Transcript of a Stoke's County Sheriff's Department Interview, February 23rd, 1930

Partial transcript of an interview with Junius Grey of Germantown, NC by Sheriff’s Deputy Charles Richardson dated February 23rd, 1930, recently discovered in an attic file cabinet by his grandson, Daniel Richardson.

JG: Yeah, strange. It be looking like someone took a bow and arrow and nailed it to a shotgun crosswise… like this.

CR: You mean a crossbow?

JG: Is that it? Sure, I guess that’s what it be.

CR: And when was this?

JG: Won’t quite Thanksgiving yet…. Uh… yeah, I be heading back from the Honey Hole what passed just the other side of his farm. I’d got me a deer and wanted to ask Charlie if he had a, uh… a wheelbarrow I could use to take it home.

CR: Alright.

JG: So I walks up the path to his home and he’s out front loading up that old horse of his with a saddle and bags like he’s going on a trip. So I asks him, I say “Charlie, you going on a trip somewhere?” And he just kinda be smiling and gives me this look.

CR: He had the crossbow then?

JG: Yeah. No, I mean it was on his horse, strapped down on it. Had a whole bunch of these little arrows in a case next to it too.

CR: Bolts.

JG: No, looked more like they be arrows for his little… for that crossbow thing. They were too long to be bolts and was made out of wood.

CR: Alright, go on.

JG: So I asks him if Charlie’s going on a trip somewhere and he just be grinning, like he was excited about something, you know? So uh… then he says “No, I’m going hunting.”

CR: And this was after the sun went down?

JG: Yeah. Stars won’t all out yet, but it was close. So I says to him “Charlie, you looking to hunt coon?” See he had his two hunting dogs with him, though they won’t coon dogs, they was hunting dogs. And he says “No, I got something else to kill,” he says, “and it’s a lot bigger than no coon.” That’s when he put them big iron shackles into his pack.

CR: Shackles?

JG: Yeah. Like them they use on the prison gangs? So I says, joking-like with him, uh… “Charlie, you gonna go hunt a man?” And he gives me that grin again and he say “What I aim to kill, he ain’t be no man, but he look like one.” And then he ask me if I want to be helping him.

CR: Did he say what that meant?

JG: I be getting to that, yeah. So I says “What ain’t no man but look like he one, Charlie?” and he says “I’m going to be killing Mister Will.”

CR: Reynolds?

JG: That be the only Mister Will I know, sir. See, that don’t be making no sense to me, though. Charlie farmed tobacco and Reynolds bought up near everything he could get hung and dried. So I asks him “Charlie, why you want to kill that rich whit e man, what he done to you?” And he says, all serious “That ain’t no man,” he says, “that be a monster and I aim to put him down.” So I says “You gonna put him down with that thing?” I says, pointing at that strange bow-gun thing.

CR: Crossbow.

JG: Yeah, crossbow. So he says “There be only so many ways you can kill a monster,” he says. “And I’m going to put a screw into his heart and then he be dead.”

CR: Did he say screw or bolt?

JG: What?

CR: Did he say he was going to shoot a bolt into his heart or put a screw into his heart?

JG: You know, you right sir, he might say bolt. Anyways, I says “I don’t want no part of killing no man or monster, Charlie.” And that’s when he starts getting all mad and shouting at me. That’s when Fannie comes out on the porch and asks what’s going on. I says “Nothing, I just be wanting to borrow the wheelbarrow” and that’s when Charlie takes his swing, about knocks my jaw off.

CR: He hit you first?

JG: Yes sir. But, well, I got mad because I be seeing no cause for him to hit me and he already talking about killing people so I hit him back. We get into it a bit, with Fannie, she be yelling for us to cut it out and Charlie, he be hitting something fierce, like a brick in the face, if you know what I mean. I mean, he ain’t be no big man, but he punch good, that’s for sure. So he got the best of me and yell for me to get off his land and forget what he done said, so that’s what I did because I didn’t want to be hit no more. I ain’t proud, I know when I be beat and when to get out.

CR: Is that the last time you spoke to him?

JG: No sir.

CR: When did you speak to him next?

JG: Next morning. It was real early and I was heading back to the Honey Hole with my own wheelbarrow to pick up that deer and I see him coming down the road looking like hell warmed over, but he got this smile on his face, grinning happy, you know?

CR: What do you mean he looked like hell warmed over?

JG: He looked rough, like he been in a fight with a bear. He had this mean scratch across his chest and had blood and black on him, like he’d been working in a mine someplace.

CR: He had blood on him from the scratch?

JG: Won’t just that. I don’t think all that blood be his.

CR: What did you say?

JG: What do you be saying to a man just whipped your ass the night before? I don’t be saying nothing, sir, nothing at all, I just get out of his way and let him the road.

CR: Did he say anything to you?

JG: Yes sir, he smiles to me and says “Junius, I got him! Mister Will’s dead and wont’ haunt no people no more,” he says. I say “Oh no, Mister Lawson…” because once a man’s whipped your ass, you call him proper. I say “Oh no, Mister Lawson, what that rich boy ever do to you?” before I be thinking that might what got him be going off last night. He says to me “The monster, he be dead Junius. I be stirring up the hornet’s nest,” he says, “and when the other monsters, they be coming, I’ll kill them too.” So I says “There ain’t no monsters, Mister Lawson. You go on to bed and let Fannie take care of you. You got a whole passle of little ones that be needing their daddy and you got them to think on” I says. And he be going “That’s why I had to kill Mister Will, Junius,” he says, “he be turning Marie, turning her away from the family and no monster is going to take my little girl without a fight” he says.

CR: So he claimed to have killed Mister Reynolds?

JG: Yes sir.

CR: But William Reynolds is still alive.

JG: Yes, sir, Jesus praised that he be.

CR: So what do you think happened?

JG: I don’t know, sir. He says he kills someone and by the look of him I believe him, but that scratch won’t from no knife or nothing, it look like it from some kind of wild animal.

CR: Do you think he killed anyone else between Thanksgiving and Christmas?

JG: I don’t be knowing sir, I didn’t see him. I be hearing a whole hell of a lot of shooting going on at his farm Christmas Day and I be heading over to see what he was shooting at and that’s when I seen his whole family been killed, except his eldest boy Buck who won’t there.

CR: Arthur?

JG: Yes, sir. We call him Buck.

CR: Thank you, Mister Grey. Is there anything else you can remember that might help with this?

JG: Yes, sir. Look, I know you don’t be having no cause to believe me, but Charlie, he didn’t kill his Fannie and them little children like that. He loved his family, won’t nothing but a respectable man making his way.

CR: He beat you up, Junius.

JG: I know, but I must be… must said something that got him riled up, I don’t know. But that the man got mad at me ain’t no reason… uh… ain’t no reason to lie about him. He always treat his family real good, always work hard and never nary had a cross word to say to be before I be getting him mad. You know he was a sharecropper, like me? Saved up all his money real careful, even with the big family to feed and bought himself that farm two years ago, just after little Ray was born. I been in his house, sir, I know he be a good husband and father. Ain’t no way he killed that good wife and them pretty children sir, ain’t nothing you can say be changing my mind on it.

CR: So what do you think happened, Mister Grey?

JG: I think when you be looking to kill monsters, sir, you got to be careful or they be turning you into a monster too.

[TRANSCRIPT ENDS]