Valley Times-News, The (Lanett, AL)



Valley Times-News, The (Lanett, AL)

January 30, 2006 | | |

Past Times

Mayhaley's eyes

Author: RON WILLIAMS; Staff Writer

Crawfishes eyes are in their tail, and mine is in my head, said Miss Mayhayley Lancaster.

The day was June 14, 1948. The courthouse in Newnan, Georgia, was full and every ear was bent to hear the fiery exchange between Heard County’s famous psychic and John Wallace’s defense representatives, Solicitor Luther Wyatt and A.L. Henson.

Wallace, who claimed to the end that the shooting-death was an accident, later went to Georgia’s electric chair for the murder of farm-hand Wilson Turner.

The case gained national attention and will forever be remembered as the “Murder in Coweta County,” made famous by Margaret Ann Barnes’ book and the made-for-TV movie starring Andy Griffith as Wallace.

Mayhayley Lancaster’s “eyes” were called into question during the trial because she could “see” things that most of us couldn’t, and Mayhayley only had one good eye.

Mayhayley could help you “find” lost things: jewelry, cattle, even husbands. She was known far and wide for her fortune telling abilities and she referred to herself as the “Oracle of the ages.”

Mayhayley had been born “under a veil,” a thin membrane of skin covering the face of a newborn infant, and according to local lore, this event gives the baby “second sight” or “presentiment,” as some call it. This gift made Mayhayley a wealthy woman.

However, you could not tell by looking at her that she “had money,” as we say.

A World War I cap was perched atop her scraggly hair and ooze ran from her bad eye. A gnarled hand gripped a walking stick and curse words flew from her mouth.

Chickens pecked about near the door of the aging Lancaster family home and hungry dogs lay here and there. Bales of cotton were not stored; they were left to rot in the yard, and buried in that Georgia red clay, hidden in those dilapidated outhouses, horded in the cabin walls was the fortune that Mayhayley had made “finding things.”

“A dollar and a dime,” she would charge. “A dollar for me and ten cents for my dogs.”

Many people of Chambers County and the surrounding area had a special interest in the Wilson Turner murder case. Most had made their way down the dusty dirt roads of Heard County to see Mayhayley and have their fortunes told. Many a story on a summer front porch or around the table after supper at night had revolved around her, and some even remembered when John Wallace was just a boy growing up in Chambers County.

Wallace had strong family ties in the area. His ancestors were pioneers in Cusseta and as a boy he lived below Fairfax and attended school at the one-room schoolhouse in the Hopewell Community.

Later, the family lived in the Langdale mill village before moving to Meriwether County to live near his mother’s people, the Stricklands, after the death of his father.

Wallace trusted Mayhayley. He considered her a friend. Little did he realize that, as Dot Moore confirmed in her book, “Oracle of the Ages,” Mayhayley was a police informant. The law made many trips to Mayhayley’s ramshackle home to see what she could tell them, and she felt it her law-abiding duty to pass on any information.

So, at the trial, when Wallace saw Mayhayley enter the room he must have felt a sense of relief. His friend was there for moral support. Little did he realize that she was there to tell all that she had “seen,” and we are not talking about the one good eye.

On the witness stand Mayhayley related that Wallace had visited her three times. Two times he wanted to know the whereabouts of some cows that he felt had been stolen. Mayhayley related that a man named “Turner” had stolen them.

Wallace threatened Turner’s life in front of Mayhayley, and on his third visit Wallace had a single question — “Would Turner’s body ever be found?”

Yes, Mayhayley confided. It was in a well with green flies all around and a handful of nails. She also “saw” that the body would be moved on horseback and cast in water.

All of the information that she provided was later proven, prompting many Heard Countians to believe that Mayhayley’s “eyes” worked faster than the police and their forensic evidence.

Nevertheless, Wallace’s defense team was bound to discredit Mayhayley and all that she had “seen.” The banter back and forth about Mayhayley’s eyes was comical and it seems that she was getting agitated. However, the lawyers never got the best of her.

“Well, you knew what was going to happen?” sneered Lawyer Henson to Mayhayley near the end of the questioning. “You can tell what is going to happen in the future, can’t you?”

`“You ought to get me to tell you sometime and see how you come out,” Mayhayley replied.

“Well, could you do it?” asked Henson.

“I might.”

“Well,” ordered Henson, “I want to know could you tell me what is going to happen in the future to me?”

“You might get what Turner got,” came the quick reply, and the witness was promptly excused from the stand.

Two years later, according to “Oracle of the Ages,” MayHayley learned that Wallace had been electrocuted on November 3, 1950. The funeral would be in Pine Mountain.

“Well, he’ll surely not come to my funeral,” Mayhayley said, and she wasn’t about to go to his.

Ron Williams’ column on local history appears each Monday in The Valley Times-News.

Copyright 2006, Valley Times-News, The (Lanett, AL), All rights reserved.

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