Pearl Bryan

Pearl Bryan was a woman who was murdered in Fort Thomas, Kentucky in 1896. Due to the murder's gruesome nature, it achieved significant notoriety nationwide. More recently, there have been claims that her ghost haunts the Bobby Mackey's Music World located in Wilder, Kentucky.

Details of the murder

Pearl's body was found, headless, just behind what is now the YMCA in Fort Thomas, Kentucky. It is falsely suggested that the neck was cut "clean" with dental tools. Her boyfriend, Scott Jackson, was a dental student and was known to carry a large surgical knife that disappeared after the murder. Pearl was five months pregnant. Cocaine was found in her system (stomach).

The story goes that Pearl was the daughter of a wealthy farmer in Greencastle, Indiana. She had a boyfriend named Scott Jackson, a dental student in a downtown Cincinnati dental school at the time. According to rootsweb author Chris Ries, a second cousin of Pearl's, William Wood, introduced Jackson and Pearl, after Jackson and his mother moved to Greencastle, IN., from New Jersey.

Ries states Pearl confided in her cousin William that she was pregnant, and when Jackson was telegrammed by Wood about it, Jackson sent a telegram for Pearl, asking her to come to Cincinnati. She arrived with her belongings and leather valise in late January, 1896, at Union Terminal. Jackson met her there with his friend and fellow dental student, Alonzo Walling, who was from Mount Carmel, Indiana.

According to author Albert Stegman Fact|date=July 2007, they arrived downtown at 4th and Plum, then proceeded to walk up to 4th and Central, then to Elm, where they had a heated argument in public. Stegman relates employees of a nearby business overheard them and listened to everything they were saying. A black coachmen who ran a horse and hack business near Peebles Corner was told to pick up two men and a woman that night, at Legner's Tavern, at 4th and Plum Street. Apparently when word of the abortion idea came about, Bryan threatened to go home, but after much heated discussion on the streets, they drugged her at the Tavern by putting cocaine into her sasparilla drink.

According to Stegman, the coachman relates much of the route and what happened from there. They went over what is now the Taylor-Southgate Bridge, up York Street and through the heart of Newport. They then went through Wilder, Kentucky (passing the site of present-day Bobby Mackey's) to Alexandria Pike, and back around to Fort Thomas, where her body was found behind what is now the YMCA there, up on a hill and out of the way of the road. The coachmen dropped them off with the girl that night, and how they made it all the way back by foot is unknown. No one witnessed them that night or the next morning.

Her headless body was found shortly thereafter by a passing farmhand. Her body was identified by her shoes, as their maker was traced by authorities back to Greencastle, Indiana. Jackson was soon arrested based on the contents of the telegram to Pearl's cousin William Wood, and Jackson implicated Walling as the other man. Had Jackson not implicated Walling, it is unlikely that he would have become a suspect.Jackson was once involved in an embezling scandal during which he turned state's evidence against his employer in exchange for immunity. It is likely that he implicated Walling in hopes of creating a scapegoat against whom he could provide evidence.

The autopsy revealed a "clean cut" that possibly occurred before she was dead, due to the amount of blood present at the scene. Stegman reports a struggle was also evident. It is not known whether this was simply an abortion attempt gone wrong, or if the plan was to murder her all along, and removing her head would simply prevent her from being identified, especially as she was from out of town.

Stegman goes on to say the bartender at Legner’s Tavern was asked by Jackson to hold the leather until they came back for it. Although he questioned its heavy contents, he agreed, without knowledge of what was inside. The theory here is that they planned to use the incinerator at the nearby dental school basement to get rid of her head, but they needed to wait until the building was open again on Monday to do it. They asked the bartender to hold it for them, confiding that it contained a lady's belongings.

The murderers' execution

Jackson (28 years old) and Walling (21) were hanged in early 1897 for Pearl's murder in 1896, behind what is now the Newport Courthouse on York Street, just south of the Taylor-Southgate bridge. They were the last people hanged in Newport. The gallows located behind the courthouse were torn down following the execution.

The case was very popular nationally at the time, provoking citizens to take souvenirs from the crime scene (even branches), and buy Pearl Bryan "merchandise" from a store near the Newport Courthouse. One report says the trial was "theatrical." The actual double-hanging was urged to be done hastily due to the threat of a public lynching by friends and relatives of Bryan. Ries relates that even during a jail break, the two men remained in their cell due to fear of a public lynching, and were heavily protected.

Ries offers the following depiction of the double hanging in Newport:

At 11:40 AM, the trapdoors opened and Jackson and Walling were hanged. The deputy sheriff (Pullman) who helped prosecute and arrest the two witnessed the hanging, and was quoted as saying that when the trap doors fell, they did not die immediately, and were left to slowly choke to death for about "ten minutes." The deputy related that it was one of the few times he had to turn his head, including the time he found Pearl Bryan's mutilated, headless corpse, in Fort Thomas.

Bobby Mackey's Music World haunting

Bobby Mackey’s Music World is a popular country music club, fashioned and opened during the late 1970’s as an "urban cowboy" type of bar, complete with mechanical bull. Located in Wilder, Kentucky, the site was originally used as a slaughterhouse in the early 1800’s. It was later torn down and a roadhouse was built in its place that took on various names and ownership until Bobby Mackey purchased it in 1978. It has become notorious as a site for ghost hauntings, and one of the most famous of these ghosts is that of Pearl Bryan.

According to legend, Walling and/or Jackson cursed the grounds Pearl was killed upon, and said they would be back to haunt everyone involved in prosecuting the case, as well as the area where Pearl's body was found. Doug Hensley’s book, "Hell's Gate", purports that the two men were Satan worshippers, and used the old well in the basement of Bobby Mackey's, when it was still an abandoned slaughterhouse in the 1890’s, to sacrifice animals and perform rituals with others. It is not known where Hensley obtained this information, other than rumors and local legend. The body was located more than two miles away, and the two men were never known to frequent the site or know of its existence. Troy Taylor mentions the occult connection with Bobby Mackey's in one of his writings, but does not cite a source or reference.

A slightly different iteration of this legend claims that the men specifically cursed Pearl's severed head, and mentioned it as another location that they would come back to haunt. The head reportedly turned up missing at some point during the course of the investigation, and police were never able to recover it. It is thought that the head may have been used in a satanic ritual on the site of the old well. Many police believed the well to be the most likely location of the missing head, although nothing has ever been found there and the head remains missing to this day. Some believe the well is a portal for demons and is a convenient site for them to manifest.

External links

* [http://purl.oclc.org/KUK/KDL/B92-139-29331474 Mysterious Murder of Pearl Bryan] author unknown, archived at the Kentucky Virtual Library
* [http://www.rootsweb.com/~kycampbe/piecespearlbryan.htm Pearl Bryan Murder] from Jim Reis' article "Pieces of the Past"
* [http://www.rootsweb.com/~kycampbe/legendpearlbryan.htm Legend of the Pearl Bryan Murder] from Troy Taylor's book "No Rest For The Wicked"
* [http://www.rootsweb.com/~kycampbe/pearlbryan.htm Pearl Bryan] a personal recollection by Albert Vinton Stegman Jr.