Summary of Beverly Lowry's Deer Creek Drive

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 This is the house where the crime occurred, with the door and the windows labeled.

#2 The house where the crime occurred, with the door and the windows labeled, is still standing.

#3 It was determined that Idella Stovall Long Thompson had been murdered on the day she was released from the hospital. The identity of the person who was eventually arrested, tried, convicted, and sent to Parchman, Mississippi’s notorious state prison for life is something Leland’s residents want to keep under wraps.

#4 White people in the 1950s thought that if you killed a black person, it was because you were financially or emotionally blackmailed into doing so.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Sep 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9798350000467

IRB Media

With IRB books, you can get the key takeaways and analysis of a book in 15 minutes. We read every chapter, identify the key takeaways and analyze them for your convenience.

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Insights on Beverly Lowry's Deer Creek Drive

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The architectural rendering of Idella Thompson's home in 1948, which was presented to the jury on the first day of the trial by the district attorney, Stanny Sanders, is the only exhibit included in the digitized transcript of the trial.

#2

Until that year, the two women had lived their whole lives on this street, which was the most desirable in town. The woman’s daughter lived with her cotton broker husband and two young daughters on South Deer Creek Drive, close to the murder house.

#3

The identity of the person who was eventually arrested, tried, and convicted of murdering Idella Stovall Long Thompson is what many people in Leland want to keep secret.

#4

The news of the murder spread quickly. The victim was described as the widow of a prominent Delta planter and former Mississippi Levee Board chairman, J. W. Thompson. She was plain as an old shoe, but that didn’t matter.

#5

The Leland murder was a shock to the entire country, and newspapers all over the country covered it. The details were reported extensively, and the trial provided the grisly details.

#6

I had renamed my fictional town Eunola, and never said what state it was in or even which river dead-ended the main street of town. But Greenville knew. The opening line was like a secret whispered into their hometown ears: The sun and river were to the west, back over their shoulders on the other side of the levee.

#7

The first police officers to arrive on the scene were Leland chief of police Frank Aldridge and Pink Gorman, one of only three regulars on the police force. They were told that Idella Long Thompson had been murdered.

#8

The Aldridges were a prominent family in Leland, and they knew almost everyone in town, as well as many of the Black citizens.

#9

The day of the murder, it was clear, warm, and slightly windy. In the humid climate of the Delta, the hours before a storm hits are close, clamped down, the air thick with expectation.

#10

The house was quiet, well cared for. Mrs. Thompson’s regular cook and cleaning lady, Martha Prewitt, wasn’t there, and wouldn’t be all week. The Thompson family told Prewitt that she was like family.

#11

When Doc and Aldridge arrived at the house, they found Ruth half sitting on the radiator and Doc standing close by, between her and her mother’s bed. Ruth was a mess, and her left hand was beginning to purple and swell.

#12

The police investigation showed that the hedge clippers and rose shears that were at the scene belonged to Ruth Dickins. She had brought them from her house to use on some rosebushes ahead of the rain, as requested by her mother.

#13

The initial thinking was that the intruder, a Black man from somewhere else, had wandered into Mrs. Thompson’s yard to protect her pecans. But Ruth said her mother had started the ruckus because she was angry about the Black people in her yard.

#14

Sheriff Foote’s path to police work was similar to Aldridge’s. He grew up in a plantation-owning family in nearby Rolling Fork, Mississippi. His father loved gambling more than managing crops, and as a result he had to sell off the land to cover his debts.

#15

The sheriff made two more phone calls: one to the Mississippi State Penitentiary and one to the Greenville chief of police, Clarence Alton Hollingsworth, who was in court and couldn’t leave immediately but said he’d make it to Leland as soon as he could get loose.

#16

The town of Leland, Mississippi, is located in the Delta region. It was once known for its drive-in movie theater, Anne, and its bootleggers, who would sell alcohol to teenagers.

#17

The police arrived at the house after Frank Aldridge and Doc Witte, and they found no evidence of a robbery. The