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You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them. Gaesy Bundy Dahmer The Nightstalker VTK. Every week, another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zufanski, Good.
Evening, the stunning true story of a murder that rocked the Mississippi Delta and forever shaped one author's life and perception of home. In nineteen forty eight, in the most stubbornly dixified corner of the Jim Crow South Society, matron Idella Thompson was vicious murdered in her home, stabbed at least one hundred and fifty times, and left face down in one of the bathrooms. Her daughter, Ruth Dickens, was
the only other person in the house. She told authorities a black man she didn't recognize had fled the scene, but no evidence of the man's presence was uncovered. When Dickens herself was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, the community exploded. Petitions pleading for her release were drafted, signed and circulated, and after only six years that Governor of Mississippi granted Ruth Dickens an indefinite suspension of her sentence,
and she was set free In Deer Creek Drive. Beverly Lowry, who was ten at the time of the murder and lived mere miles from the Thompson's home, tells a story of white privilege that still has ramifications today and reflects on the brutal crime, its aftermath, and the ways it clarified her own upbringing in Mississippi. The book of her featuring this evening is Deer Creek Drive, A Reckoning of Memory and Murder in the Mississippi Delta, with my special guest,
journalist and author, Beverly Lowry. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for this interview Beverly Lowry.
Thank you for having me on Dan.
Thank you so much. And congratulations. I know this is the paperback edition of this book that came out last year in twenty twenty two. Congratulations on this extraordinary book.
Thank you.
Let's start off with something I think is very important again for this very very important book. You put you have a little thing that you write in the introduction. Tell us give us that introduction if you don't mind.
Deer Creek Drive is fundamentally a story about the attitudes, behavior, and language of Mississippi in the nineteen fifties. This was the decade of Brown versus Board of Education of mm attil and at the beginning of the end of Jim Crow. While this material is often difficult, my aim was always to illuminate and reconnoize the reality of living and growing up at that section of the state we called the
Delta during this time. As such, the book uses a number of primary sources documents, court testimony, newspaper articles, as well as the reliance on memory, much of which reflects the demeaning and problematic language that was used so freely and unsparingly at the time.
It is both my.
Story and the story of an unreconstructed South and how both of us were destined to change.
Thank you now. You grew up in Greenville, Mississippi, which is nine miles from Leland, Mississippi, in a section of Mississippi people called the Delta. Yeah, you had moved away when you were young and went on to become a best selling novelist and nonfiction author. But you were back in Greenville in twenty eighteen. Tell us about encounter with the realtor and what that encounter with the realtor made you realize about a story that occurred in November seventeenth, nineteen forty eight.
I had begun to think about the murder that occurred in nineteen forty eight, and had gone to Leland where the murder took place, to look around and try to see what I could find was left of the houses that played a part and just the basic scene of
the town. A realtor who'd been introduced to me drove me around and we drove past the house where Idella Thompson had been murdered, slashed to death with printing shares, and we drove by other homes that had to do with this story, and she said that she could get me into the house she had she knew the owner. The owner said absolutely not. And she also said, this house is on the best street in town, Deer Creek Drive, but it's actually on the wrong side of Deer Creeks.
And I said, what does that mean? And she said, the north side. The real estate is higher there, It's pricier.
And more in demand.
And I said why and she said, because black people lived on the other side. This was twenty eighteen, when things supposedly had changed.
Now you say this story, everybody knew this story you were ten years old on November seventeenth, nineteen forty eight. So you go back in writing this book and go back to what was report ordered at that time, what was in the media, and of course, as you spoke in the introduction of the language of the time, reflecting the mentality at the time. So this Idella Stoval Long Thompson, you tell the story that she had just been released
from a hospital. Tell us who Idella Stovell Long Thompson is before we talk about what happens that day.
Adela Thompson was what's known as a society nator in the town.
She came from.
The Mississippi Dela family is very important. Ancestry is probably still but certainly certainly was at that time important who you're not just grandfather was, but great grandfather was if he fought in the Civil War and such as that, and she came with all of that heritage that was important to the town. So for somebody like a Della Thompson to be murdered was particularly newsworthy and shocking. Not just to the town. This murder was retold time and again and newspapers all over the country.
So let's talk about the day in question and who was there? And Ruth Dickens is her daughter. She's forty two years old. Tell us a little bit about her before we talk about the attack that she reports first the police, but she reports. Tell us a little bit about Ruth Dickens.
Okay, Ruth Thompson.
Dickens was one of four children that Idella Thompson and Ruth lived. And I called her by her first name because everybody calls her called her by her first name. Ruth lived three doors down from her mother and basically took care of her to a great extent. And so
Idella had been in the hospital for weeks. It's basically high blood pressure which she had suffered chronically, and had brought her home that day November seventeenth, nineteen forty eight, and helped her eat lunch, and by the time the afternoon rolled around, the murder had been committed. But Idella Thompson depended on Ruth Dickens to a great extent.
You talk about the situation in terms of these people owning a lot of acreage and what we could be called plantations at once upon a time, but big estates, and also that the Thompson's and the Dickens were very wealthy and owned a lot of land, but there was a land transfer of sorts, a situation where Ruth Dickens was in trouble business wise. Tell us a little bit about the situation.
Yeah, I mean the land was in was it had been in the father's name, the father of Ruth Dickens, the husband of Idella Thompson, and so when he was he himself either committed suicide or was murdered. The land transfer basically went to Idella Thompson, but it was a difficult transfer because he had not been in on the
ownership of the land. Ruth Dickens then with her brother, took over the maintenance of the land and the money of getting loans, as everybody in the Delta who farmed had to get loans, and Ruth was in charge of any of the money transactions that took place. She had secretly borrowed money from friends to payoff debts that were increasing year by year and until they could not management. Her husband, John Dickens, then managed to take possession of
the land. It's a very complicated set of actions, but the land at the time of the murder of Idella Thompson was in the name of John and Ruth Dickens, not in the Thompsons, and Idella Thompson clearly was not happy about this. The land had been had come actually from her side of the family, and it had always been in that side in her name, and then her husband's name, and now it was in the name of her son in law and daughter.
Now Ruth. During this time of turbulence in her and her brother's business, she conducted herself a certain way. She was used to certain things. How did she conduct herself while business was declining and they were blee money?
She just kept it all a secret. And it's there are a lot of theories as to why she did this. It's not obvious or she never said, and nobody in the family dead. But my sense of it was, I mean, her husband said Ruth always liked to have her own business.
My sense of it was that Ruth was a very self determined woman that she wanted to do it on her home, and so she didn't want her husband, who was making plenty of money to be in on to help her out to take over, and so she secretly borrowed money, didn't pay it back, and the deaths were piling up and nobody knew it except her and her brother. And her brother was the one to throw in the towel. He said, can't go on. He didn't have the income
to do it. And as he said, Ruth had done, she had her husband to support her and her family, and he did not have that infant, so she borrowed money.
How much this has.
To do with Idella Thompson's murder is again up to speculation.
In terms of this was said later by her sister Mildred. But in terms of all appearances and just again behavior, how was Ruth as a daughter towards her mother Idella?
The family line is she was a perfect daughter. She was the one who took care of me. She was not Idella Thompson's favorite child. That went to her son Jimmy, but Ruth was. Both of these women were known to be difficult. I can't tell you how many times I've heard people who knew both of them say how they could be difficult, and they were both strong willed. So whatever went on between them that the people didn't know about,
you know, remains a mystery. And since the book is out, I've heard stories about screaming fights between the two women. So it's I mean, the murder is over seventy years old and people still can talk about it if they will, and they have things to say about, especially these two women.
So let's talk about Ruth. Ruth had visited her mother in the hospital, I think for that week, and she was there all the time, every day. She even picked her up from the hospital. The brothers are at home as well and making Idella comfortable, but Ruth ends up being there. They leave and so Ruth is there with her mother Idella. November seventeenth, nineteen forty eight, there is a call to doctor Kinney Whitty, which is a friend
of the family. Tell us what the first word is about what happened to Idella Thompson her mother.
Yeah, Ruth called doctor Whitty and said she tried to talk to her mother's main doctor, couldn't get him, and so she talked to the elder doctor Whitty, and what she said was something's happened to mother. She and Idella Thompson had just gotten out of the hospital, which was the Witty Hospital, and so the doctor assumed she had a stroke because of her medical problem, and he said in court he did not hesitate. He put on his
coat and hat and went straight there. The hospital is Leland's, a very small town, and the hospital is perhaps or was three minutes from Idella Thompson's house, so he arrived there very quickly.
Now she had a story for him. He tells them what happens. So he's the first person to hear her account of what happened to the mother, and he also recognizes that she has been injured in this Maine as well. Right.
She says she walked in on a black man who was murdering her mother with printing shoes, and that she confronted him and was able to rest the printing shoes away from him, and but she that's how she got injured, and that he then ran took off out the backscreen door. What doctor Whittie saw was printing shoes that had been washed clean, and the body of Missus Thompson, who he said clearly was no longer alive. So it wasn't that something had just happened to her had been murdered. And
Boo's Dickenson is the only person in the house. And so later he said he thought immediately that there had not been a black man in the house.
Tell Us who doctor Kenny Whitty is in terms of relation to the family.
You know, again it's a small town, and the Witty Hospital is also became the Leland Hospital was where everybody went. And the Witty's were the Thompson's doctors, and so they were close. And also Miss Thompson's doctor. Whitty's wife was Idella Thompson's sister, so Adela Thompson was by marriage part of the Witty family. These were very close relationships. And Leland is a place where the original founding families of the town still lived there, certainly in nineteen forty eight,
and many of them lived there to this day. These are white families now.
The first law enforcement to arrive are the chief of Police of Leland, Frank Aldridge and his partner, Philip Gorman. I mean, you talk about Leland, a real small, quiet town of about five thousand. You say, back in the time, not much crime. But there is a sheriff named Sheriff Huey Foot. Tell us about the first officers to arrive, what they find, and why shareff Foot isn't there, well.
Because he's the sheriff of the county. When Aldridge and his partner arrived, you know, they the scene was horrific and without mystery. The woman had been murdered and she was lying to catastrophically cut to death. And so this was beyond a city chief of police's duty to investigate. So he called the county sheriff, who is to a or everybody calls him huge Foot, who was in Greenville, And because it's the county seat and that's where I lived, so huge Foot got in his car and drove the
nine miles and showed up that afternoon. But then she had been dead for almost two hours.
What was the condition that they found? The police found Ruth Dickens in and where was she soon taken to?
Well, she was, as one person said, a mess. Her hair was a mess. She had missing buttons from her clothes and blood on her clothes. And she was a very tidy person. Her hair was always immaculately combed and groomed and cut short. And so she was taken pretty soon after the sheriff arrived back to the clinic, the Witty Clinic, to because she had a few cuts that needed stitching, nothing life threatening, but you know, she needed some stitches.
Now regarding her account, because that's what police have to go by what evidence can they gather to support what she has said? What evidence is there to support what she had said?
You know, this is still even with Greenville was much bigger than Leland, but we're still talking about small town, smallish towns. Greenboll was almost forty thousand, so it was in Mississippi terms, it was.
A big time.
But they actually did a lot of good work. They didn't no crime scene like this, it's perfectly examined. But they searched for any sign of a black person or a man, a stranger, a person with bloody who had drops of blood, or had bloody feet and left footprints behind. They looked at every hair they could come up with, and found no sign of a black person's hair. They
found basically nothing that indicated that. In the idella, Thumks and Everybody had a maid who lived on Deer Creek Drive and the maid was black, but she was picking cotton at the time. She had not been in the house for a week. So they found no evidence. And as Oogie Foot later said, Miss Dickens said, it was a black man, and so I was looking for a black man.
Regarding these pruning shares, which were the murder weapon and later with the autopsy was one hundred and fifty to two hundred strikes on Idella Thompson with these bruning shears. But what did Ruth say in terms of who brought those bruning shears and why.
She brought them?
Ruth did because her mother wanted her to pring some rose bushes, and so she had gone down to her house, which is only three doors down, to get the printing shoes and bring them back, and then she went back down to her house to get a couple of other items. So the printing shoes were there in the house when Ruth came back from that second trip to her house, and so she said they were there, and her story was that the man picked them up and went at missus Thompson.
Part of her story was that even though she was five foot four, she was athletic, but she fought this man that wasn't supposedly much bigger than her and wrestle those shears away from him. Was that her story, That.
Was her story. It's the reason I know all this. We know all this is Ruth herself tell that story the same week of the murder to the investigative team.
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Forensically, these police have to gather their evidence though clothes that Ruth Dickens was wearing. Where do they find those clothes? Before we talk about Idella's clothes and where they get to right Ruth.
After the sheriff arrived and started doing his own investigation, he sent Ruth to the clinic to get her stitches, and she stopped off at her own home to change clothes and take off the bloody clothes she was wearing. Her cleaning lady took the clothes, and it is not clear whether Ruth told her to do this or the cleaning lady did it on her own. She put the bloody clothes in a bucket of water to soak, to soak out the blood, and Ruth changed her clothes and
went to the clinic. And this is one thing the sheriff and his people missed. There were several teams. Nobody even considered Ruth's close as possible crime scene evidence because she said she didn't. She said somebody else did it, and they believed her because they knew her, they were friends with her, and the people saw it. She would never do anything like this. The likelihood was it was an intruder, and the bigger likelihood was it was a black man.
Let's talk about how she explains the murder weapon being wipe clean of prints or blood. How does she do that?
Well, she said that he had time to wipe them off. I mean, it's not clear why she saw it they were clean.
Now, meanwhile, the media is reporting on this story right away, and you talk about the Democrat Times, the Delta is it the Delta Democrat Time Times? And also how they report that in the language they use for that, but also that meanwhile, this Sheriff Foot is trying to get an interview with Ruth, isn't he yes?
And the family says, when the family says she's not up to it, she's not well, she's hurt. You know, this man has damaged her. He said he went away. So it was again a lot of this has to do with it being a small town of people who know one another and are in on one another in ways that says, I trust her. She wouldn't say that it weren't true, and so he had to wait until after the burial of Idella Thompson to talk to Ruth Dickens,
and it was the conversation. The questioning was done in Ruth's home, with Ruth in bed and the investigative team aligned in around her. Her husband always allowed to be in on the interview.
The question you talk about this Ae Crawford a private eye, and you talk about Sheriff Foot wanting to hire this guy as a private eye and a detective. And he found out very very soon that this Crawford was already hired by Ruth Dickens family and so he couldn't be hired by Sheriff Foot. And that at this bizarre inquiry, he doesn't even lead the inquiry, but the privately hired A. Crawford conducts the inquiry, doesn't he It's just.
It's written truly bizarre. He leads off of the personal question and he's basically in charge. He is known as a guy who cracks crimes and he finds the murderer. He lives in Jackson, Mississippi, has his own investigative company. And the thing about Hueyfoot is he knew he was in over said, but he had only been sheriff for about eight months, and he had this was way beyond
his experience. He had not had any evidence training. Back then you had to go to Washington to get any kind of training like that, and fingerprint training, any kind of forensics training. So he felt like he needed in somebody who's specialized in this, and he tried to get another investigator who was already engaged, and this man said,
you should talk to AE Crawford. He called and found that not only was A. E. Crawford hired by the family, he was that moment in the Thompson backyard looking for clues. And so it's the whole thing is just a set of circumstances that you have to really step back and look at once again and blink and say, okayle's consider this. Do you believe because there's so many bizarre parts of the story.
You provide this dialogue, which is truly again part of the bizarre nature. Crawford would ask a question and she would answer in it that didn't you think so? She would look at Crawford after you'd ask a question and say when she would provide a vague description of this black man, and then he would ask a question related to that, she would say, don't you think so?
Right?
Don't you think he would have done that? And she especially did that also with huge foot, because you know he was from the area and this was this was white person's knowledge of what a black person would be. Don't you think he would have done that?
Huge?
And so she would answer questions with questions, and this was never pointed out to her. Today's a tough cop would say, please answer the question. But at that time, and because they assumed she was innocent, as I said, you defoot the sheriff and it was his investigation officially said she said it was a black man, and so I was looking for a black man.
Now you talk about your family living in Greenville at the time, you had just got back to Greenville, but you had again mentioned that you had grown up in Greenville and you were ten years old. So you say you don't remember the specific day and reading it in the newspaper, but you do give what actually was said in the newspaper, the reaction from the public, and also that you shared a passion with your mother for and it is very popular, the depiction of this crime in detective magazines.
Well, we liked two detective magazines, and I mean some of this.
Was beyond ten years.
I'm not sure I was reading two detective magazines at ten, but it certainly was at twelve, and keeping up, I mean the horror of what went on in the world, the salacious events that I could learn about, I had a great appetite for, and so did she, and it was something we shared. I didn't think it was even that unusual among girls my age, and at the time I do not remember that day, but the next day it came out in the newspaper, the Delas Democrat Times,
and it was huge. It went all over that part of Mississippi in a flash, and people were Nobody was talking about anything else, including my friends and me. We didn't know Ruth Dickens, we didn't know Idella Thompson, but we had a sense of what had gone on and that it just was the most horrible thing that we could imagine. So we wanted to know more about it, more and more.
Now, let's talk about the grand jury and what its decision is. Tell us what happens in the progress of the case and leads up to the grand jury, and what happens in concerning an indictment.
You know, for this.
Case, which Wood was thought to be a verse degree murder from the beginning, for it to be brought before a grand jury some two and a half months later
is pretty amazing. But when a reporter talked to huge Foot and he was interviewed, I mean people, the newspaper was it was front page headlines every day, and a newspaper reporter in December, the month after she was killed, Miss Housing was killed, asked about the search for the black man, and huge foote said there is no black man, which I found true astounding that he went all the way from saying, you know, he was only looking from
a black man too, there was no black man. And he said, then we expect to have a case before the grand jury, which was going to open up in January early January. So there was only one person anybody thought could have done it. There was just nobody else there. The family was all accounted for, they all had been someplace they could prove there was only Russ And so by this time the rumors were hot and heavy all over that Ruth Dickens had killed them other. So it
went before the grand jury. The printing seers were taken there, the back door was taken there with some bloody smears, all kinds of evidence, and they indicted her.
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twenty percent off during your first month. Visit ritual dot com slash murder to start Ritual or add Essential for Women eighteen plus to your subscription today. Now you talk about John Dickens being supportive of Ruth, his wife right from the get go, but also hiring a couple of attorneys. Tell us about who he hires and who these attorneys are.
He hired was famous go to be the best defense attorney in the state, and his nephew it would take over to his practice when he died. Benjamin Wilkes and his nephew B. B. Wilkes, they were known. Benjamin Wilkes in particular was no all of the state. He had been prosecutor and now he was a highly regarded and highly paid defense attorney. And it was thought that Ben Wilkes would certainly get missus Dickens off because he knew what he was doing and he was going to Before.
You talk about the prosecutor again, someone to match wits with the Wilkes But his name was Standy Sanders, prosecutor.
Yeah, and Sanders was young.
He had just been elected to office, as had the state in the county attorney who was his second, and so they were young and experienced, and so the situation was seemed like a no brainer. It seemed like, well, this you'll be back teaching Sunday school at the Baptist church next week, because there's no way it was a circumstantial. That evidence was circumstantial, and so it was thought that this was going to be an easy win for the Wilkeses.
Right away. There's an interesting little event that happens, and it's the you right it's the importance of Beatrice Smith. She is the black cook of Missus Dickens and apparently supposedly the key defense witness. But she has something happened to her coincidentally right at that time.
Well I don't know how coincidentally it was.
She had what was then widely known as a nervous breakdown. It was something that I've heard all in my child mostly women, had nervous spread dans. And her doctor said she was terrified to come to court, she was terrified to testify, and she was having nightmares that were essentially about being lynched. That's not what he called it, but that's essentially what her nightmare was, and that she was in no shape to testify, and that if she did, she might end up in the state insane asylum for life.
It might set her off into a psychosis she couldn't come out of. She was to testify about Ruth, that she washed theories closed, and also something about which never was clear to me how much it meant. That Ruth had yes taken the printing shoes to cut miss her mother's rose pushes, but she'd only been home once. Just that part didn't really work for either King prosecutor or defense, but she was so she caused the trial to be postponed.
It was going right into court soon after the indictment, but they postponed it until you write.
That they return in six months, Ruth and John have to mortgage your house to pay legal fees, and then you say that everyone knows what Ruth. The condition of Ruth during this time, Ruth.
Was kind of an oddball in some ways, you know. And I actually admired her spirit in dressing the way she liked to dress and ruining herself the way she liked to room herself. But in the trial and in the note newspapers, she was always described her hair was described as a manish bob, because she did have a kind of masculine look about her. There were all kinds of rumors about why missus and perhaps angered Ruth to the extent that it caused her to go at her
mother and eventually kill her. That it enraged Ruth, and one of them was her sexuality, her sexual preference. That was one of the rumors about Ruth. She was not She didn't dress like the women of her time, and in court she wore what newspapers described as a golfing
dress and clunky shoes, no jewelry, no hat. So there were a lot of things said about Ruth during that time, and some of which, I mean one of which was that she was pregnant and when she killed her mother, as if that would cause her to go nuts and kill her mother. So a lot of the rumors were ridiculous, and you know, rumors build on rumors. It became sort of a local sport to come up with something new.
Let's get to this amazing trial started June twenty first, nineteen forty nine, and one of the most amazing things is the spectator's reaction. You talk about the spectators jamming doorways. Tell us more about the reaction from people that want to get in and watch this trial.
Yeah.
They they lined up outside from early in the morning, and a lot of people brought lunches because they didn't want to leave their seat to go home, to go someplace to have lunch and not have a seat when they got back. And so a friend of mine said her aunts would come. They My friend lived close to downtown where the courthouse was, and so her aunts would come by the house with their lunches and some lemonade.
Rice Tea to take to the trial and stand in line every day and to get in line, and they the first they crammed the doors, so the judge host poned the opening of the doors till ten minutes before, and which didn't really help. It was it was like
a circus. Everybody, I've talked to you, and I talked to a couple of people who were alive and went and they verified all those stories, and they were in the newspapers over and over again about the wild abandon of people and how it was mostly filled with women, and they were really have to say, enjoying the spectacle.
Part of the spectacle is that Stannie Sanders very dramatic order as well. He has Frank Aldridge, the sheriff, read Ruth's bedside statement out loud in the core say that wouldn't happen today.
No, of course, I mean it would.
First of all, it would have been filmed or video dape, so there would have been pictures and it would have been recorded, but at that point it wasn't. And actually what he had the two prosecutors took different parts. One played Ruth and the other played the investigators to read her statements, and they were, so she was all over the place in those statements and basically incriminated herself along
the way. And there were no lawyers. She had no lawyers there at the time because her husband, John Dickons said, we don't need lawyers. We're innocent, we have nothing to hide or need to have lawyers help us with.
So, needless to say that Stannie Sanders out say a very good and like I said, dramatic prosecution of Ruth Dickens, gets all of the witnesses that were there to try to shelter her initially, and blows holes and Ruth Dickens's account of what happened. Obviously there is no black there is no evidence anything of the sort. They do have a motive, they say it's a financial motive. It seems
to be at the core. Tell us what happens after this incredible trial and the extraordinary media coverage every day of it. What happens in regarding the verdict? And there are five options in terms of verdict. What happens in terms of verdict?
Well, the jury, I mean at that point a black man could serve on a jury woman of any race
could not. But very few black men in the Delta had served on jury Chariles and none murder trial, so there were few who were in the jury pool, but the jury was all white males, and it's sort of I've always found it stunning that they came up out with not manslaughter, which even the prosecution Willard Macklamore, who was the other prosecutor, reminded the jury that manslaughter was a possible verdict that they could come up with, but
they did not. They found ruthtik AND's guilty of first degree murder, and it's unclear how they were able to do this. When the foreman of the jury was questioned by a newspaper reporter, he said, the two things that got them were, first of all, her statement and other things. There were a couple of other things, but it's thing and he never mentioned this financial possibility as a motive. So it's from today's perspective look back and think why
did they do that? And I think, you know, the court room trial is a drama, and I think you had the leading character in this courtroom drama, I e. The defendant, rus Dickens. She was kind of an unlikable person and she dressed in an improper way, and I think she didn't help herself with this jury, and the.
Judge had no option but.
To sentence her to life in a state prison, which is a parchment kind of pretty well known prison in the country is known as being pretty horrific, so it was an ending many people did not expect.
Yes, let's use this an opportunity to stop for these messages.
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Now she sent like you just mentioned the infamous parchment prison, and she starts to do her time. Her husband has been supportive all the way through. He was at the trial. He testified at the trial he was supportive, completely with her, supportive with her at the trial, he continues to be supportive, and so he what does he do? What is his strategy? What are some of the things he tries to do gain Roof's freedom.
He goes on a campaign to get people of the community Greenville and Leland behind getting her back home and saying she suffered enough, she should come home and be with her children and live. She'd never done anything violent before. And he got collected signatures. He had boays going around. I think probably for an ease to collect signatures. I've heard of papers by the cash retr in restaurants saying sign sign this petition. And so he was pretty much nonsense.
And he did every kind of legal appeal. He had the lawyers doing appeals that was possible. When the appeals ran out, he kept going with the petitions. So, I mean, you got to hand it to him. He was stalwarts. He never let down in his belief that Ruth did it. And some people have said, do you think he knew she did it and just didn't think she ought to stay in prison? And I actually think he believes she didn't do it. I don't think he knew was in it.
I don't think she told him, but that's my theory, my speculation.
It's interesting that a person that has this certain credibility, I guess Ae Crawford continues to work for the family and always believe that he could maybe find the suspect for and believe Ruth was innocent and worked accordingly along the way for this with these appeals, even though there was supposed to be a life sentence with no possibility
to parole. John Dickens approaches the governor, and then when a new governor comes in another governor and also along the way, bizarre a couple black people come into the story, where a guy named Charlie Ferguson is a convicted killer, serial killer, and the desperate team behind Ruth. Dickens uses this as an opportunity to maybe reignite the story that she had given originally about the black intruder.
It's the Charlie Ferguson story is amazing because this woman was tried. Whatever you want to say about the trial or anything, she was face a jury of her peers, and the whole thing was conducted in a reasonable legal manner. But they the governor allowed Ruth to leave prison and go to the state asylum mental asylum to view a lina to see if Charlie Ferguson was there he had been locked up there, and to identify him, which she did. He had family who had testimony, who had proof that
he was not there when this crime was committed. But the fact that she actually got out of prison to go over there, I mean, it's just not a privilege that many incarcerated people were given. She was a white lady of privilege, herself of standing, and so she was given special, special privileges. She was allowed to do things that other people certainly were not.
Yes, she was given furloughs where she would go home to visit her family for extended periods of time, and also during those she used in it as an opportunity because the only way he could likely get out of prison was on some kind of a medical decision, and so she would try as much as she could. Seems kind of absurd that you had talked about having a nasty rash and being allergic as the reasons for her possibly being released from prison.
Yeah, she and the amazing thing is that made she did have surgery one time at one point, and but once she had recovered from and she was allowed to go home and have the surgery.
The reason she was allowed to.
Go home and have her own doctor perform the surgery is the family assured the governor, and the governor assured the boarding of the of the penitentiary that the family would pick up all expenses so the state. That meant that, you know, the state wasn't out any money to pay for the surgery. And after that she was, they would the doctor would write in and say she's not ready yet, and then again she's not given extension. She's not ready yet.
So she spent a good part of one year at home and visiting with her friends and you know, seeing her daughters and such, so that she eventually got out because governors wasn't a pardon the first time. It was a suspended sentence, which meant she could be re arrested and in prison on the same charge. Did she messed up, and second governor pardon which meant she could not be arrested on this charge again and she could vote. She
got her voting privileges back. And this all happened after she'd been in prison for about less than six years. Fad had six years.
Yes, you right that this governor, even the governor of the two governors that were responded to John Dickens, she had exhausted all her legal avenues and so this appeal you righte, it was really appealing for special treatment.
Yeah.
Absolutely, I mean, there's no question about it. And interestingly, neither she was she was not exonerated. She neither governor said she was not guilty. One said it should have the charge should have been manslaughter, and other governors said that she seemed to have been completely rehabilitated, which implies that she I mean, what was she rehabilitated from if she didn't do this, if she was innocent. But so it was all just you know, figured out how to do it and then done.
You write about that. Her life continues, and the depiction in the media after that six years was what how did this story? What was reflected in the media, Well.
It was just sort of you know, wasn't a big surprise, a big surprise because the original stories, every story, no matter where it ran in the country, whether it was east coast or west coast, certainly all over the south. She would the family class. What's mentioned her mother was a society matron and she was a society lady, and so it.
But there were.
People in the States who weren't society. People who weren't didn't belong to the country club or the Daughters of the Confederacy wrote in and said, you know, you might as well let everybody out of person. If you're going to let somebody out, enough undo the jury system, if the jury's verdict is not going to be honored. So there was there was enough that the governor said he had gotten very little backlash about a decision to let her out, but he exaggerated on that point because he did.
He got a fair amount, but it's clearly didn't count.
You're right that she goes on to somehow regain her status societal wives and her privilege and some of the things that she had lost in terms of her status at church or her ability to go back to the church.
Yeah, she became she was a I heard a number of women say she was. There's something in a Baptist arches, the girls group for young teenage girls, and that's who she taught. Those were her classes, and they say that she was wonderful to them and a wonderful teacher. And she went right back to being accepted in church. I
mean she went back in parts. One of the reasons is she had been home on those medical leads, so people got used to having or around again, and so when she got out, it was just sort of an extension of those furloughs and leaves, and it was Ruth's back. But I did talk to people who never got over being afraid of her. These were not her friends or the families that she considered themselves friends of her family.
They did not want to go around her. They did not want to walk past her house, for instance.
So the rumors that never died.
The stories never died, but who she was and who she had been, whatever motive was, to this day, they'll kind of roam around town.
What we haven't spoken about in your extraordinary book is that, meanwhile, of all these things going on the account of the incredible change that is arising in Mississippi, Mississippi is the last state to adopt some of these things, but the background of the ingrained racism, the fight for continued segregation, all in the midst of while the world is changing
and there's this resistance in Mississippi. I want to thank you very much for coming on and talking about your extraordinary book, Deer Creek Drive, A Reckoning of Memory and Murder in the Mississippi Delta. For those that might want to check out this book on I'm sure they just go to Amazon and look at your author page there for all your novels and also your three other nonfiction books. Tell us about your Facebook page?
Well, I do have a Facebook page.
I am not terribly active on it, but I would I certainly if somebody goes there and ask me a question, I certainly answer it. There's also another side called You're from the Delta, ain't you? Ai n c Chu And I sometimes go there and I get questions there which I certainly won't be happy to respond to.
You.
I'm happy to hear from anybody who would like to get in touch.
Yes, thank you. Deer Creek Drive, A Reckoning of Memory and Murder in the Mississippi Delta with Beverly Lowry. Thank you so much for this interview. Beverly Lowry, you have a great evening and good night, thank you, good night, good night,