Southampton County Virginia USGenWeb Archives Obituaries.....Blythe, Margaret E., 1947 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/va/vafiles.htm ************************************************ MARGARET ETTA BLYTHE Young Woman, Wounded By Jealous Suitor, Dies Monday in Local Hospital Margaret Blythe, Bookkeeper For C.A. Cutchins & Son, Is Shot In Head Saturday By Ex-Policeman; Assailant Is In Suffolk Jail Awaiting Trial With a .38 caliber pistol allegedly stolen earlier in the day from the Veteran’s Service Station, corner Main Street and Fourth Avenue, Joseph A. Gay, 53, of Rocky Mount, N.C., formerly a member of the Franklin police force, fired a bullet through the head of Miss Margaret Etta Blythe, 24, while the latter was seated at her desk in the office of C.A. Cutchins & Sons, by whom she had been employed as a bookkeeper for a number of years. The shooting took place about 12:50 p.m. on Saturday, December 27, and the victim died in Raiford Memorial Hospital at about 3 o'clock Monday morning without having regained consciousness. There were no eyewitnesses to the fatal episode, the shooting occurring at a time when Samuel B. Cutchins, proprietor of the store, was at lunch, and the other employees, J.H. Boyd and Luther E. Barden, were in the rear of the building. They had left Gay in the office talking with Miss Blythe, neither suspecting, of course, that a tragedy was soon to be enacted. Hearing a sound which they took to be the noise of an exploding firecracker set off by some prankster, the two men walked towards the front of the building to investigate, Mr. Boyd reaching the doorway in time to see a man walking rapidly up Main Street away from the store and mingling with the crowd on the sidewalk. Mr. Barden, however, happened to glance through the window opening from the office onto the storeroom proper, and saw Miss Blythe slumped over in her chair. Calling to Mr. Boyd that Miss Blythe had been hurt, Mr. Barden went to her assistance, and he and Mr. Boyd placed her unconscious form on the floor. From the position occupied by Miss Blythe at the time of the shooting and the hole made in the wall by the bullet after it had passed through her head, it appeared that her assailant had stood behind her at the moment he fired the fatal shot. According to Police Chief W.L. Burrow, who was summoned to the scene by Mr. Boyd, the bullet had entered Miss Blythe’s head at the lobe of the left ear and without penetrating the brain, had emerged near the right ear lobe. Powder burns on the victim’s face indicated that the weapon had been fired from a distance of about three feet. The bullet was found on the floor nearby. Unrequited love was probably the motive for the shooting. The killer, who left Franklin police force about three years ago, was separated from his wife, who lives in Rocky Mount with their five children. It is alleged that he and Miss Blythe had been on friendly terms until recently, when she insisted that he cease his attentions; and according to rumor, he had issued threats against her. Since quitting the police force Gay had resumed his trade as a carpenter, working on various jobs here. Making his getaway in an automobile, the killer headed for Carolina, where he was picked up in Rocky Mount at the request of the local police. He was returned to Franklin on Sunday, and form here he was taken of Suffolk, where he was lodged in the Nansemond County jail. In a statement made to police in Rocky Mount and repeated to Chief Burrow of the Franklin force Gay admitted the killing, but he declined to sign a confession and refused to make any other statement without the advice of a lawyer. Meanwhile he awaits the action of the grand jury. The victim of the shooting was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Blythe, who reside on the Sedley road. She is survived by her parents, one sister, Mrs. Larry Overby, and one brother, W. Irving Blythe, both of Franklin. She was a member of Union Christian Church. Funeral services for Miss Blythe were conducted Tuesday afternoon at 4 o'clock at Union Church by Rev. B.H. Watkins and Rev. R.E. Brittle, in the presence of a large and sorrowing crowd. Interment was in Poplar Spring Cemetery. ****************************************************************************** Ex-Policeman Convicted Of First Degree Murder In Killing Of Young Woman Joseph A. Gay, Husband And Father, Faces Life Imprisonment For Shooting Bookkeeper On December 27 In Jealous Rage; Attorney Seeks To Have Verdict Set Aside. For Joseph A. Gay, ex-Franklin police officer, the primrose path led behind prison bars. The 53-year old carpenter and handy man, who has a wife and five children in Rocky Mount, N.C., was at eight o'clock on Tuesday night of this week found guilty of first degree murder in connection with the fatal shooting on December 27 of Miss Margaret Etta Blythe in the Main Street store of C.A. Cutchins & Sons, by whom she was employed as a bookkeeper. The jury in the Southampton County circuit court, after 45 minutes of deliberation, returned the verdict of "Guilty!" and recommended as punishment life imprisonment in the State penitentiary. The trial before Judge John K. Hutton began on Monday morning, with Commonwealth's Attorney Junius W. Pulley in the prosecutor's role and John M. Britt, Boykins lawyer, representing the defendant. Members of the jury hearing the evidence were Vernie R. Leigh, T.M. Grizzard, W.B. Ivey, N.W. Wills, R.L. Drake, J.H. Stephenson, C.D. Cobb, J.R. Ezelle, B.F. Babb, Jr., H.W. Williams, Walter Futrell, and James H. Darden. A crowd which filled the courtroom to capacity followed the proceedings with keen interest, the circumstances of the case promising testimony of a sensational nature. Members of the murder victim's family were present, as were relatives of the defendant, his wife remaining loyally at his side throughout the trial. First to be called to the witness stand was J.H. Boyd, an employee of C.A. Cutchins & Sons, who was in the store at the time of the shooting. He testified concerning the location of the office where the shooting occurred and the discovery of the victim's unconscious form slumped across the desk before which she had been seated. From the rear of the store he had heard a noise which he mistook for an exploding firecracker, and he had reached the front of the building in time to see a man leaving the store from the corner entrance and hurrying up Main Street. Then with Luther Barden, another employee, who had observed through a window of the office that Miss Blythe had been hurt, he went to investigate. (Miss Blythe lived several hours without regaining consciousness.) Following Boyd and Barden on the witness stand was W.L. Burrow, Franklin Chief of Police, who testified that while he and Gay were traveling together from Courtland to Franklin on the day after the shooting Gay had asserted that he had gone to the office where Miss Blythe was working in order to say goodbye. He had become angry when Miss Blythe declined to say why she had accepted the attentions of another man; and when she dared him to shoot her, he had fired a bullet into her head. The .38 pistol with which he fired the fatal shot he had secured, so Gay told Chief Burrow, because he had heard that two young men, in whose arrest some weeks before he had participated, were "out to met [sic; get] me." Chief Burrow testified that the men had threatened at the time of their arrest that they would get even with Gay. Testifying in his own behalf on the second day of the trial, Gay told of his coming to Franklin, of meeting Miss Blythe, of trips to Florida for the purpose of obtaining a divorce from his wife, and of securing the .38 pistol from a colored man in Camptown. (The prosecution had contended that the murder weapon had been taken from a desk drawer in the Veteran's Service Station, corner of Main Street and Fourth Avenue.) He denied the charge that one or two weeks prior to the shooting he had voiced a threat to kill Miss Blythe. The most sensational portion of his testimony was to the effect that when he had informed Miss Blythe of his intentions of returning to his home in Rocky Mount she had cursed him. This so enraged him that he lost his head and, on the impulse of the moment, he had shot her. The taking of testimony in the case was finished shortly after lunch on Tuesday. Following Judge Hutton's charge to the jury, the attorney for the Commonwealth reviewed the evidence for the jury's benefit and called for a verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree. Mr. Britt, who had been appointed by the Court to defend the prisoner and who had hoped only to save his client from the electric chair, asked for mercy, basing his plea on the absence of clearly established premeditation. After the jury had returned its verdict, with a recommendation of life imprisonment, the defense attorney moved that the verdict be set aside. Judge Hutton announced that he would render his decision on the motion, probably on Thursday, before formally sentencing Gay to the penitentiary. Margaret Etta BLYTHE, bookkeeper for C.A. Cutchins & Sons, Franklin, b. 1 Jun 1923*, Southampton Co., shot 27 Dec 1947, d. 29 Dec 1947, Franklin, interred in Poplar Spring Cemetery (Annex 2, Plot 219*), Franklin, 30 Dec 1947, "Tidewater News" (Franklin, VA), Vol. 42, No. 10, Fri., Jan. 2, 1948, p. 1; "Tidewater News" (Franklin, VA), Vol. 42, No. 19, Fri., Mar. 5, 1948, p. 1 *Additional information: Southampton County Historical Society {SCHS} Cemetery Project, Poplar Spring list: http://files.usgwarchives.net/va/southampton/cemeteries/psanx2.txt Her parents are buried in the same plot. Find a Grave Memorial #65543223 [no photo] D.Cert. 28563 (Franklin #132) gives b. 1 Jan 1923. Her father's obit ("Tidewater News," Jan. 16, 1958, Sect. I, p. 8) is posted at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/va/southampton/obits/b430f1ob.txt Joseph Alex GAY (1894 - 1970) was apparently granted clemency at some point. A WW-I veteran, he retired as a cabinet maker. He is buried in Pineview Cemetery, Rocky Mount, NC. His wife, Mamie E. (BARNHILL) GAY, div. him in 1947 in St. John's Co., FL. Contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Mrs. Bruce Saunders (bs4403@verizon.net), and re-formatted by File Manager Matt Harris. file at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/va/southampton/obits/b430m2ob.txt