Alma Petty Gatlin’s Trial

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Hey, this is not going to be the most fun episode we've ever done, and I want to make sure any of our listeners know. This involves a lot of discussion of things like domestic abuse and violence, including both physical and verbal abuse, and a murder in a family. So if all of that is something that you don't want to hear or is not good for your mental healthy hear, just go ahead and skip this one. It's cool. We are talking about the story of Alma Petty Gatlin, who was a young woman from North Carolina who went on trial for the murder of her father. But the way that the authorities were informed of the crime also brought the preacher who reported the murder into question as a religious leader. And this big, very dramatic trial, and that is what we were talking about today. You've been on kind of a murdery streak in your episode topics lately. I don't know what that's about. I really don't. I'm not in a particularly dark place. That's probably why I can handle researching darker stuff. I've been in a pretty great mood for a while, so I'm like, yeah, I can handle the yuckie stuff. I feel like we've had a very similar conversation at some other point in the history of the show, and there was sort of a string of murder episodes. So I'm actually doing a lot of downer episodes. It probably means him in a great mental space because yeah, yeah, I can. I hadn't know that this week. Yeah. So. Smith T. Petty was born in eighteen eighty two outside of Union, South Carolina, and he was the third of twelve children that his father had over the course of two marriages. Starting at a young age, Smith Petty worked in cotton mills, and over the course of his life he moved around from mill to mill for that work. Sometimes the mill would close and that's why he would have to move. Other times, according to his colleagues, Petty's alcoholism would cost him jobs. Yeah. I didn't find documentation of it, but there were definitely accounts from friends that were like, oh, yeah, he just would vanish for like a couple of weeks and not report to work, which you can understand how you would lose a job that way. At the age of twenty four, Smith married a teenager named Jeanie Bratton who went by Janey, and he was working at a mill in Virginia at that time, and they started a family right away. Janey had their first child, a daughter named Alma, when she was still seventeen. Alma was born on August thirtieth, nineteen oh six, while the Petties were living in Freeze, Virginia, near the North Carolina border. Two years later, Janey and Smith had another daughter, Thelma, and then they had two sons. Woodrow was born in nineteen twelve and Smith Junior was born in nineteen eighteen. In nineteen twenty, the Petties moved to Reidsville, North Carolina. Smith was hired at that Edna cotton mill as a supervisor, and he was making a better salary than he really ever had before. Although the Petties were not wealthy by any measure, They moved around town a lot before settling into a rental house on Lindsay Street in the winter of nineteen twenty five. That did not signal the start of any kind of consistency for the family, though in fact far from it. Smith lost his job at the cotton mill just a couple of years after moving to Reidsville, and instead of moving the entire family every time he found something new, he would just travel by himself to the various jobs that he picked up. His wife, Janey, on the other hand, had found consistent work when they first arrived in North Carolina. She started working at a women's clothing store and then took a job at Belk Steven's department store when it opened in nineteen twenty two. Both Alma and her sister Selma left school before they graduate eated so that they could also go to work to support the family. There are some differing accounts of how that all happened. Some suggests that Alma left school of her own accord to others suggests that she had been invited to leave. Alma worked at a soda shop and then the local movie theater, and then when she got a job as a dental assistant, that movie theater hired her sister Selma to replace her. Janey's niece, Annie Ready, moved in with the petty sometime in the mid nineteen twenties, and like the other girls, she also worked to help out the household. As Smith moved around. He wasn't especially communicative with his wife or children about where he was or where he had found work. He was just gone a lot. And then he would show up from time to time, normally after having lost a job, and then was a very unpleasant presence in the house. He continued to misuse alcohol off and he would become very angry and violent. And then in a second half of nineteen twenty six, Smith T. Petty vanished entirely from public view and nobody really noticed. Then on March ninth, nineteen twenty sevenths Miss's wife, Janey Petty, died at home. This is usually reported as the result of pneumonia, although some accounts say that it was pneumonia that quote developed as a result of a miscarriage. It's unclear what exactly led to that information. At Almah's request, her boyfriend at the time, Jean, tried to locate Smith Petty to tell him the news, sending telegrams to the last towns he had been known to be in and even placing notices in the trade papers that his family was looking for him. But there was no reply. And while Smith had been gone for long stretches of time without anyone really thinking about it. His failure to attend his own wife's funeral was the first time that locals reported having some questions about his whereabouts and whether something may have happened to him. Sometime in May, Almah Petty confessed to the Reverends Thomas F. Pardu that she had killed her father. This was not a situation where she had known Pardu or been part of his congregation for a long time. She was a member of the Church of Christ in Town, and Pardue, who went by the name Thunderbolt Tom, was a Baptist preacher who staged revivals in nineteen twenty six. She had attended one of those revivals. She was impressed and was excited when she learned that he'd be back in town in the spring of nineteen twenty seven, this time to move there permanently. Pardue set up his ministry in a warehouse that was used for tobacco auctions in the autumn, but was completely empty in the spring and the summer. Alma attended several of Thunderbolt Tom's revivals when he started up in the warehouse, and she was completely taken with the message that Pardu preached. One night after having been to several evenings of his sermons in a row, she asked Pardu if she could speak with him, and in this private talk, according to Thomas Pardu, Almah told him that she had killed her father, Smith Petty. On a subsequent visit to the preacher's home, which took place after Pardu had told police officer HH Carroll that he believed a member of his congregation had committed a crime, Almah gave him more details about how it was done and where the body and murder weapon warner. According to Pardu, this information weighed very heavily on him and caused him great stress. He would later say that he lost ten pounds in the week that followed as he agonized over whether to tell authorities everything he knew. Almah had other things on her mind in the summer of nineteen twenty seven, specifically the details of her upcoming wedding. On July seventh, Almah Petty married Eugene S. Gatlin, who was the fire chief in Reedsville. He had moved to the town in nineteen twenty four to work in the movie theater and had become a volunteer firefighter, and then was offered the job as chief when Jeanne, who was a decade older than Almah, said his vows. He was probably envisioning settling into a home life with his new bride and perhaps starting a family, but unbeknownst to Jeane or Alma, Thomas Pardue, after debating over the matter, reported her confession to the authorities, although when he went to the police initially they did not believe him. He continued to appeal to more and more people in the government, until he even wrote a letter to the governor, but nothing came of it. So on June tenth, nineteen twenty seven, he made the drive thirty miles south to Greensboro, North Carolina, where he met with a man named Charles W. Noel at the Home Detective Agency. Noel decided he would look into the matter, and the next day the private detective was at the home that the Petties had lived in on Lindsay Street. The home had new occupants and the detective to please stay out of the basement and not let anyone else down there without the authorities. Noel next went to the city attorney's office and told them he'd be happy to dig up the basement and put this whole matter to rest. For three hundred dollars. The city decided to take over the investigation, but still nothing happens. Pardu was irritated because he felt like he was being treated like a kuk, so he publicly accused the city administration of not doing its job. In response, the sheriff and district attorney put out a joint statement that they had actually been investigating, but had kept that from Pardiu because they were trying to do things quietly to avoid attention. Soon, the preacher was giving his statement to the authorities, and he gave it to reporters. So we're going to talk about what Pardiu said Almah told him after we first paused for a quick sponsor break. In his interviews with the press, the Reverend Thomas Pardue laid out the whole tale. He described the moment Almah confided in him by stating, quote, she sobbed out that she had committed two of the biggest sins in the world and asked me if I thought she could get forgiveness, He went on quote. A few days later, she came to my house and told the whole story. I said to her, Almah, my heart is with you, and I want you to tell me what is on your mind and in your heart. So before we start on this part of the story, we should reiterate that this is what Pardue said that Almah had told him. It's also really violent. According to Pardue, Almah told him that three years earlier, there had been a family fight and that Smith had whipped her and she had sworn she would kill him. She also meant it this wasn't an idle threat. She acquired and started carrying a gun after that and was way for the moment to come when she would be ready to use it when circumstances would enable her to hide that action from the public and from her family. Pardiu also stated that Almah had tried to poison her father on several occasions, but then at the end of nineteen twenty six, Almah had returned home after being out and walked in on her father choking her mother. The young woman got into a physical altercation with her father and once it was over, vowed to herself that she would kill him before the next day. Throughout that night, Smith Petty was belligerent and he yelled at his family, and then he went down into the basement and started banging on things with an axe to keep the rest of the family from sleeping. Almah got up at five am after things had quieted down. She got that axe from the basement and stashed it behind the kitchen door. She waited until after her mother and sister had gone to work and her brothers had gone to school. She made her father breakfast, placed his plate on the side of the table that would cause him to face away from where she had hidden the axe, and then she bludgeoned him with it while he was eating his eggs. This was, of course a bloody mess, but Smith rolled onto his back after a couple of moments and asked why she was trying to kill him, and then slowly died. This took an hour and forty five minutes, she said. She put her hands over his mouth to try to quiet his groans so the neighbors wouldn't hear. He bit off one of her fingernails and left scratches on her hand. Then he regained enough strength to get a hold of the axe, and Almah banged his head into a galvanized pipe. That is what ultimately ended his life. Almah, the preacher said, told him that she had burned her father's clothes and her own had put the body in a trunk and had cleaned every inch of the kitchen. She had said that the trunk, which she put in a closet in the living room, began to smell and to leak, and that someone in a Dodge vehicle had taken the trunk away, but then they brought it back. She herself dug the grave in the basement and had everything wrapped up before any of her family came home. That was a series of events as laid out by Pardu for the authorities. And I just want to tell you now so no one gets hopeful that Dodge detail. The story of this mystery car comes up at various points. It never gets resolved. It remains kind of a mystery. In late August of nineteen twenty seven, a formal investigation finally began into the information that Pardu had given authorities. On September third, the body of Smith T. Petty was found in the basement of the Petty's former home. It was under two feet of clay and a pile of coal, exactly as Pardu had told the police based on the information that he had gotten from Alma. Word spread really quickly in the town and soon the home was swarmed with spectators who were eager to get a look at Petty's body. Smith's remains were buried two feet down, and even before the deputies had finished digging, people were stooped down at the windows outside and peering into the basement. There was a wound on the right side of his skull, which was believed to have been caused by a force sufficient enough to have killed him. As soon as the news was confirmed that Smith Petty's body had been found and that he had been murdered, local press was writing up the story. A funeral was held for Smith. The following day, Almah was taken into custody. She was arrested at the dental office where she worked. Witnesses to the arrest stated that Sheriff J. F. Smith, who went by the debatably charming nickname of Chunk, had been very polite about telling Almah that there was a murder warrant out for her arrest, and that Almah had seemed completely calm about the whole thing. She was taken to the county jail for holding, and Alma was by most accounts, very charming and very sweet, and people just tended to like her. So she managed to get a lot of concessions while she was being held that probably other people would not. For example, she got permission to decorate her cell. This was not a matter of hanging a poster or two. She decorated. She hung lace curtains, She had a polstered furniture brought in. She painted the gray walls and the bars of the cell a light green, and she had portraits of her mother brought in and hung. She also kept a photograph of her new husband on her dresser. She was also allowed pets. She kept two birds in her cell with her, and when one of those birds died, that was written up in the papers. Every minute detail of her behavior fascinated the press. It was reported that she was mourning that bird that had passed, but that she was otherwise cheerful. From the outset. Alma claimed that she had not murdered her father, so as the authorities went through their process, the entire story was Pardue's word against Almah's. When Almah's grandfather and Smith Petty's father, John Petty, made his way to the jail from Union, South Carolina, he told Almah that he believed she had killed Smith, but that she must have had an accomplice. She denied all of it. Alma remained in her jail cell throughout the winter holidays. On January twenty fourth, a grand jury determined that there was enough probable cause for the case to move forward to a trial. Almah's trial proceedings began on February thirteenth, nineteen twenty eight, and after two days of jury selection, testimony began. In her testimony, Almah stated that her mother had been the one to kill Smith T. Petty. She did not deny that she had told Pardue she had done it, though Almah's logic was that she had con to Pardue to get information about whether salvation was possible because she was worried about her mother's soul. Almah described a home that was always tense and dangerous when Smith Petty was there. In the last four or five years of his life, he had grown increasingly volatile and abusive to the entire family. The real way the murder happened, according to Almah's trial testimony, was that Smith Petty had come home inebriated and violent, and he was choking Janey when Almah arrived home that night. When Alma her sister Thelma and their cousin Annie tried to pull Smith away from Janey. He picked up a stool and hit Alma in the head with it, hard enough to leave her days. The rest of the night was a series of outbursts on Smith's part as the rest of the family tried to avoid him. He would leave for a while, and then he would return and start the abuse all over again. The following morning, after Thelma and Annie had left for work and Woodrow was cutting kindling in the basement, Alma was washing her face and neck at the kitchen sink when Smith appeared with a butcher knife, yelling, don't wash that damn neck, I'll cut it off. Then he lunged at her, and Alma managed to grab his right arm, which held the knife, and hold it away from her. Smith tried to choke her with his left hand, and Alma was screaming for help. Woodrow ran up from the basement, still holding the axe he had been using to cut the wood, and Janey got to the kitchen at about the same time. Janey Petty took the axe from her son and hit Smith in the back of the head with it. He still had his hand around Almah's neck and a butcher knife in the other hand, and Janey hit him a second time, which killed him. Janey then told Almah and Woodrow to leave the house, and when they returned that night everything was cleaned up. Janey told them that a Dodge Sedan had taken the body away and that she would kill herself in funt of them if they ever told anyone about what had happened. Almah's sixteen year old brother, Woodrow, corroborated this entire story on the stand. Just as a note, there are some accounts that say he was fifteen. During the trial, so Almah said that she had begged her mother to confess when it became apparent that she might die of pneumonia. She stated that she was worried about her mother's soul and that this is what drove her to confide in Reverend Pardue. She stated in the confession that she had done it because she wanted to quote protect the name of my dead mother. The defense called the doctor who treated Janey Petty in her final days to the stand, and he testified that Almah begged her mother repeatedly to go to confession as her life neared its end. After we hear from the sponsors that keep the show going, we'll talk about the controversy surrounding Thomas Pardue's testimony and Alma's trial. Alma Petty's trial was sensational because of its details about patricide, domestic abuse, and a pretty young woman at the center of it all, but there was also a lot of discussion about how the entire case would set precedent on religious leaders reporting information that had been told to them in assumed confidence. To a degree. Pardu was on trial alongside Alma, and that was entirely by design on the part of the defense. Almah's defense team argued that Pardu's testimony should not be allowed, as it was a violation of Almah's human rights. This was all very hotly debated because while other states had laws on the books regarding religious confessions and their admissibility in court, North Carolina did not at this time. In the Tampa Times, an article ran about the issue on February fifteenth under the headline quotes considering ethics, and it laid out its examination of the issue quote there arises here a question of ethics that is interesting, if not overly important. Should the preacher to whom this avowal was made as a part and parcel of the young woman's religious experience, if made at all, have disclosed her statement to the authorities. It is a rather delicate point, but we think not. We suspect that every minister, even those with only a few years experience, has been made the confidant of men and women who have come under his ministry in regard to things that would be astonishing if related to the world. This, no doubt, is especially true as to persons under great religious stress, such as it seems the prime effort of many evangelists to bring them under. To think that these should be flaunted to the public to the hurt of those who make them, is to think that which is well nigh unthinkable. Ethics like charity are at times employed to cover a multitude of sins, but it seems entirely apart from good ethics for a spiritual adviser to inform on those bearing innermost secrets to him. Almah's defense team openly went after parduing court. At one point, her lawyer P. W. Glidwell said to the jury quote his friends and adherents have applauded him here in her hour of misery. I delight to defend this girl born of a drunken and dissolute father in a home where this father brutally mistreated her mother. She saw her mother die by degrees on March tenth, she saw her mother die of a broken heart. She had seen her father killed, and she turned to her pastor for comfort. She turned to a man who claimed to be an ambassador of God. When she came here for trial and took the witness stand, he sat there glaring at her, prompting the state attorneys. The defense painted Pardu as opportunistic because he had asked Almah to come to his house after he had been speaking with police as a way to get more information from her. Glidewell asked the jury quote, was there ever a more enticing scheme devised? Why did he get her there to get her right with God so that when he got her killed in the electric chair, the soul might go to heaven? Did he pray? Yes? He thanked God for himself. Later, he told the jury quote, she asked for bread and he gave her a stone. He betrayed her, misconstrued her, and became her prosecutor. If Pardu is to be believed, then it is murder in the first degree. If you believe her, it is freedom. Under the evidence, you can't convict of first degree murder. The biggest point the defense made was that Almah had been the one to give all of the information that was used at trial, and that her account had been cherry picked to use against her. One particular aspect of the story that Pardou had told the core seemed unlikely to the defense. According to Pardu, Almah had told him that after her father had been hit with the ax, she spoke with him, but the doctor that they called to the stand indicated that either one of the two blows to the head that Smith T. Petty had received would have killed him, i e. He would not have been able to have any kind of conversation. Glidewell also painted a really terrifying picture of what would happen to Almah should she be found guilty when he leaned really heavily on the jury's emotions. He reminded jurors what it's like for a person to die in the electric chair, and he reminded them of how very young she was. She was still only twenty one when the prosecution made closing statements. Glidewell's sympathy inducing rhetoric of how Almah's life would end was called unfortunate. Yeah, the prosecution really did try to call out the fact that he was emotionally manipulating the jury. The prosecution's other big focus in amation and just heads up, this is pretty cringey if you are familiar with the patterns of domestic abuse, was that there was no one who was called to testify that Smith T. Petty was a cruel or unkind man, and that it was only his kids who claimed that he had been that way. The lead prosecutor, Porter Graves, made the case that it really seemed as though Almah and her brother had been coached on what to say by their attorney, and that their testimony was too identical, even in phrasing, to be simply an instance of corroborating memories. He said to the jury in his closing quote, the council has told you that the multitude would acclaim a verdict of not guilty, Great God, the acclaim of the multitude. Do your duty, gentleman, and refrain from thoughts of the multitude. And finally, Graves pointed out that the real strategy of the defense was to attack a man of God, concluding with quote, gentleman of the jury, the defense has taken a strange position. Abuse him for betraying confidence. They say he is a liar and that he told what was given to him by a penitent. Why abuse him if it is not the truth? They spend more time denouncing him than they do arguing that the defendant didn't do it. The trial concluded on February twenty second, and the judge instructed the jury that there were three possible verdicts they could give in the case, one guilty of first degree murder, two guilty of second degree murder, or three not guilty. At roughly seven pm, the jury had supper, and once they had finished eating, they returned to the jury room. Their first vote did not have a unanimous decision after several hours of deliberation, though all of the jurors were in agreement and ready to give the verdict. Because of the late hour, Judge McCray had retired for the evening and he had to be collected from his hotel, and though the courthouse had been swarmed with people throughout the trial, no one expected a verdict that night. It was a Wednesday night. The presumption had been that the verdict would be announced Thursday morning, so when the trial reached its final conclusion, there were only a couple of hundred people on hand. That was a pretty paltry number compared to the thousands that reportedly showed up to watch each day. As Almah awaited the jury's decision, she sat with her husband and her sister. Her brother Woodrow was also close by, and according to press accounts, all of them were showing signs of strain. Alma was asked to rise for the reading of the verdict, which she had told those around her that she expected to be a bad outcome for her. But Alma Petty Gatlin was found not guilty. She was described as standing stunned for a moment before breaking down in tears in her husband's arms. When she had regained her composure somewhat, she thanked each of the jurors, or at least tried to buy some accounts, she was still crying and had difficulties speaking. She thanked the judge and spoke briefly with the prosecutor before going home for the first time in almost five months. The Reverend Thomas Pardue was not on hand for the verdict. After the case was concluded, legal experts, lawmakers, and religious leaders were all left wondering about the future of confession confidentiality. The North Carolina Law Review examined the question in an article in the summer of nineteen twenty eight, so just a few months after the trial, opening with quote, the case of State versus Alma Petty Gallin, tried before Judge Cameron McCray at a special term of the Superior Court of Rockingham County last February, aroused the interest of the public generally by its sensationalism. It is a peculiar interest to the profession. For the first time in North Carolina, the question of the admissibility of a confidential confession as evidence was squarely raised. The case itself will not go before the Supreme Court. Missus Gallin was acquitted. The question therefore remains unsettled. There is one point to be borne in mind in considering these cases. Whether the minister may be compelled to testify is quite a different question from whether the matter secured from the confidential confession is admissible as evidence. It took thirty years for North Carolina to get a legal stance in place regarding the testimony of religious figures. In nineteen fifty nine, General Statute eight fifty three two was passed, which reads quote, no priest, rabbi, accredited Christian science practitioner, or a clergyman or ordained minister of an established church shall be competent to testify in any action, suit or proceeding concerning any information which was communicated to him and entrusted to him in his professional capacity, and necessary to enable him to discharge the functions of his office according to the usual course of his practice or discipline. Wherein such persons so communicated such information about himself or another is seeking spiritual counsel and advice relative too, and growing out of the information so imparted. Provided, however, that this section shall not apply where communicant in open court waives the privilege conferred. Today, all fifty states have some law on the books regarding confessional privilege and the id admissibility of contents of a confession to a religious figure as evidence. As for Thomas Pardue, he had gained a large following as the Alma Petty Gatlin trial had become big news. He was able to open his own church and leave the warehouse behind, but soon he was in trouble. In May of nineteen thirty, he was accused of making sexual advances on a colleague's seventeen year old daughter. The scandal really damaged his reputation, and though he left Readsville, he remained a preacher. He died in nineteen sixty six at the age of seventy five. After the trial concluded, Almah was offered numerous opportunities to appear on the stage, but instead, she and Jean moved to Greensboro shortly after their first child was born. They had three children in total, and they moved a couple more times. Jean died in nineteen fifty two, and Almah became deeply involved in the church after its passing. She died in two thousand and one, having outlived all of her siblings. Yeah, that's a wild This is one of those stories too, that I stumbled across while researching something else, and it was next the column next to the pertinent column to my research in the paper, and I was like what yeah, And then it went on my list. I have much more upbeat and some silly listener mail to finish out, just so we all get a little breather, shake off all of the black and the murder talk. This is actually from Twitter and it is from our listener Kate. In relation to our chocolate edition of eponymous Foods. Kate wrote, I'm grateful for the description of German chocolate cake, but I'm still no clearer on what a tutsie roll is. Hey, that's my mistake. I don't know why I didn't consciously do it, but I think in my brain I was just like, everybody knows a tutsie roll. Yeah, that's not true, So a tutsi roll. Apologies, Kate, and I will tell you now. I don't know how appealing this will sound, because it is a weird thing. A tutsi roll is essentially like a chocolate taffy kind of yeah, y yeah, it's like a chewy, translucent kind of taffy. Is that translucent? Lightly translucent? Yeah, you can if you hold it up to light. The edges are a little translucent. Maybe that's just the ones I am. Maybe they've aged, the sugar is condensing in the middle. I don't know. Yeah, it's it's very chewy. It's fine. It's not great. Yeah, I mean, some people love them. I don't you know what I do love though, there's a vanilla version that they make that comes out sometimes during holidays, like sometimes it'll be around Um, I think they do it sometimes around Halloween, but sometimes they'll also do it around like spring holidays because it usually comes in like a springing color combination where they have other flavors. That stuff is delicious, delicious. Um. Yeah, that's what a tutsie roll is. Some people love them, some people not so much. Tracy and I think are in the Yeah. Yeah, it was always the thing apart from apart from things that I genuinely did not like. It would be like the last things left from the Halloween trick or treating hall. Yeah, last thing left in the easter basket. Yeah, tutsi role. But you know, apparently people love them that companies become the TUTSI role company entirely. So well, and if if you're gonna do something like go hiking on a hot day and you want a chocolate e treat, that's not going to be a melted mass. Yeah, I mean it's we talked about that being why it it became so popular initially. Although can I just tell you that scenario, like the idea of eating something sugary on a hot day just makes like my entire like blood sugar, go bananas. It's like, don't do that. Eat protein anyway. That's my own that has in no way advice. That's just what my body would want. So hopefully that clarifies things about what a TETs hero is. I'll remember that going forward that any of the things we talk about on eponymous foods, maybe people don't know what they are, even if they just seem ubiquitous to me. That's the scoop. If you would like to write to us, the email address is History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can find us on social media at Misston History, which is how Kate did, and you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.