Southampton County Virginia USGenWeb Archives Newspapers.....Murders, 1958 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/va/vafiles.htm ************************************************ "Suffolk (VA) News-Herald," Vol. 36, No. 195, Mon., Aug. 18, 1958, p. 1 KILLS HIMSELF WHEN CAPTURED Slays 2 Women At Sedley, Kills Self Hours Later SEDLEY - Southampton County Sheriff T.B. Bell Monday believed he had all the details in hand in which two women were shot to death here late Saturday night by a North Carolina man, who some hours later killed himself. Sheriff Bell identified the victims as Mrs. Carrie Arnold, 35, of Roanoke Rapids, N.C.; Mrs Annie Jones Upton, 38, of Sedley, and Dan Peele, 50, also of Roanoke Rapids. Peele it was said had been warned by police and other officials to keep his distance from Mrs. Arnold. However, Peele followed her into Sedley and killed her and Mrs. Upton. The two women were slain by pistol fire as they stood on Mrs. Upton's porch in the center of this small Southern Virginia community. Peele killed himself about one half mile from the Upton home. According to Sheriff Bell Mrs. Arnold, accompanied by her husband, Will, a sister Mrs. Hattie Daughtry and Ralph Allwood, came here from Roanoke Rapids for a visit with Mrs. Arnold's cousin, Mrs. Upton. Peele followed, engaging in a fight with Allwood while enroute here in two automobiles. Later Saturday, according to an account given Sheriff Bell, Mrs. Arnold was called out on the porch by Peele. Mrs. Upton went along. The shooting followed. Mrs. Upton is believed to have been an innocent bystander. Peele escaped into the darkness. Sheriff Bell said he had been unable to find a clearcut motive for the slayings, but it appeared Mrs. Arnold was Peele's target and that Mrs. Upton was apparently an innocent victim. Roanoke Rapids police said Peele had given trouble previously by going to the Arnold home and causing a general disturbance and that he had been under a suspended sentence of 30 days for public drunkeness. Mrs. Arnold was hit seven times by bullets. Mrs. Upton was struck in the heart by a single bullet. About 10:45 p.m. as Upton and Arnold were eating in the kitchen, Mrs. Arnold was called out on the back porch. Mrs. Upton followed. Upton said he heard shooting and ran outside to find his wife and Mrs. Arnold both lying dead. Peele had fled in the darkness and disappeared through a nearby field. Sheriff Bell said he organized a posse, which searched throughout the night and finally located Peele around 5 a.m. Sunday about a half a mile from the Upton home. As members of the posse came to within about 10 feet of Peele, the sheriff said, Peele raised a gun to his head and fired. The sheriff said Peele died about 15 or 20 minutes later of a wound through the right temple. The automatic he carried had one jammed bullet left in it. "Why did Peele kill my wife?" Upton asked. "I wish I could have talked to him. He wouldn't have done it if I could have talked to him." Peele, an electrician, resided in Gaston, N.C., but worked in Franklin. Police said he was separated from his wife. Husband Of Victim Tells Vivid Story Of Slayings By ERIC DENTLER FRANKLIN - Here is chain of events as related to me by Roy Upton, of Sedley, who is employed as a logger for Ben Babb, and who was the husband of one of the two women victims slain in Sedley Saturday night which led up to the tragedy. Upton stood on the back porch of his home where the two women were slain as he related the story. He showed me two bullet holes in his screen door and one in an adjacent screen window. He said the bullet which went through the screened window was the one which killed his wife. Upton said that Mrs. Arnold along with her husband, Will Lee Arnold, her sister named Hattie and a man named Ralph Allwood, all of Roanoke Rapids, arrived Saturday evening at his house. He said that he had been told that Peele had followed the party from Roanoke Rapids, caught up with them at a crossing of the Meherrin River in North Carolina and had had a fight with Allwood. Upton said that Allwood, who weighs about 250 pounds, gave the 150-pound Peele a whipping. Upton said further that about 10:45 Saturday night he and Arnold were in the kitchen of the Upton bouse eating soup and crackers and that Mrs. Arnold, who was on the back porch, called Mrs. Upton, who was her first cousin, out on the back porch. As Mrs. Upton stepped on the back porch the firing began. Upton said that bullets entered the kitchen and that one bullet hit him in the pants leg and fell into the cuff of his pants and that another ricocheting bullet fell into the pants pocket of Will Arnold. He said that he had known Peele for 25 years and kept saying over and over, "Why did he kill my wife? If only I could have got to talk to him he never would have done it." Upton said that Mrs. Arnold died on the back porch by the kitchen door where she was shot but that his wife, Mrs. Upton, staggered over to a small shed on one side of the back porch and sat down on a packing case in the shed where she died. The Upton's have one son. A Sedley resident, J.O. Bulls, told me that Peele had shown him the murder weapon not ten minutes before the slayings. Bulls said that Peele told him he bought the weapon in Boykins for $4.50. All three of the bodies were taken to the W.J.M. Holland and Sons Funeral Home in Franklin. [photos, captioned:] SCENES OF SEDLEY SLAYINGS - At upper left Roy Upton, consoles his wife's dog, "Little Man." At upper right front of the Upton residence. Lower left L.R. Crumpler, of Sedley (right) points out spot on Cemetery Road where Dan Peele, the slayer lay dying after shooting himself. And at lower right Upton points out entrance of shed on back porch where the two women were shot to death. (Photo by Eric Dentler) ****************************************************************************** "Tidewater News" (Franklin, VA), Vol. 53, No. 44, Thurs., Aug. 21, 1958, p. 1 Spurned Admirer Kills Two Women In Sedley, Then Kills Himself * Had Been Seeking Pistol For Two Weeks By Ken Byerly, Jr. SEDLEY - A married woman went out with another man. Now she is dead, killed Saturday night in Sedley by the man who was not her husband. She didn't die alone. Killed along with Mrs. Carrie Arnold of Roanoke Rapids was Mrs. Annie Jones Upton of Sedley. They died in fusillade of bullets which trapped them on the back porch of Mrs. Upton's home in Sedley. Dan Peele, aged 50, of Roanoke Rapids was the killer. Several hours later, when approached by lawmen, he shot himself to death with the same pistol. According to Mrs. Jimmy Barnes, Peele had gone out with Mrs. Arnold in the past. When Mrs. Arnold began to spurn him he began causing trouble, visiting the Arnold home in North Carolina and causing disturbances. Said Mrs. Barnes, "Carrie Arnold wanted to be a good mother." She had three children. The youngest, aged 5 and 10, were in Sedley Saturday. Peele, who is separated from his wife, apparently planned the murder. For two weeks he had been trying to buy a pistol from a fellow employee working with him for the Tidewater Construction Company on the Union Bag-Camp expansion, according to fellow worker Russell Davis. Then around 9 o'clock Saturday night he stopped Franklin policeman Floyd Walls in Franklin to tell him that a car had forced him off the road and that it was "headed towards Sedley." He gave Walls the last three numbers of the license. As Roy Upton of Sedley later related, Mr. and Mrs. Arnold, Mrs. Arnold's sister, Hattie Daughtrey, and Ralph Allwood had all driven up to Sedley from Roanoke Rapids that afternoon for a social visit. According to Upton, Peele followed them and caught them at the Meherrin River bridge, where he fought with Allwood. Allwood, a 250-pounder, came out on top, probably adding to Peele's anger. Possibly Peele's stop in Franklin was an attempt to get revenge by having Franklin police nab the group for supposedly drunk driving. When he actually decided to use the gun nobody knows. Officer Wall later said that Peele did not appear to be drinking when he talked to him in Franklin. Two men saw Peele after he reached Sedley, gun in hand. Knocked Gun Away A colored man, Joe Sands, saw him and said he knocked the gun out of his hands. Then, perhaps illustrating the wild mental condition Peele was in, he asked Sands to count his money. Sands did and said later that Peele was carrying $300. Otis Bull [sic; Bulls] also saw Peele minutes before the shooting. Peele told Bull, "I'm looking for someone to kill." He also said that he had bought the gun in Boykins. Minutes later the two women were dead. The men were sitting around a kitchen table eating and Mrs. Arnold was standing on the back porch. For some reason Mrs. Arnold called to Mrs. Upton to join her. When Mrs. Upton walked onto the porch she walked to her death. Jimmy Barnes and his wife were lying in bed in their room next to the kitchen. They saw the whole thing. "Peele came around the corner of the building," said Mrs. Barnes. "He shot Mrs. Upton first. She screamed and ran into the pump house at the end of the porch. "He shot Mrs. Arnold, too, before she could move, and shot at her again as she bolted back through the screen door into the kitchen. "She hit the stove and fell next to the wall, where she died. They didn't find Mrs. Upton until some time later, when the officers arrived and began determining where everybody was. In Pump House "They found her slumped over a box in the pump house, dead. Mrs. Arnold said, 'Dan shot me,' when she fell in the kitchen before she died." Mrs. Daughtrey broke for the bedroom, where Mr. and Mrs. Barnes were sleeping when the shooting began. She didn't come out until Sheriff T.B. Bell arrived from Courtland. Ed McGay of Sedley was sitting with a bowl of soup in his hands when the fusillade began. A bullet broke the bowl. He dropped under the table for protection. Another bullet was imbedded in the cuff of Roy Upton's trousers after ricocheting off the stove. Still another spent bullet bounced from somewhere into the overalls' pocket of Will Lee Arnold. Witnesses said Mrs. Arnold's body had at least three bullet wounds. She was hit in the hand, chest and neck. Officers said she was hit seven times. Mrs. Upton was hit only once, near the heart. Peele fled into the woods behind the house after the flurry of shooting. Upton said afterwards, "If only I could have talked to him. He wouldn't have shot my wife." Next morning around 5 o'clock B.A. Bonds, sheriff from Northampton County in North Carolina, yelled to other members of a posse formed to search for Peele, "There's a man ahead." Lawmen moved in to make the arrest after Sheriff Bonds recognized the man and said, "Stop, Dan." Peele let the lawmen get within about 10 feet of him. Then he placed the automatic to his head and fired. There, in a ditch by the Rosemont Road near Sedley, he died. Murderer's Fellow Employees Call Him Quiet, Not A Ladies' Man What did the men who worked with Dan Peele at the Tidewater Construction Company's job at Union Bag-Camp in Franklin think of him? "He was mostly quiet," said J.R. Cole, who first met him about 18 months ago in Scottsville. "He kept to himself." Was he a ladies' man, since he had chased after one of the women he shot in Sedley, Mrs. Carrie Arnold? "No," said Cole, "he wasn't a ladies' man. He was wrinkled and he looked his age." Peele was 50. Another fellow employee of Peele, Russell Davis, said Peele had been trying to buy a pistol raffled off among the company men for two weeks. "He offered the man who won the pistol $40 for it," Davis remembered. Peele was a millwright for the Tidewater Construction Company, doing welding and other similar work. Married, he was separated from his wife. "It's funny," mused Cole, "When he left Friday the last thing he said was, 'See you Monday.'" [photo, captioned:] Fusillade Of Bullets Kills Two Tidewater News Photo Mrs. Jimmy Barnes of Sedley points to two bullet holes in the screen door on the back porch of the home in Sedley where two were shot to death Saturday night. She and her husband saw the whole thing through the open door of their bedroom which borders on the same porch. Her account of the shooting is in the story of the murder on this page. The walls of the kitchen also were pocked twice by bullets, a window was penetrated, a stove was hit and one stray bullet broke a bowl of soup in one man's hands, and another bounced into the overalls pocket of another man. *Additional information: Carrie (CROWDER; Mrs. Willie Lee) ARNOLD, cotton-mill worker, b. 21 May 1922, Northampton Co., NC, murdered 16 Aug 1958, interred in Jackson, Northampton Co., NC, m. 5 Dec 1942, Northampton Co., NC, D.Cert. 21583 (Jerusalem #8) states she was the daughter of Tommy and Martha (JONES) CROWDER. Annie (JONES; Mrs. Roy Melvin) UPTON, b. 6 Mar 1918, Northampton Co., NC, murdered 16 Aug 1958, interred in Jackson, Northampton Co., NC, m. 21 Jan 1933, Northampton Co., NC, D.Cert. 21582 (Jerusalem #7) states she was the daughter of Will and Laura JONES. Henry Daniel "Dan" PEELE, millwright, b. 12 Feb 1910, Halifax Co., NC, suicide 17 Aug 1958, near Sedley, interred in the PEELE family cemetery, Lasker, Northampton Co., NC, D.Cert. 21584 (Jerusalem #9) states he was the son of William A. PEELE, and husband of Ruth (BRIDGES) PEELE, of Fuquay Springs, NC. Willie Lee ARNOLD, cotton-mill worker, b. 10 Jun 1923, Brunswick Co., NC, d. 28 Nov 1968, Roanoke Rapids, NC son of Herman Lee and Ronie Ethel (BROWN) ARNOLD interred in Cedarwood Cemetery, Roanoke Rapids, Halifax Co., NC, D.Cert. 38181 Roy Melvin UPTON, b. 15 Jul 1912, Northampton Co., NC*, d. 8 May 1976, Franklin, interred in Poplar Spring Cemetery, Franklin, son of Cornelius Godwin* and Estelle (HARRELL) UPTON [ma (1892 - 1954) bu. UPTON cemetery, Rich Square, Northampton Co., NC] WW-II draft card *gives b. "Burtie" [Bertie] Co., NC, son of Cornelius Garden 2h/o Gladys Frances (COGGSDALE BABB) UPTON [3M. BLYTHE] [(1925-1984) bu. Franklin (SMP-G-259)] 2m. 03-16-1959 So.Co. {div. '66} 2h/o Alice Rachel (ACEY BOWDEN) UPTON (b. 1929 Nan.Co.) 3m. 03-26-1968 So.Co. (Nan.Co. M.Lic.) D.Cert. 76-013851 His obit ("Suffolk News-Herald," May 10, 1976, p. 2) is posted at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/va/southampton/obits/u135r1ob.txt Contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by File Manager Matt Harris (zoobug64@aol.com). file at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/va/southampton/news/19580818nh.txt