William Lafayatte Holbert, born January 08, 1876, was the son of Jerimiah “Jerry” Holbert and Clarinda Dishman. On the night of March 25, 1932, William Holbert was murdered at his home in the Winningham community of Overton County. He owned a grist mill.

Bernice Holbert, his daughter (born 1910), died in 2003 in Overton County. There was no mention of the tragedy in her obituary.

Published News Accounts

Following are contemporaneous local and regional newspaper accounts.  Some were contributed by historian Gary Norris

Crossville Chronicle, March 31, 1932

Friday night some time, William Holbert, brother of our townsman G B Holbert, was killed in his home in the 11th district of Overton County and his wife and daughter beaten to insensibility.

The crime was discovered Saturday morning about daylight by a son, Homer Holbert, who lives nearby, who went as usual to feed his father’s stock. As he neared the house he called to his father, and his mother replied and called to him to come in, that they had all been nearly killed.

The father had been shot with a 16 gauge shotgun. The mother, an invalid for 15 years, had a broken arm. The daughter, a student at Alpine Institute, had wounds on the head. The family dog was missing; also $4 which had been concealed in a dresser drawer in the home.

Sheriff S F Johnson, with a group of deputies, is at the scene investigating. Bloodhounds were called from Celina, but the report is that they had struck no trail.

Mrs. Holbert’s mother, Mrs. John McDonald, is a Federal pensioner, and one theory is that the invaders of the home thought there might be money in the house.

Holbert, the dead man, is described as a well known, industrious citizen who stood well in his community.

Late reports say that the community is very much aroused and have raised money to offer a reward for the capture of the criminal.

G B Holbert returned from the scene Tuesday, and he informs the Chronicle that no person or persons have been arrested and that they have no idea who committed the crime.

Livingston Enterprise, April 1, 1932

Officers Seek Pair as Holbert Killer

Citizens Show Ire After William Holbert Found with Brains Blown Out / Wife and Daughter Attacked / Citizens Raise Funds to Push Search / Robbery Assumed Motive for Crime / Money Missing from Dresser / Officers Working on Theory Three Men Entered Home, Robbed, Killed, Attacked and Fled / Bloodhounds Fail to Get Trace / Fear of Lynching Result of Criminal Discovery

Two men closely surrounded by circumstances are being sought by Overton County officers today as possible murderers of William L. Holbert, 53, Winningham grist mill operator, who was found slain at his home Saturday morning.

Mrs. William L. Holbert, invalid widow of an Eleventh District grist mill operator, and their daughter, Bernice, 21, who were attacked at their home sometime Friday night, March 25th, after Mr. Holbert had been killed were reported in a critical condition late Thursday, March 26th.

Following closely upon clues revealed at the scene, Overton County officers lengthened their cordon Wednesday to overlap adjoining counties seeking 3 men believed to be Holbert’s killers.

Sometime Friday night, three men are supposed to have entered the Holbert home with robbery as a motive and meeting resistance, perhaps, blew out Holbert’s brains with a small gauge shotgun, clubbing the invalid Mrs. Holbert, she receiving a broken arm and beating a daughter of Holbert, Bernice, 21, and fracturing her skull. She had not regained consciousness Thursday, and is in a critical condition. Doctors declared however, that she had a chance to live.

Livingston Enterprise, April 1, 1932

Hold Mass Meeting

Angered residents in and near Winningham held a mass meeting Tuesday to first offer a $200 reward for the killers of William Holbert. The fund was instead given over to aid in the search by expert criminologists if necessary and was swelled to $250 Thursday. Although Sheriff Johnson and his deputies working hard under his direction had combed the county for 2 men who identities were not revealed, no trace was reported as being fruitful.

Bloodhounds were called to the scene. Saturday failed in finding a trace of the criminals.

Found by Son

The scene was discovered at about 4:30 a.m. Saturday morning by Homer Holbert, as son, who had come to do his usual feeding chores at the place. A yellow dog, property of the Holberts, is missing. Mrs. Belle McDonald, widow of the late John McDonald, lived with the Holberts, but was not at home at the time the murder was committed. Four one-dollar bills were missing from a box in the dresser drawer, but the fiends overlooked a ten-dollar bill.

Mrs. McDonald was robbed of a $100 pension check last summer, but could not identify the thief at that time. The check was never cashed. It was thought obviously that the same party was implicated in the Friday night crime with robbery evidently the ulterior motive.

The Holberts lived near Bethsaida in the 11th District near the Pickett County Line and also near Wirmingham. Mr. Holbert was recognized in his community as a hard working and honest man and was said to have many friends and few if any enemies.

Alpine Graduate

Mrs. Holbert has been an invalid for about 15 years, and was helpless in the attack and in the dark on her husband and daughter. She was likewise helpless in getting aid before her son came to feed Saturday morning. She called to him upon his arrival, shouted the death message to him thought the cold morning air.

Bernice, who may succumb to her wounds, was a graduate of Alpine Institute in the Class of 1931.

Funeral services for William Holbert were conducted Sunday at Bethsaida where the burial took place. He is survived, besides his wife and daughter and son, by a brother, Bowland Holbert, of Crossville and a sister.

Violence in the form of a mob which officers would be unable to handle, was feared should the criminals be found.

Uncited and Undated Article

Search Continues for Trio of Murderers / Bernice Holbert, Dead Man’s Daughter, Ignorant of Killings and Attack / $250 Reward out for Three Youths Under Indictments / Crime Most Gruesome in Many Years

Overton County officers under the direction of Sheriff Fowler Johnson continue searching for a trio of suspected murderers of Wiliam Holbert, 53, Eleventh District grist mill operator who was slain March 26 at his home near Winningham.

Bernice Holbert, 21, brutally beaten in the midnight massacre is still suffering from what doctors believe to be a concussion of the brain. She remained unconscious for several hours in the Alpine Infirmary and has not yet been told of anything that happened on the fatal night. If she remembers anything, she has not mentioned it. Attendants have kept from her the fact that her father has been killed, although she does know that “something terrible has happened and that they are keeping something from her.” In her critical condition, doctors believed it unwise to tell her of her father’s murder and the circumstances surrounding her own attack. Mrs. Holbert who was also attacked at the time, received a broken arm, bruises, and lacerations is recovering.

Seek Three Youths

Officers are searching for three youths believed to be implicated in the fiendish crime. They are:
Lonzy Hayes, 28.
L. Otis Smith, 17.
Ord Winningham, 26.

Lonzy Hayes, fair complected, dark brown hair, light blue eyes, short and stocky, weighs about 120- 135 pounds, small feet. Hayes is under indictment in Overton County. An extra reward of $50 is offered for his arrest.

L. Otis Smith has a fair complexion, dark brown hair, gray or blue eyes, black hair, five feet ten inches tall, weighs from 135 – 150, and is under indictment in Pickett County.

Ord Winningham has brown eyes, dark hair, weighs from 130 – 150 and is said to be under indictment in Cumberland County.

A total of $250 has been offered for the arrest of the three youths, if they are found guilty and circulars have been printed giving their description in detail and will be sent to officers all over the state and in other states.

The Tennessean, March 27, 1932

Nashville Banner, July 7, 1932

Winningham on Trial in Holbert Murder Case / Charges Against Second Defendant Taken Up

Livingston, Tenn., July 7—(Special)— The trial of Ord Winningham the second defendant in the William Holbert murder case began in Criminal court here Wednesday. Sanford Dodnon the first of three under indictment for the killing of Hobert and the beating up of his wife and daughter on the night of March 25 was on trial the past week, the case ending Tuesday in a mistrial.

William Holbert, a highly respected citizen, a miller and farmer, was murdered at his home at about 11 o’clock in the night of March 25. While asleep in his bed with his wife, he was fired upon with a shotgun the load taking effect in his shoulder. After being shot in the shoulder he either fell or got off the bed and while on the floor near his bed, he was again shot, the load entering his cheek and tearing off one side of his face and head. The report of the first shot awoke his wife, and she heard her husband exclaim that he was shot in the shoulder and bleeding profusely. His wife called to their grown daughter who, at the time, was sleeping in another bed in the same room. As she did so Mrs Holbert was struck on the arm and her arm broken in two places. She was also struck five blows on the head and rendered unconscious. The daughter, Miss Bernice Holbert, was struck several blows on the head and also rendered unconscious.

Mrs Holbert testified Wednesday that, before she was rendered unconscious, she recognized the forms of two or three men in the room and saw what she believed to be either one or two guns. There was no one at the Holbert home that night except William Holbert and his wife and their daughter. The only other child of the Holberts, a grown married son, lived on the same farm. He kept his live stock in his father’s barn. Before day, on the following morning, he started from his home to his father’s barn to feet [sic] his stock and, seeing a door open at his father’s home, he went in and found his father lying in the floor dead, his sister unconscious, and his mother in bed badly injured. Calling his wife he sent her to notify a neighbor and soon the word was spread throughout the neighborhood, and a large number of people gathered at the Holbert home. Later Mrs Holbert and her daughter Bernice were removed to the Presbyterian Hospital at Alpine where they lingered for several weeks with grave fears entertained for their recovery. Mrs Holbert, unable to sit up, was brought into the Courtroom Wednesday on a stretcher to testify as witness.

One of the witnesses introduced Wednesday by the State was Jesse Huckaba, 28, a third defendant charged with the murder of William Holbert. He adhered to his testimony given in the Sanford Dodson case, stating that Sanford Dodson, Ord Winningham and himself on the night of March 25 went from Cumberland County, in Dodson’s car, to Pickett County, where Dodson got a quantity of whisky, after which they went to the Holbert home, that Dodson and Winningham got the front porch door open, that they all three entered the room where the members of the Holbert family were sleeping, that Sanford Dodson shot William Holbert twice with a shot gun, that Ord Winningham struck Miss Bernice Dodson, and that he himself struck Mrs. Holbert, that Dodson stated that night that he only found $4 in the Holbert home, exhibiting four $1 bills after they had come out of the Holbert home.

Huckaba is a first cousin of Sanford Dodson, and at the time of the tragedy he had, for several weeks previous been staying at the home of Dodson’s parents in Cumberland County and rooming and sleeping with Sanford Dodson.

The defendant Ord Winningham, now on trial, testified as a State’s witness against Sanford Dodson in the latter’s preliminary hearing before Squire E. C. Poston, in Livingston, several weeks ago. At that time Winningham’s testimony as to the murder was virtually the same as that given by Huckaba, but on last Thursday, in the trial of Dodson in the Criminal Court, after Winningham had testified as a State ‘s witness on Wednesday, he (Winningham) retracted and repudiated his previous testimony, and denied that he was at the Holbert home on the night of the murder.

The court room has been crowded to its capacity ever since the trials were begun.

The trial of the Winningham case will probably consume two more days.

Chattanooga Daily Times, October 22, 1932

Chattanooga Daily Times, February 21, 1933

Chattanooga Daily Times, February 25, 1933

Overton Man Convicted on Charge of Perjury

Chattanooga Times Special.

Livingston, Tenn., Feb. 24. — Dave Sampson, 24, was convicted of perjury today in connection with the Sanford Dodson murder trial held last June, and was sentenced to three years in the penitentiary. Sampson’s testimony had been used in an effort to establish an alibi for Dodson.

Dodson received a sentence of twenty years last week when he was convicted of the slaying of William Holbert.  Laura Houston, of Cumberland county, and Jim Lawson and Ervin Cantrell, of White county, who were witnesses in the Dodson trial, also testified today in the perjury case.

Chattanooga Daily Times, February 26, 1933

Livingston Jurors Convict Sampson

Chattanooga Times Special.

Livingston, Tenn., Feb. 25. — Dave Sampson, resident of Cumberland county, was sentenced to three years in the penitentiary here today upon his conviction by a jury of perjury.

Sampson attempted to help set up an alibi for Sanford Dobson, who was convicted last week of the murder of William Holbert, and who was sentenced to twenty years in the penitentiary.  Sampson testified during the trial that he went to Dodson’s home the night that Holbert was killed to buy whisky and that he remembered looking at his watch while there and it was 10:30 p.m.  He said Sanford Dodson was at home at the time.

Dodson, in trying to establish an alibi, also attempted to prove by depositions that he was in Florida at the time of the killing.  Four witnesses testified to seeing Sanford Dodson near the Holbert home that night, one of whom said she sat in a car in front of the house while Dodson and others entered it and killed Holbert.

About the Convicted Men

Everett Ord Winningham was imprisoned with a pending appeal on his conviction at the time of his death at the hands of a fellow inmate in 1942. Click here to read more about Winningham’s death.

Sanford Dodson may have been James “Jimmie” Sanford Dodson, born December 19, 1905, in Pickett County, the son of Merchant Frank Dodson and Mary Alice Smith. If so, he remained in prison in 1944 when he completed a World War II Draft Registration. married Nancy Howard, had one son named Jessie (b. 1927), and died March 31, 1976, in Tennessee.  He is buried in Whitwell, Marion County, TN.

Jesse Huckaby was said to be a first cousin of Sanford Dodson, but no clear connection has been established thus far between him and either the Dodson or Smith families.

About the Witnesses

Laura Houston, a testifying witness in the trial of Sanford Dodson said to be his “sweetheart,” may have been born at Linary, Cumberland County, on March 18, 1914, daughter of James Houston and Julia Barnette. If so, she died of tuberculosis on November 28, 1937, and was buried at Linary Cemetery.

Dave Sampson, of Cumberland County — to be continued — possibly married Nellie Mae Redmon in Marion County, TN, in 1936. He may have been an 18-year-old lodger in the household of Chester Johnson in Cumberland County in 1930.  He may have been born in 1912 in Tennessee to Jim and Effie Mae (Burgess) Sampson, died in 1999 in Paducah, KY, and was buried in Jasper, TN; he had one child, David R. Sampson.

Ervin Cantrell, of Sparta — to be continued — possibly Ervin Jarvis Cantrell, 1909-1975; married Beulah Abney (later Edmonds); father of Clarence Edward Cantrell and Wilma Lorene Upchurch.

Jim Lawson, of White County — to be continued