Ep. 30 - 1909 Savannah Axe Murders

This subject was suggested by listener: Stefanie Pettiford

A man was on a simple afternoon stroll on December 9, 1909 in his Savannah, Georgia neighborhood when he heard moaning coming from 401 W. Perry Street. What he found inside the small wooden house would horrify the city. One woman lay dying and two more were already dead. An axe had been used and the murders were brutal. As to who committed the crime, that remains a mystery, although the husband of one of the women was convicted and served some time in prison before being pardoned. Perhaps that is why the location where the murders happened has stories of hauntings. 

Old Town Trolleys has locations in several historic cities and Savannah is one of those cities. The barn where the fleet was stored in the city was at 234 Martin Luther King, Jr. This is a warehouse that was erected in 1944 and came under ownership of Old Town Trolleys in 1995. Prior to that, there were several homes here, a saloon, stores and former slave quarters that had become tenements. This neighborhood was known as Frog Town or Rail Town and it wasn't a nice place to live. One corner of the warehouse sits over where 401 W. Perry Street had once stood. Eliza Gribble was originally from Cornwall, England and she moved to Savannah before the Civil War with her husband. The couple had a partially deaf daughter named Carrie who married Andrew J. Ohlander in 1893. By 1909, Eliza was 70 and widowed and running the house on Perry Street as a boarding house. Her daughter Carrie - who was 36 - had moved into the house because she had separated from her husband. They rented a room to a thirty-five-year-old woman named Maggie Hunter and she moved in on December 8th, 1909.

The following day, the women were attacked and a man passing by the house in the afternoon, heard the moaning of a woman coming from the house because the front door was ajar. He looked inside and saw Maggie lying on the floor, covered in blood, her body partially blocking the door. He ran to a drugstore to call the police who entered the house shortly thereafter and found that Maggie was still alive even though her skull was partially crushed. The police went further into the house and found Carrie Ohlander dead in the hallway and it appeared that she had been sexually assaulted. Eliza was found in a back bedroom sitting in a chair with an axe imprint on her head. She too was dead. The Evening Press wrote on Dec. 9, 1909: "(Gribble) was stretched out on her back, with her feet toward the door. Her face was as calm as if she was asleep, but the dark mass of clotted blood in her gray hair at the top and back of her head told the story only too well. She had evidently been reading when she was struck down by the murderer, as her glasses and a paper were placed at the foot of the bed by which she was found."

Maggie was rushed to a nearby hospital, but her injuries were too grave and she died three days later. She had been beaten about her head and her throat was slit. She was conscience enough at one point in the hospital to tell authorities that the person who had committed this crime was her estranged husband J.C. Hunter. However, before that revelation, the police informed the public that they were on the lookout for a black man. The Evening Press also reported on the day of the axe attack, "The crime is supposed to have been committed by a negro who had been working in the area the past few days. This negro was formerly employed as a cook at a restaurant here. He was twenty-six or twenty-seven years old, about five feet eight inches high and when he went to work this morning had on a gray sweater trimmed in red." Nearly 150 black men were brought in for questioning and many feared for their lives as the people of Savannah started hunting for the killer.

J.C. Hunter's real name was David Taylor and he was a painter and paper-hanger by trade. He enlisted with the Confederacy during the American Civil War and served with the 63rd Regiment Georgia Volunteer Infantry. Hunter was wounded in the Battle of Atlanta and discharged. He later served time in jail, once for stealing a horse and the other for bigamy. After he was released from jail the second time, he changed his name to J.C. Hunter. He was thirty years older than Maggie and the couple had only been married for five years when she left him. They had a weird relationship in which he often referred to her as his daughter and she would call him "the old man." Police arrested Hunter, but they had to release him shortly thereafter because his co-workers claimed that he had only been away from work during the lunch hour between noon and 12:30 p.m and would not have had time to commit the murders. The attack was also thought to have happened later in the day. However, a girl who worked for a neighbor of the Gribble House claimed that she had seen J.C. Hunter leaning on an oak tree outside of the house near the time of the murders. Hunter then explained that Maggie said she would leave him alone if he bought her a sewing machine and that he had taken it to her the day before the murders. He then returned the following morning to see if she was happy with the machine.

Getting to the truth in a murder investigation is complicated, especially at a time in history when physical evidence was limited. Eyewitness accounts are notoriously wrong. The police weren't sure what to believe as friends of Maggie claimed that she had breakfast with her sister on the morning of the murders and then she tried to sell remnants of cloth at three homes in the neighborhood. And then another witness claimed that he saw Maggie going toward Perry Street around 1:45pm, very drunk. Police wondered if she was found near the front door because she came into the house after the murders were already underway and was attacked as the murderers were leaving. It would explain how one perpetrator managed to kill all three women by himself. It also left open the possibility that Maggie's husband wasn't the guilty party because why would he kill the other two women? The only point to that would be to get rid of witnesses, but if Maggie wasn't even home...unless he killed them so he could lie in wait to ambush Maggie. To complicate matters, neighbors said that they didn't hear any violent noises or screams from the house during the attack. 

The Evening Press wrote on December 12, 1909, "How two women could have been killed with an ax and a third left in a dying condition, without a scream or the sound of the struggle being heard on the outside seems inconceivable." What makes it even more surprising is that one of the neighbors was the Citizens and Southern Bank's towering branch building right across the lane. And the Central of Georgia Railway offices was also nearby. The murders were thought to have happened around 2pm and many employees would have been going to dinner at that time. Between these two businesses, it was possible that over 600 employees would have been passing along Perry Street and the nearby Montgomery Street. The paper described this time as "a veritable stream of humanity surging through these streets at this hour, and yet so far as can be ascertained, not a human being other than the murderer is known to have heard a sound coming from the house where the bodies were discovered bathed in blood."

Another man brought in for questioning was named Willie Walls. There apparently was some kind of relationship between him and Maggie as he paid for her rent at the Gribble House. He admitted that he tried to see Maggie on the day of the attacks and he was indicted. Evidence against him was very weak and a trial was never held. A third suspect that was investigated was named Bingham Bryan. He worked as a yardman for the Gribble House. The chances of him knowing about a trunk that Eliza had that was filled with stocks, wills and other valuables was thought to be likely. So police brought him in and questioned him about this possibly being a robbery that went horribly wrong. Yet again, there was no evidence, so no charges were files. A fourth suspect was a man named John Coker and he was not only indicted, but put on trial. The trial made it all the way to jury deliberation when it was dismissed for lack of evidence and unreliable witnesses. 

That brought the police back to Hunter who was again arrested for the murders and indicted. They had more evidence against him then anyone else. At the trial, it was reported that police searched his home and found that he had bloody clothes strewn about his house and bloody rags were stuffed inside of the fireplace. The police also found his walking stick inside the Gribble House. A witness testified that J.C. had threatened to kill his wife once. And the Gribble House was familiar to J.C. as he had papered the walls inside six years prior to the attack. J.C.'s defense pointed out that when he was put through "the third degree" he was overcome with emotion because he hadn't realized that Maggie was dead. What that means in modern terms is that the police used a tactic before our modern investigative techniques in which they would take a suspect into the room with the dead body of their victim in a bid to get them to confess. So J.C. was taken into the room where his wife had been placed inside a coffin. He didn't seem to realize what was going on at first and when he figured it out, he was overcome with emotion and was very distressed. He asked when she died. Of course, one has to wonder how that was possible since it took Maggie three days to die. Wouldn't they have contacted him when she was in the hospital? 

The jury came back with a verdict on August 17, 1910 and it was guilty. J.C. Hunter was sentenced to die by hanging on December 22, 1911. J.C. had a spiritual advisor named Wilder who set about trying to get clemency for him. Wilder managed to get more than 300 signatures on a petition to ask for clemency based on the fact the conviction was based on circumstantial evidence. J.C. was a model prisoner and asked Wilder if he would baptize him before he was executed. Wilder baptized J.C. and then asked him if he was innocent. J.C. said he was as innocent as a newborn baby. Wilder then asked, "Mr. Hunter, if the governor shall let you die tomorrow, do you feel satisfied to go before God innocent?" Hunter replied, "I do, because I am an innocent man." Then while he was still standing in the water, Wilder informed him that the governor had commuted his sentence to life in prison.

Because of Hunter's age, it was decided to send him to the Confederate Veterans' Home in Atlanta and he was assigned to work as a waiter. For 12 years he served and then on October 27, 1923, Governor Clifford Walker pardoned him. Hunter was a free man at 77 and returned to Savannah. We don't know what became of him after that. Curiously, in March of 1917, a man named J.B. Garvin was arrested by a Savannah police officer who was serving in the National Guard at the U.S.-Mexico border. The officer was hunting for Pancho Villa at the time. Garvin told the officer that he had murdered three women in Savannah with an accomplice. He knew that the murders were committed with a knife and an axe and he described the Gribble House in detail. Garvin said that it was supposed to just be a robbery. He was found to be insane and the confession was discounted. 

But did J.C. Hunter commit this crime? The crime scene seemed to indicate that Maggie had arrived after Eliza and Carrie had been killed, so it doesn't seem like she was the target. And even if we go with J.C. lying in wait for Maggie, that doesn't explain why he would rape Carrie. We don't know if anything was stolen, so it's possible this was initially meant to be a robbery. It's impossible to know who committed this crime now and perhaps that is why there are hauntings connected to the 1909 Savannah Axe Murders. The Gribble House no longer stands, but ghost stories about the warehouse that was built in its place are abundant.

Our listener Stefanie who suggested this subject wrote, "It has been several years ago at this point but my husband and I actually took the paranormal tour they used to offer inside the location. While I cannot say anything terribly exciting happened that evening, the spirit box being used was very active and seemed to be interacting with questions asked. It was an interesting experience and also the first time I had ever heard anything about the murders." The television show Ghost Adventures investigated the trolley barn during their 12th season on episode 12. A manager named Marcie told Zak that she witnessed a big black mass form and grow between two trolleys and it drifted upwards before disappearing. She shook as she shared this story claiming that it still scared her. The GA team didn't capture any evidence of their own.

The barn was open for paranormal tours and investigations and there were reports of disembodied voices being heard. People on tours would get scratched and several saw what looked like the shadow of a man running throughout the warehouse. A lady in white has been seen in the barn. The tours and investigations are no longer offered, but the man who ran them was named Patrick. One experience he had was during a power outage. He said, "I was in the very back corner when we had a power outage. I was at the switchboard and I thought one of the mechanics was behind me. He said, 'What are you doing?' I said, 'I'm trying to fix this switch - would you move out of the light?' I turned around and nobody was there."

The general manager for Old Town Trolley, Charlie Brazil, told Savannah Now in 2012, "We had a mechanic who saw feet literally on the other side of the trolley where he was working. He slid out and there was nothing or no one there. We've had things literally slide across people's desks and all kinds of crazy electronic equipment things happen. We've had trolleys that started by themselves and turned off by themselves, stains on the walls, people who've had their names called, and all kinds of people who have been touched." One EVP that was captured included a woman who responds "Hunter" when asked, "Maggie, are you here? Maggie?"Another EVP may have captured Eliza Gribble based on the accent.

And speaking of Maggie, there was something else supernatural connected to her. It seems that she may have predicted her own death. Her husband had taken out a life insurance policy on himself and the insurance solicitor, John Flatman, had come by Maggie's sisters house the morning of the murder. He was looking to collect on the premium and Maggie told him she wasn't going to pay it, so he left. But then Maggie came outside after him and told him that she needed to tell him something. Maggie said that her old man was going to give her a sewing machine and the solicitor said that if the couple gave him 60 cents by Saturday night, the insurance would be all right. Mr. Flatman later reported that she said she would try, but she didn't think she would live that long. And that by 5 o'clock that evening, the bloody work would be done. He thought she was saying she was going to kill herself. She just replied that he would see for himself. Did she know she was going to die?

And finally, there was a weird phenomenon connected to the Gribble House before it was demolished. A woman was interviewed in 1975 by the Savannah Morning News and she said that she had heard stories about the house from her mother and grandmother, that blood would randomly appear on the walls. The woman said, "People who lived there would swear they saw it. Later the house became a boarding house and the red stains were again seen on the walls of the rooms where the murders happened. I had an uncle who told me this."

It may just be a theory that spirits remain at unrest when they don't receive justice, but there are many stories that seem to support it. Is this one of those stories? That is for you to decide!