. If you were working on his
land for thirty cents an hour or thirty cents a day,
he would create ways to.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Keep you doing that.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
And so there was no end in sight.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Now, Holly, there was a meet in a couple of
days after the stabbing down in the Toller's Woods, but
nothing ever came of it, and there's no documentation of
what occurred. But I always believed that's where they were
planning their revenge.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Of course they were. This was a concerted effort. And
what is so disturbing about this case in particular is
that there were so many people involved. This wasn't a
small number of men who are saying, hey, we're not
going to put up with this. This is an entire town.
When this whole thing went down. There were men, women
(13:27):
and children out there to witness what happened. And to
this day, Max seventy seven years later, nobody is talking.
This was a planned crime, a concerted effort, and an
execution that even now as we seek answers, we can't
get them because people are so either scared or reluctant,
(13:52):
or quite frankly, just entrenched in their side. They just
don't want to give it up. They have this way
of life, they have this philosophy, they have this idea
that what they did was justified and that they're superior.
And as sad as it is to say, seventy seven
years after this crime was planned and executed, there are
(14:16):
still people who feel that way and will not help
and will not give up names.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
But let me tell you, this is a story.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Everybody talked about, and somebody out there knows exactly who
did this.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
So George and May Murray, Dorothy and Roger and Dorothy Malcolm.
They were all in their twenties and Dorothy was reported
to be seven months pregnant when these crimes occurred. And
you know, to me, it was just a story until
we went out there. And there's something about walking it,
(14:51):
looking at it, like you say, Holly, breathing it in,
taking it all in, you know, and really understanding the times.
Because the area from the main road to the Moorsford
Bridge hadn't changed at all.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
The most astonishing thing to me when you took the
students out to the woods, Toller Woods, and we all
were out there with very very famous civil rights activists
and other elected officials and some other people and your students.
I think the most astonishing thing when I was with
(15:29):
you was the recovery of those objects. If you could
tell everyone what you found, how many pieces of bullets, shellcasings,
that was just to me it was proof positive that
something terrible, at the very least from an evidentiary standpoint,
something terrible happened out there where you had your students
(15:53):
set up the grid.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
My grandfather, or Watts, hunted airheads. It was always such
an amazing afternoon spent with him because he would drive
us way out in the middle of nowhere to some
old place that he knew about, or a known place
where there had been Native American history made. He would
survey the land, and then he would talk to us
(16:22):
and walk us through what he was looking for and
how he could spot the perfect place to hunt for
these artifacts. It was important for him to make sure
that we knew how people used to live hunt, and travel,
and if you understood those three things, you had a
better chance of finding some type of artifact, whether it
(16:44):
was an airhead or a piece of a clay pot
or anything. He would tell us things like, now, you girls,
go look for water, because everything happened near water. They
were either hunting or building their homes or gathering by
water for a multitude of reasons. He would also tell
(17:04):
us things like, you look for where two or more
creeks or rivers come together, and that's where animals would
feed or drink. So again, that's where hunters were going
to go, and we would find pottery or some type
of stone or some type of airhead. Anywhere there's good hunting,
you're going to find artifacts. That's what he would tell us.
(17:28):
So y'all may be wondering why a crime scene investigator
and a podcaster keeps referring to her students. Back in
twenty ten, when we were working the moors Ford Bridge
through the Cold Case Investigative Research Institute, I was a
college teacher. So the Cold Case Investigative Research Institute is
(17:49):
a nonprofit that uses experts in college students at different
colleges and universities to look at cold cases and find
sevil ability factors. So the moors Ford Bridge was one
of our cases at the institute, So that's how I
first got involved. So I am a crime scene investigator
(18:11):
for a living, but I run the Cold Case Investigative
Research Institute as an aside as volunteer work. Within our
work at the institute, one thing I used to always
tell the students and I still remind them today, nothing
that I was going to do with them was going
to be mock or fake. Everything we did was real.
(18:32):
So when it came time to go look for evidence,
we had to leave the college. We had to go
to the crime scene. You cannot understand a crime scene
if you don't walk it, if you don't touch it,
if you don't smell it, if you don't just immerse
yourself with it. If you look at photographs two dimensional,
(18:55):
that's all the help they're ever going to be to you.
You can only focus on what is in that picture.
But if you go to the scene, you can see
where it took place, you can see what's across the street,
through the woods, down the road. It's a whole different ballgame.
So for the students and the experts, it was necessary
(19:19):
that we went to the crime scene. Well, I think
that's another thing. Having you and Holly there as prosecutors.
Holly would tell the students over and over and over
if this were to ever go to trial, what is
it I need? And they would name things and they
would say what they would want to happen in a
(19:39):
perfect world, and Holly would always say, well, then go
get it. Go figure out how to do that. So
when we made the decision that we were going to
go out there, one of the things that happened pretty
quickly is Holly said, well, you don't need a warrant
if you get permission. Well, let's go talk to the
farmer and get permission. So that's the first thing we did.
And then once he said y as, you you know,
(20:01):
can come and you can figure out the area, and
you want to look, you know, look at when we
did that. It was not an open field, It was
not clean, it was not for you know, it was
full of debris and trees, and there were mattresses and
beer cans. Because again, this is a place that is
known to locals. It is known to people that want
(20:23):
to go out there and shoot their own gun and
drink beer and be in that type of environment where
to me it would be I don't even know how
to say it, y'all, because again you're going out drinking
and shooting guns at a place where you know, four
people were murdered. So again we had to get rid
of all that stuff. We moved mattresses, My son Hug
was cutting down trees, Caroline was taking trash bags, you know,
(20:46):
up to the truck. And once we got it all
cleaned out and cleared out and you started to be
able to see the ground everywhere. That's when we had
the archaeologists from Kennessou and their students and the ex
experts from dn R and the students from Georgia State
with their computer system and we went to work and
within the first forty five minutes we had our first
(21:09):
shell casing. After three days we had over one hundred bullets, fragments,
casings or artifacts that with the experts, most of them
were able to be predated, you know pre nineteen fifty.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
Didn't you have Also a former GBI forensics firearms forensics
expert I came out and it was clear that people
had as any I think any place that is tragically
imbued with horrible history, I think the locals come out
(21:43):
and use it after that as well as a gathering
place young people. I think that it was clear that
they had used it as target practice of some type.
I remember that.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
In the bridge had graffiti. They had KKK all over
the bridge. So again it's young people not truly understanding,
because if they truly got it, that's not what they
would do. I mean, it was clearly the graffiti was juvenile.
It was placed so you couldn't miss it if you tried.
But again, they're out there and they're misguided. That's all
(22:15):
there is to it.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
Well, speaking of being out there, I know we keep
saying the students, the students, but what actually touched my
heart was these are students who were volunteering. They were
not getting college credit for this, they were not getting
paid for this. They literally were doing this seeking knowledge
(22:38):
for the fact that it was knowledge, seeking history, learning
what happened because the Malcolms and the dor Seas mattered.
And so when we went out there in twenty ten,
you know, fifty some years after the crime, these students
were out there just to learn and to help. They
were being rewarded in any other way. It was knowledge
(23:01):
for the sake of knowledge. It was help and volunteerism
for the sake of making a difference.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
One hundred percent. And so were you, and so was Claire,
and so was Chris, and so was you know, the
good doctor from Kennessall, and so was the guy from DNR.
I mean, all of these people came together and we
had a group of family members that came up. Do
you remember that? And they wanted to see what we
(23:29):
were finding. And they were astonished because they had been told, oh,
there's nothing here, there'll be no evidence, and if there is,
it's just because other people were doing target practice. But
then we started to find things like, you know, cardboard
shell casings and a nickel from nineteen forty six and
(23:51):
a button pre nineteen fifty and Georgia States said, hey, look,
these bullets are like two inches straight down into the ground,
like somebody stood right over and shot them. Well, that
made more sense. These bullets weren't going in at an angle.
They weren't like a misshot like you missed the tree.
(24:12):
They were all right there. And then at one point Hollymember,
we walked over and there were four sets of what
I would call like a cluster, a center mass the
size of a sausle plate, like that's where the four
people were laying. You could almost see it.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
That also speaks to the fact that we were able
fifty some years later to go out and gather it
at evidence tells me that nobody looked for it in
the first place. We should have gone out there and
searched that property and found nothing. If in fact, law
enforcement at the time had done their job and had
gathered those you know, you wouldn't be digging down two
(24:49):
inches into the dirt. You would actually see where it
was and recover it at the time. So I just
fifty some years later, over one hundred artifacts, over one
hundred whether it be shellcasings or fragments, or bullets or buttons.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
All of that evidence was sitting there almost.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
Like it was just waiting to be discovered, like waiting
for someone to care enough to tell the story.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
And Claire mentioned Chris, who we all know from the
crime lab, and he took several bullets that were recovered
in casings and he was pointing out the striations and
he was like, you have at least five different thirty eighths,
and at that time that would have been considered a
(25:37):
police weapon. We have a witness that said there was
a police car on the bridge. So it's like you start,
you know, slowly putting these tiny pieces together, but it
paints the same sinister picture.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
I had forgotten that. It's been several years since we
were out there, but it never left my mind. It
has been a story that had haunted me since you
took us out there, Ryl, and I had forgotten that
there were clear signs of multiple different guns, I think
even multiple rifles.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Absolutely did you.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
Not find rifles bullets and shell casings from rifles? And
we talked about at the time, we talked about there
must have been as is reputed through historical documentation, there
were several shooters. They didn't have a chance. There was
no way they were not going to be bullet ridden
(26:36):
against that tree.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Yeah, they didn't set a chance. And you know, and
I think when even the autopsies were happening and they
started to, you know, give information for people that you
know they were beaten first and then they were mutilated.
I mean, this wasn't a fast We're going to make
sure because you almost killed somebody that you're not going
to have a chance to kill anybody else. If that's
(27:00):
what it was, it would have been one person. They
went back and got mister Dorsey, and then they went
back and got the two women. And they got the
two women because they were naming them by a name,
pleading with them not to kill their men. And Lloy Harrison,
if you remember, Lloy Harrison, didn't recognize anybody.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
Mister Dorsey, George Dorsey hadn't he wasn't he coming home
from the war. I think he was returning from the
war fighting for his country.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
Correct, he had been in World War Two. Now, Holly,
I do remember one thing about you. So everybody told
us once we stopped at the gas station, or once
we stopped and got something to drink or made our
present stone, that it would go through the town. Well,
we weren't out there long before there was a red
truck that would come down the hill pretty quick, then
(27:54):
slow down right where we were, and then speed up again,
do a k turn, come back down, deliberately, backfire the truck.
And this went on for a minute. And then we
had several students that were eager to get to their vehicles,
not to drive away, by the way, And so you
(28:15):
and Claire, of course did a great job and gave
some quick legal advice on the scene that hey, we're
not going to do that.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
I think it amounted to duck.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
That's just duck, hit the ground, hit the ground. But
you know that you don't need to get to your
truck and try to get anything to do anything. We're
going to do this the right way. And that's something
I always appreciated because I think they learned a lot
in that moment of how you do the right thing
and you know, you want to carry this through with
(28:44):
all the professionalism that you can. And after that great
speech you gave them, I'm looking back toward the grid
and I'm talking to doctor you know, Palace, and then
I turn around and you are standing in the middle
of the street, Honting. Tell them what you did well.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
First of all, it just made me angry that they
would try to intimidate these students when they're out there
just learning and trying to help family members get closure.
And I thought, we are not we're not abused, let's
start with that. But we're also not intimidated. We're not
afraid of you. So I just pulled out my phone
(29:26):
and started getting pictures and recording and taking pictures of
the license plate and the people driving the truck, because
if anything did happen, God forbid, that's evidence. That's what
you build your case on. That's how I know who
was here on that bridge that day in twenty ten.
We may not have discovered yet exactly who was on
the bridge back in forty six, but damn it, we
(29:48):
knew who was on that bridge in twenty ten because
I made sure we had documentary evidence.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
We knew without question who was on the bridge in
twenty ten. And then after Holly got the video evidence
and we had all of our findings and everything was
bagged and tagged properly. Claire, you made a phone call
because as an active DA you said, let me call
(30:18):
and see if they will come out and collect this evidence.
Who did you call and what was their response?
Speaker 2 (30:24):
I called.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
I was concerned about chain of custody and preservation of
the evidence. I called the FBI directly, and I ended
up getting in touch with an agent and he seemed
very frustrated and or not anxious to deal with me
at the moment, and I think he was trying to
(30:52):
ascertain what it was we were talking about. But I
was very clear that we had some artifacts that we've
felt were important to log in as a potential evidence
in a cold case, and that's what I called a
cold case. I think the reception was a little bit
(31:14):
less than enthusiastic.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
And they didn't come I do.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
Not recall them coming out there.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
No, But again, like I sometimes try to tell my
own children, it's illegal to run a red light, it
is not illegal to stop on green. So you just
got to figure out another way to do something.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
That was thirteen years ago. I didn't know as many
folks over there as I do now, and I was disappointed,
to say the least. I think Mac you ended up
having a further or shall we say, journey to try
to reach there get their attention right.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
They finally showed up at my office and retrieved them,
but I mean they made me feel like they were
going to walk out of there and toss it in
a dumpster. I mean, I didn't get the feeling they
were going to even try to look at them for
research or look at them for the historical part that
they may play in this whole thing. Because there was
some extraordinary evidence there. And when I say evidence, I
(32:15):
mean even evidence of nineteen forty.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
Six extraordinary extraordinary.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
That was one of the fascinating things about the shotgun
cartridges that were left behind is that our ballistics expert, Chris,
was able to date them because there was such a
huge concern about you know, are these bullet casings and
fragments from the crime or are they subsequent when people
were out there shooting and drinking on the land. And
(32:41):
I think what really hit home for me was when
our ballistics expert was able to examine and say, after
a certain date, they did not make cartridge casings anymore.
So we are not out of cardboard, so we know
for sure that these artifacts are related to this specific
period in time. And the FBI had a Civil Rights
(33:03):
Bureau at that time. They had lawyers and investigators who
should have been jumping up and down saying, oh my gosh,
we can look into this cold case. And it was disappointing,
I think, to realize that they weren't prioritizing it and
they weren't really interested because again, what do we say,
(33:25):
these people mattered, the malcolms the door seas they mattered,
they deserve better.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
And talking about lawyers jumping up and down, Claire Well
goes through what happened with the Eleventh Circuit.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
It was fascinating from a legal standpoint. Laura Wexler, who
wrote I think the definitive book on Morris Ford Lynching
Fire in the Cane Break. She and Anthony Pitch, who
is also a historian, hired Joe Bell of Bell and
Chievas and they mister Bell filed a series of motions
(34:00):
that eventually to shortened long procedural boring lecture eventually made
it to the Eleventh Circuit, and it was interesting prior
to that, in the U s District Court, Middle District,
they actually won the decision to have the grand jury
and records opened unsealed, the grand jury records, there was
(34:23):
a lot of investigation. Laura documents that thoroughly in her
book Fire in the cambrig The FBI had been involved,
they had interviewed people, and they sealed the grand jury records.
So the grand jury records have been sealed for seventy
plus years. They the historians, through mister Bell, filed a
(34:44):
petition to have them opened, and they won in the
Middle District US Court. Unfortunately, the entire decision was then
appealed by at that time the US Department of Justice,
and they took it up to the higher circuits Eleventh Circuit,
(35:05):
and they had an en banc decision, which is everybody
in the room. They put all the judges in the
room and asked the Eleventh Circuit why did you go
back on this decision? Why why not allow us to
open these grand jury records? And the court you could tell?
The Eleventh Circuit subsequently held after oral argument on October
(35:30):
twenty second, twenty nineteen, the Court was really conflicted by
having those grand jury records, whether they had the judicial
authority to actually have those grand jury records unsealed. They
seemed to focus on the Civil Rights Records Act of
(35:55):
twenty eighteen, which had just been passed, and they seemed
to say, you haven't, mister Bell, you haven't exhausted your
efforts to go back before the Congress and see if
the law applies. I think mister Bell was arguing that
they were historically significant, which would fall within the exceptions
as to why the judges would have the authority to
(36:17):
open the grand jury records. It's very complicated argument, but
suffice it to say, mister Bell, as of August of
twenty twenty, he had petitioned for search to the United
States Supreme Court, and as we know what happened in
twenty twenty, I'm sure COVID caused a delay in the
(36:37):
Court actually reaching any kind of decision making as to
whether they will hear that petition. It is astonishing to
me that the United States Department of Justice argued to
keep the grand jury records sealed, and that to me
is where we should focus our attention from a legal standpoint.
(36:59):
I'm not talking about from an evidential area or a
historical or electoral should I say standpoint, but I am
talking about from a legal standpoint. We should do everything
possible we can to support mister Bell if he is
(37:19):
continuing with these actions to ask the Supreme United States
Supreme Court to allow those grand jury records to be
unsealed for historical significance in cold cases, particularly this one.
There is no other case to me that demonstrates the
need for that more than this case, Amen and Holly.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
How important would it be for us to be able
to read actual testimony invaluable?
Speaker 2 (37:48):
It reminds me of those you know, MasterCard or Visa commercials.
You know, what is this ten dollars? What is that
twenty dollars? What is this priceless? It's priceless. You cannot
quant to find how important it would be to number one,
who were the witnesses. Let's just get the names, and
then if they are deceased, which is highly likely after
(38:10):
all this time, then you talk to their family members.
This is an event that has been talked about. You
do not execute four people, including a pregnant woman, and
then go home and never mention it. Of course they
told people. Of course, some of those families probably still
have the guns in the hope chest or under the bed.
(38:32):
It's probably a family heirloom at this point. So you
cannot quantify the importance of looking at the original investigation
because I go back to how much of an investigation
did you get due when we pulled out one hundred
artifacts from the ground fifty years after the fact. So
the most important thing we need to know is who
(38:54):
was spoken to and who spoke, who talked, who said what,
and then can start to track those family members through
time and find out what story were you told about
this horrible event.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
Well, I read where Lloyd Harrison testified to the grand
jury for eight hours. That's an awful long time for
somebody that don't know nothing.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
That's a whole lot of talking.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
I mean, all you did was drive from town to
the bridge, didn't recognize nobody, didn't participate at all, and
was told to go home for supper.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
Yeah, in a little bit of town like that, you
know everybody.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Of course, But what's he talking about for eight hours?
I want to know. I want to be able to
read that. I want to know what every witness said
that they brought in. They brought in what one hundred
and something.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
Witnesses and got nowhere with it.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
And you know, our court houses are supposed to be open.
It's not supposed to be a secret.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
That's exactly right. And that's what I had such a
hard time struggling with. Why with the government, why with
the federal government have any interest in keeping those records sealed?
I did not see the purpose behind that. I Laura
Wexler asked me. She said, I know what I want
out of this. I know, you know, I've written a book.
(40:13):
I want attention paid, and I know other people are
here for other reasons. What do you want? And I
thought about it for a minute, and I thought, I
don't think I ever adequately answered her question. And I
started thinking about it, and I thought, I really want justice,
and if not justice, you know, Mac, you and I
talked about if we can't get justice, could we at
(40:35):
least get the truth. Let's just hear the truth. And
I think if we could unseal those records and hear
the or see the investigation, as Holly mentioned, see the witnesses,
hear what the witnesses had to say, hear what Lloy
Harrison had to say, I think that we will come
closer to the truth than ever before. I don't think
(40:55):
that we are ever going to be able to prosecute
from a prosecute her standpoint, I think right now, and
I can tell you growing up from in a small town,
there are some family members who are probably ashamed, who
are probably ashamed of what has occurred in their family tree.
And if that's the case, please just consider the golden
(41:21):
reward that you may have in heaven someday if you
would just tell the truth.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
Holly, when we went back you and I did something.
I think it was super cool to me. Whenever you
can walk a scene, that's great, and it's to me
it's imperative to know the route the killer took. And
we went back out with drones, and the drone was
eye level of an average adult person. And that drone
(41:52):
went right down from the roadway down the embankment at
the bridge, all the way through the woods, down along
the river and back up the farm.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
When you have a really good storyteller, they can use
words to paint a picture for you. And now our
technology has advanced that we don't just have to rely
on that, but we can transport. And Claire mentioned this,
We're never going to see a prosecution. All of the
players are dead. We're just looking for the truth what
(42:26):
happened out there. But I still think about the value
of that drone footage because if you can show that
in a courtroom or two people who were not there,
you are painting that picture and you don't just have
to use words. We can now send you. I mean,
Claire's probably done this. I know I personally have as
(42:48):
a prosecutor. I've gone up in the helicopter to get
aerial shots. And this is pre drone technology. Okay, this
is me with my little ada suit on, hop it
in the you know, into a helicopter with the police
department and going up and saying I need aerial shots
and they're using, you know, like a long range camera.
(43:08):
There were no drones back in the day. I mean,
that's showing my age, but okay, And so to actually
have a technology where you and I are standing on
the bridge and we are looking down into that field
where those poor people lost their lives, and then you
bring the drone up and the drone shows you this
is the viewpoint, this is the passageway, this is the
(43:32):
traveling route. It's just invaluable to telling the story.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
And since it hasn't really changed, and you still have
one farm connected to the next farm connected to the woods,
then the river breaks it and then you've got more
farms and more land and more woods. When that drone
went up, you also knew they had nowhere to run.
Speaker 3 (43:54):
Oh, that's definitely true. I mean the river was on
one side, the road was facing them. They had nowhere
to go, and there was farmland to their left that
was open field, which even if they had run and
or been allowed to run, they would have been just
shot to pieces.
Speaker 1 (44:14):
And you know, there's so many photographs. This made the
Atlanta Journal Constitution and there's several with Lloy Harrison, the
coroner and the sheriff in the photographs I have pointed out,
the sheriff is not wearing a firearm. He didn't have
a hole star at all. Well, there's one quote where
(44:36):
he says, well, let somebody borrow it.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
Now.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
I don't know if y'all hear that as sinister and
horrible as I do. But is he trying to tell
us he gave that weapon to somebody on that bridge,
because that's how it sounds.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
Well, either let somebody take it or used it himself
and didn't want it for comparison purposes any longer.
Speaker 3 (44:56):
I think that there is. I don't know any sheriff
in the world except maybe Andy Griffith.
Speaker 2 (45:04):
Dandy the deputy would be the one to lose it.
Speaker 3 (45:07):
No, no, but I don't say and didn't wear one exactly.
There's no sheriff in the world that doesn't know exactly
where his thirty eight is at all times.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
Yep. And then the other thing that caught me on
that photo shoot that they did was Number One, how
fast the newspaper showed up and how would the newspaper
know that Lloyd Harrison was walking the sheriff through what
happened at that moment? So that bothered me that they
would even know this was going on. And Lloyd Harrison
(45:38):
is literally there's a couple of pictures where he is
showing the sheriff how they were bound and he's got
his wrists together showing him this is how they were
tied together. So you saw all that, you witnessed all
that you tried, of course, to not stop anything. You
didn't go run for help when they let you go,
You didn't run to the sheriff. Once you got to safety,
(46:01):
you let it happen. And that was about it. But
when you look at those photographs, to me, they tell
a bigger part of this whole story.
Speaker 3 (46:10):
I think your point is well taken. I saw those
photographs as well. I think that they had some sort
of there was some sort of arrogance to the photographs,
some sort of sinister arrogance, which I have always thought
that the coincidences were so bizarre. You can fill in
the facts from the gaps in information about how did
(46:34):
someone know when mister Dorsey and his friends and his
wife were leaving the jail, you know, things of that nature.
How did they know and remember the back road that
was taken as opposed to the straight road.
Speaker 1 (46:50):
Yes, when they get into town. Lloyd Harrison tells the
Dorseys and miss Malcolm, y'all go get some deep. I'm
going to go take care of some other business, and
then I'm going to go get Roger. Why is he
using all this time up? Why is he delaying it?
Why didn't he go there, bail the man out and
go straight home if they were worried about somebody coming
(47:13):
to revenge Barnett Hester and killing him, I wouldn't have
wasted a whole lot of time if I thought people
were going to be mad at me for bailing this
man out that tried to kill a fellow farmer.
Speaker 2 (47:25):
Well, and that's the flip side to it, is that meeting,
that prior meeting, what were they talking about. They had
time to plan this, and I think what you can
infer from the facts is that he had no intention
of taking them home. They were never going home again,
and he needed to delay it so that things worked
(47:46):
on a time clock that somebody else was watching. He
was watching his clock. But let me tell you something.
There was a whole other crowd of people in a
different location trying to get it together so they could
be that execution squad up on that bridge.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
Right, John Well. I cannot thank y'all enough for being
with me tonight and talking about some of our old days.
And I'm going to end Zone seven the way that
I always do with a quote from somebody in my
Zone seven and tonight that comes from Joseph Hunter, a
moor's Fordbridge resident and victim. Have a lot of emotion
(48:23):
left from the days of the murders. My whole family
still carries scars. I'm Cheryl McCollum and this is Zone seven.
Host
Sheryl McCollum
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