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Season Five Home for the Holidays 21
51 Plays1 hour ago
In Today’s Episode, we put together our Home for the Holiday cases.
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Sources:
Various News Sources Mentioned by Name
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Transcript
Introduction and Episode Context
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
00:00:22
Speaker
This is True Crime XS.
00:00:29
Speaker
Well, now we're like on the back, back end of all of this, kind of winding things down. It feels strange when we do that, cause we record so many of these in a row. And then as we wind down, it means we're getting closer and closer to Christmas Eve and Christmas day. And there's like some of these cases, there's just no way for them to be like, I guess, happy holidays cases, except from the perspective of, you know,
00:00:59
Speaker
some of these people got to go home. Yeah, i I'm definitely not trying to sell this as a holiday cheer. That's not really the point. That would be an awful way to do it, right?
The Groveland Case: Initial Events
00:01:13
Speaker
Yeah. now This is more of an informative binge of true crime stories. You probably won't find anywhere else.
00:01:24
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I don't know if anybody's covered this one or not. This is one of those cases that when I look at it, like there's so many people involved that it actually, it ends up making me pretty angry. The case itself is really old. It's from 1949 and it's from what I would describe as like a completely different time. Even reading some of the elements that I recognize as modern elements, it feels like you've entered a time capsule and you're reading something. I hope it would be impossible today. I think it would be. I do believe it would be impossible today. I feel like this is a, I feel like this is almost, it should have been almost impossible then. It was just such a bizarre situation.
00:02:13
Speaker
I say that, but i I happen to know there's another similar story, but and it was few and far between, but this is egregious. I would say egregious is the right word. I definitely, reading this one, I had a really hard time like wrapping my head around this case. One of the things about this case is it's from 1949, so like right up front there's a lot going on that from my perspective I've never truly been able to wrap my head around like what were people thinking. We have four mean people here and they're accused of something pretty egregious. The first person we have is a guy named Charles Greenlee. He was born in Florida in June of 1933. He is the son of Thomas and Emma Greenlee
00:02:59
Speaker
who were born in Georgia and Alabama respectively. If you go and read about this case, there's a a lot of summaries about it, even though it's that far back in time. They had ah moved around Florida, when he meaning his family, when he was very young.
00:03:18
Speaker
um His father had ah worked as a laborer. He had worked in manufacturing of... I've read one place that he worked in a paint factory and another place specified that it was a turpentine factory. Most of the sources for this that you'll find online are actually court documents and this flurry of articles between twenty twenty and twenty twenty four the bbc they talk about all of these guys there's a book out there by guiding gilbert king for those of you who don't know who gilbert king is he has a
00:03:50
Speaker
Absolutely fascinating podcast. If you want to go down sort of a different rabbit hole called bone Valley, he did a lot of good in that case very recently, but he wrote a book and it was released in 2012 called devil in the Grove. And it is about the the story that we're talking about today. There's no specific sources for this. There's a, there's no specific sources for this. There's a really well made Wikipedia page for this that you can find out there. It's one of those cases that we hear a lot about in the field really distant. This is not even a hundred years ago that this is happening. So picking up with Charles Greenlee, he's got four siblings. We've seen records based on like what the court presents about Charles and his family, that all of the his siblings in the forties were in school. So Charles would have been around 12 years old and he had four other siblings in
00:04:39
Speaker
In 1949, he came to an area called Groveland. He was looking for work. He was married, just about to turn 26 years old when he moves. His wife was pregnant at the time. We have another young man with him named Walter Ervin. He's born in 1927. He's about six years older than Charles Greenlee. He was living in Groveland, and we know this, not just based on the court records, but we know that he had a draft record and in Groveland in May of 1945, so a couple of years before the incidents we're going to talk about.
Segregation and Sheriff McCall's Influence
00:05:10
Speaker
He listed his mother, Ella, um or Ellia, depending on which document you read as his next of kin.
00:05:18
Speaker
and he was working at the time in App Shower Grove. He's a little guy. According to 1945 records, he would have been 18 years old. He was five feet three inches tall and 105 pounds. His registration describes him as being a lighter brown with brown eyes and black hair. That's his draft registration that we're talking about.
00:05:37
Speaker
He did serve in the United States Army as a private. The third person that we're bringing in today was born around the same time that Walter Urban was. His name is Samuel Shepherd. He had been born up in Georgia and his family had moved south down to Groveland, Florida. His dad worked in the lumber industry and in the timber industry. His dad ended up clearing and developing some former swampland around Groveland and he owned his own farm. Now, we also have a draft card for Sam Shepard. He is registered as 5'8", 149 pounds, also light brown with brown eyes and black hair, and that's a 1945 registration as well when he turned 18 years old. This is like the old version of what's known as a Selective Service card. His dad Henry is his next account on his card.
00:06:22
Speaker
Now, Shepard and Ervin, so Walter and Sam, they knew each other. They both were veterans and they stayed friends after World War II. Now, Ernest Thompson is the fourth of our bunch. We don't know as much about him. We do you know he was married and that he lived and worked near Groveland. And we know that he knew Charles Greenlee. He had encouraged the Charles to come to Groveland because in Groveland, they could work the citrus groves to make money. Now,
00:06:52
Speaker
When Samuel and Walter get out of the military and they go back home, they would wear their uniforms around. They were very proud of being veterans, and some of the people in the area didn't care for it. The sheriff at the time was a guy named Willis McCall. He was known for supporting continued segregation, meaning white people are here and they use these things.
00:07:16
Speaker
and black people are here and they use these things and the services are all separated. He was sort of a law and order sheriff, but he was also ah heavily racist. He did not care for union organizing in his area, and he wanted his town and county to continue to survive on the idea of, you know, they're going to work in these Florida Citrus Groves forever. He became a little bit corrupt from the perspective of almost organized crime because he would use different ways to get inmates involved in manning the orange groves when he could. Now, Samuel Shepard, he worked with his dad on his farm. Walter Ervin, as you know a vet living in Groveland, he was determined to find a way out of ah these orange groves.
00:08:04
Speaker
Now we have a very small summary of the events surrounding this before we get into the crime and what happened. So I'm just going to run with them. If you have questions, let me know. So we have Ernest Charles, who by all accounts is 16 years old, Samuel, who's 22 at the time, and Walter, who's 22 at the time. They're in this area and there is an attack on a woman. It's a white woman.
00:08:31
Speaker
And that becomes a really big deal for Grofflin. According to what we've been told, ah and I'm not using her name. She is mentioned elsewhere. If you guys want to go find it, that's totally fine. She basically says that she was assaulted, raped by four black men. If you read the court documents on this, they're very brief. I couldn't tell you what the evidence is. I can tell you what is said in sort of the appellate documents, but again, they point out that they're not clear on the record because the transcripts are mostly um incomplete. In July of 1949, these four men are accused of not only raping this white woman, but beating her husband almost to death. This is Lake County, Florida. So, Ernest Thomas is described as the oldest. Allegedly, he was trying to get away from being captured, and and by all accounts,
00:09:24
Speaker
Even though he is married, living here, working here, has established his home here, he is alleged to have fled. And the way that's told to us is Charles Greenlee is working here. He had come in from Gainesville. He is friends with Ernest thomas Thomas, which is weird because Ernest is the oldest, Charles is the youngest. But Ernest had convinced Charles that there would be a lot of work here. Charles is waiting at a rail depot and Thomas picks him up. Charles is immediately arrested and brought to the police station under suspicion of having had something to do with this rape and this beating of his wife and husband. So Charles is literally thrown into a cell. He is interrogated throughout the night. He is beaten.
00:10:05
Speaker
until he gives a level of confession to the rape of this white woman. Ernest Thomas is wanted to be brought in, but he escapes the area. From the accounts by the sheriff, he had fled Lake County, and according to Charles' story that he tells the sheriff, he had been with Ernest.
00:10:24
Speaker
Police learn where he lives, they figure out over time where he's hiding, and they find a letter in his letterbox that is addressed to his wife. Willis McCall, he appoints a posse of more than a thousand armed men. They go 200 miles away to Madison County, Florida. They find Ernest in the swamp and they chase him. And I'm going to say this, I don't have a way to verify it. I have a way that has been repeated over the years, kind of like a game of telephone. But it is reported that Ernest is shot 400 times and dies of those wounds. The officers write up reports and they say that Ernest was armed and he was reaching for a weapon. According to a coroner's inquest in Madison County, Florida, Lake County Sheriff McCall was at the scene when Thomas died. The coroner's jury determined that Thomas's death was lawful and they ruled his death a justifiable homicide. I don't know how you want to um how you feel about that one. 400 times.
Trials and Legal Battles
00:11:22
Speaker
It's ridiculous. It's not justifiable. I mean, I don't see how any of anything was left. Yeah. So in order to understand this whole story, we have to talk about Willis McCall. So Willis Virgin McCall, he's born July 21st of 1909. His early life is largely unknown, but it is known that he mainly lived in Lake County, Florida.
00:11:46
Speaker
And he was a son of a dirt farmer that's the early days that we have everything that you read about him online he's kind of this larger than life character if you pick up a career summary of him it basically says that he was first elected a sheriff of lake county in nineteen forty four and he defeated a guy named a meal eat.
00:12:05
Speaker
Now, Emil was an interesting guy because he was a professional baseball player. He he was specifically ah a pitcher, a left-handed pitcher that had played for the Pittsburgh Pirates and he had played for the Detroit Tigers.
00:12:20
Speaker
He had led the National League in shutouts on a couple of occasions. So the two of them are for some reason up against each other and the Democratic Party primary in 1944. And I'll just say that the Democratic Party, even in Florida in 1944, is a very different Democratic Party than it was today. And you'll understand this. I keep talking until 1972.
00:12:45
Speaker
Willis McCall just keeps being reelected as sheriff. I say all of that to say that the Groveman four incident that takes place in 1949, it happens very early in Willis McCall's quote, career. If you read a physical description of him, he's well over six feet tall and more than 200 pounds. He's a big dude. He wore a big white felt hat.
00:13:14
Speaker
a black ah bolo tie, and he had polished boots. He won't be defeated until a guy named Guy Bliss runs for sheriff in 1972. Now, under his story, people tell this whole groveling for a little bit different for years.
00:13:31
Speaker
This is a Democratic sheriff throwing that out there. July 16, 1949, a 17-year-old married white woman in Groveland, Florida said she'd been raped by four young black men and her husband had been beaten, and this is the Willis-McCall version. The next day, 16-year-old Charles Greenlee, Sam Shepard, and Walter Ervin were arrested in jail pending trial. They talk about the fact that Shepard and Ervin were Army veterans and that Sheriff McCall was out of state at the time, but he returned the next day.
00:13:59
Speaker
This case immediately made the newspapers, which was very rare in 1949. It gets national attention. And Willis McCall, after this case, will never leave the headlines of this area and is frequently getting national news coverage. We just talked about the fact Ernest Thomas had fled the county. He was avoiding arrest by the sheriff and the posse had killed them up in Lake County. As word spread about what had happened to this 17-year-old girl, an angry crowd of white folk gather at the county jail in what is known as Tavares. It's the county seat of Lake County, Florida. These people, we don't know exactly how many are in the crowd, but it's quite a few people.
00:14:41
Speaker
They demanded that Willis McCall turn the suspects over to them and they'll take care of them. To Willis McCall's credit, which I don't give him a lot of credit, but I'll say a little credit, he had taken both Samuel Shepard and Walter Irvin, and he had stashed him in the basement of his home. He transferred them to a secluded cell in Rayford State Prison for what he described as their safety. So the mob headed down to Groveland, and they started rioting trying to find the suspect's families. By the third day, Willis McCall and multiple prominent businessmen from the area, they tell all the people in town,
00:15:25
Speaker
If they're black, they should leave. And most of them leave. At this point in time, McCall, Sheriff McCall, he calls the Florida governor and says he's going to need the National Guard. By the time National Guard troops arrive in the Groveland area, Samuel Shepard's house had already been burned to the ground among multiple other buildings. Willis McCall hands everything over to an attorney who is acting as a district attorney for the county.
00:15:55
Speaker
He gets a grand jury to indict these three remaining rape suspects because Ernest Thomas is dead. So reading in all of this, we don't have a really good point of view of what happened to the trial until it's looked at almost 60 years later.
00:16:14
Speaker
So everything I'm about to say, take it with a shaker of salt. During an FBI investigation, Samuel Shepard and Charles Greenlee, they tell the agents that deputies had beat them until they confessed to this crime. Later on though, the US attorney for the area, Herbert Phillips, he will not return indictments against the sheriff's deputies. They named them though. One of them is named James Yates and another one is named Leroy Campbell. Willis McCall becomes one of the big problems by going to the press and telling them before the trial that two of the men have confessed. So this is reported and this is highlighted and this is talked about on the front page of the newspapers above the fold. They put all three of them on trial separately.
00:16:56
Speaker
and their all-white juries quickly convict each of them. The judge, who is overseeing these trials, he sentences Samuel Shepard and Walter Ervin to death. Because Greenlee was 16, means he's still a minor, he has sentenced to life in prison. It'll take two years, but in 1951, the U.S. Supreme Court is going to overturn Shepard and Ervin's convictions.
00:17:20
Speaker
on the grounds that the black residents of the area had been improperly excluded from serving on the jury. Now, keep in mind, the state constitution at the time would still be under what was known as Jim Crow laws. So it's a discriminatory practice in general, but they were not allowed to vote. And if you couldn't vote, you couldn't sit on a jury.
00:17:42
Speaker
Supreme Court says no to that. In November of 1951, Willis McCall is transporting Samuel Shepard and Walter Ervin. He's supposed to bring them from Rayford State Prison to the county seat, to Vars, to the Lake County Jail for a retrial. He pulls off a country road. He claims that he had tire trouble. Now, in his sworn deposition, he says that Samuel Shepard and Charles Ervin attacked him in an escape attempt. He shot them both in self-defense while backing away from them. But Samuel Shepard and Walter Ervin are handcuffed together during the entire incident. Samuel Shepard is killed on the spot. Ervin was shot three times, but he survives. During this incident, Deputy James Yates, he arrives and according to Walter Ervin, he stood over him and he shot him again while he was wounded.
00:18:35
Speaker
Ambulances arrive to the scene and they take Willis McCall and Walter Ervin to Waterman Hospital in nearby Eustace. Willis McCall is treated for a concussion and facial injuries. Walter Ervin is treated for his gunshot wounds. At the hospital, Walter Ervin meets with lawyers from the NAACP and later on he tells the press that Willis McCall shot him in Shepherd without provocation and so did James Yates. Now For Gilbert King's part, he reports that he looked through the unredacted FBI files on the case, and in the book that he wrote, he said that the FBI had located a bullet in the soil directly below the blood stain where Walter Ervin had lain wounded, and it supported Walter Ervin's claims that Yates fired at him while standing over at him looking down.
00:19:31
Speaker
A Lake County Corners inquest concluded that Willis McCall had acted in the line of his duty and a a judge named Truman Futch, he ruled that he saw no need to impanel a grand jury related to this incident where Samuel Shepard lost his life and Walter Ervin was shot and almost lost his. After Walter recovers from shooting, his retrial is moved out of Lake County to the north up to Marion County.
00:20:01
Speaker
So his retrial starts in November of 1952. He's offered a plea bargain. Walter Irvin says he can't plead guilty because he's innocent. The jury again finds Walter Irvin guilty. And again, the judge sentenced him to death. Now, the case is appealed. The conviction is upheld by the Florida courts and then eventually the Florida Supreme Court. And in early 1954,
00:20:29
Speaker
The United States Supreme Court declined to hear his case. Petitions are filed on behalf of Walter Ervin with the governor for clemency. The newly elected governor at the time is a man named Leroy Collins. Leroy Collins in 1955, he commutes Walter Ervin's sentence to life in prison.
00:20:52
Speaker
He says he does not believe that the state established guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. So we've been talking about Samuel Shepard. We've been talking about Walter Irwin. Ernest Thomas was dead. Charles Greenlee, he never appealed his case. In 1962, he's paroled. In 1968, Walter Irwin is finally paroled.
00:21:16
Speaker
Walter Ervin, in 1969, he goes down to visit Lake County, Florida. He dies while he's there. Charles Greenlee, just to contrast, he takes his wife and his daughter and they move to Tennessee. He has a son with his wife. He lives there until 2012.
Racial Discrimination in Jury Selection
00:21:33
Speaker
You were talking about the all-white juries were very commonplace during the Jim Crow era, right? Yeah. Because basically black people were just not allowed to sit. They would just be excused, right? If they were even able to be called. Most of them weren't called, yeah.
00:21:52
Speaker
as the civil rights movement was happening, I was going to see. I think I don't know exactly when this would have happened. But the reason that up until 2020, Louisiana and Oregon allowed for non-unanimous verdicts that resulted in convictions was specifically to allow for a couple of black jurors to sit on the jury and the jury overall to still get a conviction.
00:22:29
Speaker
Somehow, I did not know that. Well, I didn't either. And that's why I wanted to share it because I know that there's been, you know, obviously, most states require a unanimous verdict, right? Correct. If you can't come to a unanimous verdict, there's a mistrial and it has to be retried or, there you know, it basically starts over again. It's not like they just get let go because they couldn't come to a decision.
00:22:57
Speaker
that was a way that they got around, like, the thought process was, and I do not think this way, this is just the way that they thought then, you know, if a black person was on a jury, they would let a guilty black person go. And so they're like, we can put a couple on the jury. And when they vote not guilty, it just doesn't count. And they upheld that all the way until, let's see, it was,
00:23:22
Speaker
Uh, Ramos versus Louisiana in 2020, I believe that basically was like, okay, this has got to stop, right? Because it's ridiculous. But I thought that was really understanding. I was aware that there were states that did that. I had no idea why. Well, that that is an interesting factor. I pulled, because the there's more to the Groveland case, there's not a lot more, but I pulled together some stuff. It is summarized, if you can find it pretty easily. I would say that Gilbert's book is the best place to go if you're looking for a deep dive on this. there were a couple of things I pulled about Willis McCall that in my opinion are kind of linked to all of this and kind of the behavior of the time. The Ramos ruling is interesting. I had always wondered that it's one of those things when you talk about the non-unanimous votes, particularly for Gil, but like at some point in time that that that also apply to the death penalty or no. There is something like that. Actually, I think it still applies to the death penalty. I think that without a unanimous finding for death in a capital case, it has to be life in prison and if they go that route.
00:24:29
Speaker
Those are some of those interesting facts that as we do with these cases, you know, I know this is home for the holidays series. It's a little different. It's not as deep a dive as we normally do. I will hear those things and I'll make a note of it in my phone to look those things up. I found a note recently where I guess ah maybe in the course of this or something else we were talking about, I had found something that was like what juries don't have to be unanimous.
00:24:53
Speaker
Because and like I never remember to look some of these little tidbits up because at this point in time, does everybody have to be unanimous though? The idea behind Ramos versus Louisiana was the Supreme Court was saying like it doesn't satisfy the trial by jury to allow for somebody to be found guilty when the verdict is not unanimous. it implies the whole point of a jury trial is to to take every single person's finding into consideration, right? yeah And so by negating the unanimous part, you know, in some cases it was like, as many as two, some I think were perhaps majority rules. It's so interesting, and you're right, it's hard to look into something like that when it comes up in a case where there's already so many other things going on, right? Like in this case.
00:25:51
Speaker
And it's just this little tidbit of information that what sparked my memory was the fact that these three young black men were all tried by an all white jury. Yeah, that's always fascinating to me. And that's what, now this was in 1949. Right.
00:26:09
Speaker
So that seems a little more right. Like some of the cases that I hear about like in like, you know, 80s, where there's like an all white jury and it's on purpose, it's e strange to me, but 1949, it seems like that would be about right.
00:26:26
Speaker
Now, I wasn't sure exactly, I haven't really got there yet, but what do you think about this case? We've got basically one of the alleged perpetrators being killed by like over 400
McCall's Actions and Racial Crimes
00:26:41
Speaker
gunshot. We've got three. Now, my understanding, and again, haven't done a deep dive on this, and it's not really completely clear based on sort of the history. It's gotten muddled quite a bit. But my understanding was this was almost like a confession. Like who's your friend that doesn't quite do it? Who's your other friend? Yeah. it it Like you weren't here. So like we need somebody that was here that you know. And like, yeah, it is one of those situations. They have technically like one more in the group here than your normal, like the three guys. Here's my take on a lot of these crimes. I'm not saying that no group of black men never assaulted white women, whatever. These crimes fall into multiple categories and that's why I don't typically name the victims in these crimes because I never knew unless I really dig in. So one of those categories is it's bullshit and that means they just made the story up for whatever reason they wanted some attention. I don't know.
00:27:40
Speaker
Actually, do you know what the the side story to this is? I don't. Do you? Yeah, I do. I can tell you. Oh, tell well tell me the side story on this one and I'll give you my thoughts. Okay, so the side story is, and what I mean by that is like the what really happened story. So the victim, but so the allegations were that the 17 year old girl was raped and her husband was beaten very badly. What supposedly actually happened was the husband had hit
00:28:13
Speaker
the wife and there was no firm evidence that the husband actually had been beaten. There's evidence that a doctor examined the wife and said he couldn't really tell if she'd been raped or not. It came to the attention of the wife's parents that she had been physically, uh, well, I mean, she'd been hit by her husband, right? Okay. Or she'd been assaulted by her husband. And they made this up to keep the dad from killing the husband, basically. That's what I was going to go with in terms of how these cases tend to turn out. It's either they made it up, they covered something else up with it.
00:28:59
Speaker
or they did something themselves that they then had to cover up. So I guess the cover up could go a number of ways, like someone close to them did it, they did it themselves, or like ah ah a stranger or someone they didn't want to like get into it with. But it's very rare that we actually have during this time, this type of attack. We have a lot of accusations like this. So it does happen that groups of people of one race, assault a softer person of another race, But they're much rarer than people would think if you read an American history book. Right. And so in this case, the story was that their car had broken down. And the the husband and wife's car had broken down. And the guys came along, all four of these guys together, and were going to help with the car. And for whatever reason, they didn't do that. They beat the husband badly, and they took the wife.
00:29:55
Speaker
right And then after the assault, she got a ride from somebody else, right right? And this person, I believe it was a man, and I don't know his name, but she got a ride somewhere else. And she never said a word about being raped. She was not upset. There was no indication that she had been, had had anything happen to her when she got this ride.
00:30:23
Speaker
there were a lot of flags raised. And so, especially, okay, so as much as a sheriff is a law enforcement position, it is an elected position, I think, in Florida. It's heavily political. Yeah, yeah, it's definitely. It's very political. Okay, and so here you've got a situation where, you know, the Deep South in 1949,
00:30:49
Speaker
and a sheriff who who is going to be a career sheriff, if if at all possible. he could not he I don't even know how to put it like, cause I don't want to give excuses, but like there was no stopping the mob, the lynch mob mentality. There was a lot of deep seated, just hatred. And to hear a black male had attacked a white female. It just got their redneck racism all up in a, in a knot. And that's all it was, and it was vicious, and the mob mentality really, I mean, it took off. And because that was happening, I mean, it seems pretty obvious that the sheriff, he knew it was out of control.
00:31:40
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Allegedly, it was the wife was kidnapped and assaulted and the husband was beaten. And so those I think it got out of hand even for them, because I believe that 16 year old Charles Greenlee, I believe that he was the initial one. Correct.
00:32:02
Speaker
that came in and he like was coerced and bullied into giving like a confession yeah that wasn't true, but he what he had no choice, right? Just like how it turns out that, you know, there was a lynch mob waiting. He he had no choice and so I think that it really escalated out of control when they got this young man who, even though he was young, he was already married. And he, I think his wife was pregnant when this happened. But so you've got a situation where instead of getting her husband in trouble, if this is the way it goes, she tells her parents that she was attacked. And then she was attacked by a black guy. And then she was attacked by four black men. And so they get one guy in and they got to come up with three others, right? Yep. It got out of hand so quickly that the sheriff couldn't even do anything about it. Yeah, it took a week for the National Guard to get everything under control. People took this opportunity to just rage. Yes.
00:33:09
Speaker
um And they went just absolutely crazy. And under their circumstance, I don't think that it, I don't think the intention was to get these four guys in trouble. I think that this young girl didn't want her her dad to kill her kill her husband. yeah right And I feel like she never she never would have done it if she had known what was going to happen. I don't think the gravity of the situation, you know, because the thought process is, I think, you know, you're just your objective is to keep your husband out of trouble with your father. like And Like, why on earth would they be able to get a 16-year-old kid in there that confesses to this crime that you'd made up? Well, we've talked about a couple of those, this series. I actually, this morning, I was standing talking to a 16-year-old who was part of this, ah like, I went to somebody's graduation ceremony for something, and one of the people that was graduating had, like, multiple children. I was just asking,
00:34:19
Speaker
the oldest one might say, how old are you? Because I didn't have a good register. And I was shocked that he was 16. And I it like suddenly hit me how young and small 16 is. And to think about these this kid being beaten by like grown men and a lot of them.
00:34:39
Speaker
A lot of grown men, like at least four grown men are involved, like early on in this, that I was looking at it and I was like, oh my God. Like that is absolutely shocking to me. This case had a lot of repercussions and then we'll kind of come back to Groveland 4. I think a lot of cases you would find in certain places, a lot of these crimes were not what they looked like on the surface. We're we're highlighting this case because there is ultimately an exoneration in it. There is a Christmas story here, but it's not a good one.
00:35:09
Speaker
you are We did cover that.
Harry Moore's Tragic Fight for Justice
00:35:11
Speaker
yeah I was just going to mention it again because yeah sure because I think it needs to like loop back around so people understand. When we talked about this other case a couple of years ago. I think it was the first year we did Christmas, I think. Yeah, that sounds right. um Tying all this back together for a minute. so With Walter Ervin, the NAACP gets involved.
00:35:34
Speaker
And they're convinced from the time these guys are convicted and all this nonsense is happening, they're convinced that like this case is bunk. And like they preserve things that today tell us this case is bunk. And that's how Meg's able to tell you the side story on this. When we look back at it, one of the people that was involved was a guy named Harry Moore, who at the time he was the executive director of the Florida NAACP.
00:35:59
Speaker
And he organized a campaign to get to the bottom of what had happened to these three guys and to the gentleman who was dead. yeah Unfortunately, you have to focus your resources on the living who have been wrongfully convicted. And it's very difficult to deal with the other fourth part of the tragedy. But I bring all this up because For those of you who haven't connected the dots yet what will small is involved there so the appeals are pursued based on the diamond the resources to the dime and the time basically the money and the and the time of the NAACP in april nineteen fifty one the whole reason this
00:36:35
Speaker
wrongful conviction is recognized and ends up moving back for a new trial is because Harry Moore, he puts a team together that includes Thurgood Marshall, who is like a legal legend, literally. And we have this new trial that's about to happen with what we were just describing. Harry Moore took umbrage with the fact that Sheriff McCall has this shooting occur with Shepherd and Irvin being ah wounded, Shepard dying, and Harry Moore says that it is time to suspend Willis-McCall from office and indict him. And he gets the FBI and the federal government involved trying to do something. He even gets Fuller Warren, the Florida governor at the time. He's trying to get him to kick Willis-McCall out of office. It's very difficult to get rid of a sheriff that you have.
00:37:28
Speaker
so He does all of this, and the transport that we were just talking about where this happens, and Ervin is able to talk about all of this, happens in November 1951.
00:37:41
Speaker
Six weeks later, Christmas night, 1951, it is the 25th wedding anniversary for Harry and his wife Harriet, and a bomb goes off beneath their house in Mims, Florida. They die. So Harry dies on the way to the hospital. They had trouble getting him to a hospital. They had to go 30-some miles away. I think they had to go to Sanford to find a hospital that would serve African American people. His wife dies two weeks later. He is considered to be one of the first martyrs in the civil rights movement. He was definitely the first NAACP official who was assassinated by a bomb in the civil rights struggle. They were killed and it is a huge deal no matter what color you are or what you believe today. The state of Florida called in the FBI to lead the investigation. The case has never been solved and no one's ever been prosecuted.
00:38:31
Speaker
The FBI chased all these rabbit holes about it having been the Ku Klux Klan or other racist organizations at the time that had committed the bombing. They identified a bunch of suspects, but they were never able to put together enough of a case to bring charges. They did indict a bunch of Klansmen locally, which is people get the idea that that case was solved, that bombing of Harriet and Harry Moore was like was solved. It wasn't. They indicted them because they had lied about other things they had done.
00:38:58
Speaker
They were hoping that they could bring them in and they would tell the truth. But it like, honestly, most of them didn't crack. Nobody was there to really testify the way that they thought it was going to go. And so they end up having to dismiss even those indictments for different levels of lying to a federal agent and perjury.
00:39:19
Speaker
They close the investigation in nineteen fifty three it's been reopened i think it's been been reopened five times i think online i read somebody say it was three times but i'm pretty sure if you look at the history of the case has been reopened five times it comes up in some of the other material that we've been talking about with this case.
00:39:37
Speaker
Ultimately, there's no evidence, but in October 2006, uh, Florida attorney general, a guy named ah Charlie Christ, he had reopened it at one point. and He claimed that it was solved. He said that it was these four Klansmen. It didn't seem very likely that it was them, but I'll say this. Willis McCall has never been cleared of his possible involvement in that. And he would have been, if you take like, if you take like the big overbearing organizations out of this because wrapping your head around the concept of the Ku Klux Klan versus the NAACP in 1950s America is a very difficult thing to do. If you remove that, Harry Moore was seeing what was happening to Irvin and then had already seen what had happened to Shepard. And he had already seen that like something was wrong with the sheriff.
00:40:36
Speaker
And no matter how you look at this, no matter how you feel about this, there's other evidence that the sheriff did other things like this later in his career. and he got away with it. It is very, very, very likely that a simple motive like that guy who's a black guy is trying to get me, Sheriff of my county out of office. He's contacted the governor. He's drug the FBI into this investigation that I'm closing. And at some point in time, you have to say to yourself,
00:41:10
Speaker
Either Willis McCall just has no concept of law enforcement whatsoever and shouldn't be in office and should have been removed because he can't see that this 17 year old girl has told a lie to keep her 20 year old husband from being killed by her father.
Posthumous Pardon and Ongoing Struggles
00:41:26
Speaker
Or he is such a terrible person that like he is trying to eradicate people for these crimes that they are made up that he can't see them.
00:41:38
Speaker
I actually think it got out of hand. I think that the sheriff, I was saying the mob mentality took over and he really couldn't do anything, but he did take, after Thomas was killed, he did take them and hide them from the lynch mob. Yes, he did.
00:41:59
Speaker
Okay, and so and that that's why I like brought up that you know a Sheriff's Office is very political. I think that he like didn't know what to do when he was trying to... like I think he he knew the case was dumb right yeah and untrue, and it got way too serious, way too fast.
00:42:19
Speaker
as easy as it was for them to, you know, without anything except coercion and probably physical beating encouragement, which is just bullying, you know, get four black young men indicted and and blamed for this crime. I feel like it would have been like career suicide for him to stand up for them and say, well, no, they didn't do this and she's lying. Well. But the other part where when Erwin and Shepard, Shepard was killed and Erwin survived, right? Right. I'm sure they were not trying to escape.
00:43:04
Speaker
Oh, yeah, no, they weren't trying to escape. I mean, even if they were, they're not wrong. I don't think they were trying to. Right. And when I was thinking about it, I was like, I saw that as like like a mercy killing because of the warped way that they were thinking back then. may It could have been that, but that still doesn't negate the fact that he's still a terrible sheriff.
00:43:33
Speaker
It's not, oh yeah, no, he was awful. Yeah, he was awful. But um I think that he had a lot of minions and I think that minions were... I thought about that too. Like the minions being out of control could have been half his problem because if they go down, he goes down and he has to cover up for the nonsense they're doing.
00:43:51
Speaker
or at least not like directly call it out, which makes them think they're powerful, right? yeah And so I imagine you could probably, you know, throw a stone and hit somebody that was involved in the bombing that happened. I mean, I don't think that that it was, I think a lot of people knew And I think it was specifically because it was the executive director of these of a black organization that wants black people to be considered equal to white people is trying to get the sheriff out of office. Right.
00:44:26
Speaker
And I feel like that could have been construed a lot of ways. And I have absolutely no doubt that's why a bomb ended up being planted in their house, right? Now, who did it? Well, who knows? But there's no question. change That's like, so that's the thing that I think made it so difficult. Like, there's say those clan members did it or whatever. Sure, maybe they did. But like, my point is, I feel like The sheriff is probably calling in a favor at that point to keep himself in office now he won't actually be suspended from office till nineteen seventy two when he if you guys like want to go down a rabbit hole for christmas there's a case of a prisoner there called tommy vicars i think the trial transcripts are online but ultimately
00:45:09
Speaker
Willis McCall will be tried for second degree murder in front of an all-white jury in 1973 and he gets found not guilty and he goes right back to being sheriff and until he's finally defeated later that year. but So that's another place that this goes. I mean, okay, so this is how they kind of wrap all this up. So first of all, Gilbert King's book is published in 2012. Charles Greenlee died, but he is the only one. He was the youngest of the group. He's the 16-year-old that gets beat first in this instance. He got to see the book, so I wanted to point that out. In 2016, the Lake County Commission
00:45:48
Speaker
And ah the mayor of groveland tim locks they presented the surviving families of the groveland four with a posthumous apology locks and members of the commission they began while being state lawmakers to do the same. There was a proposal filed which is called scr one thirty six for consideration during. ah the the legislative session of 2016 to clear their names. They passed a resolution but requesting exoneration for the four men and their families in 2017 through the Florida House of Representatives. The Senate passed a similar or identical, I can't remember, resolution that was in but like a week later.
00:46:32
Speaker
But the the call was for Governor Rick Scott at the time to pardon these men. So on January 11th of 2019, the Florida Board of Clemency, they had a new governor, Ron DeSantis, by the time and this rolled around.
00:46:48
Speaker
ah They agreed to pardon the Groveland Four, and DeSantis does have like a nice little speech he gave about it, but he issued four full posthumous pardons. They were not fully exonerated by the state until 2021, and that was through a state's attorney's motion, and a judge granted that motion to fully dismiss the indictments and vacate the convictions in November of 2021.
Conclusion and Acknowledgments
00:47:13
Speaker
It's, this is one of the most disturbing stories I've ever heard. If you if you read about it, you hear other cases like it, this is a case that you should ask questions about. One of the things that we do, we've always done from the very beginning, you and I won't cover something unless we have a question about what we're covering. And you're not really hearing us just tell you a story and read a bunch of shit. Although we do read stuff when we pull stuff and and we talk about all of this, the reason is is because we're trying to answer our own question. And if nobody asks these questions, these cases are forgotten.
00:47:50
Speaker
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00:48:02
Speaker
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00:49:56
Speaker
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00:50:50
Speaker
True Crime XS is brought to you by John and Meg. It's written, produced, edited, and posted by John and Meg. You can always support True Crime Access through patreon.com or if you have a story you'd like them to cover, you can reach them at truecrimeaccess.com. Thank you for joining us.
00:51:24
Speaker
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