The Innocents (1964)
by Edward D. Radin

Excerpt on

Hamp Kendall and John Vickers
 

One of the strangest aftermaths to a frame-up case occurred in 1950 when the North Carolina legislature passed a special law making it "illegal to erect a tombstone which charges anyone with a crime."

In September, 1906, Lawrence Nelson, the son of a minister, disappeared from a rooming house in Lenoir. Some two months later his body was found buried in a shallow grave in some brush three miles from town. Suspicion fell upon two men, Hamp Kendall, Nelson's roommate, and John Vickers, Kendall's close friend; both men had not gone to work the day Nelson disappeared.

Authorities soon had their suspicions confirmed. A group of witnesses came forward who said they had seen Nelson with Kendall and Vickers that day, walking toward the scene of the murder. Both men were convicted and given long terms. There had, however, been many discrepancies in the stories told by the witnesses, and finally police arrested Sam Green, a night watchman, and a girl named Omah Grier and accused them of the murder. Omah was Green's cousin and had been the state's star witness against Kendall and Vickers. Despite the arrest, the two convicted men remained in prison. Both Green and Miss Grier later were acquitted by a jury.

In 1917 an investigation was conducted by Governor Bickett, and he came to the conclusion that, despite the acquittal, Sam Green had murdered Nelson and had framed Kendall and Vickers. The governor issued an unconditional pardon to the two men. Five years later Green ordered a coffin built for himself and, when it was completed, confessed that he was the killer and committed suicide.

Vickers died two years after his release from prison. Although Hamp Kendall's name had been cleared, there remained a marble slab for any passer-by to see, accusing him of the murder. Nelson's grief-stricken minister father had erected a gravestone that read:

H. LAWRENCE NELSON,
BORN Dec. 16, 1880,
Murdered and Robbed
by Hamp Kendall, and
John Vickers.
Sept. 25, 1906

Although Kendall made repeated pleas to have the gravestone accusation removed, both the board of commissioners of the county and the board of deacons controlling the church land were unable to do anything to remove the engraving; a state law made it a felony to tamper with a grave or a headstone. Finally, twenty-three years after he had been officially cleared of the crime, a sympathetic state legislature passed the special law allowing workmen to grind out the false accusation on the tombstone.