Georgia Focus - The Last Ride

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Welcome to Georgia Focus. I'm John Clark of the Georgia
News Network who kill Hani Gurley. For more than fifty years,
this question has been asked by journalists, bloggers, podcast hosts,
and anyone in Nashville who has heard about the famous
murder and trial that mesmerized music City in the turbulent
years of nineteen sixty eight and nineteen sixty nine. The
book is The Last Ride by Martha Smith Tait, who
is my guest today. This is a fascinating book. This

(00:33):
is a great book. What brought you to do this book?
First of all, because you were a jac rider and
then you go back to Nashville explain that.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Well, it turns out that it took me fifty years
to write this because it was that long of a
dis obsession with me. This happened at a really crucial
time and history in Nashville, in Tennessee and all over

(01:02):
in the South. It happened during the time sixty eight
sixty nine of all the assassinations in Vietnam. Vietnam War
was going raging. But this took place in nineteen sixty

(01:22):
eight on a beautiful May day, May twenty fourth, and
it's a story that I could never let go of.
My college boyfriend's father was murdered on this day, and
he was a self made millionaire who had grown up

(01:45):
in Kossplains, Tennessee, and at age eight had been abandoned
on a train with four of his siblings by his parents,
so he never saw his mother or father again. So
I sort of started with that. I didn't mean to
start there, but I wanted to start with the week

(02:08):
before the murder and then the trial. But then I
learned from my former boyfriend that he had never seen
his grandparents, and that spurred me to go back in history.
So there's a lot of history here. It's tied to
all tied to the murder victim and his the way

(02:32):
he got from where he was and cross planes to
Nashville and came to be at the top of Nashville society.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
He was he was, Now this is this hating girly.
Is the guy that you're talking about. He's the father
of your.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
He's the father of my was a guy that I
dated in college, my classmate. So we graduated in nineteen
sixty seven and hung around all that year, and in
May sixty eight I went up to visit him in Nashville.
We had a great time, and that was probably the

(03:12):
last good time he ever had. He was destined to
take over his father's very successful, lucrative, the biggest in
Nashville Chevrolet dealership. He'd known all this since he was thirteen,
that he was going to do that. But there was
a big snag that happened. His father was.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
Killed and he was killed. Tell us all that that's
the foller there.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
Okay, Well back up this little bit. In nineteen sixty five,
mister Gurley's dealership was downtown Nashville, was right across from
the ground Old Offry, and he took up a whole
block and it was just expanding like crazy. And he

(04:00):
needed someone to be his right hand man there because
Billy was still a sophomore in college. So he hired
a young man who had been a football star at Vanderbilt.
We actually did have those back then, and he hired
this man. He was thirty seven years old, six foot four,

(04:25):
weighed what two hundred thirty pounds, but he was very,
very fit, and he had been in the car business.
He graduated from Vanderbilt, and he was just a perfect person.
From mister Gurley he called on really fast. He helped
grow the business, and then when they outgrew the business

(04:47):
after his having been their year, he wanted to buy
into the dealership. So mister Gurley talked to Billy, his son,
who was still in again and having a good time.
He wasn't thinking too much about a lot of you know,
his future right then, because he knew it was it

(05:09):
was set for him. That's what he was going to
do in his life, take over that business. So and
so he mister Gurley sold twenty five percent of the
stock in Capital Chevrolet to Bill Powell, the man he had.

Speaker 1 (05:27):
Hired, and he was he was the man working there too.

Speaker 2 (05:32):
Well, he just hired him in sixty five. He sold
him the twenty five percent in sixty six. So in
nineteen sixty eight they built a new building, brand News,
state of the art building out on what was then
the outskirts of Nashville. Now it's right part of it,

(05:53):
but so they had just moved in. Their opening day
was April fourth, nineteen sixty eight, and that was the
day Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, Memphis. So
mister Gurley's one of his best friends with the mayor.
It was the governor of Tennessee, and he had to

(06:17):
leave right at the we cut the ribbon and then
left because there was a big riot of course in
Nashville when that happened, when the assassination was announced. So anyway,
so mister Gurley had been there for in April fourth,

(06:39):
and on May twenty first, he and Bill Powell and
their wives went to a dealer's convention in Memphis, and
there mister Gurley was talking to some other men who
had sons Billy's age, and mister Gurley and missus Gurley

(07:01):
had both wanted Billy to be an officer immediately. He
had been actually been working at the dealership since he
was thirteen, but he knew the business, but he graduated
in sixty seven and then so this was a year later.
He had been working there that year. But when they

(07:23):
had when Bill Powell had signed that contract in nineteen
sixty six, he agreed that he would be the one
to train Billy in the business because back then they
had this thing called the Dealer's Son's School in Detroit,

(07:44):
and Billy would be he could go there. So he
was looking forward to going to the Dealer's Son's school,
and at age twenty four he would have been eligible
to become the dealer himself. So this was all set
mister Gurley thinking that he was going to leave the

(08:07):
leave this son to run for the family because he
was older, right than most of our fathers in our class.
At render real he was seventy two and so. But
the week before, and as I was saying, in Memphis, Tennessee,
he was at the dealer's dealers in Memphis, Tennessee. That

(08:30):
week before he died, he was at a dealer's convention,
and there he met these two men who had sons
Billy's age, and they had already made their son's officers.
And mister Gurley had asked that Billy have one of
the new offices in the new building, but Bill Powell

(08:54):
said no, he wasn't ready. He hadn't really been trained yet.
I mean Bill Powell hadn't worked worked up and so
worked up any kind of schedule for him to learn things.
So his mother, mister and Missus Gurley were very upset
that Billy was not making progress in that way. So

(09:15):
when he got back from this convention, mister Gurley he
told Billy and Missus Gurley what he had heard about.
These men had warned him to buy back his stock
from Bill Powell, and if he didn't, then if something
happened to him, then he would not be able to

(09:38):
give the dealership to Billy. Billy would not get the dealership,
Bill Powell would get it. So on Wednesday made twenty
second Bill Powell. When they got back from Memphis, Bill
Powell miss. On Wednesday, May twenty second. When mister he

(10:00):
got back from Memphis, he called Bill Powell over to
his house. Now they both lived in the wealthy Belle
Mead section of Nashville, so it wasn't very far from
him Bill Powell to come. So Bill Powell came. It
was dinner time and he walked in and he was

(10:22):
just kind of saying, well, what's wrong now? And uh
miss the The some of this is that mister Gurley
told him he wanted to make Billy an officer, and
Bill Powell said, absolutely not, and mister Gurley, to Billy's surprise,

(10:43):
said yes, I'm going to make him an officer. And
Bill Powell said, well, if you do that, I'll just
get out. And Billy was amazed that his father said, well,
that's fine, you can just go go out like you

(11:03):
came in. I'll pay you for your stock and we'll
be good friends, and I'll try to get you a
new dealership. So Powell left and he the next day
mister Gurley got everything in order. He got the money
to the loan to buy back Bill Powell's part in

(11:25):
the dealership, and he also got a new contract written up.
That was on Thursday, May third. And this that back
then there were no fax machines or any kind of
instant and some way to get anything. So they had

(11:46):
to draw everything up and get it to Detroit and
so fry. But they but until they did this, the
old contract stood, which was if something happened to mister
b mister Gurley, then Bill Powell we get to be
the dealer.

Speaker 1 (12:04):
Right.

Speaker 2 (12:05):
So on Friday morning, mister Gurley left his house in
Bill made about ten thirty and he told his wife, Josephine,
this is the happiest day of my life. I finally
got my boy where I wanted. So he left and
drove up to the new dealership and he drove in

(12:28):
and he came down to the offices and told Billy
about a little before eleven o'clock that Bill Powell wanted
to go for a ride and talk about business. So
he said, I'll be back in about fifteen minutes and
I'll let you know what he said. So they mister

(12:52):
Gurley's car. They got into mister Gurley's car and Bill
Powell got at the wheel and they drove out of
the dealer ship and in fifteen minutes, all of a sudden,
everybody in the service department looked around. In this car
came crashing back into the dealership and it was Bill Powell,

(13:15):
and he sweeched to a stop and stopped and he
opened the door and this is a big man, and
he fell out onto the to the ground there, and
nobody saw mister Gurley. But it ends up that mister

(13:35):
Gurley was dead of three gunshot wounds, one just below
the ear that had gone through his head and one
to his neck and one to his chest. And Bill
Powell had had a superficial wound in his left calf.

(13:56):
So everybody said one on earth had But I mean,
what happened? What happened? So Bill Powell told them that
he had stopped at a four way stop sign and
when he did, uh black man jumped into the back
seat with these two powerful, powerfully built white men in

(14:17):
the front and held him up with a gun and
he said, give give give me your money. And when
mister Gurley. Bill Powell's story was that when mister Gurley
reached into his coat pocket for his wallet, the man said,
don't go for your gun and just start shooting Liley.

(14:40):
So Bill Powell said that, uh, the man, he made
a quick u turn. The man jumped out and disappeared,
but he disappeared forever.

Speaker 1 (14:51):
At that point, then the investigation starts, but it starts
out kind of slowly that it gets speeds up. There's
more and more and they find nothing, nothing of substance
to tell them that something happened, and the trial goes on.

Speaker 2 (15:05):
Well, that's right. There was a huge man hunt and
they were looking for a weapon, right, anything, But they
were looking in a place where Bill Paul had told
him it happened. So that was kind of crucial that
maybe they were not looking at the right place. And

(15:26):
Bill Paul assumed there were no witnesses. I mean, he
was the only witness, so nothing happened. I mean, there
was a line up where he identified some man, a
young man nineteen year old, as a killer and it
turned out he was in California at the time mister
Gurley was killed. And in March, after mister Gurley was

(15:50):
killed the previous May, Bill Paul was indicted for the
murder of mister Gurley and the trial was set for
July fourteenth. And that's where the reason I was able
to write this book because I was at the trial.

Speaker 1 (16:08):
At the trial.

Speaker 2 (16:09):
I was at the trial. Otherwise there was never in
a book. I sat there and it was like every
other minute you were gasping at what they were at
the witnesses were saying. And it turned out to be
a very circumstantial lots of circumstantial evidence, many holes in

(16:31):
Bill Powell's story, like there was no stop sign where
he said he stopped. And mister Gurley never kept his
wallet in his coat pocket, always in his back hip pocket.
A man came who worked at Countinal Chevrolet went to

(16:51):
the hospital that afternoon and said, what did you do
with the gunat behavior? And he said, I lent it
to a friend. The next day the man went back
and said what did you do with the I mean,
where is that gun? And he said, oh, it was
stolen out of my car. So there were just a

(17:14):
lot of holes and things that just didn't add on.

Speaker 1 (17:18):
What happened after the trial. The child goes on, I
don't know if you want to give that now, you won't.
People read a book. So, but what happened to the trial?
But what about that?

Speaker 2 (17:28):
Well, Nashville went crazy over this trial. It was the
biggest thing ever. And both daily papers put they printed
the entire transcript of the trial because people were just
dying to get in and it was a small courtroom

(17:48):
and they were lining up at six am. I got
to go because I went with Billy and his family. So,
but the trial lasted two weeks and they were just
so it was circumstantialized, I said, until the second week
and a gun came forward. And it ended up that

(18:11):
this gun had pearl handles, and it was came after
the prosecution had rested, but it had been found a
year before on elmhll Pike, where all of this took place,
but not where Bill Powell said it had happened. It

(18:35):
took place, I mean the gun was found up on
the part near Capital Chevrolet, not even close to where.
And also there was a surprise witness for the prosecution.
A black man had been at a construction site up

(18:56):
on a hill at Massman Drive, about sixteenths of a
mile beyond the intersection that supposed that the man jumped
in and he was eating his lunch, and as he
looked down he saw a black Chivrolet Caprice mister Gurley's car,

(19:18):
like mister Gurley's car, pull over to the side of
the road, and he saw a big man get out
and go to the trunk, open it up, get in
the back seat on the other side. Then he heard
four shots and glass breaking, and the big man came back.
He closed trunk, got back in the driver's seat, whirled

(19:40):
around and went back. And as he they passed by,
he saw the man in the passenger seat slumped over.

Speaker 1 (19:49):
That should have done it right there, Yes, it should if.

Speaker 2 (19:52):
It hadn't been for these booming These lawyers had these
booming voices that they just they just the whole courtroom
just that we just trembled. And uh they were the
big legal minds. They had uh tried the Jimmy Hoffa case. Uh,

(20:15):
both both lawyers had and so it was it was
just all anybody could think about. I mean, you just
saw it, oh okay, and then the gun came forward,
and the man came forward and said he'd given up
to Bill Powell, So shouldn't that have done?

Speaker 1 (20:35):
So? During this time, Bill Powell kept ninue to work
at the Chevrolet leadership, and.

Speaker 2 (20:41):
He took over the minute mister from the hospital when
he was Yes, the old contract stood.

Speaker 1 (20:48):
Okay, And so mister Goldie's son, Billy, what he what
happened to him?

Speaker 2 (20:53):
He leave it well, what happened he worked there because
he didn't know so the minute he but Bill Paul
never spoke a word to him after his father died,
never explained. But Bill Pop the god. The mister Gurley's
car was all shot up, the glass was all broken out,

(21:15):
and somebody has shot tried to shot shoot through the
back of the front of the front passenger seat. Whoever
was in the back had pointed the gun into mister
Gurly's back, but that bullet hit a still piece and
just grazed him. Uh So, But anyway, that bullet was

(21:40):
found on the table when mister Gurley was taking to
the hospital.

Speaker 1 (21:44):
What happened to the dealership? Eventially, when all this is
the clouds settle and everything gets out of does a
dealership stay on or they sell it.

Speaker 2 (21:53):
Well, I need to not tell you that, okay, because
it's a spoiler alert, right right, but yeah, I'm I
will say this. In the trial, it was it was
so suspenseful, it was like heart stopping. And on Saturday
evening at eight forty three, the jury reached a verdict

(22:16):
and we all filed back in and you could have
heard a pin drop, and then the jury walked out
and the minute the second lady walked out and smiled,
then we do something good.

Speaker 1 (22:36):
It's an amazing book, it really is. It's it's it's
it's very detailed, and it should be detailed because it
you do its history, and it's just a great book.
I really enjoyed reading this book.

Speaker 2 (22:46):
Thank you, thank you.

Speaker 1 (22:48):
The book is called The Last Ride. It is a
captivating story about murder, the murder of Haini Gurley. It's
just a fascinating book. And is the dealership it's no
longer there now it's went on bought something else because
it was in the sixties, right right.

Speaker 2 (23:03):
Ironically, today the police, the Nashville police just really kind
of bungle everything. And also the lawyers were so good
for the defense. But ironically today the headquarters for the
Nashville Police sits on the site of this Girlies State

(23:28):
of the Art, which is no longer there.

Speaker 1 (23:32):
The original dealership you said, was by the Grand Lopery.

Speaker 2 (23:36):
It was right across from the Cabby Corner from the
Grand Old Loppery in the showroom.

Speaker 1 (23:40):
Wow, I'm going through that so many times now and
now I know where it is. And now it's right
there in downtown.

Speaker 2 (23:45):
Right there, right there in downtown Nashville on Auto Road.
But it's kind of got a very shocking ending too,
because I fell on that by just pure serendipathy about well,
you have to read the books. A shock in the
beginning and a shock at the end.

Speaker 1 (24:06):
It is fascinating. The last Ride is a true story
about the murder of Haini Gurley. Thank you so much.
Where can the book be? Where can you find the book?

Speaker 2 (24:13):
Oh? Well, you can find on Amazon. If you're in Nashville,
it's at the Parnassas Books. It's at the Vanderbilt book Store.
You can get at Barnes and Noble. You can get
it anywhere anywhere.

Speaker 1 (24:28):
Order it, Yeah, go in there and order you order.
This book is a good book. Is a good book.
So thank you very much. Thank you for being here today.

Speaker 2 (24:33):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (24:34):
That's Martha Smith Tate, author of The Last Ride, story
about the murder of Haini Gurley. You can find out
more at Martha Smithtate dot com and you can get
the book The Last Ride at your favorite local booksseller.
The questions your comments about today's show, you can email me,
John Clark at Georgianewsnetwork dot com. Thanks for listening. I'll
talk to you next week right here on your local
radio station on Georgia Focus

Speaker 2 (25:13):
To