The Murders at Richards Mansion

Hi, I'm Holly and I'm Haley. Welcome to Mountain Mysteries Tales from Appalachia. Welcome back. Hello.

Hello. Hi. Felt very far. Hello.

Hello. It's been wild. What's happening? My microphone keeps going in weird places.

It really is. It really is. Yeah. Listen, I thought your child was possessed today.

He's doing some really amazing stuff. I mean, it sounded like the exorcist in there. Well, first he offered Haley some home goods. He did.

I walked in there because there was some sort of like waterfall something happening with the sink and I was like, I feel like I should just step in here to see what's happening. Everything was under control the first time I went in there. And there was this little like points set up when said, yeah, I don't know. We say that plant.

This little like plant. This is the core. Christmas decor. And he picks it up and he said, this is a flower.

And I'm like, that's a beautiful flower. And he said, it's yours now. Well, thank you. He really knows how to, you know, entertain.

And he said, you can put it on your counter. I'm like, well, what if I just put it on this counter and it's just a different place. And he's like, that would be okay. Yeah.

So I said it down there. And I left the bathroom. And Haley came back to me and said, your son is trying to give away all your home decor. Yeah.

So I yelled out to him, this is not Kirkland's please stop giving home decor away to our guests. And then went in after a few more minutes of him, you know, just doing whatever. And there was water in place as water should not be. There was also an odd, like, we've later found out it was hand soap, but like the counter was yellow.

So we can figure out why it was yellow. Yeah. There was a lot going on there. Oh, things have happened in here.

Okay. So for those of you who are parents out there, you know how sometimes, especially if you have one child, you just kind of need a minute. You just need a minute. You just need that break.

And you know darn well, they are in there doing something that's just you know they are, but you just need a minute. And then you go in and you're like, and it's just, you know, water and crap everywhere that you're going to have to clean up. Then you ask yourself, was that minute worth it? Because now I'm cleaning up all this, you know, mysterious yellow liquid.

I don't know. I mean, it was, it was an adventure. And again, just the reiteration for Haley of like, Perkitrol. Perkitrol.

Absolutely. I love your kid. He's so much. He's super cute.

Don't want one full time. Me neither. I think you're stuck. I think you're stuck.

Too late. Too late. Too late. Yeah.

He, I think the thing about having an only child is that he doesn't entertain himself. Right. My friend who has an only child who's a girl, she was saying actually to me the other day, she said, yeah, you know, I can turn a television show on for her. And she's like, like tuned into that TV for hours.

And I was like, that doesn't work for my kid. My kid, like, well, watch it for like a minute and then be onto something else and like, doesn't really want to watch it. And so he wants my attention all the time. So it's really hard to do anything and like have a minute to yourself because he always wants my attention.

So yeah, please send help. Well, it was an adventure tonight, I will say. It was. It was a lot.

I gained some home decor and you know, got the witness a waterfall. Yeah. In the bathroom. Yeah.

That's our little slice of nature because we're not going out into the woods to see it. Absolutely not. So we had to make one ourselves and think we did and it was lovely. It was.

Yeah. It was. Well, he wasted a crap ton of toothpaste. Yeah, that did happen.

Yeah. I told him, do you think we're rich people? I revert back to like my grandmother. Yeah.

Suddenly, like, do you think we're rich over here? Yeah. Like depression era. Exactly.

Like more ways than one. We don't waste tissues. People are standing in line for Kleenex. You know, like it brings out that Ziploc bag.

Exactly. And hang it up. Yeah, to drive. To drive.

To drive. Exactly. What are you thinking? Okay.

We're going to hear a story. That's what we're here for. I'm ready. Okay.

So today we're headed to Oliver Springs, Tennessee. Cool. This is an area near Knoxville. Hey.

I know. I know. Another Knoxville story. But y'all, Knoxville brings a murder and mayhem.

It does. It does. It really does. So this story takes place in 1940.

So we're going way back. Oh, it's fine. Pre World War II. Nice.

So in Oliver Springs, a coal mining town, by the way, it's February 5th, 1940. Two sisters and Richards, age 48, and her sister Margaret, age 46, were getting ready for the day and planning their evening ahead. They were going to Knoxville with some friends to see a screen of Gone with a Wind. Oh, horrible.

Fiddle-doo-doo-doo-doo. Why, red. Red butler. Listen, I have never seen it all the way through, but I did start watching like, I guess in the middle of it and it got to what I thought was the end.

Oh, turns out that was just the halfway point. Yes. I was like, oh, wow, that was a dice ending. And then we begin again.

I'm like, how long is this? And they're like two hours. What? Oh, it's a three hour move.

It's ridiculous. Yeah. Yeah. The part where she, I will never go hungry again.

That seems like that should be the end. And it's not because you see what happens, you know, essentially after the ravaging of the South and what happens. Yeah. That was, yeah, it's not prepared.

As a history buff, there are a lot of inaccuracies, a film that trouble me and just really irk me. So, yeah, I don't like that. I don't like the Southern accents that are so bad. She's British, by the way.

She's English. I love that for her. Which actually American, Southern dialect and British dialect aren't terribly far off from each other. But I don't know.

I liked the costumes. If we're talking about pluses, I like the costumes. You know, there are some things. I mean, some of the guys were bad to look at.

Not bad to look at. Not bad to look at. Not bad to look at. Clark Gable.

Mm. I heard though he had bad breath. I believe it. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, so come with a wind. Not with the wind. Yes.

Yeah. It won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1939, by the way, just so you know. Interesting. Yeah.

So they were going to go see this film and they wanted to make sure that they had the perfect outfits picked out. Are we going like movie accurate outfits or they were just going to look nice? That's something I'm not sure of actually. Because, you know, back in the 40s, when you went to anything like this, like a picture show or even if you went to like Sunday brunch or Sears, you dressed up.

Yeah. Like you looked nice. You like put on your Sunday best kind of thing. So I don't know if they were putting on their Sunday best to go to the theater or they actually were in historically accurate clothing.

You know what I mean? So I don't know what that meant. That's just what I read. But in my mind, I thought that'd be pretty cool if they were dressing up in like Antebellum South outfits.

Yeah. Or they got something from the window and you know, I just had to have it. You ever seen that Carol Burnett sketch? I saw it in the window and just had to have it.

So for y'all out there who haven't seen it, Carol Burnett has a comedy sketch show. And she does a spoof of Gone with the Wind and she does a Scarlett O'Hara thing where she says, oh, he says, oh, I just love your dress. And she said, oh, I saw it in the window and I just had to have it. And it's got the rod hanging out of the back.

It's really funny. Anyway, it's super cute. Anyway, so they were picking out their dresses and planning for the day. They had a younger sister whose name was Mary.

She also lived with them, but she worked in town as a teacher. Oh, cool. So Anna and Margaret waited for their Aaron boy. So I'm using this wording only because these were the terms used in the article.

I don't necessarily agree with it. So I'm just going to reiterate this, but this is the terms they use. I'm just going to say this. Okay.

So they were waiting for their Aaron boy. His name was Powder Brown. Yeah, but his first name was Leonard, but he called himself Powder. Powder was his nickname.

Sure. His last name was Brown. Okay. He was 16 years old.

Okay. He was apparently an orphan. Okay. So they sort of had taken him in.

Anyway, everybody sort of knew him in town like him. They were waiting for him to arrive. Powder was always helping them with last minute details and various things that they needed help with. It's interesting.

They sort of in this article and in the way they were sort of seen in town, these ladies almost like they were elderly. There's spinsters. Yeah. Spinsters, but we are almost like elderly folk at 48 and 46 as someone very close to that age.

I really feel like, wow, I mean, it's your green there grandma. Oh, yeah. I feel like I'm 87. We talked about it though.

Well, after cleaning up the bathroom tonight, I kind of feel like it. But also like, I guess I better get my son to help me across the street. It's just so funny. So as you've probably figured out by now, Anne and Margaret were pretty well off financially.

Sounds like it. Their great grandfather came to the United States from Wales, having made his fortune in coal. He came to Tennessee and continued to profit from iron and coal mining. He built a large mansion as well as a fancy hotel in town.

This family was well known in town and were quite the socialites. No, it's just like us. Yeah. Just like us.

In 1905, the hotel that they had built burned down and the family went through some trials and tribulations with family members suing each other and a lot of hurt feelings over money, etc. You know, that tends to happen. It's not something I'm going to have to worry about. Same with me.

Maybe that point, Setta. You don't know. Maybe. I mean, this one, the DG.

Yeah, that's a lot. It was a lot. I know. It did take a dive.

It did. So I don't know. I think it may have lost them up its value round. It did.

So whoopsie. When Anne, Margaret, and Mary's father William died in the 1930s, their cousin, Mamie, tried to sue the county and the family estate in order to obtain land that she felt was rightfully hers. She didn't win, but all the court hearings were pretty costly. So it really cost the family.

So by the time we reached the 1940s and Margaret and her sister, Mary, they're living in the mansion alone, but they don't have as much money as one would think. Like they're still pretty well off, but not as well off as the family was in the early 1900s. Gotcha. They're very generous with their money and they'd like to help their friends and families, but they aren't dripping in money like we are.

Right. Oh, darling. So wholes. They even offered to teach piano lessons to children in the community, both to help others, but also, you know, to make a little extra side money.

Yeah. So again, that speaks to some ladies who were just like, trying to pay bills. Yeah. They're just making their money.

Exactly. Making ends meet. Anyway, on the morning of February 5th, all that's, you know, seemed normal for the sisters between the hours of 11 a.m. and 12 p.m.

Things took a turn. Someone entered the home and found Anne in the kitchen. She was shot at point blank range in the head and killed instantly. I thought you guys say found in the kitchen like making pie or something.

She may have been just a little pie. Maybe getting her dress ready for the gone with the wind screening. Who knows? Yeah.

But she was shot in the head. And it says here that her sister Margaret tried to flee towards the stairs but was shot twice in the throat and the whole. Yeah. So it seemed like Margaret, you know, in a sense to like protect herself, was trying to run away and trying to like run up the stairs but whomever caught up to her and killed her.

There, Erin Boy, Leonard powder brown, had come around noon upstairs and I'm guessing that he had entered through the back staircase because how he entered through the front, he would have seen Margaret so I guess he came up the back staircase and he came up the stairs and he was met by the attacker who I guess had waited for him. So I guess the attacker knew that he would be coming. Yeah. So waited for him and then shot him in between the eyes.

Oh my gosh. So Mary, Anne and Margaret's younger sister sent one of her students to check on her sisters, something that she did daily. Why? This is something that didn't make sense to me, right?

So I have to think about it in the context of something that they did back then, right? So you got to think this is a very small town. She's a teacher in the community. Maybe this is something that she normally did.

Again, we're sort of treating these women, these Spencer women like they're elderly or something. So maybe she was like, little chawnee, go check on my sisters and just make sure that they're okay. It's midday. That's where it makes sure they took their medicine.

I don't know. This is, it's strange to me too. Yeah. But she sends the little boy, go check on the sisters.

So he goes, right? So he goes to the door and he knocks and no one comes to the door, but he reports saying, I heard weird noises, but nobody came to the door. So he goes back to school and reports back to his teacher who says, huh, that's really strange. Okay.

A father who was going to the house to pay for his own span of lessons, tried knocking at the door and he too heard weird noises. You know, he obviously like someone in their talking, but no one answered the door. Again, he found that really strange and he went away. Where a woman came to the house a little afternoon with a delivery.

She knocked at the back door. Nobody answered. And she heard voices to which she felt were white men inside the house. She thought that the voices were distinctly that of white men.

Okay. Yeah. How do you tell race? Again, this is the 1940s.

It's the 1940s. So you kind of have to take it with a grain of salt there. So, yes, sure. So all of these people have come by the house.

This is a lot of people coming by the house. I think about it. How long would our bodies be rotting? Of course, someone would find us.

It would be a long time. I live with my brother. So it would be pretty. Actually, no, he doesn't.

No, he wouldn't check. We would not. We would not. No.

You work different schedules. We do. It could be a week. If not more.

I mean, I don't know. I talked to my family regularly. It was raised by an anxious mother. It's true.

If I don't respond in a certain amount of time, she thinks I'm dead. If it were you and I though, I'd be. Oh, yeah. If we were the ones relying on each other to find our dead bodies, yeah.

Maybe a month. I would say a month. A month. Maybe not months.

A month. A month. Maybe just a month. A month.

A month. Yeah. But would we come out to check on each other? I mean, I don't know if I would think like maybe, yeah, probably I probably can check on you.

Maybe. I felt some you were holding back a little. Well, I was like, I don't know. Like, I don't think, like we've never really been mad at each other.

So we're like, we haven't spoken. So I would think it'd be weird. We normally don't speak. Right.

But not of like, you know, ill intent. Yeah, we just don't speak. Right. We're not like, we're not like daily check in people.

We're like once a week or check in. But like, even if I don't hear back from you, like if I text you, you don't answer, if I call on you, I don't panic. But I don't think I ever don't answer. No, usually answer.

Yeah. But I wouldn't panic. I'd be like, oh, she's just busy. Like I wouldn't worry.

Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

So a month. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

But anyway, these people have got like 15, there's a lot of people checking on them, which also makes you think why do they need so many people checking on them? Has there been things that have happened before that they need check in? Right. Do they have some kind of medical issue that it just kind of lends itself to some question.

Yeah. So the end of the day occurs, right? So that's the end of the school day and Mary dismisses her class. She goes back home and she discovers her two sisters, one found in the kitchen and the other found dead near the staircase.

And she also discovers powder brown upstairs shot dead. And her scream apparently was so loud that the entire town could hear it. Police arrived and they found an old pistol by the body of powder brown. Oh, no.

The local mortician recognized the gun because he had once owned it. And he, oh, yeah. Isn't that weird? That's my gun.

Oh, that is the gun that I used to have. He actually sold the gun to a member of the Hana family and the Hana family lived across the street from Ann and Margaret. Margaret. Yes.

Thank you. I had like a moment of like, yeah. Yeah. So not only that, but to be able to be like, oh, that's my gun.

I recognized you. So here's the thing about the crime scene, not just the police came and walked through. Everybody did. The entire town, friends, family, people who just were curious.

I mean, that sounds like something we would love to partake in. Absolutely. It's giving me reminders of the family that was murdered on Christmas near Stokes County. That we did.

That we did with the raisin cake with the cake. The raisin cake. Yep. That's what it's reminding me of.

Well, tis the season. I mean, it is the 21st of December. It is. Oh, by the way, yeah.

Merry Christmas. Everybody. So everybody's walking through the freaking crime scene. And everybody's making their own judgments.

It's at this point that the sheriff who has walked through the crime scene declares, he knows exactly what happened. I'm glad he does. And everyone says, well, do tell Sheriff and the sheriff says, it was a murder suicide. Of course it was.

He said that powder brown had killed the sisters and then turned the gun on himself. It was a clear case of murder suicide and the case is closed. Wasn't that convenient? Wasn't it though?

So the sheriff goes on to pose for newspaper photographs holding the pistol out with his hand and pressing the barrel straight into his forehead. That is concerning. Isn't it though? It's stupid.

Don't put guns to your head. The headline read on the front page, quote, Sheriff Sure Negro fired in Mad Rage. Ew. Yeah.

No. Yeah. I'm gonna go ahead and say no. But here's the thing.

Oh, me too. But here's the thing. While the sheriff had proclaimed this, the sheriff's an idiot. But while the sheriff had proclaimed this, others didn't believe it.

The coroner's inquest of 12 local men all met to review the evidence. And they learned that there was absolutely no gunpowder residue anywhere on powder brown anywhere. And they heard that the bullets downward, path through powder's head did not fit that of a self-inflicted gun move. Well, and like, that's not an easy angle.

Exactly. So shoot yourself between the eyes is not an easy angle. Exactly. Like side of the head and underneath is easier.

Like you tend to see more of that with suicides. Yep. Involving a gun. But like between the eyes is a difficult angle.

And the gun used was antique. Right. So even more difficult. Making it even more difficult to shoot.

And something else to note here was that powder brown was absolutely terrified of guns. He was terrified of fireworks and anything that made allowed noise. And remember, he was only 16 years old. He was a child.

He never really shot guns. He was absolutely petrified of them. And they said that even when like a car backfired or any kind of loud noise he heard, he would run away in fear. So there is no way he would have shot a gun or even shot himself.

So those who were doing the inquest went to the sheriff and said, listen, we do not believe that powder brown did this. And the sheriff looked at them at the time and said, quote, well, it's my call. End quote. Sheriff, I know you're dead and buried at this point, but I want to talk to you and I want to tell you something directly.

You're an idiot. That's not how evidence lurks. Yeah. You don't walk through an entire crime scene, have absolutely no evidence and then just make up your mind.

And decide, well, this seems like the easiest answer. Let's go with that one. Case closed. Done.

Let me go post for the magazine now with a gun to my head. Yeah. So the sisters were buried in brand new dresses that they had planned to wear that night. So I'm guessing that they weren't wearing the dresses yet.

Well, no, I'm guessing they were probably of 1940s and not into the little, well, especially with the, you know, the petty coats and everything underneath it. It's always very difficult to put into a casket. So they were late to rest to kind of stuff them all in. Although you do have a scarlet of hair vibe with your hair.

So me? To redhead. That's like now with my pick up. I know.

But I mean, we could put you in your casket of the petty coat. Okay. I have a short like, I have a krenel and then I used to wear for you. Do you really?

Yeah. It's a short one. It's for clogging. Well, let's get a longer one for you.

We could do like a whole big dress. Be great. I would love that. Okay.

So many ideas now. The wheels turning. I know. It's not good for you.

That's terrifying. They were laid to rest side by side in the Oliver Spring cemetery in the family plot beside their mom and dad. Powder Brown's body was taken out of town and placed in a remote graveyard surrounded by thick woods and laid to rest so that no one could take vengeance on his body. Yeah.

And there are actually no known photographs of him that exist. Oh my gosh. Yeah, which I just feel like powder brown suffered and no ill will towards her ill thoughts for an or Margaret. But I feel like powder really suffered more than any of them here, just in his life and death.

Yeah. His memory and his memory. So Mary Richards, the youngest sister, ended up moving to Atlanta to be closer to her older brother Joseph and their surviving siblings sold the mansion to the American Legion for a dollar. Oh wow.

Yeah. I think that they just wanted to read it. Probably the memories and all the other things. But about seven years later, after selling it, a fire broke out and destroyed the mansion.

Oh wow. Yes. So had there been any other evidence left in the mansion, it's just forever gone. So let's talk about what we know really quickly.

Okay. So what we know is that, robbery wasn't a motive because there was nothing gone. Nothing was stolen. Cigarette butts were found in an upstairs bedroom that suggested that someone had placed themselves in a key vantage point to watch the comings and goings from outside.

So like somebody was up there waiting. So it seems like somebody was watching and waiting for maybe powder brown or somebody else to come in and out of the house maybe after they had killed the sisters. Yeah. And a theory that has been going on and on and on is that someone in the Hannah family across the street might have been involved because they have been engaged in a property dispute with the Richards at one time and you know, Anna Margaret Richards.

And there was in fact a pistol that was owned by the Hannah family. Remember the one that was found by Powder Brown's body. The one that the corner or the mortician I guess had sold to them. I mean, yeah, go ahead and say that's not looking good.

I don't think so. I mean and don't you think that's convenient? Yeah. So there was also some speculation that two black convicts, convicts might have killed the three while stopping in town after being released from Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary.

Interesting. If you haven't caught it, we did an episode, probably a year and a half ago on Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary. It's a very good one. Okay.

All right. So in 2000, yeah, so we're moving forward in time about 60 years. An African American man who had once lived in town came forward. He told a local journalist that he had fled town decades ago, decades ago as a young man because he'd seen two men leaving the Richard's Mansion around the time of the killings.

These men had spotted him and told him if he knew what was best, he would forget ever seeing them and leave the area as soon as possible. He only came back when he knew the men were dead. Interesting. The police chief at the time, Messingill, looked into the case from 2000 until his death in 2011, 15.

Okay. And came to two conclusions. The first conclusion was that Powder Brown couldn't have been the killer. Obviously.

Absolutely. And the other was the two local men and the cousin, Mamie, who had lost her bid for the family property back in the 30s were the perpetrators. Interesting. Yep.

Mamie by then had been dead, you know, 20 plus years. But one of the suspects had ended up killing the other with a gun and disposing of his body. Wow. Yep.

Yep. And Messingill said he got dealt the same way the Richard sisters did. He was disposed of, shot and killed. And can't talk anymore.

End quote. Yep. Wow. Yep.

Isn't that crazy? Yeah, I'm voting against those guys. I think so. So maybe the Hano's didn't have anything to do with it.

Maybe somehow, I don't know what the deal with the gun was. It's weird that and yeah, it's weird that it was their gun though. Yeah. So maybe, I don't know, weird.

Maybe they did have something to do with it with a gun. I don't know. I don't know what that does. So we'll figure it out.

But so Powder Brown rested, tucked away in a cemetery with no stone. But thanks to a member of the Richards family, one was placed about 20 years ago in a cemetery where he resides southeast of town. His exact whereabouts are still unknown. It's not clear who is still alive from his own family.

Because like I said, he was orphaned at the time he died. But he was very well known around the town and very well liked. In 2024, he will mark his 100th birthday. Yeah.

He was well remembered. And there is a song by East Tennessee musician, Kipper Stitt of the band Pine Mountain Railroad. And it kind of goes still in his teens, no evil he'd done. Powder was timid, just ask anyone.

Three lay dead, three were slain. Someone was guilty, was powdered to blame. The sky was so dark and bitter winds blowing on a cold winter day in 1940. It's part of the song.

Before he died, Sheriff Messingill really felt that the blame was put on Powder Brown because he was a young black man and didn't have any rights. And the women in this case who were murdered didn't have any rights. So it was really easy to put the right the blame on, you know, these women, this poor black man like, you know, because it's easy to write right away in the history books. I'm like, oh yeah, it was his fault.

Like, oh well, you know, case closed. His clothes were going on. Easy peasy. And so how sad that this this poor, and he was a little kid.

He was a kid. And he lost his life and took the blame for these women, you know. Yeah, for this crime. For this crime.

So anyway, that is Oliver Springs murder of 1940. So much for, you know, going to see Gone with the Wind. Yeah, I mean, bit old DD. That's a real bummer.

That's a real I would say it really is. Yeah. Well, you know, I wish you a very Merry Christmas and happy holidays and all the wonderful things that are, you know, coming your way. It's time of year.

Yeah. I know. You know, stay healthy. It's been a wild time with sickness.

Yes, it has been. But enjoy your holiday season. Stay. Stay well.

Stay well friends. If you have some feedback to share, we would love to hear it. You can email us at mountain mysteries dot Appalachian at gmail.com. You can find us on Facebook, Mountain Mysteries, tales from Appalachia.

You can find us on Instagram, mountain mysteries dot Appalachia and patreon.com slash mountain mysteries. Got a shout out for us. I'm working on it. She is working on it.

I am working on it. Me too. Here we go. Um, maybe here we are.

Oh, that's lucky here. Um, da da da da da. How about Lebanon, Pennsylvania? Oh, wow.

Pennsylvania. Thank you so much. Yeah. Nice.

All right, y'all. Well, have a wonderful holiday and we will see you next time. Bye. Bye.