Goat Castle

August 14, 2017
Historian Cox (Dreaming of Dixie) provides a definitive look at the 1932 murder of Jennie Merrill after a botched robbery of her estate in Natchez, Miss., which garnered national headlines and even sparked a morbid boom in tourism for the city. Merrill was gunned down by Lawrence Williams, an African-American man who was subsequently shot and killed by police before he could be officially charged for the crime. Cox argues there’s sufficient evidence proving Williams was recruited to commit the theft by Dick Dana and Octavia Dockery, the victim’s eccentric neighbors, who were seen conversing with Williams on the day of the crime. Dana and Dockery lived in a decaying mansion that was overrun by goats and other livestock, and they had the motive to commit the theft, Cox explains: they were resentful of Merrill’s affluence and had a long-standing feud with her over animals trespassing onto her property. Still, they were never officially charged. Instead Dana and Dockery turned their notoriety into profit, charging reporters, and later tourists, a fee to tour the grounds of “Goat Castle.” The only person convicted of the crime was Williams’s girlfriend, Emily Burns—by all accounts an innocent bystander. Through an exhaustive examination of archival records, Cox makes clear that Burns was forced into confessing that she was involved with the plot and shows that she was a victim of racism. Cox fulfills her intention to “provide a window... onto southern race relations, Jim Crow, and the narrative of southern civilization in decline.”

November 1, 2017

In August 1932, the city of Natchez, MS, was roiled by the brutal murder of Jennie Merrill, the scion of a former Confederate family whose feud with her neighbors was legendary. Richard Dana and Olivia Dockery, the neighbors, were also former Confederate aristocracy but had been reduced to penury and living in a mansion with their livestock. They were immediately arrested, but suspicion soon fell on George Pearls, an African American resident recently returned to Natchez, and Emily Burns, his sweetheart. One dead suspect (Pearls), and one coerced confession (Burns) later, the charges against the "Goat Castle" residents were dropped. Cox (history, Univ. of North Carolina at Charlotte; Dreaming of Dixie) uses public records and primary sources to dig beneath the romanticized story of a blood feud between genteel, down-at-the-heels Southern aristocracy to the ugly politics of the Jim Crow South that saw an undoubtedly innocent woman get a life sentence as an accessory to murder. Moreover, Dana and Dockery spent years profiting off their notoriety while Burns, whose sentence was later suspended, spent eight years in jail after confessing under threat of a horsewhipping. VERDICT This engrossing tale of murder, injustice, and racial inequality will interest lovers of regional history as well as true crime buffs.--Deirdre Bray Root, MidPointe Lib. Syst., OH

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