Today, the Natchez Trace Parkway is a peaceful road through Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee. But the old Trace was once known as the Devil’s Backbone, a dangerous route marked by robbery, murder and stories that became legend. In The Devil’s Road, a four-part October series, Southern Mysteries explores the darker history and folklore of the Natchez Trace. Part One begins at ancient Native American mound sites along the route and at Pharr Mounds in northern Mississippi, where a brutal murder in 1992 brought a much more recent story to this ancient landscape.

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Episode Sources

• National Park Service, Natchez Trace Parkway. “History & Culture.”
• National Park Service, Natchez Trace Parkway. “American Indian Mounds Along the Natchez Trace Parkway.”
• National Park Service, Natchez Trace Parkway. “Pharr Mounds, Milepost 286.7.”
• National Park Service, Natchez Trace Parkway. “Bynum Mounds, Milepost 232.4.”
• National Park Service, Natchez Trace Parkway. “Emerald Mound.”
• National Park Service, Natchez Trace Parkway. “Historic Places.”
• National Park Service, Natchez Trace Parkway. “Old Natchez Trace Sections.”
• National Park Service, Natchez Trace Parkway. “Trade From Afar,” Pharr Mounds interpretive exhibit and transcript.
• National Park Service, Natchez Trace Parkway. “Objects and Ideas,” Pharr Mounds interpretive exhibit and transcript.
• National Park Service, Natchez Trace Parkway. Natchez Trace mound-site interpretive exhibits and archaeological timeline.
• United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. United States of America v. Danny McGee, No. 93-7503, July 8, 1994.
• United States District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi. Federal proceedings arising from the murder of Thomas Alan Byram at Pharr Mounds.
• Tishomingo County News/The Vidette and Belmont News. “One Arrested in Murder of Iuka Man,” September 10, 1992.
• Tishomingo County News/The Vidette and Belmont News. Coverage of the federal indictments of Danny McGee and Greg Dingler, October 8, 1992.
• Tishomingo County News/The Vidette and Belmont News. Coverage of the upcoming federal murder trials and preliminary-hearing testimony, November 5, 1992.
• Tishomingo County News/The Vidette and Belmont News. Coverage of Danny McGee’s conviction and sentencing, 1993.
• Tishomingo County News/The Vidette and Belmont News. Coverage of Greg Dingler’s second-degree murder conviction, August 5, 1993.

Episode Music

Out of the Mines and Burial Grounds, courtesy of Ross Gentry, Asheville, North Carolina.

In the early 1800s, travelers carrying money north from Natchez became targets for highway robbers along the isolated Natchez Trace.In Part Two of The Devil’s Road, Southern Mysteries follows Samuel Mason and Joseph Thompson Hare, two notorious land pirates whose robberies, violence and encounters with the law helped shape the road’s dangerous reputation. Mason’s story ends in mystery, while Hare’s own confession reveals how he preyed on unsuspecting travelers.

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Episode Sources

• Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Samuel Mason Trial Records, Z/0273.000, 1803.
• Mississippi Department of Archives and History. English translation of the Samuel Mason Trial Records, Z/0273.000.
• Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Territorial Records, Administration Papers, records concerning Samuel Mason and his accomplices, 1803–1804.
• Claiborne, William C. C. Letter Books of W. C. C. Claiborne, correspondence concerning Samuel Mason, highway robbery, the Mississippi River and roads between the Mississippi Territory and Tennessee, 1802–1804.
• Claiborne, William C. C. Letter to James Madison concerning Samuel Mason, robberies and protection of travelers, July 1803.
• Vidal, Nicholas Maria. Correspondence to Governor William C. C. Claiborne concerning Samuel Mason and his accomplices, their prosecution by Spanish authorities and transfer to American custody, 1803.
• Rothert, Otto A. The Outlaws of Cave-in-Rock: Historical Accounts of the Famous Highwaymen and River Pirates Who Operated in Pioneer Days upon the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and over the Natchez Trace.
• Hare, Joseph Thompson. Dying Confession of Joseph Hare, Alias Joseph T. Hare, One of the Mail Robbers. 1818.
• Hare, Joseph Thompson. The Life and Dying Confession of Joseph T. Hare: The Noted Robber Who Was Executed at Baltimore in September Last for Robbing the Mail. 1818.
• United States v. Hare, Circuit Court, District of Maryland, May 1818.
• Alexandria Gazette & Daily Advertiser. “Joseph Thompson Hare,” September 19, 1818.
• Daily National Intelligencer. Report of the executions of Joseph Thompson Hare and John Alexander, September 14, 1818.
• National Park Service, Natchez Trace Parkway. Historical interpretation of the Old Natchez Trace, early travel and transportation.
• National Park Service, Natchez Trace Parkway. Historical interpretation concerning boatmen, travelers and the development of the Natchez Trace.
• Tennessee Encyclopedia. “Natchez Trace.”
• Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Territorial records concerning highway robbery, piracy and law enforcement in the Mississippi Territory during the early nineteenth century.

Episode Music

Out of the Mines, courtesy of Ross Gentry, Asheville, North Carolina.

In February 1972, Bryce, Virginia and Bobby Durham were found murdered in their Boone, North Carolina, home during a heavy snowstorm. Within months, four men were charged and two were eventually indicted for murder, but the case against them collapsed. Nearly fifty years later, a story remembered by the son of a Georgia criminal led investigators to four entirely different men and an unexpected explanation for what happened that night.

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Episode Sources

• Watauga County Sheriff’s Office, “Sheriff Hagaman Announces That 50-Year-Old Triple Homicide ‘Durham Case’ Solved”
• Watauga Democrat, “Suspects Get Counsel for Current Term,” May 15, 1972
• Watauga Democrat, “Investigation of Durham Family’s Slaying Continues”
• Watauga Democrat, contemporary coverage of the June 1972 preliminary hearing in the Durham murder case
• Watauga Democrat, contemporary coverage of the September 1972 grand jury indictments of Jerry Ray Cassada and Dean Chandler
• Watauga Democrat, contemporary coverage of Dean Chandler’s 1973 speedy-trial motion and scheduled trial
• Winston-Salem Journal, contemporary February 1972 coverage of the Durham family murders and early investigation
• The Charlotte Observer, “Family Was Found Dead in a Bathtub 50 Years Ago. Now NC Cops Say They Know the Killers”
• The News & Observer, retrospective coverage of the Durham family murders and crime scene
• Associated Press, contemporary coverage of the dismissal of the remaining murder charges against Jerry Ray Cassada
• Watauga County Sheriff’s Office / Watauga Online, “Sheriff Hagaman Announces That 50-Year-Old Triple Homicide ‘Durham Case’ Solved”
• High Country Press, “Watauga County Historical Society Speaker Series: ‘Convoluted: The 1972 Durham Family Triple Homicide,’ with Terry Harmon”
• Missing in the Carolinas, “Episode 130: The 1972 Murders of Bryce, Virginia, and Bobby Durham in Boone”
• WSOC-TV, 2022 coverage of the Watauga County Sheriff’s Office announcement identifying the men investigators believe killed the Durham family
• WBTV, 2022 coverage of the Watauga County Sheriff’s Office announcement that the Durham case had been solved
• Georgia Supreme Court, Birt v. State
• Georgia court records concerning the murders of Reid and Lois Fleming
• Federal court records concerning Bobby Gene Gaddis and crimes associated with Billy Sunday Birt
• The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, reporting on Billy Sunday Birt, his family and his criminal history
• North Carolina Newspapers / DigitalNC, Watauga Democrat archive, 1972–1973
• Terry Harmon, Convoluted: The 1972 Durham Family Triple Homicide

Episode Music

Out of the Mines, courtesy of Ross Gentry, Asheville, North Carolina.

In this updated and remastered Southern Mysteries Classic, we revisit the strange disappearance of Connie Franklin and the mystery of the man who returned from the dead. In 1929, five men in Stone County, Arkansas, were charged with the murder of Franklin, a drifter who had vanished from the Ozarks. A teenage girl said he had been brutally attacked and his body burned in the woods, and investigators believed they had found his charred remains. Then, just days before the murder trial began, a man appeared claiming to be Connie Franklin. The bizarre case drew reporters from across the country and became known as the Arkansas Ghost Trial.

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Episode Sources

• Brooks Blevins, Ghost of the Ozarks: Murder and Memory in the Upland South, University of Illinois Press, 2012.
• Brooks Blevins, “The Arkansas Ghost Trial: The Connie Franklin Case and the Ozarks in the National Media,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 68, No. 3, Autumn 2009, pp. 245–271.
• Encyclopedia of Arkansas, “Connie Franklin (Alleged Murder of).”
• Deane Allen, “Man at Batesville Identified as Franklin,” Arkansas Democrat, Dec. 8, 1929, pp. 1, 8.
• “Connie Franklin Reported Living,” Arkansas Gazette, Dec. 5, 1929, p. 1.
• “Five Indicted as Climax to Murder Probe,” Arkansas Democrat, Nov. 24, 1929, pp. 1, 6.
• Fletcher Chenout, “Four Cleared of Slaying Franklin,” Arkansas Gazette, Dec. 20, 1929, pp. 1, 7.
• Carl Olsson, “Startling Franklin Case Development Predicted,” Arkansas Democrat, Dec. 15, 1929, p. 1.
• TIME, “The States: Arkansas Vindicated,” Dec. 30, 1929.
• “From Baxter Bulletin Files,” Baxter County History, Vol. 7, 1981, pp. 41–42.
• Steven Teske, Unvarnished Arkansas: The Naked Truth about Nine Famous Arkansans, Butler Center Books, 2012.
• University of Illinois Press, “Q&A with Ghost of the Ozarks Author Brooks Blevins,” July 6, 2012.
• KSMU Ozarks Public Radio, “Ghost of the Ozarks: Murder and Scandal in the Hills,” April 30, 2012.
• Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 11, 1942, retrospective account of the Connie Franklin case.

Episode Music

Out of the Mines, courtesy of Ross Gentry, Asheville, North Carolina.

In April 1963, civil rights activist William Lewis Moore set out alone on a 320-mile walk from Chattanooga, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi, carrying a letter for segregationist Gov. Ross Barnett. On April 23, the 35-year-old postal worker was found shot to death in northeast Alabama.In this episode of Southern Mysteries, we explore Moore's life beyond his final walk, the family he left behind, the threats and warnings he encountered along the road, the investigation into his killing, and the questions that remain more than 60 years later.

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Episode Sources

• William Lewis Moore — Wikipedia
• The Unsolved Civil Rights Murder of William Lewis Moore — Morbidology
• Slaying of Baltimore civil rights protester still unsolved — The Baltimore Sun (2013)
• A Postman's 1963 Walk for Justice, Cut Short on an Alabama Road — NPR (2013)
• The Murder of William Moore — Equal Justice Initiative
• William L. Moore — Un(re)solved, FRONTLINE / PBS
• Historical Marker Alongside Alabama Highway Will Honor Civil Rights Martyr William Lewis Moore — Southern Poverty Law Center (2019)
• Freedom Walk: Mississippi or Bust — Mary Stanton, University Press of Mississippi (2003)
• The Mind in Chains: The Autobiography of a Schizophrenic — William Lewis Moore
• Civil Rights Memorial — Southern Poverty Law Center, Montgomery, Alabama
• A Stain in Alabama — Los Angeles Times (Oct. 27, 2002)
• The Injustice Files: He Walked Alone — Investigation Discovery (2011)

Episode Music

Out of the Mines, courtesy of Ross Gentry, Asheville, North Carolina.

In February 1893, Atlanta endured a week of financial scandal, suicide and shocking violence that newspapers would later remember as Black Week. The darkest chapter unfolded inside the home of one of the city's most respected families, where two sisters were murdered and a third calmly confessed. Through contemporary accounts and Julia Force's own writings, this episode explores one of Georgia's most haunting nineteenth-century murder cases and the mystery that still surrounds it.

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Episode Sources

• Langley, Lee. Inside Scenes of Atlanta's Black Week: A Series of Social Sensations and a Carnival of Crimes. Atlanta: Franklin Printing and Publishing Company, 1893.
• "A Carnival of Crime." The True Citizen (Waynesboro, Georgia), March 4, 1893.
• "The Trial of Julia Force." The True Citizen (Waynesboro, Georgia), July 1, 1893.
• "Miss Julia Force Indicted." The Weekly Banner (Athens, Georgia), March 14, 1893.
• "Julia Force Declared Insane." The Hartwell Sun (Hartwell, Georgia), July 7, 1893.
• "Julia Force Sent to the State Sanitarium." The Union Recorder (Milledgeville, Georgia), July 11, 1893.
• "Thomas Cobb Jackson's Suicide." The Montgomery Monitor (Mount Vernon, Georgia), March 2, 1893.
• "Force, Wholesale and Retail Dealer in Boots and Shoes." The Daily Intelligencer (Atlanta, Georgia), Dec. 22, 1865.
• "Bankruptcy Notice of Benjamin W. Force." The Daily Opinion (Atlanta, Georgia), Oct. 24, 1867.
• The Atlanta Constitution (Atlanta, Georgia), coverage of the Lewis Redwine scandal and Atlanta's Black Week, 1893-1894.
• The Atlanta Journal (Atlanta, Georgia), coverage of the Force murders and trial, 1893.
• Georgia Historic Newspapers, Digital Library of Georgia. https://gahistoricnewspapers.galileo.usg.edu
• New Georgia Encyclopedia. "Fulton County." https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org
• New Georgia Encyclopedia. "Henry W. Grady." https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org
• Your Peachy Past. https://peachypast.blogspot.com
• Find a Grave. "Julia H. Force." https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/144555327/julia-h-force
• Friends of Memory Hill Cemetery. https://friendsofcems.org

Episode Music

Out of the Mines, courtesy of Ross Gentry, Asheville, North Carolina.

For more than two centuries, a hidden society existed in one of the most unforgiving landscapes in the American South. In this episode of Southern Mysteries, explore the remarkable history of the Great Dismal Swamp maroons, one of the longest-lasting acts of resistance to slavery in American history. Through historical records, firsthand accounts and modern archaeology, this forgotten chapter of Southern history reveals how an entire community survived in plain sight and why so few people have heard their story.

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Episode Sources

• “The Hidden Black Society They Don’t Teach You About” — In the Margins, PBS. Overview of the Great Dismal Swamp maroons, including interior, fringe and canal communities; the stories of Harriet Jacobs, Venus and Jack; the canal labor economy; and the Easter Conspiracy.
• “The Great Dismal Swamp” — 99% Invisible. Podcast episode exploring the landscape, history and archaeology of the swamp’s maroon communities.
• “Tom Copper’s Rebellion and Great Dismal Marronage” — National Park Service. Detailed history of Tom Copper, Mingo, New Begun and the alleged Easter Conspiracy of 1802.
• “Anthropologist Daniel Sayers on the Maroons Who Found Freedom in the Great Dismal Swamp” — National Endowment for the Humanities. Interview about Sayers’ archaeological research and the evidence of long-term maroon settlements.
• “The Dismal Swamp: One Road Out of Slavery Took You Straight to the Boggiest Place You’ve Ever Been” — National Endowment for the Humanities. Background on the landscape, archaeology and people who sought freedom inside the swamp.
• “Deep in the Swamps, Archaeologists Are Finding How Fugitive Slaves Kept Their Freedom” — Smithsonian Magazine. In-depth account of Daniel Sayers’ excavations and the evidence uncovered at interior maroon sites.
• A Desolate Place for a Defiant People: The Archaeology of Maroons, Indigenous Americans, and Enslaved Laborers in the Great Dismal Swamp — Daniel O. Sayers. Archaeological study of Indigenous occupation, enslaved labor and maroon resistance within the swamp.
• Dismal Freedom: A History of the Maroons of the Great Dismal Swamp — J. Brent Morris. History of the maroons and the ways they created independent lives beyond white-controlled society.
• City of Refuge: Slavery and Petit Marronage in the Great Dismal Swamp, 1763–1856 — Marcus P. Nevius. Study of temporary and long-term escape, informal labor networks and the connections between maroons and the swamp’s commercial economy.
• “A History of the Maroons of the Great Dismal Swamp” — Virginia Museum of History & Culture. Program featuring historian J. Brent Morris and his research into the swamp’s maroon communities.
• “Gabriel’s Conspiracy” — Encyclopedia Virginia and Virginia Humanities. Historical overview of Gabriel’s planned 1800 uprising near Richmond.
• “Letter from Mosby Sheppard to James Monroe, Aug. 30, 1800” — Encyclopedia Virginia and the Library of Virginia. Primary-source warning sent to Virginia’s governor after the planned uprising was revealed.
• “Testimony in the Trial of Gabriel, Oct. 6, 1800” — Encyclopedia Virginia and the Library of Virginia. Surviving testimony from Gabriel’s prosecution.
• Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl — Harriet Jacobs, available through Documenting the American South at the University of North Carolina. Jacobs’ firsthand account of her escape from slavery and the time she spent hiding in a swamp.
• Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy, Late a Slave in the United States of America — Moses Grandy, available through Documenting the American South. Firsthand account of slavery, waterway labor and the economy surrounding the Great Dismal Swamp and its canal.

Episode Music

Out of the Mines, courtesy of Ross Gentry, Asheville, North Carolina.