U.S. JOURNAL about the murder of Carol Jenkins in Martinsville, Indiana, in 1968, a crime which may have been racially motivated… Writer tells the history of the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana, where in the twenties as many as thirty per cent of the adult white male population statewide paid the ten dollar membership fee… The Klan was more active there than in any other state… . The Indiana Klan had a distinct political agenda to go along with its anti-immigrant, anti-black, anti-Catholic dogmatism, and at its peak, after the elections of 1924, it controlled the state Republican Party. Klan-endorsed candidates were elected to the governorship, the majority of both houses of the legislature, and almost all the congressional seats. The steep decline that followed was caused by political corruption and infighting and by the 1925 conviction of Grand Dragon D. C. Stephenson on charges of rape and second-degree murder… Writer interviews Jenkins's father about a racially-charged football game he attended in 1967… Tells how Carol Jenkins, in Martinsville to sell encyclopedias door-to-door, on her first day of work, sought refuge with a couple because a car had been following her… Out-of-town journalists who came to Martinsville discovered that information was remarkably hard to come by. "The town became a clam," an Indianapolis newspaper reporter told me. The prime suspect, a resident of Florida, after initially refusing to coöperate, has reportedly become more talkative, but only in the interest of exculpating himself. Shy of an outright confession, any defendant convicted at this point would have to be approximately as unlucky as Carol Jenkins… Four years ago, Martinsville attracted a lot of national publicity-once again, none of it desirable-in the wake of a high-school basketball game. A team with several black players came to town from Bloomington, and afterward its fans complained that they had been subjected to racial taunting and to dirty play on the court. (One black Bloomington player wound up on the floor retching after being violently elbowed.) The subsequent punishment levied by the Indiana High School ATHLETIC Association-a one-year probation, which, among other things, forbade all Martinsville interscholastic teams to host conference home games-still provokes lamentations in Martinsville about unfairness and humiliation… Tells about a conservative outburst in the local paper by assistant police chief Dennis Nail… The party line in Martinsville, among civic leaders and people in law enforcement, is that the Jenkins murder was motivated not by race but by sex. According to this rationale, Carol Jenkins died because she spurned her killer's advances. In a town burdened with Martinsville's history, an ugly basketball game, a public official having a very bad day-incidents that anywhere else might seem like peccadilloes-easily become caricatures of evil.
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For more than 34 years the murder of Carol Marie Jenkins remained unsolved. But on May 8, 2002, police arrested Kenneth C. Richmond, a 70-year-old career criminal with a history of bizarre behavior and affiliation with groups such as the KKK.
Investigators said Richmond was implicated in the crime by his daughter, Shirley Richmond McQueen, who witnessed the slaying as a child.
State police detectives, working in a "cold crimes" squad, were led to McQueen by an anonymous letter. When questioned, they said, she finally confirmed what the letter alleged -- that as a 7-year-old, she had watched from the back seat of a car as her father and another, still-unidentified man killed Jenkins.
State police detectives, working in a "cold crimes" squad, were led to McQueen by an anonymous letter. When questioned, they said, she finally confirmed what the letter alleged that as a 7-year-old, she had watched from the back seat of a car as her father and another, still unidentified man killed Jenkins.
Detectives said they were convinced of McQueen's story in part because she remembered a key detail which had never been made public -- that Jenkins was wearing a yellow scarf.
McQueen, by then 40, reportedly gave Indiana State Police detectives the following account: Jenkins began to flee when she saw the two men running at her. The other man held Jenkins while Richmond grabbed a screwdriver from the front seat in their car and stabbed her, McQueen said she still recalls what her father said when he returned to the car: "She got what she deserved." When they got home, her father gave her $7. One dollar for each year of her life -- to keep quiet about what she had seen. But Richmond never went to trial for Jenkin's murder. He was declared incompetent to stand trial and on Aug. 31, 2002 he died of cancer.
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Justice Denied --- As a teen-ager, Carol Jenkins wanted to move to Chicago and BECOME A FASHION MODEL. Instead of a life filled with glamour and beauty, Jenkins' death became a symbol of violence and ugliness. Racism, many believed, was the only logical motive. The 21-year-old black woman, pretty and shy, wasn't robbed or sexually assaulted.
Investigators say racial hatred was INDEED the motive. But the man accused of the crime was apparently just passing through, an interloper who solidified the Morgan County city's reputation as a place where black people were not welcome.
Jenkins was knocking on doors in Martinsville, Indiana on September 16, 1968, as she and three co-workers -- two white men and a 19-year-old black woman tried to sell encyclopedias. The women were aware of the potential dangers; they had considered buying tear gas guns, according to a newspaper article days after the slaying. The encyclopedia gig was a fill-in job for Jenkins; she worked full time at the Philco Division of Ford Motor Company, but the plant was idled by a strike.
The night she was slain, some men in a car began harassing her. She sought help at the home of Norma and Don Neal, and Norma Neal tried to help Jenkins by driving her around to find her co-workers. When they couldn't locate them, Jenkins ended up back at the home, and the woman offered to drive Jenkins to her rendezvous spot. But Jenkins declined, saying she had been a bother long enough.
Indianapolis Star
by Diana Penner, 2002
*****************************************
Her step-father's last name was Jenkins, and that's what she went by
****************************************
For more than 34 years the murder of Carol Marie Jenkins remained unsolved. But on May 8, 2002, police arrested Kenneth C. Richmond, a 70-year-old career criminal with a history of bizarre behavior and affiliation with groups such as the KKK.
Investigators said Richmond was implicated in the crime by his daughter, Shirley Richmond McQueen, who witnessed the slaying as a child.
State police detectives, working in a "cold crimes" squad, were led to McQueen by an anonymous letter. When questioned, they said, she finally confirmed what the letter alleged -- that as a 7-year-old, she had watched from the back seat of a car as her father and another, still-unidentified man killed Jenkins.
State police detectives, working in a "cold crimes" squad, were led to McQueen by an anonymous letter. When questioned, they said, she finally confirmed what the letter alleged that as a 7-year-old, she had watched from the back seat of a car as her father and another, still unidentified man killed Jenkins.
Detectives said they were convinced of McQueen's story in part because she remembered a key detail which had never been made public -- that Jenkins was wearing a yellow scarf.
McQueen, by then 40, reportedly gave Indiana State Police detectives the following account: Jenkins began to flee when she saw the two men running at her. The other man held Jenkins while Richmond grabbed a screwdriver from the front seat in their car and stabbed her, McQueen said she still recalls what her father said when he returned to the car: "She got what she deserved." When they got home, her father gave her $7. One dollar for each year of her life -- to keep quiet about what she had seen. But Richmond never went to trial for Jenkin's murder. He was declared incompetent to stand trial and on Aug. 31, 2002 he died of cancer.
***********************************
Justice Denied --- As a teen-ager, Carol Jenkins wanted to move to Chicago and BECOME A FASHION MODEL. Instead of a life filled with glamour and beauty, Jenkins' death became a symbol of violence and ugliness. Racism, many believed, was the only logical motive. The 21-year-old black woman, pretty and shy, wasn't robbed or sexually assaulted.
Investigators say racial hatred was INDEED the motive. But the man accused of the crime was apparently just passing through, an interloper who solidified the Morgan County city's reputation as a place where black people were not welcome.
Jenkins was knocking on doors in Martinsville, Indiana on September 16, 1968, as she and three co-workers -- two white men and a 19-year-old black woman tried to sell encyclopedias. The women were aware of the potential dangers; they had considered buying tear gas guns, according to a newspaper article days after the slaying. The encyclopedia gig was a fill-in job for Jenkins; she worked full time at the Philco Division of Ford Motor Company, but the plant was idled by a strike.
The night she was slain, some men in a car began harassing her. She sought help at the home of Norma and Don Neal, and Norma Neal tried to help Jenkins by driving her around to find her co-workers. When they couldn't locate them, Jenkins ended up back at the home, and the woman offered to drive Jenkins to her rendezvous spot. But Jenkins declined, saying she had been a bother long enough.
Indianapolis Star
by Diana Penner, 2002
*****************************************
Her step-father's last name was Jenkins, and that's what she went by
U.S. JOURNAL about the murder of Carol Jenkins in Martinsville, Indiana, in 1968, a crime which may have been racially motivated… Writer tells the history of the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana, where in the twenties as many as thirty per cent of the adult white male population statewide paid the ten dollar membership fee… The Klan was more active there than in any other state… . The Indiana Klan had a distinct political agenda to go along with its anti-immigrant, anti-black, anti-Catholic dogmatism, and at its peak, after the elections of 1924, it controlled the state Republican Party. Klan-endorsed candidates were elected to the governorship, the majority of both houses of the legislature, and almost all the congressional seats. The steep decline that followed was caused by political corruption and infighting and by the 1925 conviction of Grand Dragon D. C. Stephenson on charges of rape and second-degree murder… Writer interviews Jenkins's father about a racially-charged football game he attended in 1967… Tells how Carol Jenkins, in Martinsville to sell encyclopedias door-to-door, on her first day of work, sought refuge with a couple because a car had been following her… Out-of-town journalists who came to Martinsville discovered that information was remarkably hard to come by. "The town became a clam," an Indianapolis newspaper reporter told me. The prime suspect, a resident of Florida, after initially refusing to coöperate, has reportedly become more talkative, but only in the interest of exculpating himself. Shy of an outright confession, any defendant convicted at this point would have to be approximately as unlucky as Carol Jenkins… Four years ago, Martinsville attracted a lot of national publicity-once again, none of it desirable-in the wake of a high-school basketball game. A team with several black players came to town from Bloomington, and afterward its fans complained that they had been subjected to racial taunting and to dirty play on the court. (One black Bloomington player wound up on the floor retching after being violently elbowed.) The subsequent punishment levied by the Indiana High School ATHLETIC Association-a one-year probation, which, among other things, forbade all Martinsville interscholastic teams to host conference home games-still provokes lamentations in Martinsville about unfairness and humiliation… Tells about a conservative outburst in the local paper by assistant police chief Dennis Nail… The party line in Martinsville, among civic leaders and people in law enforcement, is that the Jenkins murder was motivated not by race but by sex. According to this rationale, Carol Jenkins died because she spurned her killer's advances. In a town burdened with Martinsville's history, an ugly basketball game, a public official having a very bad day-incidents that anywhere else might seem like peccadilloes-easily become caricatures of evil.
****************************************
For more than 34 years the murder of Carol Marie Jenkins remained unsolved. But on May 8, 2002, police arrested Kenneth C. Richmond, a 70-year-old career criminal with a history of bizarre behavior and affiliation with groups such as the KKK.
Investigators said Richmond was implicated in the crime by his daughter, Shirley Richmond McQueen, who witnessed the slaying as a child.
State police detectives, working in a "cold crimes" squad, were led to McQueen by an anonymous letter. When questioned, they said, she finally confirmed what the letter alleged -- that as a 7-year-old, she had watched from the back seat of a car as her father and another, still-unidentified man killed Jenkins.
State police detectives, working in a "cold crimes" squad, were led to McQueen by an anonymous letter. When questioned, they said, she finally confirmed what the letter alleged that as a 7-year-old, she had watched from the back seat of a car as her father and another, still unidentified man killed Jenkins.
Detectives said they were convinced of McQueen's story in part because she remembered a key detail which had never been made public -- that Jenkins was wearing a yellow scarf.
McQueen, by then 40, reportedly gave Indiana State Police detectives the following account: Jenkins began to flee when she saw the two men running at her. The other man held Jenkins while Richmond grabbed a screwdriver from the front seat in their car and stabbed her, McQueen said she still recalls what her father said when he returned to the car: "She got what she deserved." When they got home, her father gave her $7. One dollar for each year of her life -- to keep quiet about what she had seen. But Richmond never went to trial for Jenkin's murder. He was declared incompetent to stand trial and on Aug. 31, 2002 he died of cancer.
***********************************
Justice Denied --- As a teen-ager, Carol Jenkins wanted to move to Chicago and BECOME A FASHION MODEL. Instead of a life filled with glamour and beauty, Jenkins' death became a symbol of violence and ugliness. Racism, many believed, was the only logical motive. The 21-year-old black woman, pretty and shy, wasn't robbed or sexually assaulted.
Investigators say racial hatred was INDEED the motive. But the man accused of the crime was apparently just passing through, an interloper who solidified the Morgan County city's reputation as a place where black people were not welcome.
Jenkins was knocking on doors in Martinsville, Indiana on September 16, 1968, as she and three co-workers -- two white men and a 19-year-old black woman tried to sell encyclopedias. The women were aware of the potential dangers; they had considered buying tear gas guns, according to a newspaper article days after the slaying. The encyclopedia gig was a fill-in job for Jenkins; she worked full time at the Philco Division of Ford Motor Company, but the plant was idled by a strike.
The night she was slain, some men in a car began harassing her. She sought help at the home of Norma and Don Neal, and Norma Neal tried to help Jenkins by driving her around to find her co-workers. When they couldn't locate them, Jenkins ended up back at the home, and the woman offered to drive Jenkins to her rendezvous spot. But Jenkins declined, saying she had been a bother long enough.
Indianapolis Star
by Diana Penner, 2002
*****************************************
Her step-father's last name was Jenkins, and that's what she went by
****************************************
For more than 34 years the murder of Carol Marie Jenkins remained unsolved. But on May 8, 2002, police arrested Kenneth C. Richmond, a 70-year-old career criminal with a history of bizarre behavior and affiliation with groups such as the KKK.
Investigators said Richmond was implicated in the crime by his daughter, Shirley Richmond McQueen, who witnessed the slaying as a child.
State police detectives, working in a "cold crimes" squad, were led to McQueen by an anonymous letter. When questioned, they said, she finally confirmed what the letter alleged -- that as a 7-year-old, she had watched from the back seat of a car as her father and another, still-unidentified man killed Jenkins.
State police detectives, working in a "cold crimes" squad, were led to McQueen by an anonymous letter. When questioned, they said, she finally confirmed what the letter alleged that as a 7-year-old, she had watched from the back seat of a car as her father and another, still unidentified man killed Jenkins.
Detectives said they were convinced of McQueen's story in part because she remembered a key detail which had never been made public -- that Jenkins was wearing a yellow scarf.
McQueen, by then 40, reportedly gave Indiana State Police detectives the following account: Jenkins began to flee when she saw the two men running at her. The other man held Jenkins while Richmond grabbed a screwdriver from the front seat in their car and stabbed her, McQueen said she still recalls what her father said when he returned to the car: "She got what she deserved." When they got home, her father gave her $7. One dollar for each year of her life -- to keep quiet about what she had seen. But Richmond never went to trial for Jenkin's murder. He was declared incompetent to stand trial and on Aug. 31, 2002 he died of cancer.
***********************************
Justice Denied --- As a teen-ager, Carol Jenkins wanted to move to Chicago and BECOME A FASHION MODEL. Instead of a life filled with glamour and beauty, Jenkins' death became a symbol of violence and ugliness. Racism, many believed, was the only logical motive. The 21-year-old black woman, pretty and shy, wasn't robbed or sexually assaulted.
Investigators say racial hatred was INDEED the motive. But the man accused of the crime was apparently just passing through, an interloper who solidified the Morgan County city's reputation as a place where black people were not welcome.
Jenkins was knocking on doors in Martinsville, Indiana on September 16, 1968, as she and three co-workers -- two white men and a 19-year-old black woman tried to sell encyclopedias. The women were aware of the potential dangers; they had considered buying tear gas guns, according to a newspaper article days after the slaying. The encyclopedia gig was a fill-in job for Jenkins; she worked full time at the Philco Division of Ford Motor Company, but the plant was idled by a strike.
The night she was slain, some men in a car began harassing her. She sought help at the home of Norma and Don Neal, and Norma Neal tried to help Jenkins by driving her around to find her co-workers. When they couldn't locate them, Jenkins ended up back at the home, and the woman offered to drive Jenkins to her rendezvous spot. But Jenkins declined, saying she had been a bother long enough.
Indianapolis Star
by Diana Penner, 2002
*****************************************
Her step-father's last name was Jenkins, and that's what she went by
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