Murder Ballads of North Carolina

From Tom Dooley’s hanging to Little Sadie’s killing, North Carolina is famous for its murder ballads. It’s interesting that our State Supreme Court heard cases involving many of the alleged evil doers. From those opinions, you can learn facts that the songwriters left out.

Tom Dooley was actually Tom Dula, a Confederate soldier and violin player who returned to his home in Wilkes County after the war. According to the ballad, told from Tom’s perspective, he met his love, Laura Foster, on a mountain and “took her for my wife.” He then “took her around the hillside” and “stabbed her with my knife.”

According to court records, Laura Foster was seen riding her father’s mare with a bundle of clothes in her lap. She told a friend she was headed to the “Bates” place to meet up with Dula. She apparently thought they were going to run off to be married. A few weeks later, her body was found buried in a “laurel thicket” near the Bates place. She had been stabbed in her left side.

The Court noted that Dula “was in the habit of criminal intercourse with both Foster and Ann Melton.” The women were cousins. He allegedly “contracted a disease” from Foster and “communicated it to” Melton. As Melton was married to another man, this probably caused significant trouble for both Melton and Dula. Witnesses said Dula threatened to “put through” the person who gave him the disease.

The same day that Foster rode off for the Bates place, Ann Melton left her home. Staying out all night, Melton returned home the following morning, with her shoes and dress wet. Later, a witness took investigators to Foster’s grave, claiming that Melton had showed her where Foster was buried.

Meanwhile, Dula went missing. After authorities captured him in Tennessee, they charged him and Ann Melton with Foster’s murder. The two were tried separately.

Former Governor Zeb Vance defended Dula. The jury found Dula guilty, but Vance successfully appealed the conviction. After a second jury found Dula guilty, Vance again appealed. This time the Supreme Court found no error in the trial and upheld Dula’s conviction. On the day that he was hanged, he declared his innocence from the scaffold, but also handed his lawyer a note stating that he alone killed Foster. The note may have helped Vance defend Melton who was found not guilty in her trial.

Years later three brothers named Dula assaulted a Justice of the Peace in Wilkes County. One used a maddox, the other used a knife, and the third used a long pole. The State Supreme Court upheld their convictions.

In addition to Dula’s case, our Court heard the case of Peter DeGraff who in the late 1800’s killed Ellen Smith in Winston-Salem. Both the ballad, “Poor Ellen Smith” and the court records tell us that Ellen was shot in the heart. The Court reports that a letter was “found in her bosom” allegedly written by DeGraff. The note asked her to meet him the night she was killed. The ballad reports that DeGraff was sentenced to twenty years for Ellen’s murder, but other research indicates that he was hanged. He confessed his guilt from the scaffold.

In Morganton, in the 1830’s, Frankie Silver killed her husband, Charlie, with an axe blow to his neck. She claimed he was loading his gun to shoot her at the time. Charlie had a reputation of beating his wife. However, according to the Ballad of Frankie Silver, she killed him because she caught him cheating on her. The Court doesn’t tell us many of the facts of the case. It found no error in her trial and she was hanged for her husband’s death.

Ballads also tell of the murder of “Omie Wise” who was beaten to death by her boyfriend, John Lewis, in Randolph County. He threw her body in a river in Asheboro. I find no record of his appeal to our Supreme Court. That may be due to his confession of guilt in the case.

Little Sadie was killed by her beloved in Thomasville. He shot her and ran off to Jericho, North Carolina, before being caught. According to the ballad, he was sentenced to 41 years in prison for her death.

The existence of so many North Carolina murder ballads shouldn’t cause alarm. I don’t think we have more murderers than other states. We just have more ballad writers. And our courts apparently have done their jobs well as most of the killers confessed to their crimes before their executions. It’s probably a good idea, however, to be sure that your “significant other” doesn’t own a gun or a hatchet. Men named Johnnie or Charlie should probably avoid women named Frankie. Or maybe we should all heed the words of another old ballad and “stay single all the days of your life.”