Death of a Policeman Birth of a Baby: A Crime and Its Aftermath

By T. Felder Dorn

On 17 July 1932, on a highway near Fort Mill, SC, Rural Policeman Elliott Harris was attempting to arrest Beatrice Snipes husband Clyde for reckless driving. Mrs. Snipes intervened, snatching Harris pistol from its holster and fatally shooting him. After her trial in December, she became the first woman in South Carolina sentenced to die by electrocution. Beatrice, however, was pregnant at the time of the crime and was in her eighth month when she was sentenced to be executed on a date about three months after giving birth.

This sentence generated a firestorm of negative reaction, and the Governor of South Carolina in January commuted the sentence to life imprisonment. Beatrices daughter Jean was born soon thereafter and spent the first seven months of life with her mother in prison. Jean then was removed from her mothers custody. A secret adoption was arranged, and neither Beatrice nor Clyde was told by whom Jean had been adopted. This book tells the story of Beatrices crime and its aftermath, including the impact on Jeans life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 30, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477119853

T. Felder Dorn

Felder Dorn is the author of two books published by the University of South Carolina Press: The Guns of Meeting Street: A Southern Tragedy (2001), and Challenges on the Emmaus Road (in press), about the role of Episcopal Bishops in the Civil War era. A native of South Carolina, Dr. Dorn’s professional career included service on the chemistry faculties of The University of the South in Sewanee, TN, and Kean University in Union, NJ, as well as serving as a dean and vice president at Kean.

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Copyright © 2012 by T. Felder Dorn.

Library of Congress Control Number:            2012909635

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Contents

Part 1 A Tragic Crime and Its Immediate Consequences

Setting and Overview

Chapter 1    Near Fort Mill, South Carolina, on July 17, 1932

Chapter 2    Roots

Chapter 3    A Marriage Beset by Crime and Alcohol

Chapter 4    Interlude: Impact on Harris’s Family and Pretrial Chronology

Chapter 5    Beatrice and Clyde in Court

Chapter 6    Perspectives on a Crime

Chapter 7    Controversy and Commutation

Chapter 8    Baby Snipes and Her Brother

Chapter 9    Twelve Years in the Penitentiary

Part 2 Life and Times of a Prison Baby

Overview

Chapter 10    Farm Child

Chapter 11    A Brother’s Miserable Childhood

Chapter 12    An Identity Crisis

Chapter 13    The Ghent Family—An Identity Found

Chapter 14    Impact of Family Roots

Epilogue

Postcript

Acknowledgments

Sources

Notes

Dedicated to Jean A. Ghent

Part 1

A Tragic Crime and Its Immediate Consequences

Setting and Overview

Elliott Harris, a rural police officer in York County, South Carolina, was fatally shot while attempting to make an arrest on a Sunday afternoon in July 1932. The shooting occurred on a highway not far below the border with North Carolina.

This crime was committed during an era when the Great Depression and Prohibition dwarfed all other societal issues or problems. The lifestyle pursued during their marriage by the two people responsible for this tragic incident, Lela Beatrice Hilton (Ferguson) Snipes, who killed Officer Harris, and her husband, Clyde Thomas Snipes, whose actions set the stage for the tragedy, in fact, was shaped by the Depression and Prohibition. The influence of these two hallmarks of the times and the responses of Beatrice and Clyde to that influence led to the circumstances in which they found themselves on that Sunday in July 1932.

Part 1 opens with a description of the events on the day of the crime. The family roots of Beatrice Hilton and Clyde Snipes then are explored in chapter 2, with a focus on events during their early years that might have determined or affected their adult behavior, especially responses to crises. Then in chapter 3, the harsh, tumultuous six years of their marriage prior to July 1932 are examined.

The remaining chapters in part 1 focus first on the consequences of the crime for the victim’s family and the community concerned and then on how the legal system responded to the crime, including resolution of the dilemma that the system faced after the conviction of Beatrice Snipes for first-degree murder.

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Chapter 1

Near Fort Mill, South Carolina,

on July 17, 1932

Clyde Thomas Snipes, his wife Beatrice Ferguson Snipes, both of Columbia, and two friends, Rock Hill resident Spencer Morton and Edna Milling of Fort Mill, had left Rock Hill and were headed for Charlotte to visit Clyde’s stepmother, who was seriously ill.1 The party was traveling in Morton’s Ford roadster; Clyde was driving, Beatrice sat in the middle, and Spencer by the passenger side door. Edna sat in Spencer’s lap.2

Between three and four o’clock on Sunday afternoon, July 17, 1932, this automobile was passing by Fort Mill, headed north toward Charlotte on United States Highway No. 21. York County rural policeman Elliott Harris was patrolling Highway 21; he and fellow Fort Mill resident Kenyon Young, a student at Furman University, were driving south in a Dodge coupe, with Young at the wheel. When the two vehicles went by each other, Officer Harris saw that the roadster was being driven recklessly and at high speed. Harris directed Young to turn around to give pursuit. Snipes was pulled over near the Flint Hill Church section, about two hundred yards from the North Carolina border. The Dodge coupe pulled in front, and Officer Harris got out of his car to speak with the driver of the Ford roadster.

After Snipes was unable to produce a driver’s license, Officer Harris told him that he was going to arrest him for reckless driving and driving without a license. Clyde Snipes jumped from the car and declared, I’m not going to jail! A scuffle ensued when Officer Harris attempted to put Clyde Snipes in the Dodge coupe to take him to Fort Mill. Beatrice Snipes intervened, grabbing Officer Harris’s pistol from its holster and shooting him four times—twice after he had fallen to the ground. Beatrice then moved to Harris’s car, keeping away at gunpoint Kenyon Young, who was trying to get to the Dodge coupe to obtain a rifle kept there by Harris. She signaled to Clyde to come with her, and they fled the scene speeding toward Charlotte in the policeman’s automobile, with Clyde at the wheel.

Edna Milling and Spencer Morton then helped Kenyon Young get the wounded officer into the Ford roadster, and the four of them hurried to nearby Fort Mill where they hoped to find medical help for Harris. While there, Young reported the shooting to the chief of police. They were told to take Officer Harris to Rock Hill for emergency care and proceeded there to a hospital, the Fennell Infirmary. Lewis Potts, a close friend of Officer Harris, accompanied the car to Rock Hill on Harris’s motorcycle.

Harris had sustained one gunshot wound in the forehead, one in the chest, and two in the leg. He arrived at the hospital at 5:00 p.m., where Dr. W. B. Ward determined that he was in dying condition and that the chest wound was fatal. Dr Ward certified later that Officer Harris died of shock about 5:30 p.m.3

Harris was survived by his wife Eula and four children—Elliott Jr., age six; twins Lloyd and Ann, age four; and Gettys, four months old.4

Another tragedy occurred almost simultaneously with Harris’s death. Lewis Potts, upon learning that his friend was unlikely to survive, immediately decided to hasten back to Fort Mill to tell Mrs. Harris so that she could leave right away to see her husband before he died. In leaving Rock Hill, however, Potts crashed Harris’s motorcycle at a high rate of speed into the rear side of a Ford automobile. The impact resulted in his being thrown over the car, and he suffered severe injuries when he landed. One injury, a fracture at the base of the skull, was fatal. Potts worked in Fort Mill at the Blackman Drug Company and had returned just hours before from Camp Jackson, where his National Guard company had been on encampment.5

Edna Milling and Spencer Morton both were held as material witnesses and lodged in the York County jail, pending the inquest that was to be held the following day. Not long after the incident, Beatrice Snipes, believing that the shooting had occurred in North Carolina, surrendered to police in Charlotte. Clyde Snipes was not with her. Beatrice was handed over the next day, Monday, to a Fort Mill police officer for removal to South Carolina. She was taken first to York, by way of Gastonia, to avoid going through Fort Mill, where feeling was running high.6 From York she was taken to Chester, where a warrant stating that

One Beatrice Ferguson Snipes did with a loaded pistol shoot, strike, and kill Elliott Harris in York County, South Carolina7

was served on her in her jail cell on July 19.

During the evening of July 17, after the shooting, Clyde Snipes’s stepmother died. Her death was reported by Rock Hill Evening Herald.

Charlotte, July 19.—Mrs. P.K. Snipes, stepmother of Clyde Snipes, died at her home here just about the time that the Ferguson woman was giving herself up to Charlotte authorities. Mrs. Snipes had been in ill health for some time and little hope was held for her recovery. Those in touch with the family said that her death had no connection with the shooting.8

Harris Inquest Testimony

On Monday, July 18, the day after Harris was killed, an inquest into his death was held in Fort Mill, conducted by County Coroner Paul C. McCorkle with the assistance of Solicitor Gist Finley. Clyde Snipes, who had driven away from the scene with his wife after Harris had been shot, was still at large. Beatrice Snipes also was not present for the inquest into the death of Officer Harris, but she had admitted to the Charlotte officers to whom she had surrendered that she had shot Harris. Edna Milling was present but did not testify. The three witnesses who testified regarding the shooting of Officer Harris were Kenyon Young, Spencer Morton, and Lucius Grimes, a black man who had witnessed the incident from seventy-five to one hundred yards away. A record of the inquest has been preserved, and excerpts from the testimony by Young and Morton are provided below. The testimony of Lucius Grimes is presented in its entirety. Because a transcript of the subsequent murder trial of Beatrice Snipes was not preserved, the inquest minutes are the only extant record of certified eyewitness accounts of the killing of Elliott Harris. Witness Kenyon Young came to the scene in Officer Harris’s car. Witness Spencer Morton came in his roadster, which was driven by Clyde Snipes. Witness Lucius Grimes was an observer who was near the scene. There is a remarkable congruence among the three statements, which were taken the day after the incident.

The inquest testimony was followed by a statement from the attending physician, after which the coroner’s jury determined and reported its findings.

Witness#1

Kenyon Young, white, being duly sworn, says:

We met a Ford roadster occupied by two men and two women. The Ford roadster was being driven at a high rate of speed and in a reckless manner. Mr. Harris directed me to turn his car, and he stopped the Ford car . . . I heard Officer Harris tell Snipes that he was under arrest. The commotion then started [while I] was in Mr. Harris car about 15 or 20 feet in front of Snipes car and [I] did not see the start of the trouble. After Officer Harris had placed Snipes under arrest, I got out of the car and started back to help Mr. Harris. Beatrice Ferguson got out of the car and grabbed for Mr. Harris’ pistol. Mr. Harris then drew the pistol and told the men and women that he would have to take Snipes to jail at Fort Mill, told Beatrice Fergusson that if she did not stop, he would take her also. She stopped and Mr. Harris returned the pistol to his holster, took Snipes by the arm, and started toward his, Harris’, car. Mr. Harris reached in his auto to get the hand cuffs, when Beatrice Ferguson made another grab for his pistol. I grabbed her and stopped her. Then Snipes started back toward his auto. Officer Harris started after Snipes and Beatrice Ferguson made another grab for his pistol. All of this happened very quickly. I grabbed Beatrice Ferguson again. Then Officer Harris told me to get his black jack out of his auto, which I did, and gave it to him. Harris followed Snipes back to his car and I followed both. Then Officer Harris went behind the car to get Snipes out from under the wheel. Snipes got out of the car again and started for Officer Harris’ car. Harris was behind Snipes. Beatrice Ferguson was following Harris. I started to Officer Harris when Edna Milling got in front of me. Snipes and Mr. Harris were there in the middle of the highway. Harris had his back to his own car and Snipes was facing him. Beatrice Ferguson was to his side and rear. She slipped up from his rear and right side and picked out Officer Harris’ pistol which was a 38 police special which was carried in a holster on his right leg and hung on his right thigh. She pulled the pistol out of his holster. Mr. Harris did not see her when she did it but when he felt her grab the pistol he turned Snipes loose, who he was trying to put in the car and turned toward Beatrice Ferguson. He made a grab for Beatrice Ferguson as she shot him. The first shot Beatrice Ferguson fired struck Mr. Harris in the right leg which crumbled under him. After he was shot the first time he succeeded in grabbing her around the neck but did not hold her as his leg crumbled under him and he fell to the road. She shot him three more times. Once as he fell and at least twice as he lay on the ground . . .

I started to Mr. Harris’ car to get a rifle which I knew was in it and she drew the pistol on me. Then Snipes got in his auto and Beatrice Ferguson told him to get out and come with her. They got in Mr. Harris’ car, Snipes taking the wheel. Beatrice Ferguson held the pistol on me while he started the motor. She got in the car and while she continued to point the pistol at me he drove off.9

Witness #2

Spencer Morton, white, being duly sworn, says:

Mr. Harris asked Snipes about his driving license which he did not have and then told Snipes that he would have to arrest him for reckless driving and driving without license . . . Snipes opened the door, jumped out on the ground, and said he was not going to jail . . . At this time Mr. Harris struck Snipes with his fist . . . Mr. Young and Mr. Harris grabbed Snipes who was resisting arrest and started toward Mr. Harris’ car with him. I told Snipes to go with Mr. Harris and was begging him not to resist arrest. Snipes was resisting going with them and just before they got to Mr. Harris’ car Snipes broke loose from Harris and ran back to the Ford roadster. Mr. Harris ran up to the Ford roadster took the key out of the car and told Mr. Young to get him his black jack. Mr. Harris then went around the Ford roadster to the side where Snipes was sitting under the wheel and Snipes got out of the car the second time. Mr. Harris grabbed Snipes again and started