The reverends weren't exactly model Christians
After the congregation of a small church in Reid’s Ferry, Virginia, voted in July 1908 to replace their pastor, the Reverend James Smith, with a younger man, the Reverend Ernest Lyons, the reverends got into a quarrel over $45, and the latter threatened to kill the former. On August 1, Smith failed to appear at a church conference in nearby Suffolk, arousing suspicions among his church allies that Lyons had made good on the threat.
A few months after Smith disappeared, news reached Reid’s Ferry that a body of a man generally fitting Smith’s description had been found in the Nansemond River near Suffolk. Smith’s supporters, now convinced their suspicions were correct, contacted Commonwealth Attorney James U. Burgess, who arranged for the body from the river to be exhumed.
The body was bloated and in an advanced state of decomposition, but a ring on the little finger of the left hand appeared to match one that Smith was known to have owned. The clothing on the corpse also matched descriptions provided by persons familiar with Smith’s wardrobe. An autopsy determined that the man had been struck in the head with a dull instrument and thrown into the river when he was dead or dying. When questioned about the murder, Lyons lied, claiming to have to have seen Smith recently in Newport News, Norfolk, and Portsmouth.
Lyons was indicted for first-degree murder, carrying the death penalty. At a three-day trial, which began on January 13, 1909, in Suffolk, several members of the church testified about the death threat Lyons had leveled at Smith the previous year. Lyons’s lawyer, Robert W. Withers, contended that the corpse was not Smith’s and, in any event, the evidence was insufficient to connect Lyons to Smith’s disappearance. The jury disagreed, but found Lyons guilty only of the lesser included offense of second-degree murder, apparently having concluded that Smith’s death resulted from a renewed outbreak of the quarrel over the $45 and, therefore, that the death penalty was not appropriate. Judge James L. McLemore sentenced Lyons to 18 years in prison.
After a motion for a new trial was denied, Withers, believing strongly in his client’s innocence, pleaded with Judge McLemore to reconsider and at least grant a hearing on the motion. McLemore agreed to the hearing, only on the condition that Withers first go to Lyons, tell him that the motion had been denied, and ask what really happened. When Withers did so, he found Lyons no longer maintaining his innocence. Lyons said he indeed had been involved in the crime, but had not committed it alone. Smith’s death, he said, was a result of conspiracy involving several members of the congregation — specifically those who had testified for the prosecution at the trial. Lyons promptly recanted the allegation, but this latest lie, on top of those he had earlier told, sealed his fate. He went to the penitentiary.
Three years later, the clerk of the Nansemond County Circuit Court, George E. Bunting, discovered Smith living in good health in North Carolina and, incidentally, wearing on the little finger of his left hand a ring like the one found on the corpse from the river. Smith voluntarily returned to Suffolk, where at a hearing before Judge McLemore his identity was confirmed by members of his church. Smith acknowledged that he had read newspaper stories about Lyons’s trial and conviction, but had done nothing because he feared prosecution for absconding with church funds — the $45 over which the reverends had quarreled. The corpse from the river was never identified.
This account was written by Rob Warden, executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions. Permission is granted to reprint, quote, or ost on other web sites with appropriate attribution.
