A Shot in the Moonlight, page 8
“No, sir. I think not.”
Grider let it slide, and again started trying to make the case that the mob had had the house surrounded. He had drawn a sort of rough floor plan of George Dinning’s cabin and used it to show the jury where the Whitecappers were positioned.
“Do you know whether anybody was at the north door at the time you were at the south door?”
“No, sir.”
“Was the party when this firing was done down near the window here?” Grider said, pointing to the easternmost window.
“I think they were all due east of the house,” Moore said.
“Was your party due east of the house when they shot at him?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How many shots were fired back?”
“I couldn’t tell you.”
“The party was all together when they shot?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You cannot state how many were fired but you can state that they were all due east of the house?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where these parties were standing when they shot, they could not shoot into the north door or the south door either could they?” Grider asked.
“I do not reckon they could,” Moore answered.
“You said you were standing east of the house?”
“I was standing right along here,” Moore said, pointing to the east side of the house on the drawing.
“That shot came from the window upstairs?”
“I do not know,” Moore said. “I could not see it.”
“How far were you standing from Conn when that shot was fired?”
“I do not know,” Moore said. “He was in the crowd.”
“Was the crowd bunched together?”
“They were scattered.”
“Where was the crowd at?”
“Right along here,” Moore said, pointing again at the east side of the house.
“All around near the east end of the south door?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You say you saw no one at the north door?”
“No, sir.”
“Were there shots at the south door?”
“I reckon so.”
“They could not have shot in the North door?”
“I do not think that anybody was around there.”
“Could they have done it?”
“No sir.”
“You told George if he were stealing you would give him ten days to get away?” Grider asked.
“We asked him to get away,” Moore replied.
“Did you ask him if he was stealing?”
“We told him if he was concerned in the business he must get away.”
“And you told him he must get away in ten days?”
“We told him if he could prove [he wasn’t stealing] it would be alright.”
“He said he could prove it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you all tell him he needn’t go away?”
“No, sir. Told him to do it.”
“Did you all tell him how far he had better go before he stopped?”
“No, sir.”
“I believe you stated that he said, ‘You had better take me out now.’ What did you say to that?” Grider pressed.
“I told him if he didn’t believe we could, that there was enough of us to do it.”
“I will ask you if some of the parties didn’t make this remark,” Grider said, checking his notes. “‘You shut up in there or we will tear this damn shack down and hang you now’?”
“No, sir.”
“You told him he had better get out, and he said, ‘You had better put me out.’ And you told him, ‘There is enough of us to do it’?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Was Conn between you and the house?”
“He was in here,” Moore said, pointing to a spot between where he was standing and the house.
“Some of the party were at the south door here?”
“No, sir. They were following me. I was in front.”
“How many shots did Dinning fire?”
“I do not know.”
“How many fired from the window?”
“There was one that I heard and I didn’t see where it came from.”
“You say there was one shot from the house?”
“I didn’t see anything of the shot from the house at all.”
“Did you hear the report of several guns coming from the house.”
“I heard the report of several guns it seemed coming from the house.”
“They were from your party?”
“Several was,” Moore said.
Grider finished and Finn stood to reexamine.
“When you were walking off or leaving and heard the report of a gun, not up to that time had there been any gun fired there?” Finn asked his witness.
“No, sir,” Moore replied.
“Any bombs?”
“No, sir.”
“Any dynamite?”
“No, sir.”
“Any violence offered?”
“No, sir.”
“Now, Doc, Mr. Grider asked about where you were when that shot was fired and then he asked you where the rest of them were. Do you undertake to remember where all that party was at the time the shot was fired?”
“No, sir.”
“So far as you can state—and that is all you mean to state—is that a good bunch of them were in that direction?” Finn said, pointing to the east side of the house on the drawing.
“Yes, sir.”
Finn was finished. Grider had a few more questions.
“You say when you were out here,” he said, pointing to the east side of the house, “you do not know whether there were men at the north door?”
“No, sir.”
“You could not tell?”
“No, sir.”
“I believe you said you could not see Conn when he was shot and you did not see what he was doing when shot?”
“No, sir,” Moore said. “He came out here”—he pointed to the front of the house—“and says, ‘I am shot.’”
“He was out here at this fence?” Grider asked.
“No, sir,” Moore said. “He was about ten steps from the fence.”
“What part of the body was he shot in?”
“He was shot in the head here,” Moore said, touching his own head and neck. “I did not look at him at the time.”
“What side?”
“Left side. He was going in an easterly direction, I reckon.”
“His back would have been to the house then would it not?” Grider asked, pointing out the obvious conflict in Moore’s story.
“He was making a turn,” Moore said.
“If he was going from the house in that direction,” Grider said, pointing to his drawing, “his left side would have been next to the window, wouldn’t it?”
“No, sir.”
“He couldn’t have been shot there if his back was to the house, could he?” Grider asked.
“I think so,” Moore said.
“Did you go back to the house that night after you found that Conn had been hurt?”
“No, sir.”
“There was twenty five of the party and you didn’t go back and Conn died within 100 yards of the house?”
“He died as soon as we took him from his horse.”
“Did you go back next day?”
“No, sir.”
“Have you ever been back there since then?”
“No, sir.”
“Is that house standing there now?”
“I do not know.”
“You don’t know?”
“No, sir.”
“After you left that house that night you never have been back there since?”
“No, sir.”
“Where did you take Conn that night?”
“To Mr. Williams’.”
“Did the whole party go together?”
“No, sir. Eight or ten of them went with him.”
“What became of the balance?” Grider asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Did you go with Conn?”
“Yes, sir.”
“About 10 went?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did the balance of the party scatter and go to their homes?”
“Yes, sir,” Moore said. “I suppose so.”
“They scattered?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Nothing further,” Grider said.
One of the soldiers, people in the packed courtroom noticed, had fallen asleep while leaning on his weapon. He occupied a position near the railing that separated the increasingly sweaty crowd from the proceedings. Upon noticing, Captain Noel Gaines hurried to the sleeping militiaman and clapped him hard on the right shoulder, then escorted him from the room, a look of embarrassment on the young man’s face. Soon another soldier replaced him.
The next two witnesses called by the Commonwealth—Joe Deaux, a forty-two-year-old white farmer and father of six, and William Townsend—confirmed the version of the story put forth by the first two: that theirs was a friendly mission, even though they’d gone at night and disguised their voices, and even though they were armed. That they were walking away from the house when they heard a commotion, that they turned and witnessed a shotgun blast from the second-story window, that Jodie Conn then reported: “Boys, I am shot.” Both men denied going back to Dinning’s house at any point after that night, even though Joe Deaux lived on adjacent property and could see Dinning’s house from his front porch. They said they hadn’t been drinking that night, and that if others were, they didn’t see it. Deaux admitted to carrying a “little rifle.” He also testified that he heard Doc Moore tell Dinning that he had ten days to leave Coffee Bottom, and that he shouldn’t stop until he’d made it forty miles away. In one interesting exchange, Grider asked Deaux whether the committee had been instructed to visit Dinning at night.
“The committee arranged that,” Deaux said.
“Who appointed the committee?” Grider asked.
“It appointed itself,” Deaux said.
“What was the name of the organization?” Grider asked.
“We didn’t call it anything.”
“It was just a self-constituted committee?”
“Yes, sir.”
“It took twenty-five men to confer with Dinning?”
“That many went.”
“Went in the nighttime, armed with guns?”
“Yes, sir.”
“They went on a friendly mission, did they?”
“They didn’t mean anything else.”
Townsend, who lived a mile and a half from Dinning, said Moore was the leader of the band, and recalled a slightly different version of the dialogue between Moore and Dinning.
“What did Moore say to Dinning when he said, ‘You had better put me out tonight’?” Grider asked.
“Doc said, ‘There is enough of us to do it, and just watch us as we go off if you don’t believe it,’” Townsend said. In other words, You’ll see how many of us there are as we walk away and leave you alone. It seemed preposterous to Grider.
Townsend added that the men waited two or three minutes to fire after George Dinning fired the first shot. Grider seemed astounded by this claim as well. “Two or three minutes?” the lawyer asked.
“Yes, sir,” Townsend said.
“Was it that long?”
“Well, it wasn’t long,” Townsend said. “Just as soon as Doc Moore could give the command, ‘Shoot boys, where you saw the blaze come from.’”
The other remarkable thing Townsend said was that the whole collective had met again since the night of the shooting. Perhaps, Grider assumed, that was why the language they all used to describe the night was so similar.
The fifth witness, J. H. Bloodworth, admitted that he went back to Dinning’s house the following morning around nine o’clock, and that he observed bullet holes in the north door and two or three patches of blood inside the house, on the floor and on the bed that had been occupied by Dinning and his wife, Mollie.
The sixth, Bloodworth’s brother, Tom Bloodworth, repeated the story from the first five, but said that Jodie Conn cried out, “I am shot,” before anyone asked. And Tom Bloodworth admitted he was carrying a pistol that night, a Smith & Wesson, and he shot five times, unloading his gun at the upstairs window.
With that, court was adjourned for the day. Mollie Dinning, who was seated in the gallery, watched as soldiers escorted her husband away, his saturated suit clinging to his body.
Later that night, while on picket patrol outside the jailhouse where George Dinning would have been trying to sleep, a guard heard a noise and turned to see two men pointing shotguns in his direction. In terror, he aimed his own and squeezed off a round as quickly as he could, sending the assailants scrambling into the darkness. The shot aroused other soldiers, but by the time they arrived, all that remained of the men were boot prints in the dirt.
Chapter 7
“There Was a
Good Many Holes”
The witnesses called by the Commonwealth were decent men, according to the newspapers. They enjoyed the names of good, law-abiding citizens. So, too, did Jodie Conn, fatally injured by George Dinning’s shotgun. Many had known Conn his whole life, and he was as much a part of southeastern Logan County as dark-fired tobacco. His grandfather Notley Thomas Conn was a farmer of Scottish descent, and around 1840 he moved to Logan County, purchased a large tract of land, and began raising a family. He amassed hundreds of acres of farmland and bought dozens of slaves. Notley Thomas Conn’s offspring would long be numbered among the leading and representative men of southern Kentucky. The Conns owned the most fertile and level farmland on the Red River. They counted among their number the leading stockman in Logan County, a prominent tobacco dealer in Franklin, the vice-president of Peoples Bank, the owner of the South Kentucky Rabbitry, and the largest mule and horse trader in all of southern Kentucky. Jodie Conn’s own father owned the most beautiful home in Logan County, which sat on about seven hundred acres in the Hickory Flat section. He had accumulated the best goods the world had to offer, and he spent all of his winters in Florida.
So it was perhaps fitting, then, that Jodie Conn’s obituary accounted for the lost potential of the heir to an esteemed heritage, that it omitted certain facts and introduced for posterity a glorified version of the man’s disgraceful final act. The lengthy column made no mention of his broad-brimmed black hat, his long black overcoat, or the rifle he carried at his side on that cold January night. The facts: he was born to Charles T. and Caroline J. Baird Conn on November 1, 1864, and died when he fell from his horse with squirrel shot in his cheek, neck, and ear on the moonlit night of January 21, 1897, the thirty-two-year-old scion of the wealthiest farm family in southwestern Kentucky.
Jodie Conn, depicted by the Louisville Times.
“He was a descendant of honored ancestry, a son of most worthy parents, whose wise counsel and tender, loving care and commendable example he had continuously shared from infancy to his death, having spent his life in the neighborhood in which he had been reared,” his flowery obituary read. “He was intelligent, honest, noble-hearted, amiable in disposition, generous, and in the fullest sense neighborly. By his deeds of kindness and helping service he drew men to him and around him in the strongest ties of affection and appreciation.”
It continued: “Whatever may be the feelings of any who, without knowledge of his character and worth, or the circumstances connected with his tragical death, may to unkindly and harshly comment and criticise, the honest verdict of the last citizens about him who had known him for all his life, and who are entirely familiar with all the facts connected with his sad death, is, and will be, he gave his life for his friends, and the motive that led him to that cause which resulted in the sacrifice of his life was an honest and earnest desire that the rights and property of law-abiding citizens shall be protected, and if in his last act of kindness in behalf of his friends and at their solicitation for his help his judgement was at fault, it was an error of the head and not of the heart. His was an effort on behalf of the best interests of the best element in society.”
“How far were you from Doc Moore when he was doing the talking?” J. B. Grider asked J. M. Phelps, who lived a half mile from George Dinning and had brought a double-barreled shotgun loaded with squirrel shot with him to talk peacefully to a friend late that night in January.
“Some eight or ten feet,” Phelps said.
“Did you see his face?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Was his face disguised in any way?”
“He had a rag over his face.”
“Did he make any effort to disguise his voice?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You would have hardly recognized his voice yourself?”
“No, sir.”
“You told Dinning to come out?”
“Told him to come to the door.”
“That was said in a peaceable, orderly and quiet manner?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Told him who you were?”
“No, sir. Told him we were friends.”
“What was the purpose of keeping him from knowing who you were?”
“We didn’t want him to know I guess.”
“Why did you put that handkerchief over the mouth?”
“We didn’t want him to recognize the voice.”
“Who did you tell him you were?”
“Told him we were his friends that didn’t want to bother him.”
“You say the voice was disguised so he could not tell whether or not they were his friends?”
“No, sir,” Phelps said. “I don’t know.”
“Did you tell him he must get away?”
“Yes, sir. Within ten days.”
“Did you tell him within what distance he mustn’t stop?”
“Within fifty miles.”
“Did you see Conn where he was when he was shot?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What part of the body?”
“Left side of the face and down below the shirt collar.”
“He was shot in the face and the cheek?”
