A murder mystery in the Old South still fascinates a century later

In June 1895, Edward S. Pollard found his wife murdered in his back yard in Fort Mitchell, Lunenburg County, Va.

Pollard and his wife were white. Pollard also discovered that he had been robbed of a considerable sum of money. The motive for the murder seemed clear.

Soon, a handsome mulatto man, Solomon Marable, who had spent some $20 bills in the neighboring village, was arrested. Under pressure, he confessed that he had held Lucy Pollard while three black women, Lucy's neighbors, killed her for the money and paid him off. The three women — Mary Abernathy, Mary Barnes and Pokey Barnes, Mary's daughter — were arrested. Fearing a lynching, authorities hustled them out of the village.

At trial, Marable recanted, claiming a white man had killed Lucy Pollard, giving him two $20 bills to hold her down. But under questioning, he returned to his original confession. The court sentenced Marable, Pokey Barnes and Mary Abernathy to death, and Mary Barnes, Pokey's mother, to 10 years in prison. All were escorted to Richmond, where in 60 days their sentences would be carried out.

But much happened during those 60 days, and here, in "A Murder in Virginia: Southern Justice on Trial" (W.W. Norton, $25.95) Suzanne Lebsock, University of Washington history professor, shows why she is a prizewinning author (Lebsock won the prestigious Bancroft history prize for "The Free Women of Petersburg"). Making superb use of primary documents, newspapers and even rumors, she tells a wondrously fascinating tale of bizarre behaviors, contradictory stories, principled action, greed, chicanery and gothic ghoulishness worthy of a compelling crime novel.

For example, Solomon Marable, attempting to save himself, converted to Catholicism under pressure from an evangelical priest. But when that did not help, he returned to his Baptist faith. Frank Cunningham, the captain of the militia sent to guard the prisoners, burst into song at every opportunity.

And why was the black lawyer, John Mitchell Jr., who had succeeded with white help in freeing the three black women, arrested for body snatching when he collected Marable's body for burial on July 4, 1896? The bizarre answer: Because of a feud between the University College of Medicine and the Medical College of Virginia, arbitration for "anatomical material" rested with the Anatomical Board of Virginia, set up to prevent body snatching. When the board director found that Mitchell had not consulted him, he had Mitchell arrested. In the end, cooler heads prevailed, but not before Marable's body had been snatched twice!

Meanwhile, the black Richmond's Women League raised nearly $700 for the black women, a significant sum in those days. And despite possible danger to his political career, the governor of Virginia, Charles O'Ferrall, recognizing the injustice of Mary Barnes' sentence, explained, "The life or liberty of a citizen, however humble, is too sacred in the eyes of the law or of civilized man to be taken upon the testimony alone of a self-convicted perjurer and murderer."

Ultimately, all the women went free. To this day the murder remains unsolved, most likely because the authorities refused to question any white person with a motive. The case appeals to Lebsock because blacks and whites worked hard together on it, and in the end, "Black people, as people, won this one."

Lebsock deftly contextualizes the case in the intensely dangerous shifting environment of the South after Reconstruction, a period marked by rising racism, lynchings and sectional paranoia. White Democrats cheated John Mitchell of his city council seat in 1896. In fact, the two Marys and Pokey might have experienced a different fate one year later, for in 1897, a black man accused of raping a white girl was dragged at midnight from jail and hanged from a lamppost.

Railroads were segregated in 1900, streetcars in 1904; and in 1911, Richmond stiffened residential segregation. By 1902, 80 percent of Virginia's blacks were disfranchised.

Narrating history in a sure-handed, novelistic fashion, Lebsock has a gift for the well-turned phrase. Describing the Virginia capitol's Victorian gray stone with its baroque accretions, she concluded, "It was a paradise for pigeons, and a wonder to behold." A serious book on a very troublesome topic, it is, paradoxically, a joy to read.

John C. Walter is professor of history in the America Ethnic Studies Department at the University of Washington.