Redux: A Tale of Murder Unfolds in a Small Georgia Town

Responding to constant reminders from you-know -who that I needed to “go through my things” and get rid of unwanted papers, I recently dragged out my trunk containing thousands of notes and documents related to the hanging of a woman in Georgia. I have been collecting information about this story for more than thirty years, since my friend and fellow historian, Dr. James Bagwell, brought me a sensational account with lewd illustrations torn from an old men’s magazine. We were both teaching at the small state college in Americus, only a few miles from where the murder -and Susan’s hanging- occurred.

Susan Eberhart was little more than a child when this story begins. The murder of a poor and crippled housewife just after the Civil War, illicit love, an outraged community, a posse in pursuit, a speedy trial and appeals to a higher court that drag on for a year while Susan sleeps piteously in a log jailhouse near the deranged and self-convicted killer, Ethan Spann, who is within earshot of her every word and sound. This story has all the elements of a classic tale of murder -and more.

Susan’s death stigmatized Georgia’s governor and the state to a degree that was not surpassed until the lynching of Leo Frank for his alleged murder of a teenage girl in his Atlanta pencil factory in 1913. Public outrage was so intimidating that when Frank’s death sentence was commuted by Governor John Slaton, the governor and his wife left the state in fear for their lives and no real justice was ever meted out to the lynch mob that kidnapped Frank from the state prison and hanged him. (I have also written about the Frank story and will recover that for recirculation soon.)

Georgians tend to react angrily to any criticism that arises out side the boundaries of the state. But in the Eberhart case, public opinion swung from vengeful rage toward the alleged murderers to disappointment and anger toward the state’s governor who refused to spare a young, poor and pitiful girl.

Here is my story published some months ago about this case. I keep telling myself I should write a book, but the tale is heart-renting and others have had a try at telling this tale of one of the few women to be executed in the history of Georgia. Much reflection has convinced me that Susan would never have been convicted for murder in today’s courts. Nor would her alleged lover, Enoch Spann, who would likely have been found incompetent to stand trial because he was mentally impaired or ill.

     In the years following the South’s defeat in the war of the Civil War, many sad and violent events played out in the lives of Georgia’s rural poor. Children of destitute parents were placed as servants in the homes of those who could afford to feed them. Susan Eberhart’s family was among the poverty stricken and landless. Her father, Hardy Eberhart, fought in one of the volunteer companies of soldiers. Many such units lost as many as half their men to battle, not once, but even two or three times as the war dragged on. Hardy’s wife was a virtual widow for four years and his children all but orphans.

     At seventeen, Susan was placed in the home of Enoch and Sarah Spann, a sharecropper in his mid- thirties, and his much-older and crippled wife, Sarah. Enoch also had served in the confederate army. Enoch would be described as idiotic, brooding, and depressive by fellow soldiers who knew him during the war. But, by other accounts, he was a patient and dutiful husband, at least until Susan became his obsession.

     On a May evening in 1871, while a torrential rain fell around Enoch’s home, Susan was awakened by a candle and the harsh whisper of Enoch’s voice. “Come here Susan,” he said, “I need your help.” Startled, Susan got up. Spann led her to his bed where his wife Sarah lay asleep. He released Susan’s hand as he came to Sarah’s bed side. While Susan watched in horror, he strangled Sarah with a piece of plow line. In the midst of this brutal act he shouted to demanded that Susan hand or throw him a rag to stifle his wife’s screams. Terrified, Susan complied and in so doing , likely sealed her own fate.

     According to the original trial transcript in Susan’s case, Enoch sexually abused Susan during the night. He told Susan he had killed his wife to be with her and with the coming morning he ordered her to tie some food in a cloth and led her from the cabin. Both were barefoot, and their direction was plainly recorded in the warming day’s mud. The county sheriff, William Mathews, found the body, found the plow line under the steps. He organized a posse to pursue them, made up mostly of members of the Wharton family.

     With no plan and Susan in tow, Spann made for the shoals across the Chattahoochee River in order to avoid the bridge crossing where they might find waiting lawmen. No evidence was ever offered as to why, but the two fugitives ended up on the farm of Susan’s uncle in Barbour County, Alabama. Was Susan guilty and simply told the Harrises that she and Enoch were a couple? Or, conversely, was she fearful that Spann would harm her uncle and his family? I have been unable to find anything to corroborate either possibility. No question was raised in the trial or afterward of what evidence might be brought by Mr. Harris. A few days later, the posse arrived and arrested Spann, who despondently admitted his crime and his motive. Susan was invited to travel back home with the posse. If members of the posse interrogated Harris, neither Susan nor Enoch’s attorney raised questions about this as recorded in the original trial transcription.

     Upon their return, Spann was indicted by a grand jury and tried the following day. Susan was alarmed and indignant when she too was arrested. On evidence given by the posse members, Susan faced the same jury and charges. In the days that followed and amidst great public anger, both were convicted and ordered hanged.  The trials received extensive news coverage because they coincided with the state convention for newspapermen that was meeting in nearby Americus.

     Spann and Eberhart were imprisoned in a jail so primitive it might have felt like a dungeon from a Gothic tale, where, through months of appeals they occupied nearby cells, each in clear view of the other. If Susan’s account of the crime is believed, this must have been a constant and demoralizing strain.

Talk around town, starting in the town’s hotel, was that members of the posse had conspired to implicate Susan in the crime, likely for the reward promised by Governor Smith. There was a reversal in community opinion, almost overnight, to one of sympathy for Susan.  It has never been explained by students of the case what caused this change. I believe a member of the posse revealed the Wharton’s conspiracy to incriminate Susan or that “Old Man Wharton” had testified falsely. With only hours to prepare their case, Susan’s attorneys seem to have been at a loss as to how to conduct an effective defense. And, there could have been little incentive in the likelihood that there could be no compensation.

Sheriff William Mathews might have been called as a witness. His testimony of anything the prisoners said to him or others would and should have carried the same weight as that of Wharton. Such testimony would have been pointless in Enoch Spann’s case. He admitted his crime. But why was Spann not called as the most obvious witness in the Eberhart trial.

Many of the newspapers in the state picked up the story and were soon arguing for the commutation of Susan’s sentence on the grounds that it was improper to sentence a woman to death. Only one other woman had ever been hanged in Georgia for the crime of murder. And, there was an irregularity in jury selection that become a bone of contention in the legal appeals.

   Spann was known locally as a depressive with the mind of a child. Susan’s testimony supported that. She recounted in her trial and in her comments to reporters that Spann had attempted to murder his wife earlier by causing their wagon to turn over during a creek crossing where there was no bridge.

A special medical panel was convened, apparently by the Clerk of Court, to evaluate this evidence. The panel of physicians concluded that Spann was insane, but they could offer no evidence that he was actually insane at the very moment of the crime. This was one of the earliest cases in which an effort was made to overturn a murder verdict on the grounds of innocence by reason of insanity.

     Susan endured it all with a fatal resignation, in part because of the ministrations of two ministers who for months visited and instructed her. One was likely an informant reporting to the governor on what had become a politically charged case.

A reporter sent to interview her, wrote that Susan’s mother and father had not visited her in the tiny jail which was an easy walk from the Eberhart home. His article also mentioned that Susan’s only companions were the mice she had trained as pets using scraps of food from her plate. This widely reprinted account was, in my opinion, creatively interjected by the reporter to humanize Susan and win sympathy for her.

     Enoch’s lawyers petitioned the state Supreme Court to overturn Spann’s conviction. These appeals were all denied. Susan’s attorneys fared no better. Meanwhile a great hew and cry had erupted across the state seeking a commutation of Susan’s sentence by Governor Smith. Smith, who was elected by a strict law-and-order legislature in the wake of unchecked violence and graft under the previous Republican “carpetbagger” rule during Reconstruction. Enoch was hanged on the gallows at “Booger Bottom.” From the platform he proclaimed Susan innocent and freely admitted that he deserved his fate for so terrible a deed.

     Susan’s defenders persisted, pleading that she was little more than an uneducated child and, in her frightened condition, was virtually helpless to resist Spann’s demands. Ultimately, her appeal was also rejected. Newspapers tended to favor commutation Susan’s sentence and the governor was said to be the recipient of many appeals by responsible and thoughtful people. In the end, he decided commutation would be a a dereliction of his duty. In a visit to the state archives in Atlanta, the Governor’s correspondence file on this subject was empty.

Walking the mile or so to the gallows, Susan was surrounded by armed guards meant to foil any effort to free her. She wore a new calico dress, her hair pulled back from her face. More than a thousand people came to “Booger Bottom” to witness the execution. It was heralded by newspapers throughout the state as the saddest and darkest day in the history of Georgia. This affair ruined Governor Smith’s political career and he was not reelected.

The Eberhart case of course brings to mind the famous Leo Frank case in 1913 in which Frank was convicted for the murder of Mary Phagan, a girl employed in the Atlanta pencil factory which Frank managed. When Governor Slaton commuted Frank’s sentence, Slaton’s political career was ruined and his life threatened. In my opinion and that of others, Frank’s lynching and the hostility toward Slaton resulted from the influences brought to bear by newspapers and magazines outside the state attempting to thwart the course of justice.

The Spann-Eberhart case was undoubtedly a factor in the rise of the attorney who prosecuted the cases, Charles Crisp. He was elected to a Superior Court judgeship, and later to congress where he served as the Speaker of the U.S House of Representatives. In similar fashion, Hugh Manson Dorsey, prosecutor in the Leo Frank case, undoubtedly benefited from notoriety gained in the Frank case. He was later elected governor of Georgia.

     It does not require cynicism to wonder if personal ambition can be a driving force behind performance in a court case widely reported in the press.

       Susan’s parents, who had not attended Susan’s trial, claimed the body in a borrowed farm wagon. She was buried in an unmarked grave in the town cemetery. Perhaps her family was too poor to mark her grave, perhaps they simply felt humiliated by events. Her brother and sisters seem to have left no memories behind to give us insight into this young woman’s character or personality.

When I visited Susan’s grave in Preston, I met a man who had erected a marker of sorts. He had taken upon himself the task of mowing the grass in the town cemetery. Over the years many graves had been outlined using bricks. The volunteer caretaker I met on a visit to Preston collected the bricks, which now were only in the way of his mower. He stacked them neatly over Susan’s resting place. He said he was convinced of her innocence. Since there was no apparent objection, I concluded that this sentiment was likely shared generally in town.

     As in such cases, there are endless anecdotal stories, unanswered questions, missing documents, and unexplained coincidences. Two recent books have appeared to retell the Spann-Eberhart story. There will be others. I have the feeling there is a small army of Georgia history scholars and an even larger assortment of amateur sleuths out there looking for that illusive piece of the story that will put it to rest once and for all. Given to romance more often than to realism, I have hoped for years to be the one who could definitively demonstrate Susan Eberhart’s innocence.

  I have collected information on this case for much of my lifetime. Let me share just one intriguing fact that is highly suggestive.  The young sheriff, William Mathews, whose official responsibility it was to hold Susan and Enoch in jail and to supervise their execution, left his office as sheriff of Webster County and moved to nearby Americus where he and his wife raised a family.

Susan said on the gallows and in interviews that Mathews had been kind and respectful in performing his duties. Mathews ended up committing suicide some years later. I have never found any document or account that would confirm that he was traumatized by the events surrounding the Spann-Eberhart case, or that he perhaps sank into alcoholism and despair and killed himself as a result.  Perhaps we will discover that he committed to writing or his family passed down to later generations some important piece of information related to the case against Susan Eberhart.

Historians are often unable to offer a satisfying solution to the mysteries they encounter in their work. But, we do harbor opinions that might never be substantiated. My opinion is that, while there is much of this story that will likely never be learned, it is also true that I have encountered little over the years that seems to support Susan’s guilt or Enoch’s sanity.