Return to Home Page i.travel.to.kansas.city,mo.html
Note: p changed in css to 2.25rem 2022-12-05
This page, rev 1 is essentially a brain dump, written extemporaneously, as the thoughts and recollections come to my mind. Please take that into consideration when coming across spelling errors, etc.
2023-dec-06 Wed 4:35 am. Rev 1 I travel to Kansas City, MO
Many decades ago, I concluded a letter to a young friend who was in prison, not for what he had done, but for what he hadn't done. I ended the letter to him by concluding the letter with this remark:
I don't see how we can depart from the norm if we have someone whom we love more than we love ourself. (And then some poetic license) For when we so love – we give pause to consider their future as well as their own. Value the life, what ever the life may bring, whatever the trials and tribulations that may come our way - value the life.
I can conclude that had B called the police – he would not have been sent to prison. Life's experiences can be a great teacher for good, but unfortunately also for bad. What one thing I have learned from my experiences in life is that if we love another person more than ourself - then what we do – the decisions we make in life – if they will affect that other person then we may often pause if but for a moment – to consider how our actions will affect the other. We think about what our actions will do to their life, though we might not think or even care what it will do to our own life.
That is why I am here today, sharing these thoughts from events near 60 years ago, and am not in prison for life as an accessory to murder. I often think that when Nash asked me to go in with him on the liquor store robbery I might have agreed, really not thinking any about the consequences. What made the difference this time was the sudden memory of Ruth crying inconsolably in the ER room of St. Lukes Hospital. She was just outside the ER room where I was, being attended to by several doctors,including Dr. Sim Beam of Clayton, MO. who was our General Practicioner doctor (now called Family Doctor). He had been the one who gave me the prescription for sleeping pills becasue I complained to him of being unable to sleep. I wasn't "planning" on suicide. At least I don't think I was. I don't think a recent 14 year old thinks and plots in that manner. I simply could not sleep and if I did I would keep waking up. Thinking about it now - the condition was probably sleep apnea.
The reality had everything to do with school and nothing to do with "rejection" by my natural mother, Radja. I don't recall spending a whole lot of time dwelling on my mother much less pouting about being "rejected" by her at some time in my past. Which wasn't that long ago since I was nearing age 14. I was simply failing totally in school,the Brentwood public school and hating the school as a result. and I think I was in 7th grade.
And the final "straw" was when the teacher/school came up with the idea that the students would "sign" a contract as to their performance in school and the grade they expected to get. I mean, that's BS. It was BS then, 1959 and it is still BS, foolish narrow minded thinking. You know why near 50% of highschool students "drop out" of highschool in Kentucky and many many other public schools? Any rational person, child or adult, wants to get away from things or places that are obnoxious [Very annoying or objectionable; offensive or odious. American Heritage Dictionary of English Language, 5th Ed.]Subjecting the students to the threat of a "contract" implied "serious consequences" if a student failed. Their actions was just another version of a Charles Dickens 19th century British novel of life in those times. What a CONTRAST this backward medieval snake-pit school was with the New York City Manhattan PS-6 public school. At PS-6 learning new things was ALL FUN for not only myself but the other students too. You knew it by the way we all responded. What about the "Prep School" Watkinson in Hartford, Connecticut? I did not have a problem with that school, even having to go to school on Saturdays too. I was NOT a discipline problem, never got wrote up and got along quite well with the other lower class students. (School policy was that upper and lower students not overly fratinize and this was mainly because of the age difference. But it was nothing rigid. The lower class student (borders)rooms were on the second floor of the big mansion. The upper class was on the third. And the younger students were asked not to go up to their living quarters without a real reason. I was not making stellar grades [stellar grades refer to a student's excellent academic performance. ]at Watkinson, but I was improving and making steady progress, coming up from being pretty much illiterate when it came to reading to being able to read "Huckleberry Finn" as an english class assignment.
The quickest way to shut down a young persons desire to learn in school is to have a "threatening environment, climate" an "either - or" approach to teaching. It is indeed irrational for a person to contemplate suicide much less attempt to carry it out - over what in retrospect [looking back on the past] was a "trivial matter." But children, and at an approaching 14 - I still qualified as being "a child" and probably some adults still think I am - as though like I give a real "hoot."
First, I didn't even know what a "contract" was and I doubt any of the other 7th grade students did either.
Straw: from - the straw that broke the camel's back The idiom "the straw that broke the camel's back" . . . describes the minor or routine action that causes an unpredictably large and sudden reaction , because of the cumulative effect of small actions. It alludes to the proverb "it is the last straw that breaks the camel's back". Wikipedia
2023-dec-06 8:34am
These thoughts and experiences are primarily for young people, teenagers in particularly – and for those whom Dr. Harte would have called The Burnt Child.
Dr. Harte, who was not only a practicing child psychiatrist but also taught psychiatry at the local university to young medical doctors had a term which he often applied to me – but also said that he applied it to many of his young child and teenage patients. He called it The burnt child syndrome.
He said to me several times in letters, one when I was still a wild teenager and the other when I had "buckled down" and was working hard to get a diploma - which in my case was to be in electrical engineering as I had gone to a vocational school to learn how to fix radios and TVs and had acquired some familiarity with circuits and trouble-shooting them, i.e., circuit analysis. So, I figured, why not go for an EE and get me my union card, so to speak. If I succeeded then I would be able to make a better living than if I stayed with what I had been doing.
Off topic. But I write extemporaneously – as my thoughts come to the surface – probably from undergoing several years of psychoanalysis – where the ability to free associate is everything – and this is what I do, how I write.
I had tried factory work such as working a job at a corrugated box making company in Memphis but realized that this was not my cup of tea. For one thing, I found making cardboard boxes with heavy and somewhat dangerous equipment was a little boring. But also, the pay wasn't very good. I had been encouraged to join the union for that type of work – but one of the fellow workers clued me in that it was a weak union and I should not expect too much. From this experience in this one factory - I did come to see that having a union to represent the employee interests was important. I could see this now first hand. Not everyone of us at this factory had the speaking skills or acumen (keenness & depth of perception, discernment, or discrimination especially in practical matters) necessary to enter into negotiations or argue their own position with the managers or owner to whom the employees provide their time and labor in exchange for money. Thus, it appeared to me that it is only from the strength of numbers that the working man is able to get "a square deal" if he is to get anything sufficient to justify his labors. It was at this time that I woke from my sleep, in ignorance on matters of the working class and then soon on the true condition of the negro in America (at this time – middle 1960s – and definitely their life in the deep south.
And I will jump ahead at this time [though I am certain that my freshman college English teachers would abhor this method of my literary expressions – and say it now – that had it not been for a negro business man, prominent in the black community of Memphis, and the CEO of a large life insurance company at 123 Mississippi Avenue that provided this service to the black community, I would have had to drop out of engineering school at the completion of the sophomore year. Because of what he did – I was able to continue to complete the program and get my engineering degree, my union card. But this is all for another chapter in my life. But his name was Harold Whalum and his wife was called Tilly and he had two young sons named Skipper and Harold. This was fifty- seven years ago – but I have never forgotten his kindness.
Back on topic:
I often see signs posted here and there in the county where I now reside.
(Aside)
The signs, which are like political signs - where I vote for the candidate with the biggest sign which reads "vote for me, vote for me" because what else can I go by? Our political system has structured the voting process, has reduced it to "he who has the biggest war chest wins the vote." The winning ticket goes generally to he who has the mostest – the most money to campaign with. We have reduced the Founding Father's intentions that it is "We the people who decide" to "It is we the privileged with the money who will rule You the People.
These small signs, usually supported by a steel post planted in the ground, most often say, "Foster Parents Needed" and several times I did see a sign that went so far as to say, "Foster Parents Desperately Needed." What should that mean to me? Should it even matter? Well, it does matter to me. Let me explain.
In my generation - the world has turned topsy-turvy [In or into a state of utter disorder, confusion ]. Thanks to Bill Gates (who never got university diploma excluding many honorary) and his team of merry computer programmers – I and millions of others who have something to say – can say it – and NOT be censured by self-appointed Censorious addicts. Or have to bow down to the publishers or belong to their literary guilds that turn out the stuff that focuses first on profits above all else.Rather I can say what I want to say, as long as I do it in a polite and non-offensive way and it is legal.
Per Wikipedia, who has this to say about the sensorium: it is the apparatus of an organism's perception {that's me, an organism} considered as a whole, the "seat of sensation" where it experiences, perceives and interprets the environments within which it lives.My underline
The most important years of a child are his first five to eight years. And even more intensive is, I believe, the first year if not actually the first six months. If we are deeply burned as a child during those critical years, we will often develop what Dr. Harte called "the burnt child syndrome." This burning may be physical trauma, or emotional trauma or both. If the burning lasts continuously for many years – as for instance, let us say, the child is unloved, rejected, and unwanted, the burning will leave deep and lasting scars on that child which may never heal. This child may respond to the circumstances and conditions that his world has brought upon him in several different ways. He may become bitter, resentful and perhaps even hating all that surrounds him. He may come to trust no one, even those who attempt to help him, even those who may love him.
He may also, and this is often overlooked, blame himself for what has happened.
"I must be a very bad person that I am not loved. There must be something wrong with me. I must be to blame."
The burnt child syndrome may also show itself in the child or young person or even and often in the teenager's inability to learn, such as in the school situation. This failure then becomes a confirmation of this inner belief, this self-blame – and it becomes proof to this child or this teenager – that he is no good and he becomes a chronic failure in his life. He may resign himself to his situation, his unfounded beliefs in himself by developing a deep depression (which has nothing to do with his neuro-transmitters but everything to do with how he SEES HIMSELF).
But also, he may protest in anger and rage. A rage that is often hidden within himself during that period of time when he is still a child, still young. But come the teenage years – and young adult years – that rage may become explosive and often is explosive and directed at others – sometimes at the very people who are trying to help him.
What a dilemma we face when we come into the world – only to find that the world does not love us. As an infant and then a small child – we expect – we expect - that our needs will be met.
This is in accordence with Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs
When they are not met – at first this creates real anxiety within the small child. Again, let us turn to Wikipedia (and I do contribute to them regularly and you can see why now).
Although Maslow's pyramid above shows the highest needs attainment being transcendence, actually I believe in Maslow's life time (he died somewhat young of a heart attack) reaching self-actualization was the highest point. Victor E. Frankle and his School of Logo Therapy emphasises Self-Transcendence "as the essence of human existence." [Hear Victor E. Frankle's What is Self-Transendence Audio seminar which I posted on the home page and which was given back in the very early 1970s. (provide link)]Self-Transendence is more esoteric [Relating to or being a small group with specialized knowledge or interests - any many would add, bizzare, strange, unusual.]
Wikipedia: Anxiety is an emotion which is characterized by an unpleasant state of inner turmoil and includes feelings of dread over anticipated events. It is often accompanied by nervous behavior such as pacing back and forth, somatic complaints, and rumination.
While we are at it lets expand on that word, rumination, a big word but does not really tell us much. From Wikipedia we have this:Rumination is the focused attention on the symptoms of one's distress, and on its possible causes and consequences, as opposed to its solutions, according to the Response Styles Theory proposed by Nolen-Hoeksema. Because the Response Styles Theory has been empirically supported, this model of rumination is the most widely used conceptualization. Wikipedia
I will quote Bob Dylan to sum up the those with a deep knowledge of Response Styles Theory by saying "You Don't Need a Weather Man to Know the Way the Wind Blows." And I do this with deepest respect for the knowledge class. But I will say this – that you cannot really know what excruciating pain is until you have felt it yourself. You cannot know what it feels like to be deeply burned by life until you have experienced this for yourself. This does not mean you cannot have empathy. But I will say, as I have written earlier, and I take a short aside, that you cannot really understand the plight of the negro in the gettos' of Chicago or Harlem or may of the other places too, until you are somehow able to put yourself in their shoes and come to understand the predicament they face in their environment.
I connect all this together – and how this directly applied to the murder of Hillman Robbins. But once again I have to travel this road less taken by others in my own way. I do have promises to keep and I will keep them.
Rev 1 at this point
2022-10-29 1304 to be continued
p=2.25rem
2022-12-05, Monday, Prelude to life in Memphis. My first experience with the court system.
1 page letter to s edited
April 4,2022 Subject: Glenn Nash case. Advice about making revelation
In the span of those 40 years, and all previous years I have been charged with only one misdemeanor which was in 1965 in St. Louis County for essentially disturbing the peace. I was riding my BSA 650 motorcycle with about five other teens.
A young woman, perhaps in her early twenties, was riding a horse along the side of the road. Each of us was riding our bikes in single file which is the way you do it on narrow county roads.
There was Tom Tindell, about 23 years old and running a steel hauling business when he wasn't on work release in the Clayton City jail. Another rider was Jerry. He was 18 years old. He was a pretty tough guy – didn't take crap from nobody. Another was a guy about twenty. I forgot his name. he wasn't none too bright but was an alright guy. But he had him a really fast souped up BSA with magaphones to help tune up the noise from the engine exhaust. I know that the correct spelling for these mufflers in disguise is megaphone. But nobody who rode a Triumph or BSA would ever call it that.
As we each passed the young woman, the horse became excited and scared by our passing.
The others, including myself, where unaware as Tom Tindell was last in line in the group. By the way, Tom Tindell was the person who I went into with junking old abandoned cars. He drove an old Ford, about 1950, with a hand painted sign on the doors saying, "Tindell Salvage Co." I forgot how I came to know him. At the time, he was junking cars in a junk yard owned by this elderly black man who was also a Baptist preacher. I think it was that one day I went to the junk yard looking for spare parts. I was driving a 1954 or 1956 Mercury with a 312 V8 in it and stick shift on the steering shaft.
I happened to look back of me and noticed that Tom was stopped on the side of the road and kneeling down looking over the engine. What to do?
We all road bikes and in those days you could install what are called megaphone mufflers which greatly amplified the roar, not dampen it. The woman assumed that she was under attack and I am not sure what the horse was thinking - if they do think.
At any rate, she rode her horse in a panic and went to one of the many farm houses in that rural area and called the sheriff who(m) I am sure she knew personally. Since we drove our bikes in this county sheriff's orbit, he knew exactly what group it was that scarred the woman.
On down the road a-ways, I seen this guy standing right in the middle of the road. As Tom passes him on the bike, this guy takes a swing at Tom but misses. It was a really dumb thing to do. You figure you get hit by a 400 pound motorcycle going some 40-50 miles per hour – you're in for a real shock treatment you get hit by that bike.
I'm next. I slow down a lot then when I get close enough to this guy, I aim the bike at this fruit and he jumps to my left rather than get him hit head-on. He still got his footing. But his swing didn't mean anything because he was being extra cautious – not wanting to get a Parilla tire in his groin.
Jerry, the tough guy among us had long since gone way on up the road. But David was coming up behind me. He was the one who was slow but had a real fast bike. He twists the throttle for all its got and zooms ahead. The fruit cake decides he wasn't going to chance it again and clears a path for David. Why he did it I can't figure. I mean David – when he is passing this guy – waves to the guy – which you can figure out only further antagonize this citizen – or whatever he was.
Well, we all made it home safely. I don't figure as how any of us expected the thing was going to go away. And it didn't. About two weeks later we all got us a subpoena. The thing said we had to appear in some court, I think district court, on a charge of disturbing the peace. I wasn't sure what piece it was talking about – but I wasn't going to take no chances. The judge was a Judge Maniscalco. I knew he was Italian. But I figured he was probably also Sicilian. So, you couldn't figure out which way things were going to go.
Weeks later we were on the circuit court docket. My foster mother did hire a lawyer for me and that is always a wise thing to do if you don't want to get in over your head. Years later Nash told me the old lawyer's adage (a lawyer's proverb, KJV), "He who represents himself has a fool for a lawyer." Yes indeed.
In concluding the above, the attorney advised the judge in chambers that in the coming week the Downing's were moving to Memphis permanently. The judge then ruled ex cathedra, from the bench, that as long as I didn't ever come back to Clayton, Missouri he would drop all charges and ordered the others to stay out of the county for a year. he banged his gavel and exclaimed, "next"
The judge's decision really bent the girl's father out of shape. His lawyer jumps up and says loudly, "Your honor – this was a conspiracy!"
But the bailiff jumps in and hollars out, "Next!" And that ends the matter for me.
One thing that left a negative taste on my tongue for the rest of my years with Ruth was that when I explained what had actually happened – she said emphatically, "I don't believe you." She either had watched Marlon Brando's The Wild One (Hell's Angels) or she was more irked at having paid the lawyer fee and resented me for having caused he the expense. It was the second time I came to wonder whether she liked having me around as she did her many cats – only I was the two-legged cat that had entered into her life.
The psychoanalyst, Jerome Schroff, MD, did point out to me at one of our sessions that Ruth had her own neurotic needs to fill. I then came closer to understanding that the Catholic, Our Lady, is perhaps the only woman to have visited earth who did not have her own set of neurotic needs to be filled.
I fully realize today as the long journey nears it's end – that I owe Ruth a tremendous amount of gratitude for all she did for me – from helping me, through Radja, in making arrangements and getting us out of Munchen, to taking me in shortly after arriving in the U.S., and being, de facto, my foster mother even though it was not until years later in St. Louis, County, and thus providing me with refuge until an adoption could legally take place years later.
(2022-12-05, Monday) Pg 2 of 8 notes
The age of majority at that time was 21 so technically we were all juveniles, or for sure I was at 19.
No traffic tickets in 30 years as far as I know. 100% clean record.
On the matter of Glenn W. Nash (I don't know if he is alive still or not. If yes, he'd be about 86 and probably
still lives in the suburb in W. Memphis, ARK. Go to google-grad or Bing and type in Glenn Nash and Margo and
you get many articles
End pg 2
Rev 2. Extensive additions (2022-12-19)
Let me tell you, before I forget.
The day after Hillman Robbins was killed at the liquor store, I called the burglary squad in the early evening and notified them that Glenn Nash had done the killing.
How that came about was that I had gone down to the karate school just to visit. Nash was not there as I had expected he would be. But Kathy, his daughter and her fiancee‚ Jerry Brown, were sitting in the front room of the Dojo, and not doing much talking.
The day after Hillman Robbins was killed at the liquor store - I went down to the old Memphis Karate Academy just to visit. When I heard on the TV and then read in the morning news - about the liquor store killing - I suspected Nash right away. Glenn Nash was not at the school as I had expected he might be. But Kathy, his daughter and her fiancee‚ Jerry Brown, were sitting in the front room of the Dojo, and not doing much talking.
This is because at the early afternoon of that day, the day of the killing, I had again visited the Memphis Karate Academy, the Dojo, not to teach martial arts, but to meet friends such as Ann Nash, Jerry, etc.
I was still going to the vocational school and also doing well in my correspondence courses with The American School. But I did miss the old school and also, I knew that Glenn resented that I had left the school to teach marital arts for free at various churches around Memphis.
It sort-of left him high and dry because he himself knew NOTHING about the martial arts. And he really wasn't into it. Without the karate school main office - Nash would be without a place to set up his law office. Without me he would have no students. He was in no positon to teach the martial arts. And Henry Batten had also left, fed up with Nash and his constant drunk episodes.
MID-AFTERNOON ON THE DAY OF THE MURDER
I am down at the school visiting with Glenn when he says to me,
"Lets go up to the store and get some liquor".
I had developed a taste for Cherry Vodka so I said, OK. We went out of the building and into the parking lot. Then I got into the passenger side of his white Ford Fairlane. He then drove up E.H. Crump Blvd toward the Memphis Arkansas bridge over the mississippi river.
Hillman Robbin's liquor store was on E.H. Crump Blvd. and I had been to that store many times before with Glenn. He would always buy me a half-pint of Cherry Vodka and for himself he always bought his half-pint of Heaven Hill. This was a cheap liquor but about all Nash coud afford.
On this afternoon - as we approached the intersection where the liquor store was located, going West toward the bridge - the store was on our right side and at a major intersection with a controll stop-light. The cross steet with E.H. Crump went to downtown Memphis. Glenn paced the car so that he came to a stop when the light just turned red. It was a long light as that intersection was always heavy with traffic.
Then Glenn, in a mater-of-factly tone of voice and expressionless demeanor turned to me and then turned facing the store and slighly pointed his chin in that direction and said, without directly looking at me,
"I'm going to hold up the store. Do you want to go in with me?"
I responded in quiet curiosity, "Why do you want to do that Glenn?"
He replied, again in matter-of-fact manner, "I'm strapped for cash."
[This is EXACTLY what I told the burglary detectives who came by my house on 44 N. Tucker St. the next evening following the murder to Burglary via the telephone, and also again to two of their detectives who came by the morning following my call to them from pay phone next top Ma's Bar and Grill.]
I pondered and mulled over the question, perhaps for ten to 20 seconds. I will confess that is what I did. Outraged that he should ask me such a question?
No. I am slow to think and always have been slow to act.
Then as time neared for me to make the decision - this is what happened. I did NOT hear a voice from God telling me, "Don't do it Nenad." I did not dwell on the moral and legal implications of a decision I was having to make.
Instead, suddenly, it was so sudden then - I remember it still with vivid clarity. I saw the image of Ruth sitting in the chair next to the ER room of St. Lukes Hosptial where they had taken me - crying inconsolably, unable to stop as the doctors tried desparately to save my life.
Never in my life before had I felt so bad. I knew then that she had been the only person in my life who had wanted me, who had taken me in inspite of all the trouble I had given her.
All those years before, in Funkkaserne, Munchen,Germany,
https://bpa-waterproofing.com/en/references-referenzen/funkkaserne-residential-units
and Australia, I had lived in a crowd with many other children - all of us in the same boat - all of us desparately lonly for someone to love us and take care of us. It was after the war, you know.
It truly happened that way. Had it not been for that vision - I am certain I would have replied to Glenn, "OK." Because Glenn had always been kind to me, a father who(m) I had never had but who(m) I had always wanted.
I turned slightly to my left, toward Glenn and said only,
"I'd rather not Glenn."
Glenn then replied quiety,
"OK, but don't be a Tennessee Volunteer."
At that time in 1965, I did not know what he was referring to,
"... but don' be a Tennessee Volunteer." I knew he had been a school teacher in Chattanooga, TN., but did not know about the Tennessee Volunteers who had gone to the Battle of New Orleans and also The Alamo. I had moved to Memphis the hear before.
And then Glenn made a quick right turn on the road perpendicular to E.H. Crump and headed back to the Dojo. Once there I got out of his car and got into my car, the 1962 Ford Fairlane which Ruth had bought for me in St. Louis after I turned 16.. Glenn did not go back into the dojo but instead headed off in some direction which I do not recall.
I did not see Glenn again for several weeks. Then later he and I met again at the Hernando Country, Mississippi jail and Ann, Jerry and Cathy also were there. Nash was being held for the murder of cab driver Surrat (sp?) during his and Margo's attempt to escape from the law which was hot on his trail.)
Glenn was being held in the last cell on your left as you walked to the end of the jail hall. I did not actually walk into the cell. I stayed at the cell door. Cathy and Ann did walk on in the cell. Glenn was throwing paper into the toilet and said he was trying to block it up. Cathy sort of laughed at that. Then Glenn looked up at me directly. He didn't smile or show any expression whatsoever. But he held his gaze on me and I reciprocated. I was not and neverr was afraid of him. He knew it. But in his gaze and facial expression I sensed that he knew I had called the cops on him. And he knew I knew that he knew I had called the cops on him.
You see, it is all about the four barell derringer. 
Only he and I knew why he had left the derringer on the counter at the liquor store. His plan (and this is only supposition on my part ) if I had gone in with him on the job - would have been to kill me. It is simple as that. Because, not only could I show that he had planned this robbery all along - but ALSO - Dr. Harte could finger him and his testimony would have then convinced ANY jury that Nash had planned this operation from the very beginning.
Because you see - he killed Hillman Robbins that late afternoon or early evening. He had EXPECTED that I would go along with him in the robbery. He had brought the derringer with him that morning! Why would he have brought this gun with him unless he intended to kill me along with the liquor store owner. Had that happened, had he terminated me, he would not have left the gun on the counter of the store. But when I said, NO to his question - he had no other choice but to send me the message: If you "sing" then you're testimony won't do any good anyway because of your psychiatric record and no one will believe you. EXCEPT! It was Dr. Harte, a well established psychiatrist and assistant prof. of child psychiatry who also had known me and been "treating me" since about the time I turned age 14. And when Nash killed Hillan Robbins I was age 19. For 15 years Dr. Harte had been keeping up with me on a regular basis as is attested to by his correspondence in which he ALSO mentions Nash on several occasions.
It was Dr. Harte who dismantled the derringer and mailed it to Nash (as I had given Dr. Harte Nash's calling card) per my recommendation because - as I said to Dr. Harte, if you mail the gun back to Nash fully taken apart - in woud be difficult to construe that it was a weapon.
Nash knew that if his case went to trial - he would loose with my testimony because I could corroborate my statements regarding the gun because a person of Dr. Harte's reputation would be hard to dismiss by any jury. If he had indeed been able to carry out his plan, that is, to kill me, then he would not have left the gun on the counter as that could possibly tie him to the murder of Hillmon Robbins if ever the state or detectives were able to connect the gun witth some psychiatrist in Kansas City, MO.
Nash had it all figured it. Obviously he DID plan to kill Hillmon Robbins at the same time as he finished off me.
As regards Margo? Looking back over fifty years - I cannot say the why -he snookerred Margo (who I had never heard of until the evening after the killing when Cathy mentioned her name to me as being Glenn's new girl friend) into going along with him in his crime. Knowing Nash I think he never gave her a clue what he was actually up to. Especially when I turned him down.
You could ask, "Why did Nash ask me first and not just supprise me as he did Margo?"
Because, I think he knew how I would respond. NOT - he didn't know how I would respond. I was never in the least bit afraid of the guy. If I heard the gun go off in the store I believe I would have immediately sized up the situation and responded at the first moment I could. At that time I was very fast and had taught students how to approach a person with a gun, etc. And Nash was very slow in his movements. He was no karate student and never was.
He was in a dilema about what to do with me as a potential witness and took a chance in trying to entice me to go into the robbery with him. And he was desparate for money. I knew this because he had often shared with me his financial situation. Margo knew nothing about Nash. And when she heard the gun go off (I speculate now) he first thought was probably, "Oh shit - what do I do now." What does she do? She obviously didn't have the skill to take Nash "on" with the necessary speed of a well trained cop or karate instructor.
But everything concerning her is pure speculation.
The easiest thing to do is TO JUDGE OTHERS when you have never been in their shoes.
This one thing I do know. I did not think Nash would do the job when I bowed out. He was very subtle and quiet in asking me to go along. And when I said, "I'd rather not" I figured that was the end of the matter.
===============================================================
(2022-12-19) What follows is correspondence with Dr. J, which started in spring of 1974 and continued. A lot of what follows will be redundant with the above. It is included now only for purposes of later editing and keeping what is of any interest.
4-16-2020. J, You are absolutely right about the lawyers. Mentioning lawyers and their crooked ways [not all, but many] brings back a memory from 54 years ago when I was living in Memphis, teaching karate, and trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life. I had no formal education. I had quit high school when I turned 16 in Missouri. I had failed successfully the elementary years. In other words, I wasn't making progress in school. Then after leaving the academic world I went to working in St. Louis County junking cars, cutting up the frames, working for landscape companies, hauling bricks and mud at construction sites, all of that hard but honest work. In St. Louis I had taken up judo.
When we moved to Memphis there was a judo/karate school called "Japan Ways." I wanted to continue with the martial arts but Ruth, being a social worker didn't make much money. So, I made a bargain with the owner that I would teach judo to the youth in exchange for karate lessons. I did. And I worked my way up to 1st. Dan in Japanese style, Kotokan Karate, through very hard work which I attribute to my later success in getting an engineering degree because I acquired the necessary discipline needed to focus and concentrate on the task at hand. That's the key I discovered.
Time went by. Glenn Nash was a student, never an instructor, though he claimed he was. He was not very good and never tried me out.
We did become good friends and drinking buddies. He loved Heaven Hill, by the half-pint. I liked cherry vodka. He was a practicing criminal lawyer.
Karate & judo classes were always in the evening. I studied my correspondence work in the morning and during the day. Then as the relationship grew, Nash invited me to attend his trials. That interested me very much as it was something I knew nothing about. In going to his trials, I also met his criminal clients and their interesting ways of thinking. When it came time to do the correspondence work on math (by the way, the correspondence school was the American School in Chicago) I asked Glenn to help me. But he seemed to have little comprehension of the subject, particularly doing ratios, proportions, etc. And the subject of trigonometry had no feeling for him.
I was totally at a loss. I couldn't figure the stuff out. Looking at the paper explaining pythagorean's theorem, it just looked like a picture of a triangle. I figured I had met the end. I wasn't going to be able to get the diploma. Nash tried very much to help me but he knew about as much of math as me. Then in the day time, with Lyndon Johnson's Great Society funding the way, I went to the Memphis Vocational School. I "majored" in radio and TV repair. And, there I met a retired Air Force officer who was teaching basics in math for the disadvantaged, who had taught electronics in the Air Force and had a college degree in math. I pled my case and he agreed to tutor me. But I would have to pay for his time. Ruth agreed. And by that stroke of luck or by the providence of God, and I believe it was Providence, the helping hand of God, who the comi-demos hate so much. Through his patient help, I gained the math skills that would get me into engineering school a couple of years later. But that's another story you may not want to hear. It's getting late for sure.
By the way Jan, I had to take some tests at that school, aptitude mainly. The, probably low paid counselor told me that I had excelled in the "spatial" reasoning test, 98 percentile, (or did he mean 'special reasoning test' but that on the math aptitude test I did terrible and he advised me that I should NEVER go into anything requiring math. Can you believe that! That you would tell a young person (19) something like that based on a single test, not knowing all the facts about the person or even trying to find out.
It is also why I told you that the book, The Bell Curve (which I read years ago and still haven't thrown away) is a bunch of crap. IQ tests are crap too. I've taken many of them many times as a child and teenager. The results seemed always to oscillate between 90 on the left side of the center line on the Gaussian distribution curve and 110 on the right side of the right side of the center line of the Gaussian distribution curve. I'll end this part by simply saying that I have known a lot of black teenagers in my times of teaching them the martial arts that were plenty smart but had been labeled "marginally or educationally retarded." Do you think that would inspire any of them to "push ahead?"
Time is moving along, not faster than a speeding bullet, but faster than I am able to stay awake. Let me say when you read below, when you have time, that I was instrumental in the capture of Nash. I knew the next day when I read the morning news paper what had happened and who had done it. And I knew details that only someone who knew the facts would know. It puzzled everybody including the state DA until I tied the missing pieces together many years later. But that is another story that will have to wait until I get closer to the END.
I gave the state the whole story, put the missing pieces together in more than one hundred page document which I still have, hand written about 1985, a long time ago. And it is probably why they let Margo go rather than retry her. She was really an innocent 18 year old naïve girl who was suckered into Nash's trap and she paid a heavy cost in lost years. I could have collected a $10,000 reward for the information I provided the day after the murder – that evening in fact. The reward had been offered by the city. What would have $10,000 been in 2020 dollars?
But there were aspects to the whole story that would have revealed much of my childhood and teenage years that I was not prepared to share with anyone. Only a child psychiatrist and Ruth, and to a small but significant amount, Nash, knew. And it would have deeply hurt Ruth without whom I would not be here today. It's not that I did anything illegal. I didn't. Just the opposite. When I see today how the media trashes Trump and people who disagree with them, how vicious they are, it was not much different back then. Anyway, money has never been my currency, never meant much to me. I strive to have enough to meet my basic needs. I didn't even see money, didn't even know what it was until I came to America at about age nine and was puzzled and astonished at how much people loved it. How much it meant to them.
Here we go if you've got the patience:
4-16-2020 NASH ARTICLE FOUND VIA GOOGLE & SHARED WITH Dr. J
The Fugitive | Cover Feature | Memphis News and Events ...
www.memphisflyer.com/memphis/the-fugitive/...
Nash was deemed no longer to be a danger to himself or others. But a court never ruled that he was competent to stand trial for any of the three murders for which he had confessed. He remains free ...
When the agents stopped the McCartors outside the club, the matter sounded, well, ridiculous. The agents wanted some woman named Margo Freshwater for a crime committed more than 30 years ago, a brazen, cold-blooded slaying. On December 6, 1966, a Memphis man, Hillman Robbins Sr., the gentlemanly father of a well-known golf pro, was found lying in a pool of blood in a back room of the Square Deal Liquor store on Crump Boulevard. Robbins had been shot five times in the head. Sometime that night, a man and his teenage girlfriend left the store with around $600 in cash. The man, a demented genius
who confessed on several occasions to pulling the trigger, was declared incompetent to stand trial. But a jury of 12 men found the girl, Margo Freshwater, guilty of murder and sentenced her to 99 years.
[They are talking about the disposition in Tennessee. In Mississippi Margo was set free. Nash was declared insane and spent many years in the state hospital until he "recovered." Then he was sent to Florida for "evaluation." Florida decided not to bother with Nash as they did not feel they could overcome his "insanity defense."]
She testified that she was an unwitting accomplice, frightened into submission by her boozing, unstable -- and much older -- boyfriend. Maintaining before and during the trial that she "never killed anyone," the 18-year-old Freshwater escaped from the Tennessee Prison for Women in Nashville in 1970. Along with another female inmate, she outran a guard, scaled a 10-foot fence topped with barbed wire, and hitched a ride to Baltimore. Authorities nabbed the other fugitive within a month. But Freshwater went on to live an ordinary and law-abiding life as a wife, mother, and grandmother. She even returned to Nashville and Memphis as a tourist.
"I knew when she went to Memphis there would be trouble," her brother recalls. He was right. When she arrived in the Bluff City, Margo hired a chain-smoking, hard-drinking attorney named Glenn W. Nash to represent her boyfriend. A plain-looking man with brown hair and pale skin, Nash, 38, had been cleared earlier that year of two federal charges involving theft of money orders and treasury bonds.
[I knew the particulars, attended his trials in Mississippi and Memphis, and he was GUILTY.]
His law practice was in jeopardy -- he had nearly been disbarred years earlier -- and he was having money problems. As a way to help make ends meet, Nash also worked as a karate instructor.
He knew nothing about karate, nothing at all. I taught the classes (and judo) along with an older man, great friend and father figure, gone on to heaven I hope. Nash used a spare office space for his legal practice and his wife, a German woman he had met while in army after the war (we called her Ann because her German name was too difficult to say. She took care of the books and enrolling students, etc.
Nash met with Margo at the Hotel Claridge, where she was staying. She later recalled on the stand that when Nash arrived, he was already drunk. She tried to talk about the case, but the married attorney ordered a pint of whiskey and started to flirt with her. She shrugged him off, and he passed out on the bed.
Prosecutors later alleged that Nash and Freshwater were casing the joint. Freshwater testified that when she went to the bathroom at the liquor store, Nash bought whiskey, and then they returned to the apartment. Simple as that.
[Not quite true. Nash never "cased" the store with Margo. She was duped from the very beginning.]
When they got back, Nash quickly became drunk. Although she was still making plans to visit her boyfriend in prison the next day, Freshwater was going on a date with a neighbor that evening. Unaware of her plans, Nash parked outside, honking his horn. She got back in the car and they argued about his wife, who had learned of the affair.
[Not quite so. From the time when Margo came to Memphis until the murder - was only a few days. Ann knew that Nash was representing her (Margo's) boy friend but didn't suspect anything in terms of Margo and Glenn. At least a week after his capture that is what she told me. And inasmuch as I provided the way to keep her from loosing her house, I see no reason she would have lied to me.]
Nash then wanted to get some more whiskey, and when Freshwater asked to get out of the car, he wouldn't let her. Shortly afterward, he drove away and clipped a telephone pole. She then told him, "I'll drive before you kill us both."
They drove back to the Square Deal Liquor store, and Freshwater followed him in, hoping to get the drunk Nash in and out quickly so she could go back home and get ready for her date. But Nash had other plans. Nash told Robbins to hold up his hands. "This is a holdup," he said. Freshwater testified that she was stunned. Nash told Robbins to put the money in a bag, and the three of them went into a back room. She said that she argued with Nash, telling him that this was "insane." A customer walked in, and Nash ordered Freshwater to pretend she was an employee.
[There is a great deal not being told here that only Nash, (now dead I hope) and Tennesse Atty Gen. know. For one thing what about the derringer? the four barrel derringer that was left all in pieces carefully on the counter. What was the purpose of that? Nobody could explain that. But perhaps later if you are interested. ]
Under cross-examination, Freshwater was asked why she didn't tip off the customer. She replied, "I didn't want to die."
After she waited on the customer, she returned to the back room, and Nash walked to the front of the store. She noticed that Robbins was tied up. She testified that she tried to free him. But Nash slapped her around a few times and said, "Didn't I tell you I would kill you if I caught you trying to do something I told you not to do?" Freshwater's reply, according to her testimony: "Yes, but please don't kill me."
Nash then had Freshwater go to the car, and as soon as she did, she heard a series of loud noises. "When it finally registered in my head what it might be, I tried to decide whether I should run, whether I could get away from him or not," she later testified. "He came out and told me to get in the car behind the wheel."
Freshwater testified that she began to cry and that he warned her that if she left him and went to the cops, the customer that she waited on would be a witness against her. He [who?] also told her that he [who?] used two guns to implicate her, something that Nash has corroborated.
[Not quite true. Doesn't fit. How could the second gun, a small 22 derringer, taken apart and in pieces, left on the counter, implicate her? Why would someone doing a holdup take the time to take a small gun to pieces and leave on the counter? Or, if he brought it in the store in pieces already, then why would he do that? What could possibly be the purpose? You've watched Charlie Chan movies. Think about it.]
The couple fled to Olive Branch, Mississippi, where they stopped at a hotel. The two had sex, which the prosecution later used as evidence that Freshwater was in on the robbery and that she was never afraid of Nash. For the next three weeks, they drove around the Southeast, staying in motels or in their car, often telling people they were husband and wife.
Two more people were murdered while Freshwater and Nash were on the run. On December 18th, the two checked into the Holiday Inn in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Later that evening, Nash allegedly shot and killed Ester Bouyea, a convenience-store clerk, putting a bullet through her neck. His fingerprints were found on a grocery cart. Freshwater was seen at the store as well, but Florida authorities had no interest in prosecuting her for the murder. They only wanted Nash.
[Yet when many years later they got him to Florida, their experts, they call them psychiatrists, said he was "insane." Therefore, no trial ]
Just over a week later, the two were spotted walking in the rain without an umbrella in Millington [30+ miles from Memphis and home of the old Navy Air Base which itself has memories ]. They called a cab, and the driver, C.C. Surratt, took them across the state line into Mississippi. The driver was later found dead, shot in the back of the head.
Later that day, the two were arrested after boarding a bus in Greenville, Mississippi. According to newspaper reports, they were smiling at each other shortly after they were handcuffed.
Later, Nash confided to inmates at the county jail that he killed Robbins, Bouyea, and Surratt. [As he told me in the Hernando Co. jail, shortly after his capture. He never made any bones about it. After all, he was "insane." ] Nash also later told a physician [at the Mississippi state hospital – which I visited several time, not as a patient, but to see Nash ] treating him that he killed all three people because he needed the money. [That was the actual truth.] Subsequently, he told the psychiatric staff at a Mississippi hospital that he went on his killing spree because the victims were members of the bar association or a law-enforcement agency. Nash had been under investigation by the Memphis and Shelby County Bar Association.
Nash ultimately was found incompetent to stand trial in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Florida. He spent 15 years in a series of mental institutions. But in the early 1980s, a Florida facility released him, and he returned to his modest home in West Memphis. [Which I was responsible for Ann being able to keep and be able to raise their young son in the house. I have no regrets, neither the wife nor the child was responsible for Nash's psychopathic but sane behavior] Nash was deemed no longer to be a danger to himself or others. But a court never ruled that he was competent to stand trial for any of the three murders for which he had confessed. He remains free to this day.
Inside the Shelby County district attorney's office, (Memphis) there is a voluminous file on Glenn Nash stuffed with relevant newspaper clippings and court documents. In brief after brief, state prosecutors tried to make a case against the confessed murderer, but they could never convince a court that Nash was competent to stand trial. Even after he was released from a mental hospital into society, prosecutors couldn't take Nash before a jury. And the fact that Freshwater is back in prison hasn't changed the fact that Nash will continue to enjoy his freedom.
[Even if I had testified, and thus greatly hurting the one person who ever really cared about me, Ruth, (for I had the keys to the whole picture), he would have been acquitted. The jury would have concluded that I, not Nash, was the one who was insane. Once the state had the complete picture, and the appellate court had ordered a new trial for Margo, it was a no win situation for the state.
And let's just say that Nash had been tried captured and tried months or a year or so after the fact, would have he been convicted on my testimony alone, without extensive supporting evidence, independent of me, which they never had? I don't think so. What would my testimony really have been worth? My word against his? Me, an uneducated school dropout, no job, only doing karate stuff. But what spared me from having to endure a trial was the fact of the Mississippi murders and his many many years of "recovery" in the state insane asylum. It messed everything up for the state.
And, then years later, in 4-1974 when I went to work for the first time, in Chattanooga, with a brand new diploma, the state sent five lawyers to interview me for two days. And it was clear they had not done their homework, done no research, no police work, no nothing. They had all the resources, all the facts, the pieces but they just didn't have the painting, the puzzle put together. And yet they didn't ask me a single question about any of the pieces, even though they had been in the press and on TV. They asked few questions. I answered every question honestly. But they asked me nothing. I did give them a bundle of letter from Nash over the years, along with chess games we had played, and in some of those letter Nash revealed himself and in one part convicted himself. But I figured, why should I let myself be trashed by the media, hurt my very aging foster mother, when I never committed a crime, I did my duty at the time, and they hadn't even bothered to do basic detective or legal analysis of the case. Am I the psychopath for wanting to protect Ruth and avoid if I could from being trashed by the media? It reminds me somewhat of Star Trek and the Kobayashi Maru Test. Remember how Spok handled it? I wasn't willing to radiate myself for an outcome I knew wouldn't change. Also, Ann and her son, now grown up, what would it have done to her and to her "little" boy, Glenn Jr. She believed, and certainly Glenn Jr. believed, because that was how Ann explained it to him during the years he grew up, because she told me so and she herself believed it, that "daddy was "sick, very sick. ]
[The TN appellate court ordered a new trial a number of years ago. The state would have had to present exculpatory evidence had it gone to trial. That would have been embarrassing for them. Why not before? The first trial? And I probably would have had to testify. State agreed to release her with time served.]
"We can't make a case; we've already made a case," says deputy district attorney James Challen. "We went forward with the case over 30 years ago, and he was indicted, but it was decided that he wasn't competent to stand trial." Challen says he knows of no new plans for the state to attempt prosecution.
In the 1970s, when Tennessee prosecutors tried in vain to prosecute Nash, they stated in court papers that they believed the homicidal lawyer had concocted the bizarre motive about the victims being members of the bar association just to make people think he was insane. [He did indeed] They also said that Nash was extraordinarily intelligent. [IQ 125 from Mississippi Hospital test, not "extraordinarily intelligent" but smarter than the average person. In fact, he had such a "formidable mind" that while incarcerated in the months after his arrest, Nash carried on seven games of chess simultaneously by mail -- even though he did not have access to a board or chess pieces. He was able to remember where the pieces to all of the games were.
Partially true Jan. And I put the "extraordinarily intelligent" into red quotes. Actually, while he was in the Mississippi State Hospital for Criminally Insane he and I played chess thru mail. He chose to use paper and I, in Memphis, used chess boards. I wanted to play one game at a time, but he insisted on doing 7 as he had plenty of time on his hands. He was probably a lot smarter than me. At the time I was just a high school dropout struggling with a correspondence course to get some kind of a "high school diploma." But, I had studied the anatomy of the psychopathic personality. I think the first book I read was "The Mask of Insanity." I believe this is the book: I always rememberd that captivating title. So, although I enjoyed going to his trials and giving him my perspectives, because that's what he was wanting, I didn't kid myself as to his true nature, that he was a psychopath. Margo got suckered in by him. She was only 18, I was 19. But I knew his true nature. He had approached me first and I had told him "I'd rather not" and left it at that. There is more to the story, but I went back to the dojo (karate school in Japanese language) and thought that was the end of it. Case closed.
"It is simply the State's theory that Nash is a very clever individual who, through his reading [not so] and observations [not so] while confined in the mental institution, can convincingly present himself as insane," a state brief against the lawyer read.
[Parially true. He was clever. But during the several years I was with him constantly at trials, etc., we spent a lot of time talking psychiatry. I knew a lot having read a lot and dealt with them many times over the years, so I knew how they thought, their thinking process. They were bound to their "construct theories" and never could apply common sense, like the FED with their "models" devoid of the real economy. And I knew, from reading several books on the subject of psychiatric tests, and one in particular, the Rorschach test, and, having taken this test often as a young teenager, I read up on it when I got older, in Memphis. So. I knew for instance how you might respond to the various ink blots to be, say, declared a "morbid" personality", if on a colored blot you might see "squashed bugs" That very example was in the book. etc. If fact, he used that very observation on one of those ink blot tests they gave him in the Mississippi hospital because he told me so in a letter (which years later I gave to the state. They were either too lazy or too stupid – which I don't think stupid - because to get thru law school you have to be "better than average intelligence. But you would have thought they would have asked themselves, "what is he talking about – 'squashed bugs' on an ink blot test? ) And I knew a lot more than he did about these things. But he knew the legal insanity aspect because he had defended a client in a murder case and the binding rule in Tennessee was the mcnorton rule. Was he insane at the time he killed Hillman Robbins. Well, if he pre-mediated – he couldn't have been insane at the time, could he? Not under "law" which if you remember Mr. Bumble said "The law is an ass." I only say from the experience in my life that the law is an "ass" for deferring to the psychiatrist on whether a person is insane or not insane based on crap theories of people's mental state and motives, etc, etc, etc. that have no scientific basis, which if scientific could be experimentally proved. True? Try to prove Freud's theories of Id, Ego and Super-ego is true. Or that the Oedipus Complex really exists, or that Penis envy is the end striving of all young girls. Sorry, but I just think that is all crap in terms of it being scientifically sound. It's just one man's opinion, Freud. And whether a person is sane or insane is just another person's opinion, whether he has a diploma saying he knows something or not.
Although Nash confessed to the murders, Freshwater was tried in Mississippi for the cab driver's killing. Two trials, however, resulted in hung juries. She was then released to stand trial in Memphis for the murder of Robbins. (Florida authorities never prosecuted Freshwater for the murder of the grocery-store clerk there.)
Twelve men sat on the jury and once again heard stories of Freshwater's promiscuity, some of which were foolishly introduced by her own lawyer. But the trial seemed to be going all right for the defendant. In fact, state prosecutors didn't challenge Freshwater's testimony that Nash was the triggerman -- if anything, they substantiated it. Even a star witness for the prosecution, a barely literate ex-con named Johnny Box, testified that when he and Freshwater were in jail together, she confided to him that she was scared of Nash. He then asked her if she shot Robbins, and she told him no. ….
[The whole article is below. This event made national news and many detective magazines. Twenty years ago if you googled it - it covered the screen. But now, only this remnant article seems to remain.]
-==============================
The Fugitive
When Margo Freshwater escaped from prison 32 years ago, she began a happy and law-abiding life, becoming a devoted mother, grandmother, and wife. Now,
by MATT PULLE
On May 19th, an ordinary Sunday afternoon, a troop of plainclothes law-enforcement agents quietly converged on an athletic club in Columbus, Ohio. Their target, a convicted murderer and fugitive, had eluded capture for more than 30 years. As the agents surrounded the perimeter, Tonya Hudkins McCartor, a 53-year-old wife and grandmother, was leaving the club with her husband Daryl. In her arms was a baby boy, her 17-month-old grandson A.J. The boy's parents, Tim Hudkins and his fiancée, walked beside her. They had no reason to notice the quiet team of officers who had been watching the family for hours.
The McCartors looked no different from any other family. Tim, 22, had a shy, sweet smile and a slim, wiry build honed by his high school baseball years. He was Tonya's son from a previous marriage.
Tim and his pretty blonde fiancée Casey had known each other since they were 13; they later became high school sweethearts. These are not the kind of people who typically find themselves under heavy police surveillance.
Daryl McCartor seemed even less threatening. A Wichita-born truck driver with a calm demeanor, in 1989 he traded his job as a Pizza Hut supervisor for his own business and his own rig. Through a dating service, he met an insurance company administrative assistant named Tonya Hudkins. Like Daryl, she had grown tired of the corporate life. They met at a McDonald's for coffee. Soon, they made plans for a real date: a night on the town with dinner and dancing.
On the day the plainclothes agents were scouting them, Daryl and Tonya had been married for nearly two years. Tonya had quit her office job and joined her husband on the road, where they became a driving team. The two struggled to balance their checkbook each week, but they managed to get away occasionally to go horseback riding. And they spent a lot of time with Tonya's three children and grandchildren.
When the agents stopped the McCartors outside the club, the matter sounded, well, ridiculous. The agents wanted some woman named Margo Freshwater for a crime committed more than 30 years ago, a brazen, cold-blooded slaying. On December 6, 1966, a Memphis man, Hillman Robbins Sr., the gentlemanly father of a well-known golf pro, was found lying in a pool of blood in a back room of the Square Deal Liquor store on Crump Boulevard. Robbins had been shot five times in the head. Sometime that night, a man and his teenage girlfriend left the store with around $600 in cash. The man, a demented genius who confessed on several occasions to pulling the trigger, was declared incompetent to stand trial. But a jury of 12 men found the girl, Margo Freshwater, guilty of murder and sentenced her to 99 years.
She testified that she was an unwitting accomplice, frightened into submission by her boozing, unstable -- and much older -- boyfriend. Maintaining before and during the trial that she "never killed anyone," the 18-year-old Freshwater escaped from the Tennessee Prison for Women in Nashville in 1970. Along with another female inmate, she outran a guard, scaled a 10-foot fence topped with barbed wire, and hitched a ride to Baltimore. Authorities nabbed the other fugitive within a month. But Freshwater went on to live an ordinary and law-abiding life as a wife, mother, and grandmother. She even returned to Nashville and Memphis as a tourist.
But not long after she arrived in Baltimore, Tennessee and Ohio authorities began looking for her and never gave up. (Freshwater was from Ohio originally.) Less than a year ago, they got a break in the case when they came across Tonya McCartor's name on a computer database and noticed that McCartor had the same birth date as Freshwater and was listed as being nearly the same height and weight. The clincher came when they pulled up Tonya McCartor's Ohio driver's-license photo and compared it with Freshwater's old mug shot from the 1960s.
"It was like looking at a mother and a daughter," says Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) special agent Greg Elliott, whose Internet sleuthing helped break the case. That discovery helped launch a meticulous investigation, during which authorities looked into McCartor's life and talked to her former employers. "We did interview a few people but not friends or family," Elliott says. "Really, we had to build a strong-enough case against her where we could obtain a search warrant and compel her to give up her fingerprints."
By May of this year, they believed they had finally built that case. On May 18th, a Saturday night, Ohio Bureau of Investigation (OBI) agent Gregg Costas dropped by McCartor's Columbus apartment. Costas, who had been tracking leads on the Freshwater case for nearly 10 years, saw a car. Freshwater was home.
Immediately, Costas contacted Elliott in Nashville, who flew up that night. The next morning, Costas and Elliott, along with other law-enforcement officials, followed the couple as they went about their day. When Tonya and Daryl arrived at the athletic club, Elliott and Costas visited a local judge to obtain the search warrant they'd need to take Tonya's fingerprints. During the time the two agents were away, another agent watched the happy family swimming inside the club.
When Tonya McCartor walked out of the club with her family, OBI agents and members of the Columbus Police Department quietly surrounded the middle-aged woman and told her, "We have reason to believe you are not Tonya McCartor but Margo Freshwater."
If Tonya was shocked that her long run from the law had drawn to a close, she didn't show it. She handed her grandson to the baby's mother. She gave her son a hearty, long embrace and told him, "Everything is going to be okay." She hugged her husband and said, "I always knew this day would happen." Then the agents led her to a police car. Within a few minutes, police matched Tonya's fingerprints to the prints obtained from Margo Freshwater more than 35 years earlier.
"She was emotionless," says Elliott, who has been with the TBI for 17 years. "She was very calm and quiet. She wasn't upset." The family, however, was stunned. "I started laughing," Tim says. "I thought it was a case of mistaken identity." Her husband had the same feeling. "I just thought they had the wrong person and I'd have her home that evening," Daryl says.
Her husband may never have her home again. Tonya McCartor is back at the Tennessee Prison for Women. And unless she's given a new trial or is granted clemency -- a doubtful prospect for a convicted murderer -- she will remain behind bars until she is an old woman, if not longer. Meanwhile, the man who confessed to the killing will probably die a free man.
"She's telling us to be strong and stick together, and that's what we're doing," Tim says. "This is a tough situation. But what happened doesn't make any difference. She is still our mother."
But the relatives of Hillman Robbins, the man who was murdered that evening in Memphis, feel that Margo Freshwater's day of reckoning has at last arrived. "I think she should spend the rest of her life behind bars," says Susan Robbins West, who was just 7 years old when her grandfather was killed. She remembers that her grandfather's slaying devastated her father. "It ruined my dad; it killed my dad," she says. "He had to go to the hospital and identify the body, and he never could get that picture out of his mind. He was never close to being the same. He was haunted by that until the day he died."
"My dad didn't talk about it a lot," says Rick Robbins, the deceased's grandson. "It tore his heart out."
In the fall of 1966, Margo Freshwater came to Memphis as a troubled teenager with a habit of attracting no-good boyfriends. Earlier that year, as a junior, Freshwater dropped out of Worthington High School in Ohio. She had gotten pregnant then tried to commit suicide, in part because of how the father of the baby reacted.
Freshwater grew up in a three-bedroom house in a working-class neighborhood of Worthington, a suburb of Columbus. When she was 5 years old, her father walked out on the family, leaving her alone with her mother and two brothers -- one older, one younger. Freshwater's mother, friends recall, was a caring, loving woman and did her best to raise the family. She sold real estate and kept a roof over the family's head, but, according to those who knew her, she had a drinking problem.
"The mother had problems," says Bob Briggs, who went to high school with Margo and her younger brother Tommy. "We knew she had a problem, and everybody was pretty much aware of it."
Tommy Freshwater, who now lives in Chillicothe, Ohio, says that his mother tried her best to give the family a good life. After a troubled youth, Tommy went on to get two master's degrees in social and behavioral sciences. "There were dysfunctions in our family," he says without elaboration.
Still, Margo managed to live what appeared to be a normal life -- at least up until the time she got pregnant. Her brother says she was a good swimmer and an excellent sprinter for the school track team -- an athletic gift that she relied on years later when she outran prison guards. A tomboy in high school, Margo was neither popular nor unpopular, choosing to spend her time with a small circle of friends.
"I think Margo was too smart for high school," her brother says. "That's why she dropped out."
Margo kept her baby boy for two weeks before reluctantly giving him up for adoption. Soon after, she began seeing a new boyfriend who would change the course of her life forever. Having already served time for robbery in the Ohio state prison, Al Schlereth was not the kind of guy you'd want to bring home for dinner. Tommy describes him succinctly as a "thug." He also liked to gamble. But Margo cared deeply for him, and when he was arrested for armed robbery in Memphis, she took a 15-hour bus trip to come to his aid.
"I knew when she went to Memphis there would be trouble," her brother recalls. He was right. When she arrived in the Bluff City, Margo hired a chain-smoking, hard-drinking attorney named Glenn Nash to represent her boyfriend. A plain-looking man with brown hair and pale skin, Nash, 38, had been cleared earlier that year of two federal charges involving theft of money orders and treasury bonds. His law practice was in jeopardy -- he had nearly been disbarred years earlier -- and he was having money problems. As a way to help make ends meet, Nash also worked as a karate instructor.
Nash met with Margo at the Hotel Claridge, where she was staying. She later recalled on the stand that when Nash arrived, he was already drunk. She tried to talk about the case, but the married attorney ordered a pint of whiskey and started to flirt with her. She shrugged him off, and he passed out on the bed.
Margo went home to Columbus but returned to Memphis within weeks, after Nash told her that he needed her help in a convoluted ploy that he promised would free her incarcerated boyfriend. Nash picked her up from the bus station and found her a baby-sitting job with a couple who would provide her with room and board. Within a week of her return to Memphis, she and Nash became intimate, she later testified in court.
While it might have been an odd turn of events for Margo to start sleeping with her boyfriend's lawyer, she was only 18 years old and vulnerable. As it turned out, Nash didn't need Margo's help with the case, and she decided to return to Columbus. But Nash wouldn't let her go.
Only two people really know what happened the night of December 6, 1966 -- when Hillman Robbins' life ended in a series of gunshots. One of those people, Glenn Nash, has been found to be legally insane. The other person is Margo.
The state Corrections Department is not allowing Freshwater to talk to the media, so her trial testimony about what happened that night is all there is.
That afternoon, Nash had gone to visit her at the house where she was baby-sitting. When he arrived, Nash asked her if she had any whiskey. When she said she didn't, he told her that he was going to go get some. Freshwater wanted to get out of the house and asked him if she could join him. He said yes, and she brought the baby along.
The two visited the Square Deal Liquor store, where the brutal murder occurred hours later. Prosecutors later alleged that Nash and Freshwater were casing the joint. Freshwater testified that when she went to the bathroom at the liquor store, Nash bought whiskey, and then they returned to the apartment. Simple as that.
When they got back, Nash quickly became drunk. Although she was still making plans to visit her boyfriend in prison the next day, Freshwater was going on a date with a neighbor that evening. Unaware of her plans, Nash parked outside, honking his horn. She got back in the car and they argued about his wife, who had learned of the affair.
Nash then wanted to get some more whiskey, and when Freshwater asked to get out of the car, he wouldn't let her. Shortly afterward, he drove away and clipped a telephone pole. She then told him, "I'll drive before you kill us both."
They drove back to the Square Deal Liquor store, and Freshwater followed him in, hoping to get the drunk Nash in and out quickly so she could go back home and get ready for her date. But Nash had other plans. Nash told Robbins to hold up his hands. "This is a holdup," he said. Freshwater testified that she was stunned. Nash told Robbins to put the money in a bag, and the three of them went into a back room. She said that she argued with Nash, telling him that this was "insane." A customer walked in, and Nash ordered Freshwater to pretend she was an employee.
Under cross-examination, Freshwater was asked why she didn't tip off the customer. She replied, "I didn't want to die."
After she waited on the customer, she returned to the back room, and Nash walked to the front of the store. She noticed that Robbins was tied up. She testified that she tried to free him. But Nash slapped her around a few times and said, "Didn't I tell you I would kill you if I caught you trying to do something I told you not to do?" Freshwater's reply, according to her testimony: "Yes, but please don't kill me."
Nash then had Freshwater go to the car, and as soon as she did, she heard a series of loud noises. "When it finally registered in my head what it might be, I tried to decide whether I should run, whether I could get away from him or not," she later testified. "He came out and told me to get in the car behind the wheel."
Freshwater testified that she began to cry and that he warned her that if she left him and went to the cops, the customer that she waited on would be a witness against her. He also told her that he used two guns to implicate her, something that Nash has corroborated.
The couple fled to Olive Branch, Mississippi, where they stopped at a hotel. The two had sex, which the prosecution later used as evidence that Freshwater was in on the robbery and that she was never afraid of Nash. For the next three weeks, they drove around the Southeast, staying in motels or in their car, often telling people they were husband and wife.
Two more people were murdered while Freshwater and Nash were on the run. On December 18th, the two checked into the Holiday Inn in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Later that evening, Nash allegedly shot and killed Ester Bouyea, a convenience-store clerk, putting a bullet through her neck. His fingerprints were found on a grocery cart. Freshwater was seen at the store as well, but Florida authorities had no interest in prosecuting her for the murder. They only wanted Nash.
Just over a week later, the two were spotted walking in the rain without an umbrella in Millington. They called a cab, and the driver, C.C. Surratt, took them across the state line into Mississippi. The driver was later found dead, shot in the back of the head.
Later that day, the two were arrested after boarding a bus in Greenville, Mississippi. According to newspaper reports, they were smiling at each other shortly after they were handcuffed.
Later, Nash confided to inmates at the county jail that he killed Robbins, Bouyea, and Surratt. Nash also later told a physician treating him that he killed all three people because he needed the money. Subsequently, he told the psychiatric staff at a Mississippi hospital that he went on his killing spree because the victims were members of the bar association or a law-enforcement agency. Nash had been under investigation by the Memphis and Shelby County Bar Association.
Nash ultimately was found incompetent to stand trial in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Florida. He spent 15 years in a series of mental institutions. But in the early 1980s, a Florida facility released him, and he returned to his modest home in West Memphis. Nash was deemed no longer to be a danger to himself or others. But a court never ruled that he was competent to stand trial for any of the three murders for which he had confessed. He remains free to this day.
Inside the Shelby County district attorney's office, there is a voluminous file on Glenn Nash stuffed with relevant newspaper clippings and court documents. In brief after brief, state prosecutors tried to make a case against the confessed murderer, but they could never convince a court that Nash was competent to stand trial. Even after he was released from a mental hospital into society, prosecutors couldn't take Nash before a jury. And the fact that Freshwater is back in prison hasn't changed the fact that Nash will continue to enjoy his freedom.
"We can't make a case; we've already made a case," says deputy district attorney James Challen. "We went forward with the case over 30 years ago, and he was indicted, but it was decided that he wasn't competent to stand trial." Challen says he knows of no new plans for the state to attempt prosecution.
In the 1970s, when Tennessee prosecutors tried in vain to prosecute Nash, they stated in court papers that they believed the homicidal lawyer had concocted the bizarre motive about the victims being members of the bar association just to make people think he was insane. They also said that Nash was extraordinarily intelligent. In fact, he had such a formidable mind that while incarcerated in the months after his arrest, Nash carried on seven games of chess simultaneously by mail -- even though he did not have access to a board or chess pieces. He was able to remember where the pieces to all of the games were.
"It is simply the State's theory that Nash is a very clever individual who, through his reading and observations while confined in the mental institution, can convincingly present himself as insane," a state brief against the lawyer read.
Although Nash confessed to the murders, Freshwater was tried in Mississippi for the cab driver's killing. Two trials, however, resulted in hung juries. She was then released to stand trial in Memphis for the murder of Robbins. (Florida authorities never prosecuted Freshwater for the murder of the grocery-store clerk there.)
Twelve men sat on the jury and once again heard stories of Freshwater's promiscuity, some of which were foolishly introduced by her own lawyer. But the trial seemed to be going all right for the defendant. In fact, state prosecutors didn't challenge Freshwater's testimony that Nash was the triggerman -- if anything, they substantiated it. Even a star witness for the prosecution, a barely literate ex-con named Johnny Box, testified that when he and Freshwater were in jail together, she confided to him that she was scared of Nash. He then asked her if she shot Robbins, and she told him no.
The state's case rested on the fact that Nash and Freshwater were lovers. Based on that, the state argued, she was clearly a motivated and willing accomplice. It didn't matter whether she pulled the trigger. According to the law, an accomplice in the course of a murder is just as guilty as the triggerman. The prosecutor even referred to Freshwater as "Bonnie," the infamous gangster Bonnie Parker of Bonnie and Clyde fame.
On February 6, 1969, the jury found Freshwater guilty of first-degree murder and handed her a sentence of 99 years. According to The Commercial Appeal, the verdict stunned Freshwater. After all, the two Mississippi juries, both hung, were dealing with essentially the same kind of trial as the Memphis jury.
A year later, the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals upheld her conviction. A few months after that, Freshwater escaped from prison and began a new life. n
To be concluded next week. A version of this story originally appeared in the Nashville Scene.
Comments (10)
Showing 1-10 of 10
Add a comment
this article contained a lot of good factua information. this case needs to be reopened definitely. i would like to see updated information here. or at least articles published in 2004 or after. thanks, phil.
report 2 likes, 1 dislike like dislike
Posted by phil on 01/16/2007 at 2:23 PM
Re-open this case? How dare you or this biased rag question a jury's decision made 30 years ago without even a shread of new evidence after only reading this sob story. How gullible can someone be to read this slanted misrepresentation of facts and form an opinion with no regards to the victim's family.
report 4 likes, 1 dislike like dislike
Posted by Jacob on 08/09/2008 at 8:05 AM
this poor women shouldn't be behind bars! i have meet one of her children and can't see why this women is so bad. she was a naive 18 year old who followed a man she probley thought she loved and stuff happened and she got scared. it seems to me that scumbag guy needs to live up to his mistakes and get her innocent.i understand the familys who lost there loved ones can never get them back, that doesn't mean that another family should lose there loved one to life in jail. i work with margo's child (an adult now) and i think she was turned out great, so how can this lady be so bad?? this case should really get reopened! i think this story really says how stuff happend, nail the jerk instead of the innocent women!!!!!
report 1 like, 6 dislikes like dislike
Posted by Deanne on 09/25/2008 at 9:30 PM
"18 year old who followed a man she probley thought she loved and stuff happened" Under the law she is just as guilty as he was. Why should women get special privileges in crime. What happened to women's liberation that you bleeding heart liberals always preach about.
report 4 likes, 0 dislikes like dislike
Posted by Calvin on 09/26/2008 at 10:53 AM
This poor woman. I seen her case on Unsolved Mysteries, and I thought to myself while watching it, "Why in the world are they looking for her"? Let her live her life in peace. It's really amazing that they want someone like her off the street, who in the 32 years she's been "free" she hasn't even got a speeding ticket. She knew she got a bum deal, that's why she escaped, and rightly so. This woamn needs an appeal, and a new trial. In the 1960's people were so uptight, and it said the jury consisted of all MEN. Yeah, this woman needs to be released TODAY. ---Christopher J. Sorick ---Omaha, Nebrasaka
report 1 like, 6 dislikes like dislike
Posted by Christopher Sorick on 10/18/2008 at 9:28 AM
Go to mccartorfund.org for the most current update.
report 0 likes, 2 dislikes like dislike
Posted by wymccrt on 07/09/2011 at 2:48 PM
Go to mccartorfund.org to see the most current update.
report 0 likes, 1 dislike like dislike
Posted by wymccrt on 07/09/2011 at 2:49 PM
I have read transcripts and parts of the legal documents regarding this case and this article is not a "misrepresentation" of the facts. It is in fact quite accurate in its retelling of the events of the past.
report 2 likes, 1 dislike like dislike
Posted by Reader on 09/29/2011 at 1:31 PM
Freshwater was in on at least THREE murders across the southeastern United States. She was an admitted willing participant in the crime spree, and should have been kept in jail. To have Nash locked up for 15 years is too little for the serial killing spree that these two scumbags went on. Both sentences are a travesty. There are people in jail for longer sentences for much smaller crimes! Where is the justice for the devastated families??
report 7 likes, 1 dislike like dislike
Posted by lf judge dredd on 11/05/2011 at 4:40 PM
One of the victims was my grandfather- It is disgusting to me that this woman, no matter how "quietly" she has lived her life the last thirty years, served nearly no time in prison, meanwhile these three families were all ripped apart. I was absolutely appalled to come across her Facebook today and see her smiling face, and postings about the need for kindness. The hypocrisy. Disgusting.
this outline does not follow chronology
rough outline, don't worry about the spelling, etc
1 arrive at Jewish Hospital in St. Louis following about four days after St. Lukes
2022-dec-30, 12:30 pm
I have created a separate html web page for this section as had the case gone to trial - and had state asked the simple question, "Have you ever seen this small silver derringer before?" Do you know why this derringer was left on the liquor store counter top?" The answer would have been YES, and YES, because I have never been masochistic and was not about to screw my life for Glenn W. Nash.
i.am.in.kansas.city.mo.hospital.html
2. Travel to KC to escape from having to go to court after driving with bogus Arkansas driver license.
3. I Visit general hosp KC, psychiatric unit
4. the derringer episode
a form of sucide is attempted
b fedral law becomes a problem
c i come up with solution
5. commitment
6. i meet the catatonics, the hysterical woman, the psychotics, etc., a full display of the kooky world of the hosptial for the insane
7 i take the psycho battery of tests which i had told and taught Nash about
8 I see squashed bugs, etc in the The Rorschach ink blot test
9 I read "The Oddessey" by Homer lent to me by the resident MD. I conclude "all life is an oddesy, a series of adventures" Dr. Harte agrees. He is regularly visiting me while I am in the kook ward.
10 getting in is easier than getting out. Hosptial says he is too sick to release.
a i get to wear a straight jacket. life does not always turn out like we expected
b i get to converse with J.P. Morgan - who really thinks he is
c i get to play some poker with some interesting players
d i remember the movie "snake pit"
e FLASH BACK
brentwood jr high, academic disaster.
start painting landscapes.
i give up. real close call. near miss. 4 days in st. luke
to Jewish Hosptial, St. Louis, commitment for one month
e.1 St. Louis Academy. Jesuits from St. Louis University are teachers. changes everything - at conclusion of 8th grade i test freshman in English and high in all subjec
ts but math. i am still way behindf, St. Lousis Academy is forced closed for good.
g. Mr. Sacks gives it a try with a school above restaurant. i do quite well and catch on to the science subjects but math is still a drag
f. school closes, not enough money not enough students
g I go to university city high school for very short while but hate every moment of it. I turn 16 and say 'fuck it" and go home and paint the portrait b&*w of the man in distress and agony. Later I give to S. for payment in helping a friend in a bind.
h. start Judo. junk cars, etc. do things but avoid getting caught.
typing class is offered in summer and i take it up. ruth suggestion. smart decision.
j i get BSA motorcycle
h the girl on the horse, misinterprets situation, we all get arrested,etc. court etc.
I get called up by draft for medical exam. Vietnam lurks
thanks to dr. sim beam & dr. harte i get 4f - i thank the Lord
i move to memphis
i make deal with local karate school. i will teach judo in exchange for karate lessons. done
several friends come back home in low bid government caskets.
Initially I believe, as millions did at the time, that we were fighting the communists to save the world.
i meet nash - become good friends, go to many of his criminal trials, he teaching me some aspects of researching law, etc. he wants to know all about psychiatry,etc. I study as much as I can on subject with books from University City library. i figure the psychiatrists study me i will study them and what its all about.
vocational school
. grover, sgt air force
Glenn Harbor, air force ret. officer gets me on track with the math stuff.
mr. alexander, chief petty officer, navy, ww-2, action in pacific. teaches the more advanced class in electronics. all business. but i start learning aspects of trouble shooting step by step, etc. circuit analysis, etc.very smart man but keeps his distance. all business. lives in millington near the navy base.
larry hazen, 3rd class pettty officer, i learn about a school & b school and get to see up close the phantom jets, etc as he is avionics tech. He teaches me the Navy poem for remembering the color code for reading capacitors and resistors and coils, etc. It goes like this, "Bad boys rape our young girls but violet give willing for gold and silver.
0 = Black bad
1 = Brown boys
2 = Red rape
3 = Orange our
4 = Yellow young
5 = Green girls
6 = Blue but
7 = Violet violet
8 = Gray gives
9 = White. willinglyfor
gold = 5% accuracy
and
silver = 10% accuracyWith this jingle embedded in my mind, now near 60 years and yet still retained fresh in my mind, I decide to become an electrical engineer and join the Navy if I can get around the 4F label
i re-think about communism and start to study it but resources are scant, nothing available but short wave radio. i listed regularly to radio havana, peking, moscow, et.
more later
-
11 hospital team says results of tests and evaluation indicate i need more treatment
12 ruth must come to the hospital to get me out. i feel very bad
13 living at ymca for a while
14 i head back to Memphis. it is bitter cold outside. i had forgot to reinstall the radiator thermostat.
15 i drive and drive the long trip from KC to Memphis
16 i pull over about 100 miles from Memphis and take a cat nap which rejuvinates me
17 i finally get to Edward st.
-
-
arrest
court a lawyer ruth has hired comes to defend me. Nash is also there. Ruth's lawyer comes with bandaged up foot and a crutch. He tells me, Make a decison who you want to represent you. I chose him. Nash leaves the court room.
jail - I l learn who the Captain is and who the Governor is.
life changes
go to notes for these events
I decide to go for broke, i decide long term to get out of karate business and see if i can make it in engineering school and start to prepare for that goal. judo and karate give me the discipline to stay with it. i don't kid myself. it's not going to be easy. but neither was learning martial arts.
i complete correspondence school, high school stuff, take ged and pass
i get tutoring in math from glenn harbor who then goes on to teaching math at State Tech Institute College
i enroll in state tech to take more advance math, concurrently i get books on the ACT test and study study it
with the math courses i take at State Tech I get enough credits that i am accepted into ut engineering after taking the act test in cookville, tn and doing better than needed total schore but math is still weak.
I learn a new jingle, "I.m a rambling wreck from Tennessee Tech but one hell of an engineer. But chose U.T. for reasons other than being "one hell of an engineer". I chose engineering because I knew if I succeeded it meant a good job and pay. My real academic interest was history and political economy. It remains my main interest in life.
James Meredith is shot by sniper in approx 1966.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/james-meredith-shot
James H. Meredith, who in 1962 became the first African American to attend the University of Mississippi, is shot by a sniper shortly after beginning a lone civil rights march through the South. Known as the "March Against Fear," Meredith had been walking from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi, in an attempt to encourage voter registration by African Americans in the South.
Nash tells me he will successfully defend the shooter and the defense will be that the shooter was "hunting out of season." I thought to myself, "diabolically clever but very cynical too."
I decide to follow the marchers down to Jackson, MS, not as part of the march but to observe and see what it was all about. I saw for myself an aspect of humans I had not known before. In Jackson, MS I watch Stokely Carmichael give an interview to some TV reporter. I thought to come up to him and ask him questions but didn't. Somewhere in this website I have elaborated on this to some degree.