Today's Charlotte is a fast-growing and well-respected city. but the Charlotte of yesteryear is rife with tales of the macabre, tragic and simply unexplainable. Prepare to be surprised and unnerved as the dark side of Charlotte is brought to life by native and long-time writer David Aaron Moore. Learn about Nellie Freeman, who nearly decapitated her husband with a straight razor in 1926. Discover how the ghosts of Camp Green infantrymen, the doughboys of World War I, still scream in the Southern night. Read about the seventy-one passengers who lost their lives as Eastern Airlines Flight 212 fell to the earth one foggy night in 1974. Come along and experience the grisly past of the City of Churches. Charlotte, North Carolina native David A. Moore has more than 18 years of professional writing and editing experience. Since 2005 he has penned the ongoing serial fiction column "Elmwood Park" for Uptown Magazine (www.uptownclt. com). Moore's work has appeared in Atlanta Magazine, Charlotte Magazine, Creative Loafing, Charlotte Weekly, and Swing and Banktown, among others. He has interviewed such celebrated personalities as Hugh Grant, John Travolta, Lily Tomlin, Tammy Faye, Fantasia, Grace Jones, Melissa Etheridge, and Nancy Sinatra. Over a 14-year-period he has worked as an editor for a number of publications, including Atlanta-based Jezebel; Window Media's Southern Voice and the Washington Blade; and Pride Publishing's Q-Notes. Currently he's enjoying the life of a freelancing free spirit, focusing on his fictional writing for Uptown and a series of forgotten history pieces for Charlotte Weekly. Charlotte: Murder, Mystery and Mayhem By David Aaron Moore The History Press Copyright © 2008 David Aaron Moore All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-59629-490-5 Contents Acknowledgements, Introduction, The Saga of Benny Mack, Razor Girl, The Mausoleum Murder, Franklin Freeman: Who Killed ReRe?, The Society Slayer, Solved After Forty Years: The Starnes Case, Did the Millionaire Kill His Mistress?, Outlaws Motorcycle Massacre, Camp Greene, Mercy: The Haunted Hospital?, Palmer Fire School: When Walls Speak, Ball O' Fire, The Crash of Eastern Airlines Flight 212, The Guthery Goes Up in Flames, Love's Pass, The Charlotte Lounge Fires, The Second Ward Trolley Disaster, Civil Rights Bombings: Hatred Explodes, When a Lynch Mob Ruled Charlotte, Bibliography, About the Author, CHAPTER 1 THE SAGA OF BENNY MACK Some months ago, more than a year in fact, Charlotte nighthawks stood on the streets with their mouths wide open and gazed in amazement as a trim-looking youth socked and socked and at each sock an opponent went down. Finally, however, the youth was forced to concede victory to the continuous line of reinforcements. That youth was Benny Mack, the Charlotte boxer who many people believed would be unable to break an egg with his blows. – Text from an unidentified Charlotte paper sometime in the late 1920s, reprinted in the Shelby Daily Star, April 1, 1961. His name was Elijah Ben Quinn McIntyre. He was born in 1903 in McDowell County to Jeremiah Francis and Myra Harris McIntyre. As a child growing up in Rutherford County, he was attacked by a rabid dog and infected with the virus that invariably leads to acute encephalitis, madness and — in most humans — death. As there was no cure for such an infection in those days, McIntyre was chained to a tree and left in a thrashing rage. Miraculously, he recovered, perhaps becoming one of the few known cases in history to survive a rabies infection without treatment. As a teenager, he served the then-requisite military period — doing a stint in the navy just after World War I. It gave him a chance to see some of the world and hone his boxing skills. Afterwards, McIntyre returned to North Carolina and moved to Charlotte in 1922. In 1927, he married his first wife, Virginia, in a ceremony held on June 5, in Chester, South Carolina. The two came back to Charlotte and, less than a year later, Virginia gave birth to a daughter they would name Bennie Sue, in honor of the aspiring father. It was here in Charlotte that McIntyre was able to indulge his passion of boxing. Standing at just five foot four and weighing less than 140 pounds, he was a diminutive yet wiry young man and was categorized as a "welterweight" or a super lightweight. He quickly rose from an unknown street boxer to a pro — now going by the name Benny Mack — and capturing the headlines: "Mack Defeats His Opponent By Knockout," "Mack Signs For Bout On Local Card" and "Bennie Mack Is Semi-Final Winner." It was also here that an event occurred that would forever change McIntyre's life and end the life of another man — Charlotte landscape gardener William Moore. Newspapers announced the story of how Moore was shot in the back over an argument relating to an unpaid debt of five dollars for a bulldog he had purchased from McIntyre. McIntyre confessed that he did indeed shoot th