REDEMPTION IN A SMALL TOWN

Exoneration

There are always those who challenge myth, and even in the 1940s, there were some in Oliver Springs and beyond who never believed that Powder Brown was the killer. Mary Richards, who later moved to Atlanta, and according to some who knew her there, never spoke of the horror of that February afternoon, went to her grave in 1994, convinced that an innocent man had been blamed for the brutal crime. Her brother, Joe, also from Atlanta, who was Ann Richards' twin, also remained convinced that Powder Brown was innocent.

But to some degree, the doubters were, for many years, in the minority.

That changed, however, in January 2000, when, after eight weeks of investigation, an investigation which by his own admission rankled a good number of people in Oliver Springs, Chief Massengill concluded that Powder Brown was not a killer, but a victim.

A short time later, 60 years after Powder Brown's body had been hastily buried in an unmarked grave, people who knew him, and some who remembered him only as a character in a tragic passion play, gathered to give him the funeral he had long been denied.

Powder Brown, new grave site

Though there was ample evidence to support the conclusion that Powder Brown was not a killer, abundant evidence some might say, there were still some questions for which there were no easy answers, and for which even those who believed in his innocence had to take on faith.

For example, one of the things that always puzzled Massengill about the killings was the fact that Powder Brown had died from a single bullet wound in the forehead. As far as Massengill was concerned, it had always seemed terribly unlikely that Brown had awkwardly held the gun to his own forehead and fired. The bullet that killed Brown was never recovered at least not according to the official reports of the time. But as with many other elements of the case, questions have been raised about even that.

According to a statement Massengill took from one old-timer, "one of the local funeral directors found a knot in the lower left side of Powder's head and when they cut it out, it was the bullet. So they stitched it back up," and disposed of the bullet. Though there is no formal record of the discovery, if true, Massengill believes, it would prove that the shot that killed Brown traveled in a downward trajectory, making it impossible for Powder Brown to have shot himself. What's more, Massengill maintains, there was evidence at the time that Powder Brown, the alleged killer, had no powder burns on his hands. Even with a modern weapon, some trace of powder could be found, and if, as it was alleged, the murder weapon had been an inefficient antique revolver, it would almost have been possible to spot powder burns on the dead man's hand with the unaided eye if he had in fact fired the gun. But the forensic evidence in the case, trampled at the crime scene all those years ago and mishandled and lost since, will never be produced.

There were other questions as well. According to reports at the time, the basement door leading up into the kitchen was open when Hill and Sharp first arrived at the murder scene. It has always been speculated that the killer used that entrance to get into the house. For his part, Massengill contends that Powder Brown did indeed use that door, entering after the killer or killers had already gunned down the two sisters. In Massengill's scenario, "Powder came in at the basement and came up the steps, and then he was in the kitchen and by then the trap was already closed. He couldn't go back down the steps. Whoever was there was waiting on him. And when he went toward the front of the house, to go out the front door I believe that's where he was shot, right there in maybe between the kitchen and the entranceway."

There are, Lynch says, troubling questions about Massengill's scenario, not the least of which is this: Why would Powder Brown have come in the house through the basement, rather than simply walk through the front or kitchen door? Some might suggest that Powder Brown suspected that there was danger in the house, but if that were so, Lynch says, it would have been terribly out of character for Powder Brown, who was almost a local laughing-stock because of his timid, frightened nature, to creep toward danger.

"No, I think he'd run a mile," Lynch said. "But there again, that's just my opinion."