Gault 'trail of blood' ended in Needmore Cemetery.
Chiropractor’s crime spree ended in a furious gun battle adjacent to one of Pike County’s oldest buildings.
Part 2 of 2 (with more unpublished stories to come).
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Source material for this story came from articles published in approximately a dozen newspapers, written material from other sources and my own interviews.
The Gault story was Page-1 news across the nation. Photos are from the archives of The Montgomery Advertiser, Birmingham News, Dothan Eagle, Southern Star and Miami Herald.
This story originally appeared in the April 2021 edition of Troy Life magazine, an excellent magazine produced by the staff of The Troy Messenger. Part 2 of 2 …
A link to Part 1 can be found here.
‘Hundreds’ converge on Needmore Road
With Gault’s “trail of blood” now including two victims in Ozark, one in Troy and another man clinging to life in Clio, Gault proceeded down Needmore Road.
By this time, “hundreds” of law enforcement officers from throughout south Alabama were racing towards Needmore Road.
Steve Flowers was a teenager at the time and had a paper route for The Troy Messenger. His route included North Three Notch Street (which becomes the Banks Highway). Flowers remembers an endless line of law enforcement vehicles speeding past him.
An unknown number of civilians, following reports on police scanners or broadcasts by radio stations, were also driving to the area.
According to a 2002 story by The Messenger’s Jaine Treadwell, among those listening to the police scanner was Youngblood’s middle son Tommy, then 11. As reports came in suggesting possible grave danger to his father, Youngblood’s son was told to leave.
Bryan Jones, a senior at Charles Henderson High School, also arrived at the police station where he heard a series of frantic radio transmissions.
Jones, who became a political science professor at the University of Texas, said he’d heard reports on WTBF that a bank robber was on the loose and went to Quarles’ Pool Hall to tell his friend Ed Walters the news.
Like most people in town, the teenagers knew Officer Youngblood - who they referred to simply as “Youngblood.” According to Jones, Officer Youngblood was “so open and friendly to all of us youngsters. He always seemed to have time for us.”
Jones and Walters immediately left the pool hall and walked the short distance to the Police Station.
After several minutes with no updates from Officer Youngblood, Chief Bull “knew something had gone wrong.” At some point, an unknown civilian picked up the mouthpiece of Youngblood’s police radio and reported that Officer Youngblood had been slain.
Officer Hayden Youngblood, who died a hero while protecting others, was the first Troy police officer killed in the line of duty since 1905. He left behind a widow, Fannie Lou Youngblood, and three sons - Charles, 16, Tommy, 11, and Doug, 8.
Jones was still at the police station when more shooting occurred, this time in a cemetery not far from the country store. Jones remembers hearing a series of gunshots on the police radio, and then, finally, someone saying, “We got him.”
‘What the hell are you doing here?’
David Johnson, 10 at the time, heard the same shots … with his own ears. After school, Johnson and a friend had walked to The Messenger’s downtown office where his mother Elizabeth was the paper’s circulation manager.
While waiting for his mother to get off work, reporter Elaine Carmichael ran through the office, saying that a bank robber had been cornered outside of town.
With camera in hand, Mrs. Carmichael, Johnson’s mother and the two children jumped into a vehicle and sped to Hickman’s Store, where they knew something had happened.
“I’d never driven in a car going that fast,” says Johnson today.
At Hickman’s Store, Mrs. Carmichael got out and went inside.
When she came back to the car, her face was ashen.
“I’ll never forget the look on her face,” said Johnson. Mrs. Carmichael told the car’s occupants Hayden Youngblood was dead on the floor inside. She also said someone in the store told her the murderer had died in a crash further down the Needmore Road.
As it was her assignment to take pictures for the paper, the foursome of two women and two children continued down the road.
Approximately three miles down the road they saw maybe six to 10 vehicles pulled over near the dirt road that led to Pleasant Hill Primitive Baptist Church.
The first person they saw was Dr. Jesse Hall Colley.
“He looked at us like we were from another planet,” Johnson vividly remembers today. “What the hell are you doing here?” Dr. Colley asked.
Mrs. Carmichael told Dr. Colley she was there to take photos of the car crash she’d been told had killed Gault.
“Don’t you hear that?” Dr. Colley asked.
They did then. What they heard was a volley of continuous gunfire erupting from the top of the 300-yard dirt road that ended at the church and its adjacent cemetery.
“I heard a lot of shots,” remembers Johnson.
He also remembers a station wagon, perhaps featuring Barbour County official insignia, pulling up near their vehicle. Four men jumped out of the car and immediately raced up the dirt road.
Johnson distinctly remembers that one of the men was wearing overalls with no socks and was carrying a Thompson sub-machine gun.
Mrs. Carmichael, complying with Dr. Colley’s command, drove back to Troy - her passengers now flat on the floorboard.
Final shootout
The first four law enforcement officers to arrive at the site of the final shootout were Sam Boswell, the warden of “Camp Troy,” Kemper Johnson, a special deputy of the Pike County Sheriff’s Department, and two Alabama state troopers - C. F. Merrittt and W.E. Myers from Crenshaw County.
The men had been notified by two civilians that Gault’s car had turned up the dirt road toward the church. Gault clearly did not know he’d turned onto a dead-end road.
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At the end of the road was the Pleasant Hill Primitive Baptist Church. With only 12 to 15 active members at the time, the church, built in 1842, was one of the oldest structures in the county.
The church - then as now - is adjacent to one of the most historic cemeteries in the county with many of the “pioneers of Pike County” laid to rest on its grounds. (Gravestones seen today include names like Lunsford, Morgan, Reeves, Dunn, Sessions and Powell). Many of the grave sites in the oldest section of the cemetery are marked only by rocks.
The original wood-timbered church was often referred to as the “rough log church” and had never had electric power. (It was razed the following year. A small, brick church that still remains today was built in its place).
Upon arriving at the building, the law enforcement officers saw Gault’s car parked to the side of the church.
They initially thought Gault might be holed up in the church. However one of the men soon spotted a man making a dash through the cemetery towards a patch of woods.
As Kemper Johnson told journalists at the time, “The four of (us) spread out. Boswell was behind a tombstone in the cemetery, one patrolman was behind a car, one behind another tombstone and I was behind an oak tree to the left side. All of us had carbines except Boswell. He was firing his .38 pistol.”
Boswell hollered at least once for Gault to surrender. His command was immediately answered by a series of gunshots from Gault’s .45.
“I was the only one who had a clear shot at Gault, but all four of us were firing at him,” said Johnson. At some point, “Gault was hit twice and after that he didn’t move. He just fell back on the ground.”
Still another report said that one of the highway patrolmen circled around Gault and killed him as he crouched behind a tombstone. Yet another report said Gault was killed just as he started to make another dash towards the woods.
Former Chief Reeves adds details …
Grady Reeves, a local attorney, was 11 years old at the time. He would later become chief of police for the TPD.
From veterans of the Troy Police Department, Reeves heard various accounts of what happened in the cemetery. He can also confirm one detail not mentioned in press accounts of the time.
According to stories shared with Reeves, early in the shootout Gault was attempting to hide in a large tin-covered outhouse at the rear of the cemetery. The officers peppered the out house with bullets, forcing Gault back into the cemetery where he took cover behind some headstones.
Reeves said he knows this story must be true as he visited the cemetery with a relative in the days following the event. He said he could still see a bloody hand print left by Gault on the door of the outhouse, which was full of bullet holes.
Reeves said the cemetery also included many mimosa trees at the time, which were also splintered in the gun battle.
Floyd Holland, one of the civilians from Clio, was wounded in the gun battle. Most reports said his injury probably came from a stray bullet fired by one of the law enforcement officers, while my father’s book said he might have been wounded in the leg by shattered fragments of a tombstone. Holland was hospitalized for one night at Beard Hospital in Troy and was released.
Even today, imprints caused by bullet impacts and chipped sections of gravestones reveal evidence of the furious gun battle.
Located on a bluff offering a beautiful view of rolling green hills and ponds, Pleasant Hill Baptist Cemetery was aptly named.
It was in this pastoral, peaceful setting that a series of violent and tragic events finally ended. By 4 p.m. on this hot day in May 1962 Dr. Eugene S. Gault’s body lay dead and cold in a field of tombstones.
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Postscript revealed this was not Gault’s first bank robbery
When they examined Dr. Eugene Gault’s wallet, law enforcement officers found $19 and, of all things, a membership card to the Alabama Police Officers Association. At the time of his death, four rounds of his .45 caliber pistol remained in the chamber. Officers also found at least one other clip of unused cartridges.
Law enforcement officers quickly learned that Dr. Gault was broke. This was surprising as it was also quickly learned that the same man had gotten away scot free in another bank robbery, this one on Dec. 31, 1960 in Auburn - just 17 months earlier.
The New Year’s Eve heist - the first in the history of Lee County - netted Gault $29,200 … the inflation-adjusted equivalent of almost $300,000 today.
How could a person go through so much money so quickly? Who was this “skilled” but peculiar man, a man whose wife (whom he’d abandoned 2 1/2 years earlier in New York state) told reporters abhorred violence and recoiled from causing any living creature pain?
(I also learned that in World War II Gault had flown more than 40 missions as a “belly gunner” of a B-24 bomber).
These questions (and other oddities of the Gault saga) will be addressed in upcoming stories.
Maybe the many curious details don’t even matter.
All that really matters is that, because of this man, three innocent men did not get to live beyond May 22, 1962. Two other men were nearly killed - and others could have been killed - in a senseless, desperate crime spree that’s still talked about today … and will probably still be talked about 60 years from now.
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Note: In today’s Reader Comments section, I’ll add many excerpts from contemporaneous reporting that, for space reasons, I didn’t include in this story.
Aside: In my research, I found one article which said the Troy Chamber of Commerce organized a fund to provide for the family of Officer Youngblood).
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(The Troy Citizen is Alabama’s first “Substack newspaper.” Readers will receive dispatches almost every day via e-mail or their Substack app. Subscriptions are available at no charge, although monthly or annual paid subscriptions are appreciated. Reader comments are welcomed.)
Troy Police Chief Curtis Bull wrote a letter seeking a retraction to two state newspapers that published articles quoting Bull as saying officer Youngblood "disobeyed orders" to not confront Gault.
Chief Bull comments:
“Its my opinion he gave his life to save the people inside the store,” said Troy Police Chief Curtis Bull. “He probably thought the gunman was going to take hostages.”
“We lost a fine officer,” ... Youngblood was “dependable and reliable and had an excellent record as a a police officer."
Bull stated that it was his belief that Youngblood was not attempting to make an arrest but to protect the occupants of the store.
"Reports were already out that the bandit had a woman hostage, and Policeman Youngblood went into the store warn and protect Mrs. Brantley. Whether the bandit would have entered the store to harm Mrs. Brantley no one knows, but in light of what he had already done, and the report that he had one woman as hostage … Youngblood certainly did the only proper and right thing when he went in the store protect Mrs. Brantley.
"... The bandit started up again, and Youngblood was at the front door of the store when the bandit came by or approached the front in his car ... Policeman Youngblood did the only thing he could have done, and he violated no order.
"Policeman Youngblood gave his life in the line of duty, and I request you correct your news story that he disobeyed an order."
More details on the shootout on a street in the middle of Clio's main business district:
(Chief of Police) Roberts … his lung punctured by the shoulder wound, staggered back.
“Bill didn’t fall,” his wife said. “He leaned against his car and walked two doors down the street to the doctor’s office.” - Sept. 9, 1963 - Dothan Eagle
Roberts was jolted a good six inches when the big .45 caliber bullet smashed into his chest.
But, with undaunted composure, he fired back, hitting his opponent in the head and knocking most of the fight out of him.
… Without warning, Gault rammed his right hand through the left window of his own car and fired his automatic pistol.
“It felt like somebody had hit me with a fist,” Roberts recalled. (“It knocked me back, but I shot at his head.”)
Blood spurted out of his face as soon as I fired, and he fell back inside the car. I thought I had killed him.”
Roberts laid his empty gun on the rear of his own car and reached into the cruiser in search of another weapon. Gault drove away.
“I don’t know how I hit him in the leg,” Robert said. “I was shooting at his head every time. Doctors tell me I was able to get off my first shot all right because the bullet that hit me had not taken effect.”
Roberts said he turned from the police car and walked toward a doctor’s office as soon as the shooting was over. His wife was the first to reach her husband. She and a service station operator helped him to the doctor’s office.
Note: Roberts was one of just two police officers employed by the town of Clio.