There was another killing in a secluded parking area, before the Hinote, Bryars, killings. The location of this one was in the Magnolia Bluffs area off of Scenic Highway. This occurred months before the last one I wrote about, and is also unsolved.
Thursday, June 22, 2017
The Unsolved Murder of Henry Hicks Moore
There was another killing in a secluded parking area, before the Hinote, Bryars, killings. The location of this one was in the Magnolia Bluffs area off of Scenic Highway. This occurred months before the last one I wrote about, and is also unsolved.
Henry Hicks Moore left his wife and
son at home on the evening of January 10, 1931 and went to the Saenger Theater
to watch a movie. He was not alone. He had a date with a 19 year old Miss
Gretchen Gregory. Moore was 23 years old and
lived at 503 E. Jackson St., with his wife Eulalie, and son Henry,
Jr. Later, Miss Gregory claimed she had
no idea that Henry was married.
After watching, “The Painted
Desert”, they jumped in Henry’s roadster and drove toward East Pensacola
Heights, stopping to get a soft drink at a roadside sandwich shop, then
proceeded to the area of Magnolia Bluffs on Scenic Highway. About 11 pm Moore parked his car down a secluded path
about 75 yards from the main road.
Just a few minutes after stopping,
two men, each shining a flashlight into the couple’s eyes, shouted for them to,
“Stick ‘em up!”. Miss Gregory screamed
and one of the assailants shot Henry Moore, and then they disappeared in the
woods. After sitting in shock for a
moment, she climbed over Henry and got behind the wheel. She heard him mumble something, but didn’t
understand what he said. She had only
driven a car once before, but after a few attempts was able to get the car
started and back out on the highway. She
first stopped at a closed drug store, but finding no one there, she drove to
Pensacola Hospital. (Later Sacred Heart on 12th ave.) Her arrival time there was noted as 11:40
pm.
Ten minutes later, Dr. C. C. Webb
pronounced Moore dead. The police were
notified. Sheriff Mose Penton was notified since the crime occurred outside
city limits. Miss Gregory gave him the details of the night’s events. When Gregory was informed that Henry Moore
was married with a family she was shocked. The police went to the scene of the
crime but found no evidence. The only
prints they could find on the car belonged to Moore, and Gregory.
The Officers did discover, however,
two $2000 life insurance policies, payable to the victim’s wife. One of them had only been written that day.
Miss Gregory was held overnight in jail
as a material witness, pending the outcome of the coroner’s inquest and
questioned repeatedly, but her story did not change. The autopsy was performed
by Dr. James W. Hoffman, and showed the cause of death as a bullet through
Moore’s heart that passed at a downward angle and came to rest in his back by
the 8th rib. The bullet was identified as a .38 caliber. Powder
burns indicated he had been shot a close range.
Miss Gregory was released on $7500
bond, and her family retained Attorney William Fisher to look out for her best
interests.
A reporter interviewed Henry’s widow
who claimed Henry hardly ever went out at night. He had been home for supper,
and played with his son for a little while before kissing her goodbye, and heading
for the movie.
On Wednesday, a capacity crowd
gathered in the courtroom of Justice of the Peace, Dan A. Nee to hear evidence
on the Moore case. Testimony was heard
from seven witnesses including hospital and police personnel, but the star was
Miss Gretchen Gregory. She repeated the
detailed sequence of events of that night, and the jury found that Henry Hicks
Moore died “at the hands of an unknown person, or persons.”
On February 19, State Attorney
Fabisinski called a grand jury to once again investigate the case trying to
find new evidence. Even though the Associated Press had reported that Moore’s
brother-in-law, R. S. Clark of Greenville, SC, claimed to have furnished clues
to Pensacola police officers, the grand jury found no new information about the
case.
The murder of Henry Hicks Moore
remains unsolved to this day.
Gretchen Gregory married Henry C.
Longuet on June 30, 1931 in Santa Rosa, County. In the 1940 census they are
living on 81st Street in New York City, with a three year old
daughter, and her husband was a Superintendent of an apartment building. They divorced in Escambia county in August of
1958. She passed away in May of 2003,
and is buried In Bayview Memorial Park.
Eulalie Turner Moore, Henry’s widow,
married Lewis Kenneth Cahn in May of 1941, and died March 21, 1982.
Henry Hicks Moore, Jr. was only 2
years old when his father was killed. He
grew up to be a prominent citizen in Pensacola, and was a community activist
who wrote many opinion pieces for the News Journal. He died on December 26, 2010. He was an interesting person, and a google
search should be productive for those interested.
I doubt these two cases from 1931 were
connected. The crime scenes were not too far apart, but there was no attempt to
assault Miss Gregory. I think it was
just a robbery gone wrong. When Miss Gregory screamed, she may have startled
one of the robbers into accidently firing his weapon. According to her, they didn’t stick around
after that and took nothing.
Monday, June 19, 2017
Hinote / Bryars Murders, Unsolved
Arthur Hinote / Bernice Bryars
Murder,
22 Oct. 1931
Arthur Hinote, born, 7 Mar 1914, and
Bernice Bryars, born, 27 Sep 1916, left Hinote’s sister’s house at 1000 E.
Brainerd St., in Pensacola to go to a movie.
When the two did not return that night, their families began to
search. They even made inquiries to
neighboring states to see if a marriage license had been applied for,
suspecting they may have eloped.
Arthur worked at a mattress factory,
and gave most of his money to his mother. On the night of their date he only
had seventy cents in his pocket.
The next day, shortly after noon,
two wood cutters, John Engstrom, and John Birthright, were looking to collect
some wood near Bayou Texar, about a mile north of Bayview Park. At the time, this was a secluded area with
little traffic. Engstrom saw an
automobile parked in the distance, and being curious, went to take a look. Horrified, he saw the body of a young man
lying next to the running board with part of his face blown away. He turned to call his partner, and saw the
body of a young lady lying about 15 feet away on the other side of the car.
The young man had been obviously
shot in the face. The young lady had
been savagely beaten to death. It was
later found that she had a deep mark on her forehead, a deep looking wound
behind her ear, jaw broken in three places, and one of her eyes was discolored.
Authorities were notified and began
to arrive at the scene, and along with them, a growing crowd of gawkers began
to gather. Police identified the couple
as Arthur Hinote, and Bernice Bryars, and notified the families. Police found
few clues. There were several wads from
expended shotgun shells near the bodies.
The ground around Arthur was pretty much undisturbed, but it looked as
if Bernice had put up quite a fight. Her
watch stopped at 10:15 pm, but not due to need of winding. Some Bayou residents reported that they had
thought they heard gunfire around 10 pm.
Sheriff Mose Penton, Chief O’Connell,
and Inspector Andrew Schmitz traveled to Andalusia, Alabama to interview a
young man who had worked with Hinote in a sausage factory months before the
slaying. The young man had an alibi, and
was cleared of suspicion.
On Sunday, a dual funeral was held
in the home of Arthur Hinote’s parents at 1118 W. Chase St. Burial was at St. John’s Cemetery, attended
by approximately 5000 people. The two young victims were buried side by side.
The next day Sheriff Penton
announced to the press that there were no new leads. He could not find a
motive. It wasn’t robbery. It wasn’t revenge because there were no known
enemies. He declared it to be the work of a maniac.
By Monday, rewards for apprehension
of the killer reached $550. City Manager
George J. Roark put up $100. The county offered $250. State Attorney Purl G.
Adams in Crestview contributed $100, and a private citizen, Joseph Banman put
up $100.
County Solicitor Richard H. Merritt
joined the investigation, and Florida Governor Doyle E. Carlton sent a special
investigator to lend a hand. Every day,
at least a dozen investigators scoured Pensacola for leads. Interviewing, double checking, back tracking,
and tirelessly seeking answers, they were getting nowhere fast.
Finally, 15 days after the murders,
Solicitor Merritt announced that he was holding a suspect named Grady H. Faulk,
25 years of age. Merritt said he would give evidence to the Grand jury, and
seek a true bill. Even though every
effort was made to keep the evidence secret, the details began to leak.
The evidence included a bloody shirt
found in Faulk’s home in Klondike.
A shotgun of caliber that killed
Hinote with a bent barrel was in his possession.
Rumor of a compact belonging to
Bryars found in his home.
The evidence was purely
circumstantial, but it was strong enough for the Grand Jury to return two first
degree murder indictments against Faulk. The court appointed Attorney Ernest E.
Mason to defend Faulk.
On the 8th of March,
1932, the trial began. The State’s case,
based on circumstantial evidence was built on these points:
Faulk left home night of October 22nd,
carrying shotgun.
He didn’t return home until 3:30 in
the morning, drunk.
Someone noticed blood on his shirt.
He became increasingly nervous, and
didn’t return to work the day after the murders.
Vanity case similar to Bryars found
in his possession.
Faulk himself
took the stand and withstood vigorous examination calmly while answering all
questions put to him.
The Defense’s case:
Faulk DID return to work the next
day and the rest of the days of the week.
The shotgun in question was a
20-guage, not 12-guage used in the murder.
He was in possession of a shotgun
but a witness backed up his story that he took it from an acquaintance named Nora Coleman when she attacked him with it. He
bent the barrel on a table while he was
trying to break it.
The blood on his shirt was turkey
blood.
The vanity case in question was
never proven to belong to Bryars.
The same night
the trial concluded, the jury took 25 minutes to acquit on the first ballot.
The case then
went cold for over 29 years.
On May 1, 1951,
Sheriff R. L. Kendrick arrested Cleveland Ellison Cobb, a 58-year-old man at a Crestview bus depot. The
law had been looking for this man because they had been told that he had been
in a car accident with Hinote several months before the murders. Allegedly, he had threatened Hinote’s life
when he was forced to pay repair charges stemming from the accident. Due to lack of evidence, he was released.
With no more evidence, the case has
never been solved. The killer of Arthur
Hinote, and Bernice Bryars has never been identified.
It is nice that their families buried them together. They
had been a couple for months, and all indications were that they would be married.
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