"Officers Seeking Two Arms in Calhoun County"

That title is excellent clickbait, isn't it?

Come with me now back to Alabama in the summer of  1959. Our scene is set in Rabbittown, a community five miles northwest of  White Plains, a small unincorporated area in Calhoun County about 15 miles northeast of Anniston. In that place Viola V. Hyatt and her elderly parents lived in an old farmhouse. Two men, Lee Andrew Harper (48) and his brother Emmett Harper (56) occupied a small trailer behind the house. Lee worked at the U.S. Army Depot at Bynum near Anniston; Emmett was unemployed at the time. 

On July 17 after her confession, Viola was arrested and charged with first degree murder of the two men. Now Viola didn't simply murder the pair; she proved herself worthy of joining the company of "mad dog" killers everywhere. First, she used a shotgun and blasted both men in the face in their trailer. State toxicologist Robert Johnston declared those shots as the cause of death. Then she dismembered the bodies with an ax and distributed the pieces around two counties.

The men had not been seen after June 27. On June 28 the first torso was found near an abandoned house in Attalla in Etowah County. The second was discovered the following day 11 miles away in Whitney Junction in northwest St. Clair County where U.S. highways 11 and 231 cross. Despite the facial injuries sketches were made of what the men may have looked like and distributed to Alabama newspapers. After almost a month a tip led investigators to the farm where Viola Hyatt lived. 

Viola, her parents Mr. and Mrs. M.D. Hyatt and a former boyfriend Dewey Carroll were questioned over two days while investigators searched the farm and gathered evidence from the trailer and men's car. At first Viola told a story about taking the men to the bus station in Oxford. Finally she confessed during interrogations by various state investigators and led them through Calhoun and Etowah counties to the locations of two arms and two legs. No effort had been made to conceal them; the limbs were just tossed into fields. She said the second set of legs was thrown into the Tallapoosa River at Bell's Mill in Cleburne County.

The murderess also led officials to a cornfield on the farm where a bloody, double-headed axe was buried in a shallow hole. Viola had committed the murders by herself, she said, and dismembered the bodies to make them easier to move in a wheelbarrow to the car trunk. 

After her arrest Viola spent some months in Bryce Hospital but was determined to be sane and fit for trial. As soon as the trial began, a deal was reached in which Viola could avoid the electric chair and serve two life sentences. She agreed if she did not have to describe the crimes. Despite the sentence, the state parole board unanimously voted to release her in April 1970 after she had served only 10 years.

Hyatt returned to Rabbitttown, her birthplace on February 3, 1929. She remained on the farm for a while, but sold it and moved to the Jacksonville area to be near a small circle of friends and relatives. She never discussed the crimes or motive. Viola died of congestive heart failure on June 12, 2000, age 71, and is buried at the Baptist Church Cemetery in Rabbittown. 

Viola was an only child; a WikiTree entry on her describes her childhood and much else about the case. Donald Brown was a 23 year-old reporter for the Birmingham News when he covered the murders; this article from February 2016 notes he's writing a book about the case, but I could not determine if it was ever published. This item about a podcast on the murders has additional information. And of course Viola rates a chapter in Jeremy W. Gray's Wicked Women of Alabama [History Press, 2021]. 

Alabama has executed very few women. Lynda Lyon Block was put to death in 2002. Before that, Rhonda Bell Martin was executed in 1957, the third woman up to that date. 

The dismemberment map

Fine Fun in Alabama

Francis Harper was born of free parents in Maryland, then a slave state, on September 24, 1825. Before her death on February 22, 1911, she had developed careers as a teacher, abolitionist, suffragist, public speaker and author. Harper began to publish articles in anti-slavery journals in 1839 under her maiden name Francis Watkins. She did not marry Fenton Harper until 1860.

She was one of the earliest African-American women to develop an extensive writing career. In addition to her works on abolition and suffrage, she published poetry and several novels. Her first book of poems appeared in 1845. She joined the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1853 and lectured widely on their behalf. Harper was also active in various suffrage and prohibitionist organizations. In 1872 she published Sketches of Southern Life, a chronicle of  her travels in the region to meet newly freed slaves. 

In 1895 her collection Poems appeared and included the one below, "The Martyr of Alabama". Harper was inspired by a newspaper account of a real event at Bay Minnette in  Baldwin County, Alabama, on December 29, 1894. The beating and shooting of the young Tim Thompson had been covered in several newspapers around the country; you can see some examples here. 

Whether any Alabama newspapers wrote about the event or whether the murderer was ever caught will require further research. 

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Source: Indianapolis Journal 30 December 1894

In the same newspaper column as the Thompson piece, a few items below, is this article--another sign of the times. 

Frances E.W. Harper [1825-1911]

Source: Wikipedia

Below is Harper's poem as it appeared in the 1895 edition of her Poems. The numbers are the page numbers from that publication. 

THE MARTYR OF ALABAMA.

"Tim Thompson, a little negro boy, was asked to dance for the amusement of some white toughs. He refused, saying he was a church member. One of the men knocked him down with a club and then danced upon his prostrate form. He then shot the boy in the hip. The boy is dead; his murderer is still at large."—News Item.

  He lifted up his pleading eyes,

     And scanned each cruel face,

  Where cold and brutal cowardice

     Had left its evil trace.

  It was when tender memories

     Round Beth'lem's manger lay,

(49)

50 THE MARTYR OF ALABAMA.

  And mothers told their little ones

     Of Jesu's natal day.

  And of the Magi from the East

     Who came their gifts to bring,

  And bow in rev'rence at the feet

     Of Salem's new-born King.

  And how the herald angels sang

     The choral song of peace,

  That war should close his wrathful lips,

     And strife and carnage cease.

  At such an hour men well may hush

     Their discord and their strife,

  And o'er that manger clasp their hands

     With gifts to brighten life.

  Alas! that in our favored land,

     That cruelty and crime

  Should cast their shadows o'er a day.

     The fairest pearl of time.

  A dark-browed boy had drawn anear

     A band of savage men,

  Just as a hapless lamb might stray

     Into a tiger's den.

THE MARTYR OF ALABAMA. 51

  Cruel and dull, they saw in him

     For sport an evil chance,

  And then demanded of the child

     To give to them a dance.

  "Come dance for us," the rough men said;

     "I can't," the child replied,

  "I cannot for the dear Lord's sake,

     Who for my sins once died."

  Tho' they were strong and he was weak,

     He wouldn't his Lord deny.

  His life lay in their cruel hands,

     But he for Christ could die.

  Heard they aright? Did that brave child

     Their mandates dare resist?

  Did he against their stern commands

     Have courage to insist?

  Then recklessly a man (?) arose,

     And dealt a fearful blow.

  He crushed the portals of that life,

     And laid the brave child low.

  And trampled on his prostrate form,

     As on a broken toy;

52 THE MARTYR OF ALABAMA.

  Then danced with careless, brutal feet,

     Upon the murdered boy.

  Christians! behold that martyred child!

     His blood cries from the ground;

  Before the sleepless eye of God,

     He shows each gaping wound.

  Oh! Church of Christ arise! arise!

     Lest crimson stain thy hand,

  When God shall inquisition make

     For blood shed in the land.

  Take sackcloth of the darkest hue,

     And shroud the pulpits round;

  Servants of him who cannot lie

     Sit mourning on the ground.

  Let holy horror blanch each brow,

     Pale every cheek with fears,

  And rocks and stones, if ye could speak,

     Ye well might melt to tears.

  Through every fane send forth a cry,

     Of sorrow and regret,

  Nor in an hour of careless ease

     Thy brother's wrongs forget.

A Story in Stone: John Payne, M.D. [1860-1901]

Cemeteries are places crowded with fascinating stories, and the Pelham City Cemetery just off U.S. 31 at the corner of Industrial Park Road and Lee Street is no exception. There among many others with the same surname is the marker of John Payne, M.D.

Born in August 1860, Payne appears in the 1880 U.S. Census living in Shelby County with his father William H., a farmer, and mother Jane and his nine siblings. Somehow Payne managed to go to medical school, graduating from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia in 1886. That school would have offered him one of the best medical educations available in the U.S. at the time. Members of the Shelby County medical board which tested him that same year for certification were apparently not impressed. The state medical association’s Transactions for 1887 noted, “This examination is not credible to the board. The papers are badly arranged, written on both sides, and some of the sheets evidently missing.”

Nevertheless, the board granted his certificate, since “The answers are usually correct.” After his examination, Payne moved to the Birmingham area and practiced there until his death. Sadly, he was shot by telegraph operator James P. Cook on May 30, 1901, and died the next day. A newspaper account of the murder declared that “The physician was a very popular young man.”

According to that press article, Cook shot Payne twice in the head from behind the doctor. Cook had recently separated from his wife, “said to be a very handsome woman,” and jealously was presumed to have fueled both the separation and the murder.

Payne apparently never practiced in Pelham, although during his lifetime several other physicians did. Based on the state medical society’s annual Transactions, at least four doctors were in Pelham at some point during those years: Eli F. Denson, Andrew W. Horton, and two Johnsons, Joseph M. and William R.K.

Payne is not the only physician buried in the City Cemetery who practiced elsewhere. William Betta Cross is known to have spent time in Helena and Columbiana before his death on Christmas Day 1884. That’s another story hidden in stone. An inventory of the cemetery done in 2002 is available.  

More photos can be seen at the Find-A-Grave site for Dr. Payne.

A version of this article appeared in the Pelham City News Fall 2013 issue.