The Treachery of Mrs. Vann

 

The Treachery of Mrs. Vann

Or, How Her Husband Knew the Truth, but Refused to Give Up on Her

        Unlike the majority of my essays about mostly forgotten Panhandle malfeasance, this story does not contain a killing. Admittedly, there was a poor attempt, but due to the tabloid atmosphere this created in the area, I felt it was worth exploring. There was an affair carried out by a younger wife with even a younger fellow. There was a hopelessly bungled attempt to kill the husband, and possibly many innocent people for the insurance money. There was so much publicity that there was a change of venue granted for the trial. I bet for a period of about 2 years this was a dominant topic around kitchen tables.

        On April 1, 1936, All Fool’s Day, Engineer Livvie W. Vann was bringing his three-car passenger train toward Pensacola on his regular run from Selma, Alabama. Just before 2 pm as he approached the Cottage Hill area, he noticed a slight buckling in the rail but thought it was a piece of wood, and passed over it. When he arrived in Cantonment a few minutes later, he reported it to the section foreman for the L & N Railroad, who soon went to investigate. What he found prompted him to immediately notify the Escambia County Sheriff.

        The Pensacola Journal headlines of April 2, 1936, let their readers know that: An attempt was made to derail L&N Southbound train #1, by removing spikes from almost an entire length of rail on a curve one mile north of Cottage Hill. They surmised that the only reason it was unsuccessful was that the rail that was tampered with was on the inside of the curve. Also, the train derailment was intended to result in the death of the engineer, Mr. L. W. Vann.

        Escambia County Sheriff H.E. Gandy, and Deputies Ernest Harper, and Richard Olsen investigated the scene of the rail tampering. They found tracks leading them to a truck abandoned nearby. In the rear of the truck, they found a railroad spike puller, a crowbar, and a large wrench with a long length of pipe in it’s handle for leverage. The opinion was that the suspects drove to the scene, did the job, and preparing to depart, could not start the truck. Bloodhounds trailed the two men to the Flomaton road about a half-mile from the site of the rail damage where they apparently caught a ride.

        Tracing the registration of the truck, the Sheriff was stunned to find out it was registered to Engineer Vann himself. They headed to Ferry Pass to speak to some people.

        The April 3, and 4^th issues of the Pensacola Journal let everyone know that the investigation was proceeding. The truck would not start for the getaway part of the plot due to being out of gas. It was also revealed that this was the second attempt to derail Engineer Vann’s train. The Sheriff was looking for at least two suspects but had made no arrests.

        On April 6^th it was reported that Earl Travis, 28, a carpenter from Castleberry, Alabama was brought in for questioning. He was living in a rented room at 124 S. Reus St. He was taken into custody for vagrancy when deputies found him hanging around a filling station on Ferry Pass road. He denied any connection to the derailment attempt. At the time it was thought that he was one of the truck occupants.

        On April 7^th the Journal reported that four people were being held in connection with the derailment. Earl Travis remained in custody, along with Cleve Carter, his wife, Adelaide, and George Johnson who worked for Vann. Johnson and the Carters were black and Johnson claimed a “strange negro” called for the truck last Tuesday, saying he was sent by Cleve Carter. Carter had denied he sent for the truck.

        The next day on the 8^th of April, Wednesday, it was reported that Allen Findley, 16, and Allen Langston, 70, (later said to be 76 years of age), were in custody, after confessing to the attempt to derail the train. Findley also confessed in the attempt to derail the same train a few weeks before when it passed through the Oak Field area. At some point on the 8^th, or 9^th, Mrs. Mary Vann was taken into custody and jailed by Sheriff Gandy.

        Allen Langston was known by residents of the Bell’s Head section to profess the ability to read into the future, (I guess he failed to foresee his current predicament), and it was learned in his confession that Mrs. Vann had visited the old man’s shack on a number of occasions presumably to have her fortune told. Sheriff Gandy does not believe the voodoo had anything to do with the attempted derailment. Langston charged fees for his services dealing mainly with settlements of family affairs and holding strange rituals including burning a bluish type of wax.

        The following day the Journal reported that Solicitor Richard H. Merritt said he would file charges carrying sentences totaling nearly 50 years against Mrs. Mary Barnett Vann, held at the county jail, in the attempted wrecking of a passenger train on which her husband was the engineer. He said he would add charges of attempted murder and tampering with the railroad tracks to the conspiracy count under which the 40-year-old woman was arrested Tuesday after two negroes confessed that she hired them to loosen a section of track on a curve near Cottage Hill on All Fool’s Day.

        Mr. Vann was 6 feet tall and white-haired. He was the engineer on a three-car passenger train that made a regular run between Selma, Alabama, and Pensacola. He usually left home around 1:40 pm on his run to Selma and returned the next afternoon at about 2:45. Even after his wife’s arrest, and hearing that Earl Travis had confessed to having an affair with Mrs. Vann, he told reporters that, “I still believe in her”, and that he found Findley, and Langston’s confessions, “incredible”. However, sources claimed that Mr. Vann did change the beneficiaries on his three insurance policies to his sons. There were three sons, and Mrs. Vann had a daughter from a previous marriage. All lived in the Ferry Pass home.

        Mrs. Vann, it should be noted, never admitted to any wrongdoing, whatsoever, and her dutiful husband promised to obtain a bond and get her out of jail. As soon as he got back from his Selma run. (Publicly he defended her, privately was probably another matter.) Mr. Vann hired William Fisher to represent his wife and went about finding her a bondsman.

        On April 11^th charges were announced against Mrs. Vann and Earl Travis. Arraignment was scheduled for the next term of the Court of Record, opening May 11. Judge C. Moreno Jones set bail for both of them at $2000.

 

        Allen Langston’s confession which Findley corroborated, claimed that Mrs. Vann promised that both of them would receive $50 each to do the work. He also said she told him there was $30,000 hidden under the rail that she wanted for herself. She had also asked them to weaken the rail at Oak Field two weeks before but they were frightened away by a farmer plowing a field after they had removed one, or two spikes. At both locations, Langston claimed Mrs. Vann marked with a pencil the section of the rail she wanted them to tamper with. She told them exactly what time of day she wanted the spikes removed. Langston said they got the truck on the afternoon of March 31. After a northbound train passed, they began pulling spikes until they heard the whistle of Vann’s train. They returned to the truck, but could not get it started. He also claimed that on the second attempt, Mrs. Vann told him that if they did a good job, she would build him a house and that, “he would no longer have to live in a hog pen”, and “She was going to let Earl be her old man and that she was getting tired of this one.”

        On April 14, Mrs. Vann was released on $2000 bond. Travis remained in jail. There is no mention of Langston and Findley, but since they were poor, black, and it was 1936, I assume they stayed in the county jail until their trial later in the summer.

        Mrs. Vann’s bond was signed by her brother Frank B. Martin, and A.C. Wilson, a local businessman. Mrs. Vann signed her bond in her cell, then was hurried with her lawyer out a side door to avoid reporters, and into the adjoining Court of Record building. Her husband stood on the corner of Zaragoza, and Tarragona streets, a block from the jail, and got into a car that then picked up Mrs. Vann and her lawyer, and sped away.

        On July 23, 1936, the trial for Langston, and Findley got underway. L.W. Vann testified about seeing the strange hump in the rail and how he notified L & N section Foreman J.V. King. Then King testified how he found the tampered-with rail and missing spikes. Bodie Kemp, and W. G. Davis, two employees of The Wiggins Store, told how Langston and Findley purchased five or six gallons of gasoline and charged it to Mrs. Vann’s account.

        Sheriff Gandy and Deputy Ernest Harper were questioned by the defense lawyers, J. Montrose Edrehi, and D. Webster Berry, and denied that they were told by the defendants that they removed the rail looking for hidden gold and had planned to replace it before the train got there. After a dozen witnesses testified, Langston and Findley changed their plea to guilty. Sentencing was postponed until after Mrs. Vann’s trial. (This is curious to me. I don’t know if that was a common practice at the time, or if it was a way to ensure that Langston and Findley testified the way the state wanted them to in the Vann trial.)

        Mrs. Vann’s lawyers began discussing a change of venue due to the amount of publicity the case had generated. In early August, there was a hearing before Judge Fabisinski in Circuit Court on a Change of Venue motion. Mrs. Vann’s attorney, William Fisher argued that she could not get a fair trial in Escambia County. The change was granted and the trial was moved to Milton, in Santa Rosa County. A potential problem with this was that Escambia was the only county in Florida to use a Court of Record, and used “Informations”, instead of indictments. The state Supreme Court in the past, reversed a case after a change of venue because of this.

 

        After four and a half hours of testimony, the Change of Venue was granted on August 4^th. The trial in Milton opened the next day with Jury selection. The State’s case was to be presented by Escambia County Solicitor Richard H. Merritt, E. Dixie Beggs, Jr. Circuit Solicitor, and Senator Phillip D. Beall who was aiding the prosecution as a “Friend of the State”.  Though Mr. Vann had been encouraged by some to leave his wife, he maintained his belief in her innocence and was assisting in her defense.

The Case

        The trial began on Wednesday, August 5^th. The testimony was complete and went to the jury at 9:30 pm Thursday night. The State presented its case all day Wednesday and until 2pm Thursday. Defense only took two hours and Judge Fabisinski used 30 minutes charging the jurors.

        “Mrs. Vann was friendly with Earl Travis, 35-year-old, Pensacola night spot operator, and former Castleberry, Ala carpenter. Travis was a frequent visitor at the Vann home in Ferry Pass, in Escambia County during recent months. Mrs. Vann accompanied Travis to a secondhand store where he bought a bed. Later she visited his room in a boarding house. They had gone to beer joints around Pensacola and danced. Mrs. Vann knew a 76-year-old negro who set himself up as a Voodoo Doctor, conjuror, and fortune teller. She had purchased liniment from Langston and “the Doctor”, had worked a charm on the front of a Pensacola laundry to get Travis a job. (Not sure how “Night Spot Operator” ties into all this.)

        Mrs. Vann desired the death of her husband L.W. Vann, 60, a white-haired L & N engineer. With Travis, she conspired to have Langston weaken the rails of the L & N track near Cottage Hill a few minutes before Vann’s fast passenger train would pass over that section of track. For this, she promised Langston $400-500 and because Langston was old and infirm, she agreed to give $50 to Allen Findley, 17, for aiding the “witch doctor”. She provided the Vann family’s makeshift old truck used to haul the household wood, and Langston, and Findley assembled the wrecking tools, went to the spot, which had been marked by Mrs. Vann, and with Vann, and Travis sitting 50 yards away directing, they pulled the spikes from the rails. Fortunately, they pulled the spikes from the inside rail of the curve, instead of the outside rail, and the train was not wrecked. Mrs. Vann planned her husband’s death and was going to use his $6000 insurance policies in which one would pay double indemnity in case of death by accident to bring the total payout to $9000, to marry Travis.

        Defense lawyers, William Fisher, and J.T. Wiggins of Milton charged that Mrs. Vann was not being tried for the attempt to wreck the train, but for her indiscretions with Travis. A general denial of all charges of Mrs. Vann’s participation in any wreck plot was made, and instead the witch doctor’s “gold machine” was introduced as the cause of the attempted wreck. Langston owned a machine that was supposed to find gold. He once tried to dig up the Frisco railroad tracks near Pensacola to get money he said was under the rails but was warned away by a section Foreman. Testimony showed he told Allen Findley they would clear the L & N tracks and find money there. They were using the Vann truck, which they had borrowed ostensibly to haul some wood and to haul the tools they needed to clear off the track without Mrs. Vann’s knowledge.

 

        They pointed out that this did not seem fantastic to the conjuror since he had spent several years in the Alabama Asylum for Insane Negroes at Mt. Vernon, Alabama, and is still subject to spells.

        Mrs. Vann was presented as a hardworking, kindly housewife who was on the best terms with her husband, three sons, and daughter. She was kept too busy with keeping house and looking after all her charges to run around with Travis or anyone else. All this testimony was heard by a six-man jury of Ed Jernigan, Douglas McComb, M.E. Brown, M.C. Diamond, Albert Enfinger, and Nick Broxson.

        During Langston’s testimony, he told of Mrs. Vann and a “Mr. Earl” coming to his house and offering him four, or five hundred dollars to do “some work on the railroad”. He said she was so persistent about the matter that he “just had to do it”. He said Mrs. Vann accompanied him to the spot on the railroad north of Cottage Hill and showed him how to remove the spikes. It was at that spot that Mr. Vann noticed buckling rails on his April 1 run from Selma. Langston said he was unable to use the crowbar given to him by Mrs. Vann so he asked 17-year-old Findley to help him. He said Mrs. Vann furnished them with the truck and gasoline to get to the spot where they attempted to remove the rails.

“Was anyone along with you?” the prosecutor asked.

A-   “Mrs. Vann”.

Q- “Was anyone with her?”

A-   “Yes, Mr. Earl.”

Q- “Where were they?”

A-   “In the car. About 50 yards from the track.”

Q- “What was she going to give you?’

A-   “Four or five hundred dollars. She told me I could fix up my house fine.”

Q- “Did you ever see Mrs. Vann and Mr. Earl ever show any affection for each other?”

A-   “Yes. They played huggin’ and kissin’.”

Defense counsel, William Fischer, Sr. asked Langston if he had ever gone to an Insane Asylum.

A-   “Yes. Up to Mount Vernon.” (The Alabama Asylum near Mobile.)

        Langston said he was there for two or three years because of, “spells in my head.” When asked he admitted he still had spells, “now and then”.

        Though feeble, Langston was on the stand for more than two hours smiling constantly as he answered questions. Mrs. Vann listened to his testimony intently and spoke quietly to her attorney several times.

        The prosecution called Mr. C. G. Hartsfield, L & N railroad agent. He told of finding the truck containing crowbars near the scene and identifying the truck and tools as belonging to Mr. Vann.

        The case went to jury deliberation at 9:30 pm after two days of testimony.

        The 6-man jury deliberated through the night for more than eleven hours and returned a guilty verdict on two counts. They convicted Mrs. Vann of being an accessory before the fact and conspiracy to commit murder. The defense was granted a hearing to be held on August 31 for a motion for a new trial. The $2500 bond was continued for Mrs. Vann that was posted by her husband back in April.

        On August 31 in Milton, Judge L.L. Fabisinski denied the motion for a new trial and sentenced Mary Vann to ten years. She was stunned by the ruling and burst into tears as she left the courtroom. An appeal bond was set at $7500 and since the Vanns could not raise that amount, she was put in the Escambia County jail. Officials indicated that the trial of Earl Travis would start soon, but actually, he was never put on trial for conspiracy or anything else. In December, Livvie Vann, and Mrs. Vann’s brother Frank Martin posted the $7500 bond and Mary was released until her appeals went through the system.

        Langston, and Findley both received ten-year sentences and with no appeals went directly to prison.

        Mary Vann’s case went to the Florida Supreme Court three times, but on 31 March 1938 her last petition for another hearing was denied without comment, and on 4 April it was reported that she was sent to Raiford to begin her 10-year sentence. She had recently opened a dining car lunchroom in downtown Pensacola. I guess she was overly optimistic about her chances.

        In July of 1939, Livvie Vann was in a Pensacola hospital dying of Tuberculosis. Mary’s brother Frank Martin requested the State Pardon Board to release her for a week to visit her husband. The request was granted and she was escorted to Pensacola for the visit. (Her brother had to cover the costs of the escort.) After her week-long stay, she requested an extension of her visit but was denied. On September 21, Livvie Vann passed away and Mary was granted leave to attend the funeral. Mr. Vann was buried at the Whitmire Cemetery in a Masonic ceremony. He was a life member of the Montgomery Masonic Lodge. The ceremony was conducted by Pensacola Lodge no. 42. Pallbearers were members of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers.

        Mary Vann was released from prison on 29 June 1943 after serving about 5 years of her sentence. She remained under parole supervision until 12 April 1948. She then married Jim H. Croft who she met in prison. (I don’t know what his role was at the prison.)  Langston and Findley were also released on good behavior after serving five years. I haven’t been able to find out any further information about them.

Mary Martin Vann Croft died on 21 March 1986 and is also buried at the Whitmire Cemetery.

Pensacola Journal 11 Apr 1936.

 Livvie and Mary Vann had three sons and a daughter. Two of the sons joined the Army. John K. Vann was a paratrooper, and Livvie, Jr. was awarded the Bronze Star for actions in the European theater of operations. The youngest son William joined the Navy in 1945 and was assigned to the USS Crater.

Pensacola Journal 8 July 1945.