← Gone South
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To realize the future America needs. We understand what's needed from us to face each threat head on. We've earned our place in the fight for our nation's future. We are Marines. We were made for this.
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See website for details. In the summer of 2012, historian Karen Cox was digging through the Mississippi State Archives. She was researching something called the Natchez Pilgrimage, an annual event that brings thousands of people to the city of Natchez to tour its grand antebellum homes.
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While I was there and I was talking to a historian archivist named Clinton Bagley. And Clinton is now a friend. But at the time, Clinton said to me, if you want to know about Natchez, you need to look at Goat Castle.
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Karen thought he'd said Ghost Castle, but the archivist corrected her. Goat Castle. Karen was intrigued. She asked to see the file.
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And when I opened that up and started reading sort of the outlines of the story, I just instinctively knew that that was going to be the book I was going to write next.
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The story of Goat Castle, Karen discovered, centered on a shocking murder in 1932. The victim was a reclusive former Southern Bel. The suspects were her two eccentric neighbors, a failed concert pianist and an aging socialite nicknamed the Wild man and the Goat Woman, who lived in a decaying mansion overrun with animals. The case made national headlines. One reporter asked, can a novelist have invented a more fascinating hair raising tale of decay and morbid gloom than this one? From real life, Karen was drawn to the story's Southern Gothic strangeness. But as she dug deeper, she realized that beneath the spectacle was a story of racial injustice in the Jim Crow south, one that had been largely forgotten. The real tragedy of Goat Castle, she learned, was the young black woman who took the blame for the crime and was then erased from history. In writing her book, Karen set out to write her back in. I'm Jed Lipinski. This is Gone South. Natchez, Mississippi, sits in the southwest corner of the state, high on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River. Today, it's A quiet town of shaded streets, live oaks, and carefully preserved antebellum mansions. But before the Civil War, Natchez was home to some of the wealthiest men in America who built their fortunes on cotton.
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Natchez became part of the domestic slave trade in the time before the war because cotton was booming and it also had a slave market, which was the second largest slave market outside of New Orleans.
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That market was known as Forks of the Road. In its peak years, thousands of enslaved people arrived there each year. Some were shipped from the upper south by steamboat. Others were forced to walk hundreds of miles in chained groups. Many of Natchez's wealthiest planters weren't from the South. They came from Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and New York. They built grand homes in Natchez that would later define the romantic ideal of the antebellum South.
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If you want to know what Gone with the Wind was trying to achieve, it's in Natchez, Mississippi.
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The Civil War changed everything. The Union army captured Vicksburg in 1863, and soon after, federal troops occupied Natchez. The war's end destroyed the slave labor economy of the South. Many planters who tied all their wealth to land and slaves lost everything. But a few were so rich or so well diversified, they managed to survive. One of those men was Ayres Merrill, the father of Jenny Merrill, who would later die in the Goat Castle murder.
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His family came from Massachusetts, and she was also the granddaughter of probably one of the wealthiest men in the south before the Civil War. She has money because they diversified, right? They were financially diverse family. They didn't just have all their eggs in, you know, slavery, which is why they still have money many, many years later.
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After the war, Jennie's family moved to New York City, where she attended elite private schools. Her father, though once tied to slavery, had sided with the Union and become friends with President Ulysses S. Granted. Grant later appointed him ambassador to Belgium. Jennie followed and spent her 20s moving in European high society. Back in New York, she befriended Jacob Riis, the Danish born journalist who exposed the misery of city tenements in his book, how the Other Half Lives. Jennie later became a vocal advocate for housing reform, traveling the country on speaking tours. But in her mid-30s, for reasons no one fully knows, Jenny returned to Natchez.
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And so she had a really interesting life leading up to the time when she does return to Natchez as an unmarried woman, which is not good, you know, generally in the aristocracy of Natchez, she would have married a cousin, but she didn't want to marry that cousin. Although he was completely smitten with her all the time. She returns to a home in Natchez that she purchases, known as Glen Burney. And this where she'll live out the rest of her life.
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In moving back to Natchez, Jenny seemed to want a quieter life than the one she lived in Europe and the Northeast. Her new home, Glen Burney, was a stately antebellum mansion on the edge of town with towering columns and sprawling grounds. She lived there alone with a small staff of servants and yard hands to keep the place up. Over time, Jenny grew increasingly reclusive. She was known as an eccentric. Her mechanic later said that when she drove into town, she never stopped at red lights or stop signs and the cops never ticketed her. She was one of the last symbols of Natchez's old planter aristocracy, which made her in some ways above the law. But Jenny's quiet life was upended in 1916 when two neighbors moved in next door. What began as a minor irritation would turn into a full on feud. One of those neighbors was a man named Dick Dana. Like Jenny, he came from money.
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Dick Dana, Richard Dana. He is the descendant of the Danas of New England. Like Charles Dana of the New York sun, he's descended from those people.
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Dick Dana came from a distinguished family. His uncle had served as assistant Secretary of War under Abraham Lincoln. His father was a rector of a well known Episcopal church in Alexandria, Virginia, where Robert E. Lee was one of his parishioners. Later he accepted a post at a church in Natchez and he builds a
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home there called Glenwood, which is next to Glen Burnie. Every plantation has a name because they think of themselves like English aristocracy. You have a name for your home.
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Glenwood was a two story Greek revival mansion. And it was here that Dick Dana was born. Like Jenny Merrill, he was educated in the North. After the war he studied music and briefly pursued a career as a concert pianist. But while his brothers went on to succeed in journalism and politics, Dick drifted by his late 20s. He'd come back to Natchez broke and in poor health.
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Dick Dana is not well mentally apparently. He's musically talented. He can play the piano, he can sing some, but he's kind of an oddball and he really needs people to look after him. And the person who kind of comes into his life is this woman, Octavia Dockery.
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Octavia Dockery is the third main character in the Goat Castle story. Like Jenny and Dick, she came from a prominent family. Her grandfather was one of the largest land and slave Owners in Arkansas. Her father served as a Confederate commander. She, too, was educated in the North. But the war drained the family fortune, and her father squandered what was left before he died. With no inheritance to live on, Octavia moved back to Natchez with her sister. That's where she met Dick Dana. Dana was as broke as she was, but he still had one asset. Glenwood. The crumbling mansion where he'd been born. The place had sat empty for years. Dick didn't technically own it. Someone else held the title. But out of pity, the owner let him and Octavia live there rent free.
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They're basically squatters, but no one is willing to force them out onto the streets because they are descendants of elite Southerners, and people feel sorry for them. And it doesn't take long before this place is just overrun with animals of all kinds. Chickens, cats, but particularly goats. And they live in the house with them. And there are photographs of this. It's absolute squalor.
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A year after Dick and Octavia moved in, Dick was declared non compos mentis of unsound mind. He spent his days wandering the woods, swinging from vines, dressed in a burlap sack with a hole cut for his head. Octavia became his legal guardian, scraping by by selling eggs. And with no fence around their property, their animals roamed freely, often onto Jenny Merrill's immaculate lawn next door.
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And that becomes a source of argument between Octavia Dockery and Jenny Merrill, arguing over basically escaped hogs or something like that, that have come over and destroyed Jenny's roses or dug up her pond or something like that. It starts out with just basically petty neighbor grievances.
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Jenny Merrill never complained to Octavia directly. She'd send a servant with a note or call the sheriff herself. It was her way of reminding Octavia that she was beneath her.
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There is this sense that even among planters and slave owners in those families, there is a hierarchy still. And I believe that Jenny Merrill believes that certainly about herself. And she's still doing pretty well. And Octavia Dockery, her father lost everything. But Octavia Dockery is an educated woman, too, and so she's the kind of woman that is not going to let Jenny Merrill boss her around and tell her how to be.
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Octavia may have been broke and living in squalor, but she still had the pride of a southern aristocrat. Despite warnings from the sheriff, she let her goats and hogs wander through Jennie's flower beds. Jennie finally had enough and sued her for property damage. Octavia fought back in court. She cast herself as a victim. A destitute woman caring for a troubled man. She even claimed the stray hogs belonged to somebody else. The lawsuit went nowhere. The animals kept crossing the property line. The feud simmered on. And so when Jenny Merrill turned up dead one summer night in 1932, the sheriff already had a good idea where to start looking. You know, 2026 marks 250 years of America, and it's got me thinking about the people who helped build this country from the ground up. American Ranchers, Good Ranchers is fully dedicated to quality sourcing. From working with trusted local farms and ranches to packing and shipping. Every box right here in the US Every cut they sell comes from local American farms and ranches. Their boxes are packed and shipped right here in the US and even their customer support team is based here at home. I've been a subscriber for a few months now, and I love how easy it is to manage. If I need to pause, delay or move an order, it takes just a few clicks. No hassle at all. And honestly, the quality speaks for itself. Visit goodranchers.com today. Subscribe and get free meat for life and $25 off your first order using my code South. That's code south for free meat for life and $25 off your first order just for subscribing goodranchers.com American Meat delivered
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it is not hard to destroy a college.
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It was so chaotic. As soon as I got over there, a lot of the police cars started
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arriving and it is very hard to build something new.
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I believe her exact quote was that I could have gone to jail for the shit this school was doing.
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Last season we brought you 35 stories from American colleges. Stories of drug rings, fraternity hazing, stolen body parts, campus cults, and more.
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And now Campus Files is back for another season. At a time when universities are all over the news, there's a guy screaming into his phone. He's like, I just saw Charlie Kirk get assassinated right in front of me. This season, you'll hear stories from decades ago.
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They were recruited from Cambridge University by the Soviet Union. Union to do great damage to the West.
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Stories you've never heard of. Every freshman had to have posture pictures. And of course, they were all nude
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photos and stories you're itching to know more about. Sorority recruitment is a game, and if you want to play, you've got to play by the rules. Listen to and follow. Campus Files, available now for free on the Odysee app and wherever you get your podcasts.
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Some men who worked for Jenny told him that they'd heard screaming and gunshots coming from the house. So he rides his horse up to the house, goes in and sees that there has been a struggle within the house. And when he gets some light on the situation, he sees that there's blood smears there, but she's nowhere to be found. And he's the one who calls in the sheriff.
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The sheriff knew the place well. He'd been called to Jenny Merrill's estate countless times before, usually over complaints about her neighbors Dick Dana and Octavia Dockery and their roaming livestock. When he heard she was missing, he suspected them immediately. He and a few deputies rode out to Glenwood to ask some questions.
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And they're calling for them to come down, and they're kind of hesitant about it. But Dick Dana is the one who begins to come downstairs, and when he sees the sheriff, he blurts out, I know nothing about the murder. You know, you can almost hear, like the sheriff bring out the handcuffs right then for both of them.
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The sheriff arrested Dick and Octavia on the spot. Just days earlier, a deputy had been called to Jennie's estate after a violent argument over trespassing goats. Now, Dick claimed to know nothing about the murder. But his story kept changing. When deputies searched the house, they found one of his shirts hanging on the line, stained with what looked like blood. Jenny's body was discovered the next morning lying in a thicket about a hundred yards from her home. The coroner said she'd been shot in the neck and chest. But Dick and Octavia swore they had nothing to do with it. From their jail cells, they told their story to anyone who would listen.
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And they pose for photographs inside of the jail, and they're giving jailhouse interviews. And it just becomes this national story because it goes out over the wire and the New York Times is covering it. And soon every newspaper in the country is covering the story, in part because these are two quirky characters, but also because their living conditions and living with their goads.
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Reporters poured into Natchez. They found the couple's mansion in ruins. The floors were ankle deep in debris. Goats chewed books right off the shelves. Dick and Octavia appeared to cook in the fireplace, where they roasted goat meat on old bedsprings. In interviews, journalists marveled at Dick and Octavia's privileged backgrounds. Jenny Merrill, they learned, had been the daughter of a US Ambassador and the granddaughter of one of the South's richest slaveholders. The press now called her an aged recluse. Dick, once the heir to a distinguished family, had become a mental wreck. Octavia, the daughter of a Confederate general, had been reduced to selling eggs and milk to get by. It all seemed to signal the collapse of the old Southern order. One reporter called the story, quote, as dramatic and full of pathos as any ever told by the facile pen of Edgar Allan Poe. Newspapers started referring to Glenwood as Goat Castle.
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And Dick Dana will be known as the Wild man because they learned that he loves to hang out in the trees and swing from grapevines. And Octavia Dockery will be known as the Goat Woman.
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While they sat in jail, the sheriff called in the state's top fingerprint Expert. He lifted 32 sets of prints from Jennie Merrill's home. A few matched Dick and Octavia, proof they'd been inside the house. And yet, despite the fingerprints, the blood stained shirt, and their long feud with Jenny Merrill, the couple had plenty of supporters in Natchez's white community. To them, Dick and Octavia weren't villains. They were victims. Impoverished white aristocrats who'd fallen on hard times. Locals brought flowers and books to the jail. They signed petitions for their release. A prominent attorney, perhaps sensing an opportunity in the national spotlight, took their case pro bono. He argued that they'd been wrongfully accused and unlawfully detained at a habeas corpus hearing. Even the district attorney came to their defense. The murder weapon hadn't been found, he said, and there wasn't enough evidence to hold them. The judge agreed and released Dick and Octavia on their own recognizance. The courtroom erupted in cheers. After the release, the investigation shifted. The fingerprint expert had found a third set of prints at Jenny Merrill's house. Prince, the sheriff believed belonged to an accomplice. He and his deputies began questioning members of Natchez's black community because that's the
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assumption in the jim crow south. And they begin to do a deep dive of investigation into the black community, and somebody tells them about this stranger named Lawrence Williams who was in town from Chicago.
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As Karen learned, many black people who went north during the great migration and later returned were viewed with suspicion. It was as if they'd forgotten the ways of the old south. Sources told investigators that Lawrence Williams was known to have aliases, which made him even more suspicious. As the sheriff looked into Lawrence williams whereabouts, he got a surprise call from the police chief in pine bluff, arkansas. A few days earlier, one of the chief's deputies had spotted a black man he didn't recognize and assumed he was up to no good. When the man refused to answer questions, the deputy tried to arrest him. According to the deputy, the man resisted, then reached for something in the small bundle he was carrying. Believing it was a gun, the deputy opened fire, killing him instantly. Letters in the man's bag identified him as George Pearls, though he also went by Lawrence Williams. Among his belongings was a.32 caliber pistol, the same caliber weapon that killed Jennie Merrill. Investigators in Natchez later matched the gun to the bullets found at the scene and the third set of fingerprints to the dead man's body. George Pearls, also known as Lawrence Williams, appeared to be the trigger man. The sheriff believed he'd fled Natchez after the murder and was headed back to Chicago when he was killed. But how had he ended up inside Jennie Merrill's house that night? And what was his connection to the wild man and the goat woman? Searching for answers, the sheriff intensified his sweep through Natchez's black neighborhoods. A tip led him to a local boarding house run by a young woman named Emily Burns and her mother.
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They go there, and they begin to talk to these women and also find that there's a trunk of this man's belongings in their home, and they're immediately taken in for questioning.
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Emily Burns would become the fourth major figure in the Goat Castle story. Unlike Jenny, Dick and Octavia, the press barely mentioned her name. And yet it was Emily's story that would turn the Goat Castle case upside down.
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After Emily Burns was arrested, detectives questioned her for days as a black woman in the Jim Crow South. She wasn't given a lawyer or a court hearing. She initially refused to answer questions about her connection to George Pearls. She didn't know he'd been killed in Arkansas and may have feared he'd come after her if she talked.
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She never gives him up until one point in the questioning. One of the deputy sheriffs lays down a bullwhip on the table, and that is a signal to her that she better give him up and explain what was going on.
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Emily told the sheriff that George Pearls had rented a room in her boarding house a few weeks earlier. He'd gone north to Chicago years before, but after losing his refinery job, he came back to Natchez looking for work. A few days before the murder, Emily said he'd gone to Jenny Merrill's house asking for a job. She turned him away, so he went next door to Dick and Octavia's. They clearly couldn't afford to hire him, but Octavia suggested a quick way to make some money robbing their wealthy neighbor.
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And I believe it's there that they form a little pact. This woman's got money. I think we should rob her. And I think Octavia Dockery is smart enough to know that if something happens, they're going to blame the black man. They're not going to blame her.
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Back at the boarding house George Pearls told Emily about the plan. She wanted nothing to do with it, she said, but George threatened to kill her if she refused to join them. On the night of the murder, she followed him to Dick and Octavia's home, where George met with them alone.
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And they end up walking over to Jenny Merrill's house to rob her. And that is the basis of the crime. He's going to rob her. But Jenny Merrill puts up a fight, gets shot and killed.
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Emily said Octavia Dockery and Dick Dana were outside during the robbery when the shots rang out. They ran inside and searched for money, but found nothing.
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Dana and Dockery scurry back over to Glenwood. George Pearls and Emily head back to the black community, which is off of St. Catherine street, and he changes his clothes and makes a quick getaway out of town.
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Emily insisted she never entered the house herself, a claim backed up by the lack of her fingerprints at the scene. But none of that mattered.
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This is a Jim Crow justice system in the Deep south, and they weren't going to try and convict these two people who had fallen on hard times. They're going to go after an African American and. And it turns out that it's Emily Burns, the most innocent of all the people who might have been at the home that evening.
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Emily signed her confession in September, but the grand jury wouldn't meet until November. All she could do was wait in her cell. In the meantime, Dick Dana and Octavia Dockery were busy turning their notoriety into fame. Six months earlier, in April of 1932, a local group called the Natchez Garden Club launched its first pilgrimage of houses. 26 antebellum homeowners opened their doors to visitors for an admission fee. The event's slogan read, come to Natchez, where the Old south still lives. Women wore hoop skirts. Their husbands wore Confederate uniforms. Black men were cast as butlers. No one expected much of a crowd, but thousands of tourists showed up from across the country. The pilgrimage was a hit, and it gave Dick and Octavia an idea.
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And so they decide, this is the town where we have a pilgrimage of homes. We're going to turn our home into a tourist destination.
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Dick got a haircut, a shave, and a crisp white suit. Octavia did her best to tidy up. Their supporters printed flyers inviting visitors to, quote, beautiful and historic place, Glenwood. The plan worked. Tourists poured in to see the wild man and the goat woman in the flesh.
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Dick Dana would entertain them by playing the piano and singing songs. And she would regale them with stories of her life. You can Imagine how the women in the garden clubs are reacting to all of this. This is like the worst thing they think that could happen because they're all about, you know, the very polished looking homes of Natchez. And here is this rundown mansion is crumbling around these people and, you know, they've got goats. It's just filth.
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When the grand jury finally met, the district attorney declined to seek an indictment against Dick or Octavia, arguing there wasn't enough evidence to prove they'd committed the crime. Instead, the jury posthumously indicted George Pearls for Jenny Merrill's murder. Emily Burns was charged on two counts, accessory to murder and aiding a murderer's escape. If convicted, she faced the death penalty. The court appointed her a public defender who had just a week to prepare. He did what he could. He argued that Emily was mentally unwell and called a black physician from the Natchez Sanitarium who testified that he treated her for what we now know as schizophrenia.
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And this was his way of sort of like to save her life, in other words, so that she doesn't get the death penalty. If she got the death penalty, she would have been taken right back across the street from the courthouse to the jail and they would have hung her right away.
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But the all white male jury was conflicted. They found her guilty but spared her life.
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And then the judge sends her to prison. That is, her sentence is to go to Parchman Prison, which is in the delta of Mississippi in a very, very brutal place for anyone to be sent. Especially during the Depression.
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Like Angola and Louisiana, Parchman sat on thousands of acres and operated like a slave plantation. Most of its inmates were black. They picked cotton, raised livestock, and worked in canning rooms and sewing shops. They rose at 4:30 each morning and labored 12 hours a day, six days a week. The Depression made conditions worse. The year Emily arrived, the state slashed Parchman's budget by 40%, triggering overcrowding and malaria outbreaks. Meanwhile, outside the prison, newspapers kept chronicling the lives of Dick Dana and Octavia Dockery.
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You know, in the following years, they'll continue to keep that home open to tourists because that story still has legs. Long after the trial is over, train
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companies began offering excursions to Natchez to capitalize on the Goat Castle craze. Dick and Octavia even went on tour, performing for packed audiences across the Deep South. They claimed the money would go toward restoring Goat Castle to its former glory. But the house was never repaired. Dick died of pneumonia in 1948. Octavia followed a few months later. Their deaths made national Headlines. Goat Castle was later sold at auction and razed to make room for a housing development. The fate of Emily Burns, meanwhile, went unmentioned by the press. Karen assumed she died in Parchman Prison.
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The trail had run dry for me. I didn't know what happened to Emily Burns. I assumed she stayed there the rest of her life. But for me, I thought, how can I not tell the story of the one person to serve trial and to be sentenced for this crime?
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So Karen went back to the Mississippi State Archives, the place she'd first heard about Goat Castle years earlier. She pulled the pardon and suspension files, old records documenting people whose prison sentences had been reduced, suspended, or wiped clean by the governor. To her surprise, she found Emily Burns name. Her sentence, the document said, had been suspended. During the Depression, the governor would occasionally come through Parchman and hold what he called mercy courts. He'd interview inmates, review their files, and read petitions from citizens asking for clemency. Emily's file showed that she'd petitioned for release year after year, without success, until 1940, when a new, more progressive governor took office. When he reviewed her case, he found petitions signed by what he called a large number of reputable citizens of Natchez. Those citizens weren't named, but the word reputable suggested most of them were probably white. Convinced of her innocence, the governor suspended her sentence indefinitely. After eight years at Parchman, Emily was finally free. Karen's question now was, where had she gone? Back in Natchez, Karen searched for anyone who might remember Emily Burns, the young woman once convicted in Jenny Merrill's murder. Eventually, she found one.
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He said, oh, Ms. Burns, she lived across the street from me, and she married a man named Lee Randolph.
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Karen rushed to the local library and pulled the Natchez city directories from the 1940s and 50s. Sure enough, there she was. Emily Burns had come home to Natchez.
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She'd remarried, and she had returned to her church, known as Antioch Baptist Church, on a road named, of all places, Liberty. And I went to her church and I met her family. They were second cousins. Because I was able to meet with that extended family, I found out that she came back in 40, 41, and then she stayed till her death in 1969.
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Her relatives said Emily was quiet and gentle. She never spoke about the murder or her years at Parchman. Perhaps because the memories were too painful, they were eager to know what Karen had found.
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Afterward, I exchanged information with them. I said I planned to stay an extra day, and one of them messaged me to come to their house. One of their houses. And I went there and we gathered around the kitchen table and I shared with them everything that I knew about her. And then one of them got up and walked across the room and returned with a large family photo. And I saw Emily for the first time. I didn't know I was going to get like that. I'm sorry. But I saw her for the first time and it was the most perfect photo because it was of her in the context of a very large family. Her mother was there, her uncles were there. Her grandmother was in the photograph, a grandmother who was born into slavery. And it wasn't Emily in a mugshot. It was Emily Burns as a human being.
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A few years later, Karen published her book about the Goat Castle saga before a reading in Natchez. She looked out into the crowd and saw Emily's cousins sitting in the front row. If you have information, story tips or feedback you'd like to share with the Gone south team, please email us@gonesouthpodcastmail.com that's gonesouthpodcastmail.com for bonus content. You can follow us on Facebook, TikTok and Instagram at Gone South Podcast. You can also sign up for our newsletter on substack at Gone south with Jed Lipinski Gone south is an Odyssey original podcast. It's created, written and narrated by me, Jed Lipinski. Our executive producers are Leah Rees, Dennis, Maddy Sprung Keyser, and Lloyd Lockridge. Our story editor is Katie Mingle. Gone south is edited, mixed and mastered by Chris Basel. Production support from Ian Mont and Sean Cherry. Special thanks to Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Kurt Courtney and Hilary Schuff. Thank you for listening to Gone South.
- [37:59]
B
Close your eyes, exhale, feel your body relax and let go of whatever you're carrying today. Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1-800-contacts. Oh my gosh, they're so fast. And breathe. Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry. Namaste. Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order. 1-800-contacts Spring break isn't what it used to be. It's better this spring. Stay three nights and get a $50 Best Western gift card. Life's a trip. Make the most of it at best Western. Visit bestwestern.com for complete terms and conditions.