Columbus Ledger-Enquirer (GA)



Columbus Ledger-Enquirer (GA)

June 15, 1998 | | |

Series: Murder in Coweta County

THE CRIME: A CHASE AND A MASSIVE SHOTGUN BLOW

Author: Harry Franklin

John W. Wallace went through proper channels to notify authorities that his former tenant farmer, William Turner, had stolen his cattle.

It's what he did later that cost Wallace his life in Georgia's electric chair.

Turner, 26 at the time of his death April 20, 1948, went to work for Wallace in October 1945 as the only white sharecropper on Wallace's farm near Greenville.

Turner had adopted his retarded brother's first name of Wilson to avoid discovery by the military after deserting the U.S. Army during World War II. Even his wife knew him as Wilson.

But Turner's stay was filled with dissension. He and Wallace didn't get along.

Earl H. Lucas, investigator for the U.S. Treasury Department's Alcohol Tax Unit, furnished a brief for the Wallace trial that detailed a conversation he had with Wallace nearly six months before Turner was killed.

Wallace related that Turner was ``causing him a lot of worry and was making liquor all around him all over his place, and he could not do anything with him,'' Lucas stated. ``He said he thought about killing him several times, and on one occasion met him on the road up there . . . but his (Turner's) wife looked so pitiful, he (Wallace) could not go through with it.''

Wallace said he didn't want to return to prison for the illegal liquor that his tenant farmer was making.

He also saw Turner as a bad influence on his black tenant farmers, especially when he invested his farm earnings in a new pickup truck.

In November 1947, Wallace ordered the sharecropper off his land and Turner, along with his wife and child, moved out of town, winding up in Carroll County in spring 1948.

Testimony in Wallace's murder trial indicates he ordered Turner to leave after the tenant sold moonshine manufactured on the farm and tried to withhold the money from Wallace.

Turner's widow, Julia Louise Turner, testified that Wallace and Turner argued vehemently after Turner slipped 20 gallons of moonshine off the farm and sold it without Wallace's permission, even while federal revenue agents kept the farm under surveillance.

Rumors flew about the bad blood between the two, including talk that Turner planned to kill Wallace.

Wallace told his trial jury he had lost some 20 head of cattle over a period of months, but when three of his top registered Guernsey dairy cattle costing $1,605 were stolen in the spring 1948, he set out to find and punish the culprit.

``The only thing I wanted to do is find my cattle,'' Wallace testified.

He traced one of the cows to a field in Carrollton and enlisted the help of Carrollton Police Chief E.R. Threadgill to watch the field for several nights to see whether they could capture the thief.

Threadgill located a cow fitting Wallace's description. Wallace identified the cow as his.

Turner showed up on the fifth night of the watch and had the cow hauled off. He was arrested after trying to flee, and warned Threadgill to ` ``get me away or they will kill me,' '' Threadgill said. ``I asked him who would kill him, and he wouldn't say.''

Threadgill took Turner to the Carroll County Jail.

Meanwhile, Wallace called Meriwether County Sheriff Hardy Collier in Greenville and asked him to get a warrant and take Turner back to the Meriwether jail. Turner was transferred in the middle of the night.

While Wallace and Collier were in Carrollton the next morning, Wallace's cow was discovered tied to a tree and returned to him. A second cow was later found in Crawford County with its head cut off.

On Tuesday, April 20, the next day, Collier directed that Turner be released because they didn't have enough evidence to hold him. Authorities said Collier notified Wallace when Turner would be released.

Turner didn't know that Wallace had recruited three men and they were waiting for him in town in two cars. The men were Herring Sivell, a Chipley, Ga., dairy farmer; Tom Strickland, a Meriwether County farmer and cousin of John Wallace; and Henry Mobley, a quiet, easy-going farmer who had worked for Wallace and lived on his farm.

Wallace testified at his trial that they wanted to get a confession out of Turner.

When Turner spotted Wallace, he raced out of town on Highway 41 toward Newnan, with two cars in hot pursuit. A 17-mile chase ended with a screech in the Coweta County hamlet of Moreland at Sunset Tourist Camp. Turner pulled up to a restaurant, jumped out and rushed toward a side door.

Sivell and Wallace pulled in near Turner's pickup, while the car carrying Mobley and Strickland didn't stop, but headed back toward Greenville and waited along the road for Wallace to return.

Geneva Yeager, 18, of Moreland, was working at the Sunset Tourist Restaurant about 12:30 p.m. that day. She reported seeing a green 1948 Ford pickup stop there, followed quickly by a green Ford car. Jumping out of the car was ``a heavyset man with a short-barrel shotgun. He hit Turner's head with the gun and . . . the man never uttered another sound. I think the man was killed by the blow from the shotgun, which discharged when the blow was struck.''

Seven people who witnessed the episode told similar stories, including Merle Hannah, who still lives in rural Coweta County several miles from Moreland.

C.W. Wilson of Moreland reported seeing Wallace and Sivell drag a man toward Sivell's car.

``They pushed him in the car on the back floorboard and John Wallace got on top of him and had him by the neck and was hitting him,'' Wilson said, adding he thought the man was either unconscious or dead when Sivell drove off.

Restaurant proprietor Steve A. Smith testified at the trial that Wallace and Sivell kept beating Turner as they dragged him toward the car, and that Wallace was striking him with the shotgun. He said Turner ``put up an awful fight and (was) hollering for help all the time. He placed himself against the car and they could not put him in and he (Wallace) hauled off with the shotgun and come across his head and hit him as hard as he could hit him . . . and the gun went off and the boy fell in the car . . . He didn't make a noise and they doubled him in with his feet. Mr. Wallace got in . . . still beating him. He kept stomping him with his heel in the car.''

Merle Hannah testified at a hearing for Wallace and Sivell that when she saw them going after Turner, she yelled, ``Don't kill him'' and that Wallace shouted, `` `Hush.' '' As he was being beaten and dragged, she said, Turner shouted `` `Don't let them kill me!' ''

She said Wallace drew back the shotgun and ``struck him with enough force to kill anybody . . . I think they were just so brutal he (Wallace) wanted to be sure he was dead.''

Enter Coweta County Sheriff Lamar Potts, a determined and popular law enforcement officer who would serve his county for 32 years and die quietly in his sleep. He had been sheriff for 12 years and was considered a man of integrity who would work as long and hard as necessary to break a case.

Notified of the Moreland incident, he immediately went to work, calling in state investigators for help.

It didn't take authorities long to identify Wallace and Sivell as the two men who had attacked Turner. Witnesses said Wallace and Sivell told them that Turner was an escaped murderer and they were officers taking him into custody.

Sivell was identified by the tag on his car. Investigators traced Turner as the likely victim by his truck registration. He had bought the new pickup at LaGrange Motor Co.

Turner's body wasn't seen again until Wallace had two black tenant farmers haul the body out of a 20-foot, 6-inch well on his farm.

Editor's note: This is the second in a five-part series about one of the most famous murder trials in Georgia history. Fifty years ago this week, wealthy dairy farmer John W. Wallace went to trial for the murder of William Turner, a former tenant farmer.

Copyright (c) 1998 Columbus Ledger-Enquirer

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