Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Shattered Souls: The Car Barn Murders | Episode Two: "Seeing Can Be Deceiving"

Episode Date: May 13, 2022

A look at a brand new true crime podcast series from former detective Karen Smith. In this podcast, Karen begins reconstructing the moments of the murders of James Mitchell and her great uncle, Emory Smith, which leads to difficult questions. Was it really an inside job like everyone thought?  Subscribe to the Shattered Souls podcast now to hear all new episodes! Episodes 1-8 available NOW! New episodes every Tuesday. Apple Podcast iHeart Spotify  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Hi, everyone. I'm retired detective Karen Smith, the host of Shattered Souls, The Car Barn Murders. Follow my journey as I work to solve the 87-year-old cold case murder of my own great uncle. The first eight episodes are available now on iHeart, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you find your podcasts. Please be sure to download and follow. And here's episode two of Shattered Souls, The Car Barn Murders. Thank you for listening. So long, farewell

To what you thought would go so well You can hold on like hell But it doesn't matter how you feel This is the new real This is the new real It was a huge deal. It was headline news.

If they were going to dump him in the creek, why did they drag him across the road? Nobody believed that. I thought he could have slept through that. It was stolen out of his office, but he was locked inside his office. So how did that happen? I did uncover a witness to the murder.

And he says, you know, I was there. And I said, what? Welcome back to Shattered Souls, The Car Barn Murders. This is episode two. This podcast may contain graphic language and is not suitable for children. Previously on The Car Barn Murders. On January 21st, 1935, two employees of the Capital Transit Company were murdered during the commission of a robbery. Accountant James Mitchell was found shot three times in the head inside of the locked money cage of the Chevy Chase Lake ticket office.

Night watchman Emery Smith had been shot four times in the head and his body was found hours later floating in Rock Creek just a mile up the road. At the bridge, detectives found blood, shoe prints, and drag marks in the snow. They also found an empty quart milk bottle inside of a dry paper bag and several pieces of broken auto glass. The detectives surmised that the broken glass was from the window or windshield of a car, and based on the blood in the snow, along with two different sets of shoe prints, that two suspects dragged Emery Smith into the water from the northwest side of that bridge before continuing northbound on Connecticut Avenue. This was strange, since most robberies don't involve a kidnapping, and the suspects would just leave the victim in the spot where they were

killed, just like James Mitchell was left on the floor. Why would the suspects go to the trouble of kidnapping Emery Smith only to dump his body a short distance away? And if the car was northbound, why would they stop on the northwest corner? That means they either crossed the road and parked against traffic, did a U-turn and went back southbound, or they dragged Emery Smith's body all the way across Connecticut Avenue, which makes no sense at all. Back at the ticket office, the detectives inspected the money cage. The door was locked when everyone arrived, the only door inside of the ticket office that actually was locked. The lower half of the door was covered with a piece of tin to keep drafts out from the front door being opened and closed all day long.

It was pried open to get to James Mitchell's body. Apparently, nobody at the ticket office had a key to that cage. And on the floor, they found four bullet casings and one unfired bullet. Both of the bodies were transported to Pumphrey's Funeral Home for autopsies to be completed that afternoon by Dr. Linthicum and Dr. Hawks of the Health Department. Personal items were secured from each man's body, which is standard procedure. You'd be surprised at some of the random stuff that people keep in their pockets, and those items can tell you a lot about a person's life and habits. From James Mitchell, they recovered $26.20, one leather billfold with a DC driver's license, a small comb, two pen knives, a handkerchief, some miscellaneous cards, one belt and his eyeglasses.

Nothing earth-shattering. From Emery Smith, they took one open-faced watch, one dollar bill and another $1.66 and change, eight trolley tokens, a screwdriver, a tobacco pouch, four pencils, and one large brass key. The description of the key as large didn't read like it was to a vehicle, more like a house key, or to some other kind of lock. Interviews with the witnesses at the office continued. Linwood Jones gave his statement he was the second man to arrive after parker hannah jones went into the ticket office with the third witness robert abersold at around 5 15 in the morning after getting back from the

firehouse the door to the trainman's room was unlocked and another man named francis gregory was apparently asleep on a bench linwood jones shook Jones shook Gregory to wake him up and told him that Mitchell had been murdered. Jones said that Gregory had his coat off, his shirt was untucked from his pants, and he believed that Gregory's shoes were off. Linwood Jones said that Francis Gregory became nervous, got up, put his coat on and went out, came back and said it was strange that he hadn't heard a shooting, and he wondered why they didn't see him. additional employees were questioned, including Harry Gibbons. He was the daytime clerk. He said that James Mitchell was always very diligent and careful

about keeping all of the doors and windows locked, especially when he was alone in the office overnight. Evening clerk John Stout corroborated that when he said that Mitchell bolted the front door behind him when he left at 3.40. John Stout had a lot more to add to the story. He was the last witness to see James Mitchell and Emery Smith alive. The final trolley left the barn at 2.05, and Mitchell locked the front door as soon as it was gone. Stout and Mitchell counted the money and tallied the receipts. At three o'clock, John Stout left the money cage, and he went through the trainman's room to the back porch, where the empty money bags were kept in a closet. He got another one and locked that back door. John Stout met with Emery Smith in the trainman's room, and they both saw a man lying on a bench.

John Stout asked Emery Smith who the man was, and Smith replied, I think his name is Gregory. John Stout said that Gregory had his shoes on, and his coat was pulled over him. Stout let Emery Smith out the front door and bolted it shut. He went back to the money cage and he and Mitchell continued to count the bills and the coins and the final bag was left unlocked so that Mitchell could put the paperwork inside when he was done. Stout left the office at 3 40 to go home. Mitchell locked the front door behind him. John Stout said that his windshield wipers were broken and he was forced

to drive home with his head hanging out of the driver's window. On his way home, which was only about a half mile south of the office, just off Connecticut Avenue, John Stout said that he saw a dark-colored sedan idling on the east side of the road with its headlights on, facing north. He saw three people in that car and said the driver was a white man. He made a left turn onto Williams Lane, just past that car, and he said he could see the taillights illuminated. This was around 3.50 in the morning, just 45 minutes before the gunshots heard by Charles Smallwood.

Now that James Mitchell's body was out of the office, the detectives collected the four shell casings and unfired bullet from the floor. They originated from a.32 caliber semi-automatic. There were three bullet holes in and around the desk where Mitchell had been working, and two projectiles were recovered. One was found behind an ink bottle on the desk where Mitchell had been working and two projectiles were recovered. One was found behind an ink bottle on the desk and the other was sticking out of the wall plaster just above the cubby holes. A third bullet had perforated the right side of the desk and terminated in the wall stud. When they took a closer look at that desk, they found James Mitchell's handgun inside of a top drawer. It had been reported that Mitchell had been found lying on his back with three bullet holes in his head.

All of the shots entered on the left side. Two of them exited on the right. The third remained inside of his skull. No autopsy report for James Mitchell was provided to me with the case file, but three photographs taken at the funeral home were included. They were taken after the autopsy was finished. James Mitchell was laid out on this filthy steel table, stained with blood and fluids from who knows how many bodies. His head rested on a metal positioner. A glass cabinet in the background held various

bottles of embalming preparations and black boxes filled with autopsy tools. James Mitchell's wedding ring was still on his left finger. He was clean-shaven, and there were no bruises evident on his face. The photos clearly showed the entry and exit wounds. Two entries were just above his left ear, and the third was about four inches above the other two, near the top of his head. One exit wound was near his right temple. The other exited at the joint of his right mandible, about an inch in front of his right ear. The investigative report said that two of Mitchell's teeth were knocked out and found inside his mouth. That's consistent with that shot through the rear of his

jaw. There was evidence of a shored wound, a lump just above his right temple, where a bullet may have failed to exit his head because it was stopped by a solid surface. I couldn't be certain without an accompanying report, but that would account for the third shot without an exit. Mitchell also had some marks on the back of his left hand, and the detectives noted that they looked like teeth marks from either backhanding someone in the mouth or from being bitten. The photos don't show those details, so I can't be sure about that, but there are marks that can be identified. The circular indentations left by the rubber bands that held his shirt sleeves in place. And speaking of James Mitchell's shirt, there aren't any notations about where it ended up.

In the photos, he's wearing dark pants and a white tank top undershirt. I don't know if his dress shirt was collected or if it got lost in the shuffle. Without it, I can't make any determinations about bloodstains or possible gunpowder residue, so those questions will just remain unanswered. From what I have been able to reconstruct, using the photographs of James Mitchell and the office, I don't believe that he was sitting at his desk

when he was shot like everyone thought. In some original newspaper clippings I received from my cousin that were meticulously glued into an album by our great aunt, there are photographs of the office taken on the day of the murders. These weren't provided in the case file, and they can't be found anywhere online. They were a treasure trove of information for me to work with. And using those black and white photos, I could see bloodstains on the floor, just to the left of the desk.

They were drip stains, which meant that the source of the blood, James Mitchell's head, was above that area before he collapsed on the floor. There was also an open upper drawer in the desk on the left side, where Mitchell kept his gun. John Stout reported that the money bags were on a table toward the middle of the room to the left of the desk. One of those table legs was visible in these pictures and that gave me a basic idea of the office layout. James Mitchell was shot twice in a close grouping on the left

side of his head. The third shot entered grouping on the left side of his head. The third shot entered through the upper left side of his head. Two of the bullets exited. The third didn't. There were four casings on the floor, meaning four shots were fired. Three went into Mitchell. The fourth missed. There were two projectiles recovered, one behind the ink bottle on the desk and the other from the wall plaster above it. The one behind the ink bottle left a strike mark on the paper ink blotter, showing a trajectory from above and down with a slight angle from left to right if you were

facing the desk. The one in the wall plaster was about two feet higher and had the same left to right strike angle based on the missing plaster. The third shot into the desk went through the right side and went all the way through into the wall stud. There's a reason that the bullets by the ink bottle and in the wall plaster didn't go any further. The projectiles lost a lot of their kinetic energy prior to ending up there because they traveled through an intermediate surface first, James Mitchell's head. The shot through the right side of the desk was a miss, which is why it had the energy to keep going into the wall stud. If I placed James Mitchell into

that scene using the two gunshot wounds that exited his head, he was likely almost standing near the left side of that desk, closer to the table where the money bags were. And I'll go a step further. He might have been reaching for his gun inside of that open top drawer when the first shot was fired. Mitchell was 5 feet 11, so he was likely slightly bent over when he was struck by two shots in quick succession, a double tap, if he only had a split second to open that drawer and reach for that gun. I needed more information to complete this reconstruction, so I did some research to find out the approximate height of a 1930s roll-top desk so that I could do a rough estimation of the maximum height of the shots fired into the ink blotter and into the wall above the cubby holes.

The desk would have been approximately four feet high. Add three vertical inches to the strike in the wall. The desk chair was standard. The seat was 18 to 20 inches high. If James Mitchell had been sitting in that chair as alleged, his head would have been approximately four inches too low for the shot above the cubby holes to have struck him in the head. Subtract another four inches from the top of his head

to the area by his left ear where the two bullets entered, it would have been impossible for him to have been seated. I placed James Mitchell into the scene further away from the desk toward the table where the money bags were. If he leaned toward that open drawer where his gun was, it would place both shots directly into the left side of his head, the first one into the ink blotter at an angle, and the second higher into the wall due to the gun recoil. It would also account for the blood drops on the floor directly below. The gunman would have been to Mitchell's left, at least two feet away, maybe on the other side

of that table, which could have been used as a physical barrier. There's something else to mention. The unfired bullet on the floor. This told me that the suspect either didn't know that a round was chambered and racked the slide to load one, leaving that live round on the floor, or it was an intimidation tactic to get Mitchell to comply. The suspect wasn't used to carrying a semi-automatic and forgot that a round was chambered, or the gun jammed. Could that have been the opportunity that Mitchell took to try to protect himself before the first shot was fired? And as to the possible shored wound above his right temple, to me that's the final shot, through the top of his head, as he lay on his right side on the floor, just to make sure he was dead. The description of his body position on his back is unnatural.

When a person is shot in the head, they don't normally collapse into a position like that. It's an indication that the victim has been moved post-mortem. The suspects had to make sure he was dead, so one of them kicked Mitchell over onto his back before they left. All of this information told me that Mitchell wasn't blitz attacked. There was time involved. Decisions made. Movement. Conversation. Panic. No furniture was overturned. There was no fight. No struggle. If James Mitchell acquiesced and told the suspects to just take the money, why did they kill him? Was he a threat? Was it a witness elimination? Did James Mitchell know the suspects?

The detailed accounting records were included in the file, along with a breakdown of the denominations of money taken that morning. I did some quick calculations to find out how much those money bags would have weighed, since most of it was coins. About 22 pounds. One suspect would have had his hands full while the other brandished the gun, so that placed a minimum of two suspects inside that cage with James Mitchell. I had to consider how the suspects got entry into that locked money cage. If the front door to the ticket office was unlocked, as Parker Hanna reported, the suspects would have had the jump on James Mitchell as he worked alone and could have

forced him to unlock that money cage at gunpoint. Once they were inside, it was two-on-one. If Mitchell reached for the gun in the desk, it was over, and they killed him. I also had to answer why the cage door was locked when the police arrived. It's my opinion that the cage door had a one-way spring lock that could be disengaged by turning a latch from the inside, and it would lock automatically when it shut. You'd need a key to get back inside, and there were no reports of keys found on James Mitchell's body or anywhere in the office, which could explain why a brass key was found safe and sound inside of Emery Smith's pocket. That led me to consider the possibility that Emery Smith could have allowed the suspect's

entry at gunpoint, but that scenario didn't could have allowed the suspect's entry at gunpoint. But that scenario didn't make sense within the known timeline. Emery Smith punched his time clock card at 4.23 at the barn across the street. Earwitness Charles Smallwood heard gunshots and shouting at around 4.35, which helped to pinpoint the time of James Mitchell's murder, several of the trolley car's headlights were on, and Smith was nearly 50 yards away from the ticket office. Regardless, that 12 minute window was still unaccounted for, so I just put that question on the back burner. Only one photograph was taken of Emery Smith after his autopsy, but it speaks volumes when it's coupled with a written report, and there's a lot to unpack. The single photograph is of the left side of his face,

and a white sheet was pulled up to his neck. His autopsy took place at 3 o'clock p.m. on January 21st. My grandfather went to the funeral home to identify him around the same time that this single picture was taken. Looking at that photo and remaining clinical was difficult, knowing that my grandfather had the same view under enormous stress and sorrow. Was my grandfather brought into the room, or did he identify his uncle through glass? Did he smell the putrid, sweet pungency of death, or was he spared that indignity? Was the sheet nonchalantly tossed off my great-uncle, or carefully pulled down to reveal his face? Was my grandfather granted a moment to compose himself? Did he receive time alone with Emery's body to say a few words, or was he ushered out immediately after he made

the identification? Did my grandfather cry? Did he vomit? Did he drive to Walkersville to tell the family? Did he have to go next door to break the news to Aunt Edith, or did the police visit her personally? I stuffed those thoughts down and went back to my clinical brain. Emery's hair was dry. His face was clean-shaven. Stitches above his left ear continued toward the top of his head, the vestiges of facial reflection, when the surgeons pulled his scalp back to reveal his skull and recover two of the bullets.

Clearly, his body had been prepped for this photograph, and his hair was fluffed over that incision, almost as if he were to be moved directly into a casket as soon as the flashbulb went off. The notes on the report were handwritten in scrawled cursive, but thankfully, the vast majority were legible. Starting with the notes at the top, it states that Emery Smith was 5 feet 6 inches tall and weighed between 190 and 200 pounds. Yeah, he was definitely short and chunky. He wore dentures and his upper plate was gone, but a partial lower plate was in place. He came in with no clothing.

So again, I have no idea what happened to them between the time he was retrieved from Rock Creek, the items were taken from his pockets, and the time he arrived at the funeral home. He was shot four times in the head, and each bullet wound is thoroughly documented, including the trajectory each one took. And they tell a story, starting with the gunshot wound in his left cheek. It has stippling around it, meaning powder burns. That means the gun was very close to his face when it was fired. Another entry wound was just above his left ear, and from the photo it appears like there might have been additional stippling around it, but

I couldn't be positive because his hair was in the way. A third entry wound is just behind his left ear, and a fourth is about four inches above it, near the top of his head. That's familiar. It's the same wound pattern they found on James Mitchell. The physicians noted that the bullet that entered his left cheek traveled slightly downward and exited through the right side of his neck, severing the cranial artery. The one just above his ear didn't exit. It lodged behind his right eye. The one behind his left ear traveled almost parallel through his head and exited just above his right ear. The bullet fired near the top of his head didn't exit, and they found it at the base of his skull. There was no question that the manner of death was homicide by gunshot, so the autopsy didn't include very many notations about the rest of Emery's body, but one remark

at the bottom of the page got my attention because it confirmed his death prior to entering Rock Creek. Heart normal in size, lungs normal, air containing. Air containing. No water was found in his lungs. Four gunshots in his head. Whoever killed Emery Smith had a different motivation than a robbery getaway. This was vengeance. This was panic. This was someone he knew.

Lieutenant John Fowler, the D.C. police forensic specialist, determined that the gun used to kill Mitchell was the same one used to kill Smith. A 1903 Colt.32 caliber semi-automatic, one of the most popular guns manufactured at the time. It would hold nine rounds, eight in the magazine, one in the chamber.

At the office, there were four casings and one unfired bullet. Add the four shots into Emery Smith, and you have a total of nine. The shooter emptied the gun. Additionally, there were no mentions of any shell casings found outside of the ticket office, at the car barn, or by the bridge over Rock Creek. Semi-automatic guns eject the casings, which is why four of them were found on the office floor. But what happened to the casings from Emery Smith's murder? If he was killed in a car, the casings would have been left inside of the passenger

compartment rather than on the ground, which does add credence to the information that Smith was killed in a vehicle. And if he was killed in a car, I believe he was, that means close quarters, especially if there are multiple suspects and large money bags already inside. It would also explain how the stippling got on his cheek. The gunman was either sitting next to Emery Smith or reached over the seat to shoot him. And that led to another question. Why was Emery Smith in that car in the first place, and how did he get inside? The detectives took notations of shoe prints in the snow around the ticket office and the car barn, and they made a detailed diagram.

One set of shoe prints exits the car barn, and they abruptly stop at Connecticut Avenue, just north of the barn, toward the T.W. Perry Coal Company. I think that's the spot where they took Emery Smith, after he exited the barn when he heard the shouting and gunshots from the ticket office. After they forced him in the car. This was my initial assessment of those events, and as I worked through the leads, my evaluation evolved, but I'm going to provide you with my entire thought process. This is from December of 2020. Someone who didn't go into the ticket office was driving, the getaway driver.

The gunman and the bagman got into the vehicle, with the gunman likely in the front passenger seat and the bagman in the back, so there'd be room for the money bags. Smith was shoved into the passenger side backseat at gunpoint, and after a struggle, they stopped at the bridge, and they killed him with three shots in quick succession, breaking the glass of the window, and the fourth final shot into the top of his head was fired after they got his body out of the car. The final gunshot wound wouldn't bleed really heavily since he was already dead, which aligned with the detective's

notes that the only blood in the snow seemed to be transferred from bloody clothing. The drag marks and shoe prints told the rest of that story. Whether or not my assessment was accurate will likely never be known, but that was my first attempt at a reconstruction of Smith's death, and it was the first time that I really thought about my great-uncle as a person instead of just as a victim. What were his final thoughts? Did he plead for his life? Did he tell the suspects he had children and a wife at home? Did he put up a fight? Did he curse the suspects or did he even have a chance to say anything? Was it quick or did he see it coming? 20 years of training have taught me how to push questions like that aside, to treat death as a scientific premise rather than an emotional dilemma. God damn, this case was

becoming a real bitch. A daily battle between objectivity and sentiment, detachment and guilt. But if I were to find the answers, the truth, my job was to keep my head screwed on straight and stick to the facts. But just like many times in the past, keeping my feelings out of this one was really hard to do. Emery Smith's murder and the questions about what happened opened another can of worms. The suspects close. If Emery was killed in the close quarters of a vehicle with three shots to the head, severing an artery, and then dragged down the bank of a creek to the water, there is no doubt in my mind that the suspects would have been covered in blood. Their pants and their shoes would have been soaking wet. The investigators did glean some information from the autopsy of my

uncle Emery. Since one of the gunshots severed an artery, which would bleed really heavily, and since they were convinced that he was killed in a car, they knew that any car they found would certainly have bloodstains in it. This is a direct quote from Detective Volton's handwritten report. It was believed that Smith was shot and killed inside of an automobile, as examination of Smith's body showed that he had been shot at close range. The bullet that entered Smith's cheek showed a downward course and severed his vein, which would cause a great amount of blood to spurt out. This belief is substantiated in that the entire scene around the car barn and car barn office

and along the route taken to the bridge failed to disclose any other bloodstain other than that of Mitchell. This belief is further borne out in that the hole referred to was at such close range so as to have excessive powder burns on Smith's cheek, as if the gun were placed against his cheek. The bloodstain referred to before in this report, where Smith's body was as if the gun were placed against his cheek. The bloodstain referred to before in this report, where Smith's body was dragged through the snow, were of such a nature as would come off of blood-soaked clothing and showed no signs of excessive bleeding. Those are incredibly detailed notes, and they're pretty spot on. For detectives in 1935, with very little experience in a murder investigation, they're pretty spot on. For detectives in 1935, with very little experience in a murder

investigation, they're extraordinary. The gunshot into his left cheek was fired at an intermediate range, not a hard contact against his skin based on the stippling pattern, but the detectives understood that the shooter was very close to Emery Smith when he was shot. In my estimation, the gun was fired less than three inches from my uncle's face. An alert for a vehicle with broken glass, bullet holes, and bloodstains was sent to the surrounding jurisdictions of Washington and Baltimore. Meanwhile, District Lieutenant John Fowler processed the broken glass pieces and milk bottle for fingerprints. He found nothing. The detectives spoke with the manager of Embassy Dairy, where that quart milk bottle originated based on the stamp.

They asked the manager if any of his drivers had made a sale of a single quart milk bottle overnight while they ran their routes. All of the drivers reported back that they hadn't, but the manager said the paper bag that contained the bottle was from a different manufacturer than his company used. It could have been purchased at any number of drugstores. Unfortunately, that lead got dropped along the way and over the years, all of that evidence got destroyed. Later in the afternoon, Captain Thompson, the chief of detectives in D.C., contacted Montgomery County. Captain Thompson reported that a patrolman from the 2nd Precinct had located a car parked in front of 643 O Street NW. The door glass was broken, and there was blood inside.

Detective Frank Brass, one of the district detectives assigned to help, told Captain Thompson that he and the boys would be over right away. The D.C. patrolman stood by and arrested a man when he entered that car. When the detectives arrived, they located a.32 caliber revolver in the door pocket, and they held two more men for questioning. From the police report, it was ascertained that these men were from La Plata, Maryland, and couldn't have had any connections with this case. They let all of them go. The car, too. Another car with a broken windshield was found at an auto glass business. The detectives rode over to that location, and they found marks in the windshield from a BB gun. Not their car, either.

A third car was stopped after it was found speeding on New York Avenue. The car had bullet holes in it, and some of the glass was broken. The investigation of that car found that it belonged to a 14th Street used car dealer. He said he allowed the car to be used for demonstration purposes. The detectives were satisfied with that explanation, and they let it go. They made a list of all of the vehicles that had been stolen the day and night before the murders. Criminals don't use their own vehicles, and back in the 30s, just like today, they'd put a stolen license plate on the one they did use. And here's a fun fact. There were cases where career criminals would have a switch under the

dashboard that would flip the license plate over to a different one from another state when they fled a scene. That wasn't just the imaginations of Hollywood. Those criminals were innovative. After the detectives compiled a list of all the stolen cars, they tracked down all of them, except one. A 1926 green Buick Coach with DC license plate 131-993, stolen from the area of 15th and Irving Street NW on Sunday night around 10 o'clock. By Monday the 21st, it hadn't been located anywhere. As I was doing my initial read-through of the case, I posted a question about the Carbarn murders on a Facebook page that focuses on Chevy Chase, Maryland history. Someone had put up a photograph of the Carbarn with the trolleys inside. A notification popped up from retired Montgomery County Detective Jack Toomey. Jack said he knew all about the Carbarn case because he'd worked on it for a number of years back in the 1970s and 80s. I reached out to Jack, and he told me a story that left me stunned.

He located an eyewitness to the robbery and murders over 40 years later. The man's name was Ernest Carter, and he was just 7 years old in 1935. I'll let Jack tell the rest of that story. In 1977, I was a fairly new patrolman. I had been on the department six years by that time, and it was right at the end of November, and we were right on the doorstep of one of the coldest winters Washington's ever had. And I was sitting in the parking lot of the Columbia Country Club,

and I heard a tap on my window. And there standing there was a man dressed in a security guard uniform of some type. And we chit-chatted, and I said, why don't you come sit in my car? It's too cold out there. And he sat in the front seat. We were talking about how things have changed over the years. He brought up, and they never did find out who killed those men down the street. I said, what men?

And he told me the story of the Carbond murder. And I said, I have lived here all my life, within three miles of that building, and I don't know what you're talking about. And I said, well, this is news to me. And he says, you know, I was there. And I said, what? And he says, yes, I was waiting for a streetcar. One of his relatives had dropped him off.

He was waiting for the first trolley car in the morning, and he's waiting at the transit stop, and all of a sudden he hears gunshots, people shouting, running. He's scared. He runs somewhere and hides behind the building, and he sees a green Buick make a U-turn on Connecticut Avenue. The car had been parked facing southbound. The car made a U-turn across Connecticut Avenue and went north on Connecticut Avenue. And that's the last he had ever saw of the car. And naturally, I said, well, what did the police say when you talked to them, thinking that they'd be all over it?

And he said, Officer, they didn't talk to us black people in those days. say when you talked to them, thinking that they'd be all over it. And he said, officer, they didn't talk to us black people in those days. And I said, so you've never been interviewed? And he said, never. Ernest Carter saw a green Buick? If you have information about the Car Bar Murders, go to the Shattered Souls Facebook page and leave me a message. Opening music by Sam Johnson at SamJohnsonLive.com. Shattered Souls, The Car Bar Murders is produced by Karen Smith and Angel Heart Productions. This is an iHeart Podcast.