Macon Telegraph, February 8, 1931
FUGITIVE RETURNS TO COTTON CO.
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F. Wilson in Custody Under False Name
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SECOND SUSPECT CHARGED IN JULY MURDER
FLORENCE, Ga., Feb. 8— The Cotton County Sheriff’s Department is conducting a review of a “cold case” after a fugitive from the law, George Frederick “Freddie” Wilson III, was discovered Saturday in Cotton County custody under a false identity. The 20-year-old former foreman of the Florence Cotton Mill and grandson of mill owner and planter George Wilson was wanted in connection with the July 7 murder of Genus Jackson, after which he fled from the county. A second suspect, John “Juke” Jesup, was also taken into county custody on Saturday.
On November 4, Wilson was arrested on charges of petty larceny for stealing “a rooster, a pumpkin squash, and a pair of overalls off a clothesline” from a farm in Meredith. The fugitive had brought himself to Dr. Aldus DeMille for multiple lacerations after the rooster had apparently pecked both arms, his neck, and his right eye. “That bird nearly pecked the eye clean,” said Dr. DeMille. “He looked like he’d been sorting wildcats.”
When the doctor grew suspicious of the patient’s erratic behavior, he reported Wilson, who had presented himself as “John Smith,” to Deputy Sheriff Herman Flood, who assigned him three months on the Cotton County road gang.
“He was right under our nose,” said Sheriff S. M. Cleave, who’d been away on a hunting trip at the time. “But we had no reason to suspect him of nothing other than being a farm beggar. No one couldn’t hardly recognize him with his eye clawed out.”
Wilson managed to serve twelve weeks on the road gang under the false name before he was identified while paving Twelve-Mile Road near the intersection of String Wilson Road by Mrs. Elma Rawls, née Jesup, 18, Wilson’s former fiancée. Chain gang guards held the crew of convicts near Mud Turner’s crossroads store while word was relayed to Florence. Sheriff Cleave and Warden Mississippi Barnes shortly arrived at the crossroads in caravan.
In July, Jackson, a Negro, was determined to be hanged from a gourd tree on the crossroads farm owned by Wilson, Sr., before his body was dragged some six miles to Florence’s mill village. Jesup, the sharecropper who hired Jackson as a wage hand, accused Wilson of the murder, citing retaliation for the rape of Mrs. Rawls.
But Wilson turned the tables on Saturday, claiming to authorities that Jesup was the one responsible for Jackson’s killing. He reported to the sheriff that Jesup had threatened to kill Wilson’s newborn daughter, Jesup’s own granddaughter, if Wilson refused to leave town and “take the fall.”
Jesup protested, denying the charges vehemently. Witnesses to the events described his behavior at this point as “ornery” and “heated up.” He repeatedly threatened both Wilsons, calling them “yellow scoundrels.”
Jesup was taken into custody and escorted to the Cotton County Jailhouse in Florence on charges of public intoxication. Sheriff Cleave released a statement later that evening that Jesup had been indicted on charges of Jackson’s murder. Jesup’s bail hearing is set for Friday.
“What’s important is that the people of Cotton County are safe and sound,” Sheriff Cleave stated. “We’re going to hear the matter out.”
Sheriff Cleave and Warden Barnes both declined to speculate on whether the crime against Jackson would be reclassified as a mob killing, or if others would be charged. After a three-year hiatus, the state of Georgia recorded six lynchings of Negroes last year.
Q. L. Boothby contributed to this report from Florence. See Editorial, 2B.