Hanging the Peachtree Bandit by Tom Hughes

Author:Tom Hughes [Hughes, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: True Crime, Historical, History, United States, State & Local, South (AL; AR; FL; GA; KY; LA; MS; NC; SC; TN; VA; WV), Murder, General
ISBN: 9781625849465
Google: Ngp3CQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Published: 2019-06-24T00:47:03+00:00

Chapter 8

“Somebody Loves This Poor Devil”

At the Tower, Frank was moved to “Cell No. 5, North Wing.” Nearby was “Old John” Williams, awaiting his move to the state prison farm for causing the deaths of eleven Negroes who’d been held in peonage in Jasper County.37 A white man, Williams had arranged with the local sheriffs to bring him their “troublemakers.” He quite literally worked them to death on his two-thousand-acre plantation. Williams told a reporter that he was stunned to see the young and slight DuPre. “It’s a shame, you know,” he offered.

Sheriff James Lowry was the man tasked to do the hanging. He had hanged several men since taking office in 1917, most recently a rapist in 1920.38 But Lowry had never hanged a white man. The last white man hanged in Fulton was wife-killer Robert Clay in 1912. From the day he was arrested, Clay refused to speak until, days before he was hanged, he complained that the Tower coffee wasn’t hot enough. Sheriff Lowry promised that, white or black, the gallows would be ready for Frank DuPre when needed.

Henry Allen told the Constitution, “Only now does DuPre understand the horrible situation he is in. Maybe now we can try to get him to help us.” Some prominent help was nearby. In Spartanburg, South Carolina, the former big-league ballplayer turned evangelist Billy Sunday39 was holding one of his celebrated revivals. He preached three times daily, mixing “scripture and modern slang with a rapidity that leaves his audience almost dizzy.” Sunday had followed the DuPre trial in the papers. On February 1, he wrote to Governor Hardwick, “I hope you will exercise that clemency typical of the big heart and generosity of the South.” According to his biographer, Robert Martin, Sunday held no strong views regarding hanging but had a “soft and sympathetic side” and an ear for injustice.40 Hardwick assured Sunday that any appeal would get his “careful and conscientious attention.”

Hardwick’s office released both letters to the Atlanta papers. From the Tower, Frank sent Sunday a letter of thanks:

Mr. Sunday, I want to tell you how much I appreciate your kindness. I have been reading your sermons that you preached in Spartanburg, and I think they are wonderful. I want to tell you that I think you are a gift to the human race and you should be appreciated by everybody for your great work. Mr. Sunday, would you please say a prayer for me? I certainly will appreciate it if you will. I end my letter with many thanks to you. Yours devotedly, Frank B. DuPre.

Sunday read Frank’s letter aloud to friends, and his “voice shook” when he got to the requested prayer. The prayer was duly offered, but Sunday played no further role in the clemency battle.

Another clergyman climbed his Atlanta pulpit on the Sunday following the verdict. At the Central Baptist Church on Cooper Street, Reverend Caleb Ridley told his congregation that it was a “great mistake” to rush DuPre to trial in a city

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