Editor’s note: This updated column was first printed in this newspaper in May 2017. Now also in author’s Real Mountain Tales #2 collection, offered at gift shops, museum and Scout office.
Scandal and murder …shootings and brutal beatings … masked men … home invasions … dramatic trials and a double hanging …
I found a fascinating story recently on an innocent jaunt to Pigeon Forge, Tenn., tourist-trap deluxe on the north side of the Smokies.
You’ve heard the saying about “skeletons in the closet.”
Well, this is the story that Pigeon Forge and Sevierville prefer to forget – for very good reasons.
They offer a great family vacation spot – music halls, pancake houses, Dolly Parton and Paula Deen, wax museums, endless buffets, factory outlet stores galore. Entertainment, food and bargains.
Right on the edge of the Great Smoky Mountain Park, America’s most-visited wilderness, step right up.
So my good wife and I checked into the Ramada for a couple of days. Bought a Browning fishing rod and a cheap knife, both made in China, neither actually needed. She bought clothes, kitchen gadgets and a new waffle iron.
Statue of Dolly Parton
We remember Dolly on the Porter Wagoner television show. So after shopping we braved the traffic and drove to downtown Sevierville, the county seat.
Their huge courthouse, red-brick and stone, was built in 1895. It’s bigger and taller than ours here in Murphy. More ornate, with fanciful cupolas that serve no useful purpose except decoration, their little roofs painted gold.
It was the statue on the courthouse lawn that we wanted to see. A youthful Dolly Parton, bare-footed and strumming a flat-top acoustic guitar. Laughing and perched on a rock, put there in 1987 by the grateful residents of Sevier County.
Her Dollywood and other attractions, such as the Dixie Stampede, have brought millions of dollars to her hometown. Tourist spending and jobs created by Dolly are countless, the reason for the statue and down-home recognition.
Mountain vigilantes
Then we went to a free Wildlife Week exhibit at their big LeConte Center. Met two local authors who have produced a book some residents would probably just as soon ignore and forget.
Old family secrets are revealed, real names are used and it’s not a pretty story. But it’s fascinating, as murder stories usually are. And it involves that same courthouse lawn.
Their names are Robert Wilson and Richard Way. Their book, published in 2015, is a privately-done paperback of about 125 pages. Wilson, a journalist living at nearby Knoxville, did the actual writing. Way was the researcher, digging out stories and photos.
I bought their book and started asking questions.
“What motivated your vigilantes … what fired them up?”
They laughed and said it was Victorian-age morals, the Sevier County night-riders at first whipped any woman suspected of having sex outside of marriage. A gang of prostitutes from Knoxville had come into the county and set up shop, becoming the first victims of the White Caps.
They did not wear the pointed headgear of the Ku Klux Klan but a white cap with a face mask, often just a white cloth covering with eye holes. Nor were they racial bullies like the Klan, very few blacks in Sevier at that time.
Members took a blood oath, knowing they could be killed if they betrayed the brotherhood in any way. Soon their numbers were so great that attorneys, judges and politicians were either sympathizers or actual members. Some lawmen, too.
Honest officers were stymied in prosecuting a White Cap, since secret members often sat on juries and protected their own. White Cap crimes quickly grew from vicious beatings to robbery and killings.
Double murder, hanging
The final blow came in the late 1890s when a wealthy White Cap hired two men of the order to kill a young couple who had told their secrets to the Grand Jury. For $50 they shotgunned the young mother and father, in the presence of their infant and their niece sitter holding the baby.
Caught and convicted, they agreed to testify against their “boss.” Their execution date was nearing and the boss hired lawyers to defend him, hoping once the pair was dead they could not hurt him. Written transcripts of their words would be available but the pair would not be present to be cross-examined, key point that would free the “boss.”
Thousands gathered at Sevierville to witness the double hanging, one killer baptized by request in the nearby Pigeon River just before his death. A scaffold was erected on the lawn of the courthouse and shortly after 1 o’clock on July 5, 1899, they were hanged. The White Caps soon faded away.
The boss faced justice but was never convicted, dying in Knoxville in 1940. His lawyers contested the use of the dead killers’ testimony and the courts agreed. He literally got away with murder.
The sheriff who drove the investigation and the execution was widely seen as an honest man. But he was a Democrat in a county solidly Republican. So he only served one term of office.
The book is titled The Eyes of Midnight, and I donated my copy to the Murphy library for anyone interested to read the full account.
It is also still available on Amazon, paperback or Kindle download.
The author recently revisited this bloody story on the Internet and was amazed to see the local coverage now.
Sevier County Heritage Center offers photos, period newspaper clips, court records on the case. Pigeon Forge library offers videos.
An opposing group called the Blue Bills faced off with the White Caps in a wild gun battle that left dead on both sides. All duly recorded. UT library at Knoxville also reportedly has data.
Wally Avett first wrote for the Cherokee Scout as editor in 1969. His books are available as signed copies at the Scout office in Murphy. Call him at 828-837-5531 or email wallyavett@gmail.com.