295: Murder & Lynching in Early 1900s Tennessee w/ Kimberly Tilley

Most Notorious! A True Crime History Podcast

Erik Rivenes

True Crime, History, Education

4.7 • 2.8K Ratings

🗓️ 26 May 2023

⏱️ 86 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Chattanooga, Tennessee, 1906. When a young white woman is assaulted in a dark cemetery, the town erupts. Despite questionable evidence and a flawed trial, a black man named Ed Johnson is convicted of the crime and sentenced to death. Before he can be executed, the U.S. Supreme Court intervenes. Despite their order, a bloodthirsty mob attacks the county jail, and lynches Johnson.

The infuriated high court is determined Ed Johnson's murder will not go unpunished, and they charge Joseph Shipp, the county sheriff, with contempt. Desperate to save his political career and fearful of the reckoning he faces, the ambitious sheriff deteriorates under the strain of the case against him.

After failing to solve another shocking crime, Shipp does the unthinkable. He gambles on the ability of Dave Edwards, a notoriously violent inmate in his jail, to solve the high-profile cold case. Despite a pending trial for first-degree murder, the sheriff releases Edwards. It's not long until Dave's madness manifests itself, with dreadful consequences.

My guest is Kimberly Tilley, back for the fourth time to Most Notorious, this time to talk about her fascinating new book called "Grievous Deeds: The True Story of Four Years of Fury in Chattanooga, Tennessee".

More about Kimberly's historical research and writing here: https://oldspirituals.com/

Kimberly is also a co-founder of Pivot Discovery Career Services. If you're thinking about making changes to your work life, connect with Kimberly here: https://pivotdisc.com/

Our "The Poisoned Glass" interview from 9/5/19.

Our "Cold Heart" interview from 12/9/20.

Our "Has It Come to This?" interview from 4/3/22.

This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/4698315/advertisement

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome everyone to another episode of the most notorious podcast,
0:30.3	hope you are having a marvelous day. Thank you for staying subscribed and sticking with me
0:36.7	week after week. A great welcome back to Kimberly Tilly, who today makes her fourth appearance
0:46.3	on the most notorious podcast. She has broken the record now and in the lead.
0:54.4	Her fourth book released at the end of this past March is called Greedest Deeds,
1:01.9	the true story of four years of fury in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
1:08.1	Awesome as always to have you here Kimberly. Thank you for coming on.
1:12.7	Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be back.
1:16.4	Yes, yes. So you become known for writing about interesting cases that have happened in our
1:23.4	past not well remembered now. How did you uncover this one? It's funny because sometimes I'll
1:31.3	have to dig and dig for a story that I want to write about because I do like to find things that
1:37.6	other people haven't written about and forgotten cases, things like that. But in this particular case,
1:44.9	this story literally just fell into my lap. I was researching something from my mom on
1:51.6	an ancestry type of site. I was looking up Kentucky and in different areas and I came across
1:59.4	a little story about a guy named Dave Edwards. I read it and something about it just intrigued me.
2:05.6	It wasn't even very long or descriptive. I pulled the thread and I kept pulling and pulling.
2:11.9	And I was so fascinated by him and by his life. And then I had been writing his story for about
2:23.4	at least a few months. And then I realized he had a tie to a very famous story. Actually a pretty
2:30.5	close tie to it. And nobody had ever heard of Dave, but some people have heard of this other case
2:36.3	because it was very famous at the time and still is in legal circles. So it was just, I don't know,
2:44.0	it was just completely a lucky thing where it fell into my lap and it was just sort of the case of
2:50.2	a lifetime that I wanted to write about. That's great. That's great. So this story begins in Chattanooga,
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -677 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Erik Rivenes, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Erik Rivenes and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.