Amite murder, rape predated Hotard-Moate events
Near midnight on November 25, 1956, on a rural road just south of the Tangipahoa Parish line, a married man parked his car in a wooded area near Lake Pontchartrain and watched submarine races with his mistress. Someone from the dark woods opened the car door and fired a shotgun into the car, killing Thomas Hotard. His mistress, Audrey Moate, ran from the vehicle with the gunman in pursuit.
Near midnight on February 25, 1954, on a rural road one-half mile west of Amite in northern Tangipahoa Parish, a married man parked his car in a wooded area with his mistress. Someone from the dark woods opened the car door and fired a shotgun into the car, killing Merwin F. Kendricks of Kentwood. His mistress, Lillie Ford, ran from the vehicle with the gunman in pursuit.
Although law enforcement never found Audrey Moate, Lillie Ford told police her attacker raped her in the woods before running away with her purse. Afterward, the woman returned to the car, pushed the driver to one side, and drove to Shorse’s Medical Clinic in Amite. She arrived at the clinic just before two that morning and phoned the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office. Her companion died on the road.
The woman, Mrs. Lillie May Hemphill Ford, 26, told Deputies Hulon Simmons and Mervin Falcon that she and Kendricks, a 27-year-old working for Illinois Central Railroad, both separated from their spouses. Near 11:30 on the Thursday night that Kendricks died, the two sat in the front seat of Kendricks’s five-passenger coupe, parked on a country lane in a sparsely inhabited area. As the two conversed, a black man approached the rear of Kendricks’s 1952 Chevrolet carrying a shotgun. The man opened the passenger-side door and pointed the shotgun past Lille Ford’s face. With the muzzle 18 inches from the driver’s nose, he fired, critically wounded Merwin Kendricks.
Ford said the attacker gripped her left wrist and dragged her out of the car. In a thicket twenty feet from the road, she said, he raped her.
From the court record:
“After having accomplished his lustful purpose, he returned her to the car, took her wallet, containing approximately $4, and jacket and ran from the scene, still carrying his shotgun. After removing the money, he threw the wallet into high weeds and burned the jacket in his fireplace.”
After Deputies Hulon Simmons and Mervin Falcon interviewed Ford at the clinic, they drove two miles from the crime scene to a cabin in the woods. They knew the owner, 29-year-old Walter Palmer, had served time in Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola following a robbery in St. Helena Parish.
Palmer was the only black man living in the area, and they did not find him at home. After searching two local bars, they found him at the Clyde Peevy farm, where he worked, milking cows. His shift started at 4 that morning.
In court, Deputy Simmons said Walter Palmer asked, “What do you want to pick me up for?” The deputy explained what had happened, and Palmer replied, “I didn’t shoot nobody.”
However, after 16 hours with Deputies Simmons and Falcon, Palmer signed a written confession and agreed to reenact the crime for Sheriff Tom Sanders and a newspaper photographer. Deputy Vincent Rispone also attended the reenactment, along with Amite Police Captain Billy Joe Booth and Lt. Leon Price of the Louisiana State Police.
Palmer told his audience he “watched the couple smooch for 15 or 20 minutes” before approaching the car. After shooting Kendricks, he said, he “threw the woman on the ground and raped her and kissed her.” He said he left her, took her purse, and ran. “Emptiest purse I ever saw,” Palmer told them, “Not one red penny inside.”
As he photographed Palmer’s walkthrough, Leo Lanier, editor of the Amite News Digest, asked Palmer how he got the large lump on his forehead, but Palmer declined to answer.
Walter Palmer allegedly murdered Merwin Kendricks on February 25, 1954. District Attorney Joe A. Simms scheduled his arraignment for April 13 of that year, telling newspapers he wanted to conduct the trial soon, but Strawberry Season would hinder the search for jurors.
On May 27, 1954, the first-ever Tangipahoa Parish jury to include two black men found Walter Palmer, indicted for the murder of Merwin Kendricks, guilty as charged, and Judge Warren Comish sentenced the defendant to death on June 17.
Palmer’s defense attorney, Joe Blache of Hammond, moved for a mistrial due to a problem with the rape evidence. Judge Comish denied the move. Blache appealed but lost on March 21, 1955.
From the appeal:
“The State guardedly informed these jurors, however, that the defendant was only being tried for the crime of murder. Counsel for the defendants argued that the court erred in permitting the district attorney to inform these prospective jurors that it expected to prove the commission of the crime of murder and that of aggravated rape; that the crimes of murder and aggravated rape are separate and distinct offenses, and that reference to a crime, other than that charged, was highly prejudicial and improper and could serve no other purpose than being inflammatory and creating the impression that the defendant was guilty of a sex crime, in violation of his constitutional rights guaranteeing a fair and impartial trial.”
The Court responded:
“An indictment of murder was returned against the defendant who was being tried for the crime of murder only, and the jury was so instructed and the reference to aggravated rape was made by the district attorney only to explain the crime of murder under the aforesaid section. This court believed that this was one series of events that were so closely associated and happened so close together that it would be impossible to segregate one from the other and that the murder was committed while in the perpetration of the crime of aggravated rape.”
Both outgoing district attorney Joe A. Simms and incoming district attorney Duncan S. Kemp refused to indict Walter Palmer for the rape of Lillie Ford due to the Shorse’s Medical Clinic’s inability to find evidence of the crime.
Judge Comish ordered Louisiana’s electric chair shipped from Angola to Amite on April 3, 1956. Inside the Tangipahoa Parish Prison, a hooded executioner pulled the switch killing Palmer at midnight three days later.