CHAPTER 2
DeKalb County deputy Lamar Hackworth was right in the middle of a busy but routine first shift. It was just past midday, but he had already made a round trip from the sheriff’s office in Fort Payne, Alabama, to a Chattanooga, Tennessee, doctor’s office with two inmates in need of medical care. He waited while they were treated; then he returned them to the county jail. As soon as he turned over his two charges to the jailers, he was asked to take another inmate for a doctor’s appointment in Rainsville, Alabama, the town immediately south of Henagar on Highway 75.
“As I was getting back into the car from the doctor’s office, I heard nine-one-one dispatch giving a nine-one-one call of a possible homicide on Shady Lane in Henagar,” Hackworth said. “I was told to be en route to assist the units that were responding, so I dropped the prisoner off at the Henagar Police Department and went on to the call.”
On his arrival at the murder scene, Hackworth saw several people he knew from other law enforcement agencies and city departments. Deputy Jim Mays and Henagar street department worker Eugene Camp were putting up crime scene tape, and Hackworth parked his car along the road while another arrival, Lieutenant David Smalley, from the Henagar Fire Department, moved his first responder vehicle from the driveway to make room for other emergency units that were on their way. Hackworth and Smalley helped to finish putting up the crime scene tape as several other vehicles pulled up, lining both sides of the already narrow road in front of the house. Hackworth then began a job that would take several hours and would later prove to be very important to the investigation of the murders. He started a list of the names of everyone who came into the house before it was taped off, then continued with another list of those people who crossed the crime scene tape during the following hours.
Investigator Rhonda Jackson, of the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Department, and another officer, Investigator Clay Simpson, arrived at the Dalton home around 3:01 P.M., responding to emergency calls from the sheriff’s dispatcher. Jackson would be tapped by the sheriff to serve as lead investigator in the case, her first time to head up the investigation of a homicide. With her keen eye for detail and her meticulous record keeping, she was an ideal choice for the job. Jackson, a striking young brunette who had worked her way up through the ranks the hard way, from rookie patrol deputy to experienced investigator, was just as determined as she was attractive. Knowing she would be judged by her colleagues on the skill with which she handled the investigation of this double homicide, she began to walk through the house with Simpson, taking careful note of everything she saw.
“We entered the residence through the front door into the living room,” Jackson said. “There was a chair overturned in the corner, with what appeared to be a brown leather sheath lying near it. The chair’s cushion was against the couch.”
Jackson also noticed an afghan, a pillow and a binder notebook lying on the floor beside the overturned chair. The ceiling fan and a window air conditioner were both running.
As the investigators moved from the living room into the kitchen, where rumpled throw rugs lay on the floor, they found the ceiling fan turning overhead and a pedestal fan sitting with its cord stretched across the kitchen floor. It was plugged into the electric wall receptacle but was not turned on. Dora Ann Dalton’s body was lying, fully clothed, on the floor, positioned partially on her side with her head under the kitchen table. She was wearing dark blue shorts, a light-colored top, white socks and tennis shoes.
“A large amount of blood was under the victim’s upper body,” Jackson said. “A spear around five or six feet in length had been stuck into her right side, and there was an additional stab wound visible to the back and one bullet wound to the middle of the forehead. Her glasses were lying on the floor beside the body.”
As they looked around the kitchen, nothing seemed out of place and there were no evident signs of a struggle. Glass jars of freshly preserved sauerkraut, still warm to the touch, sat in neat rows on the countertop, and a pot of green beans was steaming on the stove. The house’s back door was closed. Jackson noted that Dora Ann appeared to have been sitting at the table eating watermelon when her killer struck without warning; half of a small watermelon lay broken into pieces on the kitchen floor, and the other half sat on the kitchen counter covered with aluminum foil.
Jackson and Simpson then moved down the hallway to the bathroom, where Carolyn’s body was slumped against the wall in a semiseated position, with her legs bent and her right shoulder against the commode. The left side of her head was wedged against a wooden towel rack. The investigators noted three gunshot wounds to her head, and she had been stabbed in the throat with a large bowie knife, which had been left in the wound. A seven-foot homemade Indian spear had been used to stab Carolyn in the chest; it, too, had been left in her body. A pattern of blood spatters extended from her wounds toward the doorway, and the blood was already coagulated.
Like her mother, Carolyn was fully clothed. She wore blue jeans, a light-colored top, white socks and tennis shoes. Her reddish brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and a small floral picture had fallen off the bathroom wall and lay in the floor by her right leg.
Jackson and Simpson moved on to the other rooms in the house, starting with Dora Ann’s bedroom. There they found a middle dresser drawer open, with underwear lying on the floor and hanging out of the drawer. Dora Ann’s oxygen machine was on the right wall, and a small fan sat on top of the machine. A dresser drawer containing Indian-style bric-a-brac sat in a chair, and three decorative Indian plates were lying on the bed along with their holders. The doors were standing open on the wardrobe, and clothes were lying scattered about on the floor.
In Carolyn and her husband Randy’s bedroom, a purse was sitting on the bed with its contents partially dumped out. Several papers and other miscellaneous items were scattered over the bed. In another room, which was the room where Randy kept most of his Indian artifacts and craft supplies, a twin bed had been moved away from the wall and a vacuum cleaner was sitting behind it. There were spears mounted on the wall behind the bed, along with some empty holders. Decorated Indian staffs and walking sticks stood in the corner of the room, along with a .22 long rifle. A box of shells for the rifle was sitting on a nearby wall shelf, and a large dresser that appeared to have been moved from the room was sitting out in the hallway with Indian jewelry and several other items lying on top.
After this initial inspection of the house, Jackson and Simpson and another colleague, Investigator Jimmy Phillips, determined that there had been no forced entry, and nothing obvious appeared to be missing. There were no signs of a struggle or of any resistance by either of the two women. The investigators decided it was time to contact the Department of Forensic Sciences in Huntsville, Alabama, to request their assistance in working the crime scene. They also requested the help of one of the most experienced crime scene investigators in the state, Danny Smith. Smith worked for Richard Igou, district attorney (DA) of the Ninth Judicial Circuit of Alabama, as the circuit’s investigator. The Ninth Judicial Circuit consisted of DeKalb County and the adjoining Cherokee County, and Danny Smith regularly assisted sheriff’s investigators in both counties when his experience and expertise were needed. While Phillips phoned the forensic department, Sheriff Cecil Reed contacted Danny Smith and asked him to come lend a hand with the investigation.
Around 5:00 P.M., Danny Smith arrived at the house on Shady Lane and began his own walk-through of the crime scene. After he conferred with the other detectives and learned there had been no forcible entry, no apparent robbery and no signs of a struggle, he entered through the front door and walked into the living room.
Much of what Danny Smith noticed coincided with the observations already made, except for one thing: the brown leather knife sheath he saw lying near the overturned chair looked like the right size to fit a twelve-inch bowie knife, and there was an empty display space on the wall behind the chair. It appeared that the knife had been hanging on the wall and had been taken down and possibly used as one of the murder weapons.
Danny Smith then walked through the double doorway at the northeast corner of the living room, which led into the kitchen. When he viewed Dora Ann’s body, he noted that, judging by the position of her feet, she might have been standing at the kitchen counter and was attacked without warning from behind.
When he looked at Carolyn’s body in the bathroom, Danny Smith saw that the gunshot wound to her right temple appeared to be a contact wound. There was gunpowder on the vanity at the front edge of the lavatory, and Smith felt she was most likely standing when at least one of the wounds occurred. The spray pattern he noticed on the towel near her head indicated that the contact gunshot wound happened after she came to rest in the sitting position, where she was found. The towel rack beside her body looked as though it had been pushed against the wall as she fell, gouging a small hole in the Sheetrock and knocking the picture off the wall, which the other investigators had seen lying on the bathroom floor. Other than that, there was no sign of a struggle in the room.
In the bedroom where Carolyn had been vacuuming and moving furniture, Smith saw that there were several Indian-type weapons hanging on the wall, with at least two places on the wall where something had obviously been displayed, but had been taken down. The empty spaces, he noticed, were the right size and shape to accommodate the two long spears that had been used to stab the two victims.
Strangely, no bullets or spent casings were found in the house; the only piece of evidence of that type was a small shaving of lead that was found underneath the kitchen table. Just as strange was the lack of an obvious motive for such brutal murders. A few things had been thrown about, as though the killer or killers wanted it to look as though there had been some type of a search for valuables, but nothing actually seemed to have been taken. Jewelry and other items were lying untouched in plain sight on the dresser top; if theft had been the motive, surely those items would have been quickly and easily snatched up.
What reason could there have been for the murders? The two women were very well-known and respected in the community, and they had no enemies. Their home was neat and comfortable, but modest; it was not the type of house to attract burglars in search of expensive, easily fenced items or a stash of currency. No motive for the double homicide had yet become apparent, but that was soon to change. During her further search of the house the following day, Rhonda Jackson would find and seize evidence that provided a great deal of motivation for murder: 325,000 dollars’ worth, to be exact.