Execution Eve. William Buchanan
He detoured back through the hallway for a moment to retrieve a package he had stored in a desk there the day before, then went to the apartment’s country-size kitchen. He handed the package to a large black man who was turning sausage patties in a cast-iron skillet atop a coal-burning range. Lucien Greenwell laid down the spatula and wiped his hands on his apron. He took the package and laid it aside near the stove. “Yessir. I’ll put ’em on right after breakfast.”
Back-to-back, Greenwell stood a half-inch shorter than the warden. But in all other respects of girth and size the two were identical. The package the warden handed his cook that morning contained a new pair of shoes, size 15-EEE, just arrived from a cobbler in Boston. The warden detested new shoes. Lucien would wear them until they were well broken in, then return them. An amusing pastime at the prison was observing Lucien Greenwell’s feet for evidence that the warden had purchased a new pair of shoes.
The warden sat down and poured himself a cup of coffee. Lucien brought eggs, sausages, and biscuits to the table, laid two morning newspapers near the warden’s plate, then pulled up a chair and sat down. Then, as they had each morning for six years, the warden of Kentucky’s maximum security penitentiary and a convict serving life for murder ate the first meal of the day together.
Breakfast finished, the warden put on a pair of horn-rimmed glasses and picked up the first paper. War news dominated the front page. With one son in the Navy and another preparing to enter the Army Air Corps, he read about the German advances in Europe and North Africa with heavy heart.
Finishing the lead stories, he thumbed through the following pages looking for the article he knew would be there today. He found it near the bottom of page two. Two columns wide, it read:
MILEY MURDERERS TO DIE TONIGHT
Lexington, Ky. — Barring intervention from Governor Johnson or the courts, a scar-faced carpenter, a burly cafe owner, and a dope-addicted handyman will die tonight in the electric chair at Eddyville. Thomas C. Penney, Robert H. Anderson, and Raymond S. Baxter, convicted for the murders of popular golf star Marion Miley and her mother at the Lexington Country Club in 1941, are slated to begin their walk to death just minutes past midnight tonight.
Subsequent paragraphs described the brutality of the murders, the trials, the previous stays of execution. The final paragraph posed a chilling question:
Is Anderson guilty? Despite the latest ruling from the Court of Appeals, doubts about Robert Anderson’s guilt continue to plague legal scholars and some officials close to the case. Anderson’s attorneys vow to continue the fight to save their client’s life and are planning to meet again with Governor Johnson in Frankfort today.
The warden laid the paper down, removed his heavy glasses, and rubbed his eyes wearily. He’d been thinking about Bob Anderson for days. Indeed, it had ruined his sleep for nights. There were too many unanswered questions about the man’s involvement in the killings—too many loose ends. Surely the truth about Bob Anderson would surface some day. But someday might be too late—for both Anderson and himself.
His mind focused on another thought, something that had come to him during the night, though he realized on reflection that he’d been mulling it over for days. Perhaps there was a way to determine if Anderson was guilty or innocent before it was too late. It would be risky, controversial, perhaps even unlawful. It would mean reneging on a plan he had formulated earlier with Governor Johnson. But that would be a small price to pay to save the life of a possibly innocent man. He made a mental note to inform the deputy warden of his plan following the morning staff meeting.
He finished his second cup of coffee, folded the papers, and handed them to Lucien to read later. Then he went to his bedroom to finish dressing before going downstairs to his office.
It was going to be a long day.
From his office high in the Citizens Bank Building at Fourth and Broadway in Paducah, Kentucky, Thomas S. Waller, senior partner at Waller, Threlkeld & Whitlow, Attorneys at Law, sat facing the window and gazed into the distance beyond the Ohio River, deep in thought. A large man, known for his trademark dark suits and Kentucky Colonel string ties, Waller was renowned as a quick study with penetrating insight. One of the South’s most prominent attorneys, his appointment calendar was filled months in advance. Yet he had cancelled all appointments for this day and asked his secretary to hold all calls. After a while he swiveled back to his desk and noted today’s date on his calendar pad—Thursday, February 25, 1943. He had circled the date in red months before on the day when Warden Buchanan came to see him in confidence.
For over fifty years Tom Waller and Jess Buchanan had been the closest of friends. They had grown up together in Union County. Each held the other in utmost esteem, each respected the other’s opinion. In matters of law, Jess Buchanan always sought Tom Waller’s counsel. In matters of politics, Waller usually deferred to Buchanan’s instincts. But on that day four months ago when Buchanan came to see his old friend, Waller sensed that there was more to the visit than a question of politics or legal fine points. The warden was in torment.
The two old friends talked for most of the morning. At the end, Tom Waller agreed to honor Buchanan’s request: Yes, he would study the Miley Case in detail to try to detect any flaw in the case against Robert Anderson.
Now, Waller pulled a heavy file from his HOLD basket. Compiled from news clippings, court records, and transcribed private conversations, the file was marked MILEY CASE. He had read every word of every document at least a half-dozen times. Still, he decided to spend the remainder of this day doing so again. He opened the file and started at the beginning:
The crime that tormented the warden and occupied Tom Waller occurred during the pre-dawn hours of September 28, 1941. At 4:15 that Sunday morning, J. M. Giles, manager of the Ben Mar Sanatorium in the fashionable northeast section of Lexington, Kentucky, was awakened by the repeated ringing of his doorbell accompanied by faint cries for help. He threw on a robe, went to the front door, and opened it to horror. A woman, barefoot and dressed in a blood-drenched nightgown, took a feeble step inside and collapsed into his arms. Giles recognized her at once. She was Mrs. Elsie Miley, 52, director of the Lexington Country Club just across the highway. Barely able to talk, she gasped out a tale of being beaten, shot, and robbed.
“Marion . . .,” the woman cried, “shot . . . please, get help.”
Giles yelled for a member of his staff to summon an ambulance and the police, and began rendering first aid to the stricken woman.
The prestigious Lexington Country Club was situated on lush bluegrass acreage on Paris Pike, three miles from downtown. Fifteen minutes after being notified, Lexington police entered the clubhouse to find wires cut, phones ripped from the walls, and furniture smashed. Upstairs, the door to Mrs. Miley’s apartment was splintered from its hinges. Inside was carnage. The entry hallway and bedrooms had been ransacked. In the master bedroom the floor and bed were blood-soaked. At the head of the hallway, officers made a more gruesome discovery: lying dead in a pool of blood, clad in pajamas, was twenty-seven-year-old Marion Miley. She had been shot at close range in the back and again in the top of her head. An autopsy would show that she died at approximately 2:30 A.M. Physicians speculated that her mother had lain in a state of shock for over an hour before acquiring enough strength to make her desperate crawl for help.
Within hours, the murder in Kentucky was headline news throughout the United States and Europe, for Marion Miley was a household name on both sides of the Atlantic.
A winning athlete since age eighteen, Marion had risen steadily through the ranks of female golfers. Along the way she won every major American tournament open to women, garnering a reputation for being “cool under fire—a golfer without nerves.” In her early twenties she represented the United States in major European tournaments. Hailed by sportswriters as being on a par with her good friends Patty Berg and “Babe” Didrickson, both of whom she defeated in competition, Marion was officially ranked the number-two woman golfer in the country. She was well on her way to becoming number one. Vivacious, outgoing, and strongly competitive,