JONES COUNTY, GA - BIOS Katherine (Kate) Lena Simmons ***************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/ga/gafiles.htm *********************** This file was contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by:Tom Roberts KATHERINE (KATE) LENA SIMMONS KING Katherine (Kate) Lena Simmons was born in GA April 28, 1877, and died Aft. 1971 in MI. She was the daughter of Marcus DeLafayette Simmons and Sara Jane Johnson. She married James Andrew King January 21, 1894 in Jones Co, GA. He died December 12, 1912 in Jones Co, GA. She was the sister of Martha Malinda Simmons Roberts. On the afternoon of December 12, 1912 Jim King, Kate's husband, went bird hunting near his home in Round Oak, Jones Co, GA. When he had not returned by dark Kate notified his neighbors and they went on a search for him. Around 2:00 AM a friend discovered his body in the woods about a mile from his home. Someone had shot him with his gun and tried to make it look like an accident or suicide. On December 27, 1912 the sheriff arrested Nick Wilburn for his murder. Nick [age 25], Jim and Kate's oldest daughter's brother-in-law, first claimed his innocence. On the day after Nick's arrest a rumor spread that a mob was going to remove Nick from jail and lynch him. The sheriff, therefore, took Nick and Jessie Barber, a black man held as a witness, to Macon for safety. According to the sheriff, during transit a frightened Nick confessed. Nick claimed Mrs. King told him several months ago to kill her husband and she would give him $600 in insurance money. Nick claimed that he followed Mr. King into the woods, took away his hunting gun, shot and killed him. Nick tried to make it look like a suicide. After the confession the sheriff obtained a warrant for Kate King. He arrested Kate at her sister's home the next morning and placed her in the Jones County jail. Upon her arrest she reportedly fell to the floor and screamed " My God, my poor husband! Why I loved him better than anything in the world. My God, what will I do with my poor little children?" Once she was at the jail she allegedly confessed. She claimed that she and Nick first started seeing each other in March 1912 and that she felt sorry for him because he did not have any friends. They would meet when her husband was not at home, as well as, sometimes in the woods. Since her husband had a life insurance policy, they plotted to kill him for the money. Kate claimed that first they plotted to put strychnine in his whisky. Nick did that but when Jim King came home sick, Kate gave him something to throw up. Next they planned to shoot him with his own gun during one of his hunting trips. Around 3:30 PM on December 12 Jim left the house to go hunting for birds and about one hour later Nick went after him. She confessed that she could not meet her God with a lie on her lips. Nick Wilburn's trial held in Jones County began on Thursday October 22, 1913, and he pled not guilty. The state witness Jessie Barber, the black man living on the King farm, testified that he met Wilburn in the woods near the scene of the homicide and Nick asked him if he knew where Mr. King had gone. He, also, indicated he saw Nick and Mr. King walking together in the woods and later heard a gun shot. He claimed that he saw Wilburn and Mrs. King in compromising positions on two occasions. Another witness, the now ex-sheriff testified as to Nick's confession. Fred Step, a saw mill man from North Carolina, stated that Nick had confessed to him some hours after the killing and that he and Nick had rearranged King body. There were no defense witnesses, but Wilburn's lawyers pled his case to the jury for over four hours. Judge Park charged the jury on Kate Simmons King and Nick Wilburn Saturday, October 24, 1913 and within an hour the jury returned a verdict of guilty without recommendation. The judge sentenced him to be hung. The Georgia Supreme Court affirmed the verdict and the United States Supreme Court did not take the case. After the Governor refused to intercede the county executed Wilburn on the top floor of the Jones County courthouse on June 12, 1914. He was the last man hung in Jones County for a crime. On the following Monday morning October 26, 1913 the trial of Kate King began. She entered the courtroom on the arm of her brother Sid Simmons looking frail, forlorn and dressed in black. Kate pleaded not guilty. Dr. White testified that Mrs. King inquired of him about strychnine and the rest of the state witnesses testified as they did in Nick's trial. The only defense witness was Kate. Her testimony was as follows. "Gentlemen of the jury, I was a good woman, a faithful wife and loving mother to my children until this man, Wilburn, came into my home. It was a year ago January. He came to my home and said he didn't have a friend on earth.... Yes, Nick we will be your friend.... In March of last year, Mr. King was away from home and all my children, except the two baby boys, and he came to my home and stayed nearly all day, and he said nothing improper to me until late in the afternoon.... I was leaning over near the bed, looking for something I was after for my small children, and I felt somebody push me near the bed, and I screamed for Wilburn, knowing he was in the front room of my house, and the man holding me in his arms said this is Nick. I said for God sakes turn me loose. I am a frail and delicate woman, I have never been strong and from that day to this day my life has been hell on earth. I was so horror stricken, I felt I could hardly look my children in the face or my husband, and when he would caress me I was crazy to tell my husband what had happened, but didn't have the courage, for Wilburn had told me, if I ever mentioned it he would kill both me and my husband." "I didn't fear for myself, I felt I'd rather be dead than alive. I would beg my husband to keep Wilburn away from my home and he would only laugh at me when I mentioned it.... I was absolutely defenseless and he forced his attentions on me. The second time he told me if I didn't submit, he would kill both me and himself, and in my fear and weaken condition, I made what I realized to be my fatal mistake, by allowing him his way, but God in Heaven knows I would rather have stuck my hand in the fire than have submitted to his embraces, but I knew I would lose the respect of the community and I knew my husband, if he knew what this man had done, would kill him. I got to the point where I could not pray. Everything seemed blank. I began to think my children no longer loved me, and I knew in my heart I didn't deserve their love and I knew if my husband ever realized it, I would be despised if he realized the life I had lived.....Wilburn would force me to give him any little amount of money I had in my house....on this fatal day my husband took the gun after dinner and went hunting and Wilburn.....left going in that direction." "Gentlemen, I know I have done some things wrong, but I am not responsible for the death of my husband. Wilburn made his own plans and carried them out. Of course, he told me the evening he passed my house what he was going to do, and I begged him to spare my husband's life. I was in his hands. He had everything over me. I was entirely alone and in his hands with no protection on earth. He has not only taken my husband, he has taken my children from me and my relatives, and only one brother is left to me. He has wrecked my home and my children's lives." At noon on Tuesday the jury received the case. By 4:00 PM they reached a verdict of "not guilty." The judge openly disagreed with the verdict. After the trial she went with her brother Sid to Macon. He was the only family member that supported her while the rest of her family believed in her guilt. She said she had shamed her family and would not attempt to see them again. At some later date her brother put her on a train to Detroit, and she lived there the rest of her life. Family members said she worked as a housekeeper in Detroit. After her arrest three of her children were sent to Hephzibah Orphan Asylum in Macon and the other three were sent to live with family members in Jones County.69,70,71,72