Criminal - The Family Land, Part 2

Episode Date: November 1, 2024

This week, part two of the Reels family story – how two brothers went to jail in an attempt to save their family land, and were held there for eight years without being charged with a crime. “I’m not going to give up. I don’t think I’m wrong, and I’m willing to fight for it.” For more on the Reels family’s story, you can read Lizzie Presser’s article, “Their Family Bought Land One Generation After Slavery. The Reels Brothers Spent Eight Years in Jail for Refusing to Leave It.” Say hello on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts. Sign up for Criminal Plus to get behind-the-scenes bonus episodes of Criminal, ad-free listening of all of our shows, special merch deals, and more.  We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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You'll get to hear seven brand new stories, most of which will probably make you laugh. I'll even try to come and say hi at the merch table. Get your tickets while they last at thisiscriminal.com slash live. This episode picks up where last week's episode left off. If you haven't heard that one, you might want to go back and listen to them in order. How long have you lived on Silver Dollar Road? All my life. I never left here until he took me off this land and locked me up.

In 2011, Melvin Davis and his brother, like Curtis Reels, were sent to jail by a judge in Carteret County, North Carolina. They were being held in contempt of court because they'd refused to follow orders from a judge to leave their property on Silver Dollar Road. They pretty much said they weren't going down without a fight. Kim Doohan, Melvin and Leigh Curtis' niece. And if it meant them being incarcerated,

that was what they were gonna do. The land Melvin and Leigh Curtis lived on had been in the family for over 100 years. It was 65 acres. Their grandfather owned it, but he died in 1970. Melvin and Ly-Curtis's sister Mamie remembers what their grandfather said right before he died. He told my mother, whatever you do, don't let the white man have my land. But her grandfather didn't have a will, which meant the land became Heir's property. With Heir's property, when someone dies without a will, any land they own goes to their descendants,

who then jointly own the land. But there are loopholes that make Heir's property easy to lose. Today, around a third of Black-owned land in the south is Ayers' property, and that includes the Reels' family's land. In 1978, their grandfather's brother tried to claim 13 acres of their land right on the water. His name was Shedrick, and he eventually sold the thirteen acres to a developer. Melvin and Ly-Curtis' homes were on the thirteen acres, and they were told they were trespassing by continuing to live there.

The developer who bought the land, Adams Creek Associates, got a court order saying Melvin and Ly-Curtis had to vacate their homes and land. They were also ordered to clear the land and to do the demolition work of tearing down their houses themselves. But they refused to. So in 2011, a judge ordered them to jail for civil contempt. What did you think when they said you're going to jail? Were you surprised?

I was. I didn't think they could do it. Like Curtis Reels. Here's Melvin. We wasn't charged with nothing. We've never been charged with nothing. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

This is criminal. Kim Doohan, Melvin and Leigh Curtis's niece, says at least 20 family members were there at the Beaufort Courthouse when they were handcuffed and sent to jail. Melvin had asked Kim to do whatever she could to help the family save their land. She knew she had to find a lawyer. I knew that I was gonna have to put all both feet on the ground and start running to get some assistance because I knew that I was going to have to honor

the promise that I gave my uncle Melvin and get out here and find an attorney that could accommodate us. Kim started reaching out to lawyers, but it was hard to get anyone to take their case. During that time, my husband had just been diagnosed with colon cancer. I was from Atlanta to North Carolina every other week, trying to find attorneys that had already heard about our story and didn't want to get involved, but they were

taking our monies for consult fees, listening to the story, and pretty much charging us a zubbit amounts of monies to just talk to us about something they knew they weren't going to do and help us or whatever. And it was almost like for me, I didn't know what I was going to do. How am I going to drive to these cancer treatment centers and still come back by Wednesday to see them in jail? And in my mind, I couldn't let them down. Kim says it was especially hard for Melvin and L-Curtis's mother, Gertrude. But still, Gertrude told the reporter that Melvin and Ly-Curtis took care of her and said, and now they're still taking care of me by standing up for their rights.

Everything about her demeanor changed. She was always been a very joyful person, a very energetic person. When my uncles were remanded to jail, she totally turned into this hermit. She sat by the phone, she cried, she listened to her gospel music and old spirituals. She was just that. She changed. I saw her age dramatically with the worry and the concern of ever seeing them again. This was emotional, stressful for all of us. Mamie Reels, Melvin and Leigh Curtis's sister.

But no matter how stressful it was for me, my siblings. It was all about Gertrude. We just wanted to take care of her because we knew, if anything happened to her, we are going to catch him. And my mother got where she didn't want to go out the house. She didn't want to go nowhere. And if I were carrying her out to town on the third or carrying her to pay her bills,

if we met a sheriff's car, it didn't only have her paranoid, it had everybody. Because my mother grew up in the days where of the Depression and the Jim Crow days, and she know what could happen to black men, you know? She just worried a lot about Melvin and LaCourtes. And then she quit doing her gardening. So when she quit doing her gardening, that did get hard.

She didn't want to go out and do the gardening anymore because really she didn't have the means because Melvin kept her garden plowed and tilled and everything. And she would go to church, she'd come right back home, and she'd sit to that window and would just stay out every day. That was the hardest thing. We'll be right back.

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Did your family come and visit you in jail? Yeah. Every week. Like Curtis Reels. It would just be my sister and my niece and my other sister, they would come and my brothers, they would come. I hated for them to leave because I couldn't go, you know what I'm saying? And that's the only thing that kept me going, it was them and my mother. And my mother, when I would call her on the phone, she'd be crying and you wouldn't see mama cry.

My daddy, he would come in, he would cuss everybody out. But that's just the way he went. I didn't want mother and my daddy to come there because every time they come and go, they will cry. Here is Melvin. And I didn't want to see them hurt like that, because I hurt enough when you would leave. Me and a lot of other family members, we went every Monday, Tuesday, and then they split them up. We were going Wednesday, or we were going both days. I went every day that they had visiting.

When I would go to visit them in jail, I literally had to put my game face on because I felt like if they saw the stress or worry or fear that that was going to hinder them with being able to stay focused with what their plot was to just hang in there. So I had to be in a head space of we got this, I'm ripping and running to make sure I find someone that can accommodate us and help you get out of jail. We're fine, we're doing well, we're just hoping that you guys can hang in there. So, and when I would leave, I'd sit in my car and

cry because it was like, this is so taxing. This is so emotionally draining. Kim says she had a bad feeling. She felt like each time she visited, something bad happened. I was having nails put in my tires and the emblems on my car were being removed. Kim says she was pulled over several times for no reason. I literally had someone stop me and I was about 20 minutes away from meeting the from meeting the visitation time, and this officer, which was a black officer, stopped me at the Carter County Community College, and he said,

I bet you won't make that visitation today. Melvin and Leigh Curtis thought they were gonna spend 90 days in jail, but 90 days came and went. Melvin asked a friend to help him write a letter. It said, I've spent 91 days on a 90-day sentence, and I don't understand why. Please explain this to me. He was told that the developer who bought his land had requested 90 days, but that the court had ignored that, and chose not to put a limit on their jail time. What was the explanation for, you know, why they were being held in jail so long?

From my understanding, it was a personal vendetta, and it's just my personal thought. The county, the court system said that my uncles were thumbing their nose up at the judicial system, not willing to abide by the court's order to tear down their homes and leave the property. And they were never gonna do that because we knew that we owned the property.

About three months after Melvin and Leigh Curtis were sent to jail on July 4th, the family held a birthday party for Leigh Curtis on Silver Dollar Road. Mamie took a video of all the family members gathered, wishing Leigh Curtis a happy birthday and saying hello to Melvin. She showed her brothers the video the next time she visited.

Happy birthday, brother. Happy birthday she visited. Happy birthday, bro. Happy birthday, huh? Happy birthday, Uncle Lyle. Oh, right, you did it. You did. Hi, Uncle Lyle Curtis. Hi, Uncle Lyle Curtis. Hi, Uncle Lyle Curtis. Hi, Uncle Lyle Curtis.

Hi, Uncle Lyle Curtis. At Christmas, their mother Gertrude bought presents for Lye, Curtis, and Melvin and wrapped them. But Christmas passed, and the brothers were still in jail. Kim kept trying to find a new lawyer. We were told about an attorney that was a real estate attorney who told me at the time that it was going to cost us $45,000 to retain him, just to really see if he could actually accommodate us. We actually took him up on that offer, brought him cashiers

check for $45,000 and from 2011 until 2015-16 timeframe, we paid him roughly $90,000 to no avail. He pretty much said he had taken us to the valley but couldn't get us to the mountain. He had gone as far as he could go. The partnered Adams Creek Associates who bought the land from Shedrick was named Billy Dean Brown. And he knew that the Reels family, no matter how much they tried, would have a hard time proving they owned the land, because Shedrick had walked away with the land at the Torrens hearing.

The Torrens Act, where all Shedrick had to do was prove he owned the land to a lawyer, has been controversial for decades. A land broker told ProPublica reporter Lizzie Presser, it's a legal way to steal land. North Carolina is one of the few states where the Torrens Act still exists. Billy Dean Brown of Adams Creek Associates was called Little Caesar by his coworkers. He spoke with a Charlotte Observer about the land on Silver Dollar Road and said, "'I made up my mind. I will die and burn in hell before I walk away from this thing.'"

Mamie says at one point the plan was to build multiple waterfront homes on the land. In jail, Ly Curtis started getting sick and was taken to the hospital. He remembers being shackled to the bed the whole time. He says the doctor told him, you need to get out of jail, that it wasn't good for his health. Later he was diagnosed with diabetes. Sometimes Melvin and Ly Curtis would be able to see each other and talk. Sometimes they were moved into different cells and didn't see each other for months.

Leigh Curtis told a reporter from jail, I'm not going to give up. I don't think I'm wrong and I'm willing to fight for it. Were you depressed in jail? I was because, you know, it seemed like it was taking too long for them to clear it up. Did you ever say to anyone or do you like, how are you still keeping us here? Yeah, I said that, why you keep keeping us? Reb, you wanted to get out, sign this piece of paper saying you won't go back to that land. So if you would sign the paper saying, I promise I won't go back to the land,

you would have been let out of jail. These say, that's what these say. I don't believe that. They were saying if they sign a paper, they could be released. Something's saying they won't go back onto the property and they will tear their homes down and leave the property for good.

That wasn't going to happen. So you thought to yourself, I can't sign this because there's no way in the world if I'm out of jail that I'm not going to go back to that land. That's right. So why am I lying on myself signing a piece of paper that I will never go back to this land, and I'm not gonna stay away from this land? We'll be right back.

In 2015, a lawyer named James Hairston got a call from a friend who was a judge. She told him about a story she'd heard, about two brothers serving time in jail for refusing to leave their land. She says that, Jay, you have to help these guys. At this time, it was close to five years. This was 2015. Ladder part of 2015. Five years for civil contempt. It's like I never heard anything like that. That's crazy. And my only, you know, contempt knowledge outside of, you know, going through law school was, okay, you're going to lock a reporter up because they failed to give a source or something, but you know, stay in jail overnight, a week, you can lock a reporter up because they fail to give a source or something

But you know stay in jail overnight a week, you know, but you're not committed to crime. So so I turn around I'm in my office when I'm talking to her and I'm you know, do a little bit of research and I'm like It's crazy Nothing like this Anywhere around no case precedent nothing So I ended up eventually meeting Kim. I came down to the jail, I met Melvin and Curtis, and I think I did that the latter part of 2015 or the early part of 2016.

Do you understand why Melvin and Curtis were willing to go to jail for this? Of course. I mean, they tried the legal route. They kept trying the legal route. They went through numerous attorneys, protests at the bar, all types of stuff. James Hairston got to work on trying to get Melvin and Lykurtis out of jail.

He focused on the judge's order that the brothers tear down their own homes before vacating the land. But they can't. They've been in jail for, by this time, five plus years. They had no income. You know, nothing. So you can't keep somebody in jail if they can't purge themselves of the contempt. They're looking at an ineffective life sentence. They stay in jail for the rest of their lives. I mean, I don't think they even had a traffic ticket. Never committed a crime in their lives. This was their life down on their water.

James argued Melvin and Leigh Curtis's case in front of the North Carolina Supreme Court. He remembers that a lawyer for Adams Creek Associates argued that even if Melvin and Leigh Curtis couldn't clear their land from jail, they could sign something saying they acknowledged that Adams Creek Associates owned the land, that they wouldn't go back on the land, and that would get them out of jail. But James Hairston argued that wasn't reasonable.

You can't, none of you have the power nor the authority to force somebody to say something that they otherwise inclined not to say, sign something that they otherwise inclined not to do. I mean, it's the reason that they're in debt right now. I mean, you can't take their convictions and, you know, make them do something that they don't want to do. Well, not you agree with it or not. I mean, that's a rank and egregious violation

of the First Amendment. After the Supreme Court heard their case, they sent it back down to the Carteret County Court. This time, the judge ruled on the Reels family side. Melvin and Lykurtis would finally be able to return to Silver Dollar Road. They'd been in jail for seven years and 11 months. And I think at that point was where this judge said, I'm not going to get involved in this.

I'm not holding these men here. They should have been released a long time ago. I'm not going to be a part of the good old boy network. I'm going to do what's right and release these gentlemen. What was it like driving down Silver Dollar for the first time after eight years? Oh boy, I'm going to tell you, when I drove in, the Mamie come pick me up. I felt like a brand new person, you know what I'm saying? To be back home.

Oh man, that was amazing. I really had to shed a tear. It was a good, it was a great day. That was better than Christmas because my father, I was helped take care of him and looked out for him and every month he would say mammy, he called me mammy, he said, I don't know if I can hold on till them boys get out of jail. I said, pop, you gotta hold on. And he did. When they got out of jail, he told me, he says, mammy, he said, I'm ready to go now,

I'm ready to go. My boys is out of jail, he says, and I'm ready to go. I'm tired, I'm sick, I'm ready to go. And he did. But that was a happy time because my mother was beginning to get herself together. My dad had lived to see them get out.

What's next? I mean, where is the process now? Right now, I really, we really don't know because we've been told so much, hoped for so much. Adams Creek Associates eventually sold the land to another developer. If the developer builds on the land, Mamie is worried about property taxes going up. Are you worried about the rest of the land, about losing it all? Yes, because you have family who can't afford the rent nowadays, and they're wanting to move back home.

But it's nowhere for one to come. Mimi also worries about what happens when her mother, Gertrude, dies. She's 97 now. She is one of two of Mitchell's children, still alive. As her siblings have died, their stake in the property transfers to all of their children, expanding the number of people who own stakes of the land, potentially making the land even more vulnerable. With Heir's property, a single stakeholder could choose to sell and trigger the sale of the entire land. As reporter Lizzie Presser puts it, if one heir decides to sell, quote, the whole property

would likely go to auction at a price that none of them could pay. Mamie says she doesn't know if the next generations will continue fighting for Silver Dollar Road, but she hopes they will. Her niece Kim still brings her grandchildren to the land. Now, my grandchildren who don't live in the area, their father's military, but when they come here, it's like we rip and run.

We walk to the water, but we don't let them go on. We kind of stay on the sandy beach area where the road kind of connects. They don't go on the beach because they don't own the waterfront anymore, but they still own the rest of the land. But they're in awe when they say, we own this? We own this so much? It's, I don't know, it's our lineage, it's our heritage, it's our everything. What do you hope for the future of this land? What do you hope happens here? That I'll be able to go back to my house and then go back to the club.

Do you have a favorite part of this land? Yeah, right there where my house is. So your house is right there? Yeah, that's my house over there. Can you go in it? Well, my lawyer told me don't go in it right now until we get this clear. And then you can go on back over there.

So you can look at your house right now. We can see your house, but you can't go in it? No, he told me don't go in it. Not right now. That must be hard. I mean, you know, I come by there some days, and I sit out there to the driveway and I cry. Do you plan to die on this land?

Yes. That I be buried on this land. Yeah, we got three cemeteries. I can pick out what one I want to go to and they put me there. Criminal is created by Lauren Spohr and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Roberson, Jackie Sejiko, Lily Clark, Lena Sillison, and Megan Kineane. Our show is mixed and engineered by Veronica Simonetti.

Special thanks to Ruth Roberson. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com. For more on the Reels family story, you can read Lizzie Presser's article, Their Family Bought Land One Generation After Slavery, The Reels Brothers Spent Eight Years in Jail for Refusing to Leave It. We'll have a link in the show notes. And you can sign up for our newsletter at thisiscriminal.com slash newsletter.

We hope you'll join our new membership program, Criminal Plus. Once you sign up, you can listen to criminal episodes without any ads, and you'll get bonus episodes with me and criminal co-creator Lauren Spore too. To learn more, go to thisiscriminal.com slash plus. We're on Facebook and Twitter at Criminal Show, and Instagram and TikTok at Criminal underscore podcast. We're also on YouTube at youtube.com slash criminal podcast. Criminal is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com.

I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.