Hey guys, it is Ryan.
I'm not sure if you know this about me, but I'm a bit of a fun fanatic one I can.
I like to work, but I like fun too. It's a thing.
And now the truth is out there, I can tell you about my favorite place to have fun, Chumbuck Casino. They have hundreds of social casino style games to choose from, with new games released each week. You can play for free anytime, anywhere, and each day brings a new chance to collect daily bonusites. So join me and the fun. Sign up now at chumba casino dot com.
No purs necessary day.
I lost the terms conditions eighteen plus. Judy was boring Hello. Then Judy discovered Chumbucasino dot com. It's my little escape. Now Judy is the life of the party. Oh baby mama is bringing home the bacon. Who take it easy, Judy, jump the chumba life. That's for everybody. So go to chumpacasino dot com and play over one hundred casino style games. Join today and playing for free for your chance to redeem some serious prices. Jump chumpacasino dot com.
Noe, just necessary boid.
We're prohibited to my on eighteen plus terms and condition to place.
Let's details.
Okay, Round two, name something that's not boring, laundry, a book club, computer solitaire.
Huh oh, sorry, we were looking for Chumbuck Casino.
Chum.
That's right, Chumbuckcasino dot com as over one hundred casino style games. Join today and play for free for your chance to redeem some serious prizes.
Chum, Chumbucasino dot com.
No percess'related by lofty plus trots conditions of blue website retails.
Wait the Lucky land Slots. You can get lucky just about anywhere.
It's your captain speaking. We've got clear runway and the weather's five. But we're just gonna circle up here a while and get lucky. No, no, nothing like that. It's just these cash prizes add up quick. So I suggest you sit back, keep your trade table up right, and start getting lucky.
Play for free at Lucky Landslots dot com. Are you feeling lucky? No purchase necessary void, We're prohibited by Law eighteen plus terms and condition. Supply say website for detail.
You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about Them, Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. 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 Zupanski good Evening, A reign of terror swept the streets of Birmingham in the nineteen twenties.
Criminals armed with small axes attacked immigrant merchants and interracial couples, leaving dozens dead or injured over the course of four years. Desperate for answers, police accepted clues from a Ouiji board, while citizens clamored for gun permits for protection. The city's Italian immigrants formed their own association as protection against the Black Hand, an organized band of brutal criminals. Eventually, the police turned to a dangerous and untested truth serum to
illicit confessions. Four black men and a teenaged girl were charged and tried, while copycat killers emerged from the woodwork. Journalist Jeremy Gray tackles one of the most curious and violent cases in Magic City history. The book they were featuring this evening is the infamous Birmingham Axe Murders, Prohibition Gangsters and Vigilante Justice with my special guest, journalist and author Jeremy W.
Gray. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for a greens this interview. Jeremy W.
Gray, wonderful to be here, Thank you for having me.
Thank you very much. Incredible story and thank you for bringing it to our audience. Attention. Now, you start this story in December fourteenth, nineteen nineteen, but there is a background that you a little bit later in the book. You talk about Birmingham itself at that time and also the makeup of the city in terms of African American
population and Italian immigrants. So tell us just a little bit about first about Birmingham and the state of it and in the population, tell us a little bit about Birmingham, Alabama.
Sure, Birmingham is a very young city. It's incorporated in eighteen seventy one, several years after the end of the Civil War. Birmingham, according to historian Wayne Flint, is the only city in America, even outside of Pittsburgh, where you have everything you need to make steel. And so it's the height of the Industrial Revolution. This is the place to be. So it just emerges out of nothing literally and by nineteen twenty the population has grown exponentially to
one hundred and seventy eight thousand. It's attracted white farmers, sharecroppers, black shared croppers from the fields of Alabama. It's also attracted immigrants from all over the world. And so here in the middle of the South, which is predominantly for Protestant, you know, White Anglo Saxon Protestant and African American, you have this large cause of Politan growing community. And it's a hard lot. It's blue collar work, it's steel meal,
it's coal mines, it's an arduous existence. And so along with that you have a lot of violence. And so if you have the city, it's growing extonationally, one of the fastest growing cities in the country. It's also one of the most violent.
You talked about also, and as you do in the book, because of all of these things, confluence of events and groups that you talk about the Klan at that time, the Ku Klux Klan, So tell us about its presence there and it's importance you talk about later we talk about the police chief even being a member, a proud member. So tell us just about the influence of the Klan at that time. It's importance there.
At that time. In the nineteen twenties, the Klan in several parts of America experience a resurgence after the silent movie The Birth of the Nation. You see claverns that that's the name for plan groups springing up oliver the Nation. In Birmingham there is the Robert E. Lee Claborn named after, of course, the same to Frederick General and it is said to be one of the largest in the nation. And Atlanta, Georgia, was probably the clan capital at that time,
but Birmingham was a very close second. And it was said, according to multiple historical experts that pretty much every member of the Birmingham Police Department was a member of the clan, and including and also the sheriffs. The elected sheriff for the county was said to be a clan member, probably upwards of ten thousand members, and had very much regular power. A lot of what their focus was wasn't so much about racial things. It was about what they can center morality.
One time someone mistreated their mother a property dispute, so they dragged them out of this house and whipped him. A Chinese restaurant had a gambling operations. They dragged those people out and whipped them. It wasn't really what you would think of as a traditional plan activity, but it was very prevalent during the time of the acts murders.
Before we get into any of the details of those murders, you also I would like to get to get you to tell us about the state of the Italian population, the Italian immigrants, where they were originally from, and also the clan treatment of Italians and why.
All Right, near as I can tell, a lot of the Italians made up the largest immigrant group in Jefferson County, the home county of Birmingham in the nineteen twenties. As near as I can tell, a lot of those came from Sicily, the southern part of Italy. Biasquiano. I forgive me if I've mispronounced that, which is a small rural community, and it just sort of became one of those things where while so and so went so, so and So's cousin is side, I'll go follow them, or so and
So's brothers side, go follow them. They get to Alabama, they you know, as with so many immigrants, they come with hoping for the promise of better life for themselves and their family, and they find it, but they also find a discrimination. And since a lot of these Southern Italian folks they're darker skinned, they're treated basically the same as African Americans, which, of course, in nineteen twentis Alabamas
is not so great. So you have congressmen Alabama probably publicly proclaiming that these immigrants are defiling in the white race, and you start seeing literacy test for voting and that sort of thing. And also because they're sort of a disenfranchised group, they don't really enjoyed police protection, so they're an easy group to target for robbery extortion, and then go to that they sort of band together and try to protect themselves, which leads to its own sets a set of problems.
People know about this, but we could warrants mentioning again that these people had come from Sicily, and so they knew of people praying on them, namely the Black Hand. Tell us just a little bit about what they knew of the Black Hand from their experiences in life in Sicily. Tell us a little bit about that.
You know, I really I don't know what they might have known or not known. I just know from looking back at it. Wherever Italian immigrants lived not to cast dis versions on any one group of people. You would see groups of these Black Hand organizations pop up to pray primarily on Italians. They're fellow countrymen. I tell people, my book's not so much Friday the Thirteenth as it is that God saw them Part two. It's a small you know, small time thug praying on their fellow countrymen
because they know they don't have anywhere to turn. In Chicago in the nineteen twenties, the Black Hand used bombs. There were multiple bombings of that killed people. It was extortion. Hey pay up, but we're gonna blow up your business. And there was also a black Hand enforcer known as a shotgun and in Chicago who just walked down the street with a shotgun over his shoulder and he just ran the streets. In New York City, there was a barrel murders and that's really how organized crime first came
to be known in the United States. There were barrels found on the side of the road in New York City and it starts thinking up and it's made open them and there'd be some you know, poor crime victim inside and it was an extortion racket. It wasn't really one national syndicate the way we might think of the larger scale mafia of the forties and fifties and sixties. It was just fans of thugs who like, hey, we
can extort people. And in Birmingham, I think that took the form of shopping people up with access.
Now before December twenty fourth, nineteen nineteen, which chronicles the beginning of these reportedly of these axe murders, you also chronicle about case two months before and the axe Man of New Orleans and a man named Mike peppatone again his skull was crushed while he's in bed October seventeenth, nineteen nineteen, and that marked the end of an ax murder spree. You say that injured a dozen people, mostly
Italian merchants. Why did you include this crime two months before and then tell and then from there tell us what happened December twenty fourth, nineteen nineteen.
And one of the first things I hear when I when I discussed this case of people, especially people who are very interested in true crime, Hey, there were there acx murders in New Orleans. Is it possibly related to that? I don't think so. But I think it is worth noting. You know, it's in today. It's a five hour car I do from Birmingham to New Orleans. There's a train line that has been running folks from New Orleans to
Birmingham to New York for one hundred years now. So it's not beyond the realm of possibility that someone was committing murders in New Orleans and then decided to start committing those murders in Birmingham instead. The New Orleans murders are much different. They target Italian merchants. That's another reason. It's the same sort of class of people group of people. However, in those cases, the axe man chopped through the doors, killed the people in their sleep, killed kids. That's not
what happened in Birmingham and Birmingham. The ax man and the merchant murders would come in and say, hey, I want some oranges, want some cigarettes. He would bend down to pick up the cigarettes, or you'd turn around to get the oranges and the axe man would chop you in the head. So it was very much different. You know the fact that eight weeks passed between the end of one crime spree and the other, the fact they both targeted Italian communities in the foul. I thought it
was worth noting. I think there's probably three paragraphs in the entire book about New Orleans, but I think it would have been not to acknowledge it in some way.
You talk about the first to murder, about John H. Belzer, and you say that in the general story was attacked as he turned his head to serve some customers, and he was attacked, and you say police had no leads in the attack. And then it vanished from memory for more than a year. But then March fifteenth, nineteen twenty one, C. C. Pipkins was attacked at his grocery store. Tell us about this attack and what witnesses claim to have seen or who they've seen.
Oh, and that went up.
There were.
Money from the scene. You know, there was a I question whether the first murder is actually associated with any of these. I think it may have been an unsault case that was just linked to it. And then they resume in nineteen twenty one with the Pipkin's case. It doesn't give us a lot of attention. A man's assaulted
in the store on March fifth, nineteen twenty one. Two men hit him in the head with an axe and two customers scare the culprits away, and then we have another series, another case just a few months later in July of nineteen twenty one, where a family in a grocery store, A man, a woman, and a teenage girl are attacked. A nail is pounded into a woman's head, everybody survives. A milkman comes around these the kids running in blood and work the authorities. So from there it
just starts picking up incrementally. We start with this one man getting assaulted, and we have the family getting assaulted, and by the end of nineteen twenty one there were seven injured and four murdered. And it's by the end of nineteen twenty one people really get the idea that hey, there's something going on here.
Do you talk about the police reaction, their theory as to who is responsible for these crimes and then the very very interesting response by the media, and you talk about a newspaper called The Age Herald in Birmingham. So first time was about the police theory and then the media response.
Well, the police theories varied in case the case, and some there was you know, we said there were maybe were straight up robbery, and some they said that the resident has had a beef with one of their neighbors or someone they rented property to. Some they said a person was involved in bootlegging, our selling of selling goods, and someone some other group of people, perhaps he's black hand.
Organized crime groups knew about that and were blackmailing them, and when the blackmail didn't work, they were killing them. And then in the midst of all that, we also have a second set of crimes where an African American woman and a white man would be found in an alleyway, perhaps engaged prostitution, perhaps someone selling alcohol illicitly, this being prohibition to another person or elan and the seal of illegal drugs and someone killing them, and the police are
pretty quick to say. And also the African American newspaper, the prominent black weekly paper, the Verman Air Report, was quick to say that those were the group of kids who were trying to prevent white men from having relations with black women. And so the news was quick to jump on all that these interracial stuff that came up a little bit later. So the Age Herald in January of nineteen twenty two, and this is an age where we have three daily newspapers, multiple weekly papers and you know,
just pre television radios and its infancy. It's an old fashioned newspaper war. And so with the axe murders increasing in intensity and frequency in late nineteen twenty one, by nineteen twenty two, they're all over it, the Age Herald comes up with a crudely drawn racist care nature, assuming this sub such as black, the murderers black, and they call him Henry the Hacker, and they give him just sort of the basic racist caricature drawing uh and there's
just tons of a recals. They devote two straight days of coverage to this. And at the same time, the plans marching through the street people that are going to the courthouse to get gun permits. Merchants are saying, hey, we're going to form a group. We're going to hire people, the Italian immigrants, their formula protection organization where they're going to band together to chase out criminals that targets their the little countrymen. So the Age Herald really fans the flames.
And I work for the Birmingham News the al al dot com. I've been there almost fifteen years, so were we were complicent in that too, But the Harold really stoked it for a while there.
What did the police do with this is nineteen twenty two. What did police do with people though they suspected? How did they proceed with questioning and what were some of the things that they did to try to solve these cases? And was there any talk of any kind of link between any of these crimes despite again the racial overtones here, but also the immigrants that were killed in their shops or attacked in their shops. Tell us about any possible link that the police thought and how they proceeded.
It began with sort of standard operating procedure of chasing down the leads in each one of these cases. It got more outlandish as time went on. In January of nineteen twenty two, someone mailed a to the Birmingham Police chief. He said that he and some friends had been playing with a wigi board, and the wigi board they'd asked the Wigi board who was committing the axe murders and it spelled out the name of a well known Birmingham criminal. The letter writer said he didn't know who this man was.
They didn't share in the name of the newspaper. One of the h Harold articles that I mentioned earlier. The police sent out detectives looking for this man identified through
the Ouiji board. What really ultimately broke the case, so to speak, was it when they rounded up the suspects and two of the murders, just two of them out about twenty They there beside the people's four men, one teenage girl, a nineteen year old woman, and they took them out of their jail sales late at night and led him to a doctor's office and they shot him up with a mixture of drugs morphine and stapalo mine. This was a drug cocktail used on women who were
getting birth. A doctor in Texas, Robert House, in the early twenties, noticed that whenever women were injected with his drugs, their loose, their lips got really loose, you know, they would tell you anything. And so he thought maybe this would fall some crimes, and so he, you know, pouted it with some law enforcing agencies in Texas. Anybody would listen.
He was going around selling it. I don't know that he was very involved in the Birmingham cases, but the doctors and the police and the prosecutors decided to give it a try, and it is crazy as that sounds. Dragging people out of their cells and shooting them up with drugs and then listening confessions. I mean is that it is literally torture in the eyes of the US Constitution.
It was out lawed in nineteen sixty three in connection with a murder case in Cook County, Illinois, but the standard operating procedure for interrogating suspects in Birmingham, Alabama, or any other city in America in the nineteen twenties was just basically to beat someone until they told you what you wanted them to say. So it's kind of interesting that they this was a very scientific route. They thought, hey, we'll use these drugs and they'll tell us everything we
want to know. And ultimately these five people are connected in one set of murders, a white man, John Robert Turner, and a woman, Lily Beal. But the police say, okay, well we got everybody, and they just were wrap it up with a neat even though it really makes no there's no way that all these people, and some of them were in prison when ers were committed. It just it's it's outlandish to think that these five people committed even more than one or two of these murders. It's even that.
You talk about and we kind of skipped over it though, because of this increasing fear and stoked by the media, sensationalistic media that took liberty with facts and with the clan and with you know, you say, the police force being openly clan members and this pressure. You also talk about though, that there was a theory by police that there was this vigilante band of negroes that was responsible.
So before when they talked about the Truth serum, that there were critics at the time of the Truth series and what it would mean, but also interestingly, the police and the media herald it, as you say, much more civil than the way they elicited confessions before that, and it was almost like the recent East Area rapist development where now everybody's going to be taking familiar DNA and
doing testing on cold cases. It really was harald as an innovation that would just as important as fingerprinting and that every other police force would be interested in and in fact, very much like we'd see in modern day. Many police jurisdictions asked the advice of Birmingham Police detectives as to end the doctor, as to how to use this truth serum to elicit confessions and use it for investigations, didn't they sure?
Sure they thought that it would be a method that would be replicated in police departments around the country. I don't see any evidence of that happening. I think there
are cases sporadically here and there. The CIA several years ago released a report that they wrote in the nineteen nineties just detelling how true serves were used in law enforcement and intelligence scattering to some degree, and it's specifically references to drugs, to palamone, and it makes mention that it's not effective because when you're shot up with this number one, your mouth goit is just completely dry, which makes it difficult to talk, you have hallucinations. It's just
is not effective. So it just really wasn't It wasn't an effective way of prosecuting cases. And even in the Birmingham cases there were questions as to whether the confessions would be used. What they did is they took the confessions and tried to find evidence to supplement it.
You talk about to counter the criticism from the questioning with this truth serum, they said that because they were described by people as done in the in the night because you say, one of the journalists that was touting it wanted as part of the research to really witness some of these. So he didn't witness the ones in Birmingham, but he witnessed other druggings using this drug in other places. And then he reported that they were done in the
middle of the night. So to counter that, you talk about how they would do it in the day and ask these same questions. But as a result, there was some different tell us about those results once they had done that same test using that truth serum in daylight questioning.
Well, the gentleman question was kind of the the start evant who was the bureau chief for one of the wire services in the South and interesting fellow was a thudling journalist and very successful and then he went into the drive in movie business later on in line he left journalism all behind and open drive in theaters all over the South, all over California in the Southwest, and he I think they give out awards in his name
in the movie theater industry now. But he flashed onto this and he would go around as he found cases where they used this true erum. He actually had the true thereum used on himself but he he didn't witness to Birmingham win, but he got the notes. Supposedly they did it tonight, so supposedly they did it during the day. The results there's a complicting news report, so it's hard to say, you know which what they got win. But the prosecutors maintained that they said the same things in
different setting and individually, and then they cooperated it. But it's it's not anything where I would think due process was honored or recognized. But it's hard to take it with any brain assault or with any without a brain support as ault.
It's it's interesting too because you include those Again, I guess portions of what this stirt event was was told or someone that witnessed the Birmingham druggings was had to say. But the small portions that you do present really don't give any weight to the prosecution or the doctor with this drug itself and its effectiveness.
Right, it's are Dan, Yeah, it's it's Preadan. I you know, I think it's possible that these five convicted people participated in the two murders. It's absolutely possible because there was at least one person who testified to having here been there with them right before the murder and been there when they came back from the murder and testified with
some detail. It's possible, but without what is undisputable indisputable me is that they were not granted their constitutional rights the two processes.
Certainly, you also talk about that the t in nineteen pardon me, that they talked about ending this murder spree.
So they predicted that there would be the end of these acts murders, and so what it coincided with was this convenient truth serum that was was reliable, so that a confluence of events happened with the panic in the city over these murders, these unsolved murders, and then these suspects and the true serum, and then the prediction that these acts murders would end, and that this with the arrest of these people, that these things would go away.
We're going to use this as an opportunity, Jeremy, just to stop for a second to talk about our sponsor, which is Breakout Games. Murder, Romance, Scandal. That's my kind of mystery dispatch by Breakout Games delivers all that and more straight to your home, told through clues you receive in the mail. The story draws you in to solve a crime over several months of interactive investigation. Now I've been playing with my wife Lisa for a few months, and trust me, this is pure crime solving gold the
first series called On the Run. Once you open your delivery, you'll find yourself entangled in the strange disappearance of your closest childhood friend who also happens to be suspected of killing his wife, a well known Harris. With the aid of physical clues and details embedded online, you'll follow each thread to deduce what is fact in what is fiction? Intrigued, satisfy your curious mind with fifty percent off your first delivery.
Go to Breakout Dispatch dot com Slash True. That's Breakout Dispatch ds P A t H dot com, Slash True Breakout Games dot com. Now when we least off, Jeremy, when we were last talked, we were talking about the You say that the True serum, you doubted that its effectiveness, and I mentioned that there were people that were critical of it, but they had some suspects. And then the sheriff and the media and everyone wanted and predicted the end of the Axe murders in Birmingham tell us about
some of the cracks in the case. Despite everybody wanting this to happen, and this to be a conclusion. Some of the cracks in the case of the four accused.
Well right before, right before the five were to stand trial. In nineteen twenty four, two men are found brutally assaulted in the streets of Birmingham on Saturday night. Two white men and Birmingham police come across a guy named Frank Owens and they see him. When they walk up all of these few patrol officers, he throws a max over the fence and he takes off. They chase him down, they get him. He puts up one hell of a fight. They finally get him wrangled. One officer goes to get
the axe. Frank Owens, a black man who's later said to be very mentally ill, somehow gets away from the officer tries he isn't done. The two officers just have to beat the hell out of him, or said they had to beat the hell out of him, ripes inn and there to try to get him in the car. They get him in the car. They're driving them to the station. First out of the back of the car they run after him. They start firing shots, probably a dozen shots. One of them hit him in the arm.
They take him, they get him. He says he was beaten during the interrogation. I don't doubt that. I don't have any reason. I don't have any evidence it is true, but I have no reason of doubt it either. He says that he was inspired by the axe murders and he was determined quote to cut down people in the fashion of the accident. And so what you have happening is when these five suspects for standing trial as the axe murderers, and people are saying, oh, well, we've got
it all wrapped up. We have this guy who's like, hey, yeah, he's just carrying the torch. He's inspired by him. And also around the same time, you have the relatives of the victims who are still up in arms and two women who've been cut down. In a grocery store, the surviving son, brother of one of them, is working on Saturday night and he sees a black man he considers suspicious, and this Italian store ownery takes out his downe and
shoots the guy. So even though the police are ready to wrap this up at a nice neat Ball and the press too. There's still a great deal of violence going on in the streets of Earlham.
Can you talk about the first trial in February nineteen twenty four and one of the people is this a Glover and he is one of the people that you say in the interrogations with the drug with the truth serum, he seemed to know a lot less than the other people and at least in their claims under the drug and he took the stand in his own defense. Tell us about what he says about his attack on mister and missus Sparks and how that proceeds in that trial.
Well, he, whoever, is the guy who's sort of the thread a lot of these crimes. In terms of the suspects. He is accused of attacking a man named Edwin Sparks and his wife. She's never fully identified other than being his wife. Supposedly, they're walking and a group of they're they're white of a group of black people grab them, tie him up, attack her and he's arrested. Mister Edwin's part, he's arrested and accused of assaulting his wife and he's like, no, no, no,
it was this. It was this gang and his wife regains consciousness and she and she backs him up. He's also later on Fred Glove with the suspect. The one is identified. He's identified because he's a droopy I his gun had a blue barrel. He has had a lengthy criminal history. Uh. He claims that he's the volte dog of the law, meaning he's sort of blamed with everything that happened. And he said to have been involved in
the furnitures for a burglary. He said to have been involved with one of the earliest assault in nineteen twenty one, a Jewish Russian immigry named Sophie Seideman, who was sort of a pillar of the community. He was beaten with a stick. She testified later on that he assaulted her. He's also convicted any two murders that nets the entire five game five members. So he's yeah, he's implicated and pretty much everything that this one gang is fit's linked to.
You talk about the Romeo and Vigilante murders, but also the idea that prosecutors have to get around the idea that this drug that they administer these people might not have been well, it wasn't voluntary, So how do they get around admissibility and still use the evidence. How do they do that?
The news reports of the court cases are not very detailed, and the actual court records that I was able to find, the few that I was able to find, were not very detailed. The prosecutors swore up and down that they just that it would not be an issue because they would use the information if they gained from the truths term to to convict these suspects. So, you know, they tried to get around it. It seemed to work. You know, they got convictions in all five of these suspects.
So you have a very very interesting prosecution star witnessing the Peyton and Peyton Johnson first trial, and you talk about her name is Mary Sanders. Now this February twenty eighth, So tell us what Sanders says at trial about what she had heard.
She says, They're all gathered at a house, a shack really a shanty in Birmingham one night. They're all playing cards. Uh, they're drinking a liquor that they referred to as skull and skulls and crossbones. Uh. When a group of people suggest, hey, let's go sculling now was slang for let's go rob someone today. It's hit a lick. It's one of the slaying terms in Birmingham today. But apparently it was well known that this woman, Lily Bell, she was a black woman.
She had white people, white men at her house, I would assume for prostitution or liquor or drugs or all of it. And so they decided to go there. One of them grabs a gun, one grabs a rope. Uh, the one female, Pearl Jackson nineteen. She apparently dresses as a man, and so they go and apparently they come back later on talking about how well it went, and well, I know I killed the woman. I think I got the man. I saw his brains. This was easy. You know,
we should try to do this again. Later on, she sees a bloody accent in the outhouse and they warn her that, you know, she doesn't keep her mouth shut, someone going to stamp her brains are out. Let's quote Stamford brains out. And she was later on in a jail camp. When they arrested you back in the day, they put you on a farm to work, you know. And so she was working with Pearl Jackson, and Pearl
Jackson made her matches. You know, if you don't shut your mouth, I'm gonna tell what y'all did, get y'all sent away and decided to take him. Apparently heard that and that was one of the breaks in the case. But defense attorney said that she and a sister were in New Orleans during the time this happened. They couldn't have heard it. But the prosecutor said that would lie and actually charged them with perjury. I don't know the disposition of that.
Now. The prosecution demanded the death penalty, and as a result of Mary Sanders' testimony, what was the result.
It's concluded that Perl Jackson, who was nineteen, and her husband, Odella Jackson, they were sentenced to death. Others received varying the sentences from life to ten years. Interestingly enough, Alabama in the nineteen twenties, the death penalty was very controversy. That was really one of the biggest surprises for me personally.
I'm an eighth generation Alabamian with here forty years my entire life, and even my most liberal friends are not all of that tied up in knots about the death vinity, but it was something Alabamians agonized over. We're very religious and the commandment says, now shan not killed. So the governor at the time, he's the son of a Methodist minister. He's allowed more than a dozen executions to proceed, but
he he wrenches his hands over every one. Reportedly, and the sheriff of the time, who was a ku Kluck's Plan member, which is well known for, you know, hanging black men from trees, that to share. His job was to execute people. He had executed four black men and every one of them ate him up. He would very anti deathtility. He carried their pictures around with him. And so he was going to the governor and saying, hey,
let's not do this, and he was really lobbying. And the governor comes to the conclusion that, you know, if we're not going to execute all five of them, how can we execute any of them. So there's some back and forth. You know, there was a medical issue with one of the suspects. There was a retrial, but ultimately, you know, Pearl and Odell, they're they're going to be executed in nineteen twenty five. She will be the first woman executed in Alabama since the Civil War. She will
be the first woman executed in Birmingham. Ever, they will be the first married couple executed together. The prosecutors wanted all five of them hanged together, they would have that would have been historic in Alabama in the twentieth century. We'd tanged six people at one time in one day in the eighteen hundreds, but that related to wars with the Native Americans. That is a matter of law enforcement. We had never pained five people in one day in Alabama.
But the others, the three others, they had lesser sentences, and the sheriff said, well, you remember, the governor said, well, I just can't see doing that. League commuted their their sentences the life, but they had very interi dates within like yeah, within two years, within months they had they had three execution date. They were like down to the wire and they just got pushed back and pushed back and pushed back.
Yeah.
It's very interesting to talk about the Governor Brandon and these progressive thoughts, considering Sheriff Sureley a clan member and the Klan at that time, and given these kind of crimes too, where they said this Negro gang vigilante killing white men, black woman. You also talked about when you talk about this medical issue. On this second trial of one of these defendants, he had a stroke right on the stand and fell out of the fell out of the chair.
So yeah, that's a.
Medical issue for sure, certainly. And also that you say that they delayed the death sentence so that they could hang everyone. And in the end Brandon was progressive enough to say, Governor Brandon said, if they're not all going to get the same sentence, it's just unthinkable to execute one person and not execute the other. So they all had their life centsuss commuted or sentences commuted to life, didn't they That's great?
But I think some of them serbliged sentences. Some I think one or two served like ten years in labor camps. And I actually heard from a it's a weird story, and I couldn't include it in the book because I just didn't have it nailed down. But I had turned into book and I was waiting to get the addis back and I get a call from an Alabama parole office and he says, Hey, I need to talk to you about a story you wrote in twenty thirteen. And I'm I'm a journalist to day to day you know,
Birmingham news Dale, the time journalist. I'm thinking, oh, great, what can I tell them about some case from twenty thirteen. But that's when I had my original stories. You know, this wasn't a book form originally it was. It was three articles I wrote for al dot com in twenty thirteen. And so I called him. He said, yeah, I was. I work fugitive cases and I've been assigned to find
ed Bullseye Jackson. Ed Bulldye Bullseye Jackson is one of the five suspects, one of the five people being convicted. And so you know Ed Bullseye Jackson would be like one hundred and ten years old. And so this officer is kind of laughing about it, like, you know, this is not this has been put on my dead do you know anything? And I'm like, no, of course not. And he said that what happened is this guy was paroled in the nineteen forties and disappeared. He skipped the roll.
He was in his fifties at the time. He's born in the eighteen nineties, and so in the forties they led him out of prison, he skips his parole, and the state of Alabama today considers him the fugitive even though he's you know, like I said, probably going on one hundred and twenty. Yeah, so he just but it was just one of them in the night. He wouldn't the officer wouldn't go on the records. I just couldn't
include all that. He's like, yeah, he's all these great records and stuff, blah blah blah, and then he just vanished on me. I was just dying. I was chomping in the bed to look at that file.
We talked about Frank Owens and the copycat murders. Interesting how you talk about it's a copycat murder, and yet the people that committed the murders, apparently allegedly during this reign of terror on, none of them are going to receive death penalties, death sentences. And so now you have the Sheriff Shirley again, the known KKK lobbying Brandon to spare Owens from the death penalty. All right, tell us how that ends up.
Well, Frank Owens he mentally ill. He assaults two white men right before the so called axe murderers are going to trial. They survive, he's arrested, he shot, he says he's eaten. So he's lingering in jail through the whole appeals process as the dramas in polding around Pearl and O'Dell Jackson. So after in nineteen twenty five, Pearl and Odell their sentences are commuted and eventually it comes down in nineteen September of nineteen twenty six, they decide to
that the theory is that execute Frank Owen's. What's interesting about his case is that this is, in my estimation, according to everything to find, is the last legal hanging in Alabama. I'd say that because we've had lynchings, I personally covered murders where someone's hanging somebody, But this is the last execution I know of that was carried out by hanging in September twenty fourth, nineteen twenty six. After
that we went to the electric chair. And it's also one of the very few cases where it's not a murder. Most of the people we've executed are murderers. I found a couple of rape cases, one early eighteen hundred, counter fenty cases, but yeah, this is probably one of the last rock Police we executed somebody for a robbery, assault or attempted murder, and so it's yeah, It was a it was a cut wrenching experience. The guards had known him for more than a year, and so they're crying.
The inmates who were you know, they were crying. The sheriff was, you know, very upset. But the governor, Governor Brandon, who opposed that death nity, just felt that that was justice in this case, and he allowed to proceed. It was the last execution for Brandon. It was the last execution for sheriffs. Surely after that, the sheriff still longer carried out executions. It was done at the state level. It was just a very dramatic scene and in so much historic.
You talk in the book about it was interesting and very again, very cinematic scene where Odell and Pearl Jackson, the couple that are accused of murder, that deny any killing anyone, are given their last meal. Just tell us about that scene, because I thought that was very interesting. That's how close. So tell us about their last meal and what was they were told during that last meal?
Sure, you know, ready to go out. So Pearl Jackson wants to go out with a full stomach, and so she had a full fried chicken, She had a whole watermelon, she had a whole bunch of ice creams. She had. Let me see what I'll have come to look out the whole list of it. A water bo a quarter by a screen tomatoes. She was ready to die as soon as she gets plenty to eat. And so she's halfway through eating this meal and they're like, hey, no,
you've given a reprieve. We're going to see about this new trial, and so she says, and then she then the sheriff makes a joke that he's going to take the watermelon away from her, and she gets upset and no, no, I'm not going to.
But yeah, yeah, very very interesting the last meal and then they get to reprieve. You talk about that everybody wanted, the entire city of Birmingham, the governor, the sheriff, police force, the people, shopkeepers, Italian immigrants, non Italian shopkeeper immigrants that were attacked as well. But you say that there you do chronicle other crimes that have the same moo or similar So tell us what you found.
I think that what happened is to the end of it, when they're ready to like close in on these suspects and it's one these two murders, the Turner bail murders. I think they start going through and just looking at what they have over and I think the very first murder, John Delizer, I mean there's more than a year long
gap between that and the next murder. So I think they just look for any blunt force trauma homicide robberies and they start lumping it in and the press is eager to go along to that ride, so they just sort of sore they wrap it all up. And this one thing, interestingly enough, but the days of right before the days before Frank Allen is executed, and a man named Benjamin Benjamin Alper, he's a Russian immigry hei there in his sixties or his seventies. He runs a hat
shop in Birmingham. He goes to work, someone hits him from behind, kills them, robs and it's exact same m And this is more than a year after Pearl and Odell were almost executed. This is days before Frank Owens is about to be executed. One news article says that Frian was as gruesome as to what Frank Owens did, but there's no other mention in any of these news reports about Ale. It's linked.
So yeah, and so attribute some of the murders to and other murders to. What's your take on all of this. You really don't make any conclusions in this. You don't say this happens, that happened. But I'm curious to what you think this all could be attributed to.
I don't make those pollutions because I just don't feel like I have the information available to do that. I just, yeah, I'm relying on h questionable news reports and the shady recollections of the grandchildren of people who were associated with it, and US can't number of court records. That's basically all I had to go on. I think there were some clusters of these cases. They were probably related. Probably some
other clusters are related. Probably some that are just completely un just one off, you know, cases that had nothing to do with anything I do suspect, and I would love to know it, and I don't drive me crazy because I never I will never know it. But there was some sort of organized gang. There was some badass acts building gang enforceder in Birmingham who committed probably two
or three of these murders, at least maybe five. Some You think of Luca Brozie from the Godfather, I think there was some Southern Fried Luca Brozi and I'll never know who that is that I think he's out there or he was.
Do you think that you could conclude that there was two sets of motivations. One was to rob shopkeepers either through that they had not relent or were relenting to extortion. So it was robbery and intimidation and the axes and like again, very much like the Black hen And then also, is there any credibility, like you say these people were convicted, is there any credibility this black gang assembled to not have white men and black women together.
I think there's probably more than there's probably more than two motives. I think some were robberies. I think some were extortions. I think some were probably you know, disputes between people.
Uh.
I think it's kind of I don't know if probably some of them were drug related. As far as the to go into it, I don't think we've really got into it. But there were letters to the police and one of the newspapers from a group that said there were color KKK. The color KKK was going to try
to keep white men away from black women. And I've first heard of that when I saw like news clippings of from the sheriffs and the police, and I thought, Okay, whatever white police white share, if they're just trying to find some way to blame them some black folks. But then the editor of this Southern the the black newspaper here in Birmingham, a very well respected man, he shared the same theory. It just it seems so outlandish. They're just just so hard to believe that there's some colored
KKK that is mobilizing against interracial couples. But it will go widely accepted theory. I don't know. I tend to believe that if prostitution is the oldest profession, then robbing people engaged in prostitution is probably the second oldest. You know though, that seems more logical to me than just being a social statement. But I've heard of crazier things happening.
Do you think there's a relevance, especially given the time, in terms of the weapon used, the acts, and its relation to all of the.
Christ pretty much every building, pretty much every building anywhere, a house, a school, a business, a church. They had wood burn burning stoves. If you cooked your food, you probably used would if you heated your house and used wood used coal to but wood burning stoves were just a staple of life, and so to have that you had short handled axes that you would chop up the wood with. As I researched these cases, I came across
other axe murders that were just completely unrelated. An escaped inmate in North Alabama would find an axe and a wood pile and attack of family or to guys. We'd get into a fight behind the house and one of them would pick up an axe. And not everybody could afford a gun back then, but access were just around. Also, there's the reports of the climbs or very details as far as they came in. They asked for this, they asked for that, and when the person turned, they hit him.
When they hit him, then they turn around and they cut their throat. So it gave sort of a blueprint. He read that first report of that first murder, you had an idea of how to commit it, though I think there were probably a lot of copycats in the mix there.
Do you have one tale that you talk about that five months after a relative, a son of one of the murdered shopkeepers, tell us about this interesting response to whether it happened five months before to his relatives.
Is this the Romeo digil Anti case you're talking about?
I believe so, yes, Okay.
His sister was in her twenties and her mother was this mantriarch. She's described as a pioneer of Birmingham. Her husband worked on the railroads or Italian immigrants. Her husband had died. She had a large family, Uh, Elizabeth Romeo and Juliet Digilante. I also, I can't help up be a these by the fact that this murdered young woman's maiden name was Juliet Romeo. But it was I guess, Juliet Romeo, I guess. But Juliette Digilante, her husband Bernard
is out as a play. A guy comes in, he brutally kills her, kills her mother, Elizabeth Romeo, and the bed. Juliet's daughter, Caroline, who's three, survived. She's not assaulted, but she she lives the whole ordeal. So months later, Juliette's brother, Ernest, he's working and an African American man who, according him one news report, had been giving him trouble quote unquote, just aroused his suspicion and he took out a gun
and shot him. To my knowledge, he survived. I couldn't find any subset reports to counter that, but it's just sort of indicative. So, I mean, people were store owners were carrying guns. There were news reports that store owners were buying World War One helmets to protect their heads. I mean, it's there was a lot of panic, and so if your sister and your mother were murdered, dance reason might act unreasonably and if you have a gun nearby, then there you go.
Yeah, it's fascinating the response based on the media and just the fear of the people. In this four year period, as you say, twenty murders and twenty one people injured, panic sees the entire city of Birmingham, and the media reported on what was going on Birmingham throughout across the country. Like you had mentioned, I want to thank you very much for coming on and talking about the infamous Birmingham
AX murders. For those that might want to contact you possibly or see your work, do you have a Facebook page or a website that they might see and look at.
Yeah, if you go to Facebook, the infamous Birmingham AX murders starts that on Facebook, you should be able to find me. The books available born to notable Amazon target, Walmart.
Virtually everywhere. I want to thank you very much, Jeremy W. Gray for coming on and talking about the infamous Birmingham axe murders, prohibition gangsters, and vigilante justice. It's been a pleasure. Thank you very much. Hope to speak to you again.
I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me, Thank you, good night.