Newspapers / Jones County Journal (Trenton, … / Jan. 31, 1952, edition 1 / Page 1
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A BETTER COUNTY THROUGH IMPROVED FARM PRACTICES TRENTON. N. C„ THURSDAY, NUMBER. as Jones Court Has 75 Case Docket Set.for This Term Former Highway Patrol Ser geant Jimmy Merritt pointed out this week in dlap.nwring the near permanent weighing station that has been set up just south of Kinston which he supervises, 'that this effort Is aimed at pre venting penalties to Individuals and punishment to our highways rather than curing the troubles after they have developed. Merritt pointed out that every man who Is able to own a truck should also be able to under stand the simple weight restric tions and the necessity of ob taining the proper license to go with these various weight limits. No truck—no matter how It is licensed, may have more than 18,000 pounds per axle, Merritt says' and this means simply that ~ a man may be heavily penalized by allowing a load to be Im properly distributed on his ve hicle. The total load might be under that permitted by the li cense purchased but placing that load over one or two of the axles on a truck or trailer can easily place the vehicle In a vio lation category. Weight limits are basically aimed at protecting the high ways, Merrit declared but the whi mso in protecting truck penalties Judge Henry A. Grady of New Bern this week is conducting a one week mixed term of Jones County Superior Court and some 75 criminal cases are scheduled tor hearing during the session. The principal items on the agenda are the trial of Colonel XJodbeig Murrell on a man slaughter charge that grew out of an automobile accident death in November. Robert C. Swanke, Robert A. Wzprek and Clarence M. Whit ney, who have already been tried in Craven County for a series of breaking and enterings will also face trial in Jones County on five charges oftuaak tag, entering Drunken d: driving ran a tii in the trial qf each crimi There were law violation, tag and e: support, five game laws, four for assault with a deadly weapon, three for lar ceny, two each for simple as sault, embezzlement, passing worthless checks and assault on a 'female and one each for alienation of affections and ab duction of a minor child. pound penalty. Merritt concluded by pointing out to all track owners that con siderable time can be saved by the truck owner by keeping the registration card for each ve hicle in the vehicle at all times. ststants or any highway patrol man will be happy to give you tills information at any tfme. Weather is Cold Although there Is more than a plenty of political action at the state level only two names have been tossed into the pout-VM arena by men seeking to obtain posts either totally or partially in the hands of Lenoir County voters. United States Represen tative John Kerr of Warrenton has admitted that he will be running In an effort to add two more years to his 29 spent in Washington as spokesman North Carolina’s second gressional district and Turner of Pink Hill has Law School, is a of Lenoir County’s best known families and his grandfather was the last General Assemblyman to sit in the state legislature from the southern end of the county. Turner said in announcing his candidacy that he would “be deeply interested in improving the conditions of our people who live In the county. Having spent my life In the country, I think I know their desires, their hard ships and their needs; and to help them with all proper legis lation^ town, but In every proper way I would try to assist those who live in the county.” No county commissioners, pre reportedly even willing to s flee the $600 per-month disability pension that the General Assembly, forced The pecan is the only nut pro duced commercially in North Carolina. sent or would be; no county school board members, no other purely county officials or would be officials have thrown their fedora's into the ring. It is rated as highly likely that Turner will have opposition, but It Is railed just as likely that Judge "Kf k wlH 'be unopposed. iittle if any optjbsltlon is like nt Lenoir un ^ against ’ »Unty Regisl ' Aldridge IBte coun iO-hoo, Deeds Camil rcompetition in m'mlssion and es are all but a e same is true of Register of Deeds George Nobles, who says he will ee»^t«elf ely since he had opposition. M far there have been no out ard comments from hopefuls in the Sixth North Carolina Sena torial District with embraces Oreene, Lenoir, Jones, Craven, Onslow and Carteret counties. It is likely that Incumbent John Larkins of Trenton will be in this race and it is rumored on the lower Neuse that former Senator Libby Ward of New Bern might covet another official visit in the Capitol City. 'Up from the tidewater land of Carteret County there comes re peated ru'rniors that retired Su perior Court Judge Luther Ham ilton of Morehead City is want at the senate and is sacri ‘ n-s I 3 Telephone Company Is Accelerating Rural Service In This Area E. J. Nobles, manager of the Kinston branch of the Carolina Telephone and Telegraph Com pany. announced Wednesday morning that 36 new telephones would be cut in Wednesday in Lenoir County’s Vance Township and in the southern edge of Greene County. At the same time Nobles said that engineering has been com pleted for the addition of 20 new phones in the Wheat Swamp Section and plans are now on the drawing boards for a rural ex change that will serve up to 120 homes in the Moss Hill Commun ity. Engineering is also completed for the addition of about 20 more phones in the Southwest Com munity and in the near future an additional 15 phones will be available between Kinston and Dover, Nobles said. As to just when these new phones will be available Nobles said that he and no one else could give a close guess due to the labor and matrials situation but he said that it would 'be done as fast as his company could get the necessary men and equip ment for the work. Information has available the names of those who now have phones In the Vance Township showing a great deal of Interest in the use of soli fumigants for control of root-knot in tobacco soils, says County Agent F. J. Koonce, Jr. i i * I^Pliirder Still, Unsolved On Its 5th Anniversary live year* ago today (January 31) Kenneth Taylor, a past middle-age Kinston bakery em ployee, Md good night to the men and women gathered about the warmth at a Tower Hill Road tilling station and started on his way home, a mile and a halt away in Kinston. Taylor’s lifeless body was found the next mom r tag lying in a huge puddle of frozen blood just a few yards from the bank of the Adkin drainage ditch and just outside the Kinston city limits. Today, although one man, Lemuel Parrott, spent six months in the shadow of the state gas chamber awaiting death for the murder of Taylor the crime is still listed on police records as one of the major un solved crimes in recent years in Lenoir County. Taylor, a quiet fellow, who was best known for “minding his own business" left the filling < station, stopped at the brink of the hill just outside the city limits to talk with a restden of that neighborhood who was on bis way home and walked about another three hundred yards to first be bludgeoned in the back of the head, carried into the bushes beside the road and there his throat was cut to such an ex tent that the deep knife wound almost met the point where It had, first begun under: Taylor’s v About a week after the body was found it seemed that the case was completely cleared up when Sam Thompson, a Golds boro youth with a vivid imagina tion, who was under arrest for a Goldsboro burglary, ‘ confess ed” to the part he had played in the murder of Taylor but placed the principal guilt on Lemuel Parrott, a resident of Kinston, who was under arrest with Thompson for the Goldsboro 'breaking and entering. : Thompson .told a convincing 'story of just how Parrott had gone about committing this cold blooded crime for the purpose of robbery. Parrott plead innocent from the beginning and pro tested that he knew nothing of the crime. Parrott was indicted and on Thompson’s testimony ALONE he was convicted and sentenced to die in the lethal gas chamber at the North Carolina Prison in Raleigh. Thompson, becduse of his assistance to the prosecution of Parrott, was permitted to plead guilty to second degree murder and he was given 30 years in prison for his admitted part In the crime. Local law enforcement officers dosed the book on the case and marked it finished. But just as all officials con cerned with the crime were re laxing "on the Taylor murder, Thompson, was in state prison behind the same walls with Par rott, who was, awaiting the day when he would be stripped of all his clothing except shorts and marched into that, morbid, awful little chamber where several potassium cyanide tablets would be dropped into a cup of hydro chloric add and after a few deep gasps the life would deport from his body. Time to meditate on the fate about to be meted out to the man he had singlehandedly placed on Death Row or perhaps knewledge of the extreme length of his own 30 year sentence caused Thompson to write a let ter to Kinston police and ask to be given a chance to tell the “Truth.” Kinston Detective Wheeler Kennedy and Police Secretary Doris Tull went to the “walls” in Raleigh and there Thompson de nied any knowledge of th eTay lor. murder except what he had been able to learn from reading the newspapers while he was in the Wayne County jail in Goldsboro. Thompson said he had gotten mad with Parrott because Par rott had “squealed” on him about the laundry robbery in Goldsboro. He read the papers and saw that the police were getting no where fast and he de cided to fabricate a story and “fix” Parrott for “squealing” on him. He fitted together an excel lent story. Story enough to fool a jury and judge and solicitor but his willingness to place his own neck in a second degree murder rap was more than enough to convince the authori ties that his story was the truth, the whole truth and noth ing but the truth. But Thompson now said he was in Wilkes County on the night of the murder of Ifeylor and what’s more he was able to prove it. He was chased by a patrolman and after wrecking the car managed to escape to visit In North Wllkesboro In the home of peo ple he knew there, j His story of the wild chase | ■ ) with the patrol car was corro borated by the chasing patrol man down to the smallest detail. The people he visited in North Wilkesboro came to Kinston and swore that ve was in their home within three hours of the time that Taylor was murdered in Kinston nearly 550 miles away. Kinston Police Chief George Canady, who had become a member of the SBI after the trial of Parrott, now, along with other members of the SBI, was 1 the peculiar position of hav ing to offer evidence to free a man that had earlier been con victed at least partially through his efforts. The new judge and jury lis tened to Thompson and his new story. Solicitor Abner Barker and private prosecution battered away at the new Thompson story but when the jury return ed they voted to believe Thomp son’s latest story. This time, un like the first time, Thompson had witnesses to corroborate his testimony. Parrott was found not guilty and after more than a year in prison, six months of that time on Death Row in Raleigh’s cold gray prison, he was free to walk the streets—free as any man could be who had walked so closely with death for so long. Thompson, his conscience now relieved, was returned to Raleigh and the 30 year sentence he had imposed upon himself in an ef fort to "get even" with another fellow. He was in an extremely peculiar legal position. He was serving 30 years for his part in a murder that he had proved he had no connection with. Yet, now five years after the crime, he is still serving that long, hard sentence. For perjury, which he was surely guilty of, the maximum penalty is 10 years and Thomp son has tried repeatedly to in terest first one lawyer and then another in getting him freed from his web of lies so that he may be tried for perjury. The lawyers have apparently taken the attitude that once was a part of the Hebrew criminal code: That a man must serve the sen tence of the man he has lied up on. In this instance Thompson’s lying came very near to depriv ing an innocent man of his life and a great many who have made any expression on Thomp son’s situation feel that he should serve every minute of his 30 year sentence. With the release of Parrott the question again stared Lenoir County officers in the eye: If Parrott didn’t kill Taylor, who did? That question still remains un answered five years after that cold January night when some one struck the aging Taylor a tremendous iblow from the back and then nearly cut his head off to make sure of the brutal job. Robbery was established as the motive at the time of the mur der; yet Taylor was not a man who carried large sums of money about and less than $30 was missing from his pockets. Today there remains very little tangible evidence to go upon in any attempt that might be made to clear up the five-year-old crime. Only two facts and on these many do not agree: That a powerful man, with a powerful motive killed Taylor with a blow and knife wound that only a lefthanded man could have in flicted.
Jones County Journal (Trenton, N.C.)
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Jan. 31, 1952, edition 1
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