The Murders of Homer and Dee McClure

One could well imagine, driving down a country lane, perhaps in the middle of the night (but not necessarily so), coming upon an old tree at the bend of a country road. Perhaps the road cuts between two rusted fences, a farm field tall with grazing corn on either side. Perhaps there is a little, forgotten cemetery, gnarled and pitted and effaced headstones emerging like rotten teeth from the hardscrabble earth. Their faces may be worn until the inscriptions carved upon them can no longer be read. Who were they? The world no longer cares, stopped caring long ago.

Beneath yonder tree, two little tykes playing. Or, perhaps, just wandering around, perhaps looking confused. Both of them are dressed oddly as if they stepped whole from the pages of a history book, a time nigh-on a hundred years in the dust of ages. The concerned motorist might stop. Or perhaps not. Maybe they lived nearby, in a religious community of some kind.

Daddy, why did you hurt me like that?

The plaintive, forgotten wail of one of the little ghosts reverberates throughout the ages, the psychic "hidden channels" that can only be perceived by the sensitive. Both of these boys, you see, are long dead, a victim of the one who helped, quite literally, father them into this world. I know of no ghost story, personally, involving Homer and Dee McClure, of Marion, Indiana. I do, however, know of THIS STORY [1].

Jesse McClure was a thoroughgoing SOB who beat his wife senselessly. Escaping from him, she took up residence with her sister-in-law. Jesse, who had begun threatening to KILL his wife, was nonetheless soon released from jail in Elwood. Hiring a buggy, he went to his sister's home, demanded to see his wife, and was given the children instead.

Leaving angrily, he soon returned, asking again to see his wife, and again being rebuffed. He returned, according to the newspaper account, multiple times, each time being told that his wife, whose name is not given, would under no circumstances consent to see him.

Now boiling with rage, but still with his two children in the buggy, Jesse McClure drove out to a deserted country lane, near a clump of trees. Both boys were asleep in the bottom of the buggy.

He woke up two-year-old Dee McClure. Guileless, the little tot asked his father, "Daddy, what are you going to do?"

Jesse McClure, in an act of pure malicious revenge, covered the boys' eyes with his palm. Then he blew his son's brains out.

Next, he killed three-year-old Homer. He shot him in the head.

Curiously, he then laid the bodies of the slain tots upon the grass, in peaceful repose. He then drove to the jail, confessed the whole crime, turned himself in, said he was ready to die, and sat down and waited, one supposes, to be busted out of jail and lynched.

[Note. Marion, Indiana is famous for the lynching of two black men on the courthouse steps in the middle of downtown. The grisly and disturbing photo, which appeared in Alistair Cooke's America, is an incredible and horrific piece of photographic history. That particular lynching happened in Marion in 1930, on August 7th, to Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith. James Cameron, a third suspect in the murder of a white man and the alleged rape of his fiance, was spared due to the protestations of someone in the crowd who claimed his innocence. Later Able Meeropol would write the lyrics to "Strange Fruit," made famous by the vocalizations of the immortal Billie Holiday:

Southern trees bear a strange fruit,

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,

Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Of course, Marion, Indiana could hardly be called "Southern"!]

The Sheriff, realizing that, yes, most probably, Jesse McClure would be broken by a mob from jail and lynched, put him on a buggy and snuck him out the back as soon as angry neighbors began to gather. He was driven to a neighboring town before being put on a train to Indianapolis, and taken to prison there. He then stood trial for murder in Tipton. He was sentenced to life in prison.

His odd, final request in the matter was to see his "two little precious ones" buried. One wonders: Why? If he loved them so much, why did he snuff their lives out so mercilessly, in an act of pure, hate-filled revenge? What demon drove him? For that matter, what power of Hell is it that forces ANY man to such a horrible act as the murder of his sons?

Does the psychic malevolence unleashed by such a deed, the pain and terror and confusion of the murdered tots, reverberate, and echo throughout the years? Does that much terror and betrayal linger, like a psychic stench wafting under a clump of old trees, near a forgotten country road, year after year, decade after decade, with some sensitive souls, or even the unsuspecting, unwary occasional traveler able to pick up on it? The case itself is buried in the annals of forgotten criminal lore, resurrected only by the research of Bobbie Lee [1].

Are those two little ghosts still waiting and wailing, looking for someone to come along, give them a ride, and take them, finally, home?

Who could ever truly know?

Note. 1. Source of this account is the excellent book Play the Yellow Tape by Bobbie Lee (Self-published, 2007).