* * *

  It seemed to have been done so easily and peaceful like, but there was plenty of battle in the room. No sooner was the defense motion granted than the state’s attorney got to his feet and addressed the bench. He suggested that there should be a time limit to this examination by Dr. McCollough, mental specialist of Jacksonville, and that the place of examination should be fixed.

  “Oh, I can settle that right now,” Judge Adams remarked, sitting informally half way around in the big swivel chair. “She’s not going to be moved anywhere. She’s going to stay right here in the custody and care of the Suwanee County Sheriff.”

  “As to the time limit of this examination,” the state’s attorney persisted.

  His Honor agreed with this. He picked up a small notebook, but before he studied it, he fixed both prosecution and defense with his sharp eyes.

  * * *

  “I WANT DEFENSE and state to produce whatever witnesses they feel necessary, and any testimony that will throw light on the case, but no piddling along. We can’t be just meeting here forever. I have tried many a homicide case, and I want this one to proceed like all the others. I can’t see why this one should have any special interest. Let’s have some definite arrangements.”

  After consulting the pages of the book, Judge Adams suggested Monday, Oct. 6, as the date when Dr. McCollough, the specialist in mental diseases, must appear before him to state his findings in the case of Ruby McCollum, where he may be examined by the defense counsel, and cross-examined by the state.

  * * *

  HE TALKED FOR THREE WHOLE DAYS

  Though everybody concerned spoke in quiet, conversational tones, it was obvious that the state considered that defense was sparring for time, and seeking every opportunity to improve the case for Ruby McCollum, and the prosecutor was there to block his every move.

  This was obvious when Judge Adams said that he was ready to hear any witnesses to Ruby McCollum’s mental state, “not specialists. Dr. McCollough is a front rank man, but he was before me on another case and talked for three whole days. Any witnesses that either side cares to present?”

  The short, plump state’s attorney got to his feet.

  * * *

  “WE OFFER NO witnesses at this time because we are convinced that the defendant is perfectly sane. We are sure that she knows right from wrong.” Then he sat down.

  The Negro spectators, all seated in the gallery, leaned forward and all looked in the same direction like cows in a pasture. Their eyes were fixed hopefully on P. Guy Crews. The defense attorney sat quietly in his seat beside the defendant.

  “That lawyer is no good,” a man in the second row murmured in deep disappointment. “Why don’t he let her talk?”

  * * *

  “THAT’S WHAT I say,” a woman’s voice grumbled. “He ain’t let her say a word since the mess started. Shucks! You can learn more from the newspapers than you can from her.”

  * * *

  THAT MAN IS A GETTING FOOL

  “Shhh,” your correspondent whispered over her shoulder. “This is not the kind of session for her to do any talking. Then, too, at regular sessions, at times a lawyer will not allow his client to take the stand to keep the prosecution from getting at them.”

  “Yeah, he had better watch his step,” a tall, middle-aged man beside me agreed, and pointed at the state’s attorney. “That man is a ‘getting’ fool. Never mind about that bald head and him being short and squaddly. He can go for broke. I done heard him at it.”

  * * *

  THIS OPENING move in a tense and terrible struggle for Ruby McCollum’s life was about over. Opposing counsel went up to the bench for a brief, whispered conference with the court. Then one could see the people in the room at leisure. Down stairs, where the white people sat, the room was nearly full. Four matrons sat together on the front row. They all leaned forward hungrily to catch every word and every move. The one on the center aisle had brought her son, about two years old.

  * * *

  MOST OF ’EM CAME TO HEAR RUBY TALK

  The third one in the row had brought her knitting, and one was reminded of the females of the reign of terror of the French revolution, who brought their knitting and worked away as they cheered the sharp, heavy blade of the guillotine as the bloody heads fell into the basket.

  Most of the Negro spectators had come from a distance to hear what Ruby McCollum was going to tell.

  Six had come from as far as Fort Lauderdale. Jacksonville was well represented.

  Local Negroes were conspicuously absent, with one or two exceptions.

  * * *

  THE CAST OF MAIN characters was interesting. The state’s attorney in a rumpled blue suit, with a bald spot on his head so round and exact that it might have been the tonsure of a monk, sat very quietly in his chair.

  But when he moved or spoke, he emitted alertness so intense that it was electrical.

  * * *

  CREWS FIGHTING FOR HIS CLIENT

  P. Guy Crews, defense lawyer, tall, heavy of body, with his eyes sloping down so sharply at the outer corners that one got the impression that a slight blow, and his eyeballs would run down into his collar. His general expression was the kindly mournful one of a bloodhound. Soft-spoken and obviously careful not to antagonize the court, he was, nevertheless, mentally on his toes every moment. He was in there fighting for his client.

  * * *

  HIS HONOR, Judge Adams, was the most dynamic personality in the room. Slender, with his thick graying hair parted on the left and swept back in the manner of the Southern gentleman of generations past, high cheek bones and keen, bright eyes.

  His face is reminiscent of three men whose pictures are familiar in history books . . . Patrick Henry, Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis. He chewed his tobacco all through the hearing, kept notes in a ledger-like book, but heard everything that went on. When called on to make a decision, he thought a moment and came out positive and clear. His sentences were grammatically correct, but richly idiomatic. No effort was made to lard them with heavy legal terminology. He talked the common man’s law. He allowed his human side to show on occasion.

  * * *

  FOR EXAMPLE, when defense counsel mentioned the use of two specialists in mental diseases, Judge Adams asked quickly, “Is it necessary to have two? Both of the men you mention are front rank men, but I had to listen to three days of testimony from Dr. McCollough in another case. I don’t want to do anything to cut anybody off from offering testimony, but I want reasonable progress. Non-expert testimony is wanted today. I’d like to hear it.” Who among us has not been bored with tedious, lengthy, technical testimony?

  Court was dismissed and some went out hurriedly while others lingered in disappointment of sensational revelations.

  The woman who knitted was the last to leave the room.

  OCTOBER 11, 1952

  Victim of Fate!

  SUWANEE COUNTY COURTHOUSE, LIVE OAK, Fla.—Mrs. Ruby McCollum, central figure in the tragic drama of life and death which envelops this little community, is a strange figure. I watched her for an hour and a half this morning and she did not utter a single word, except in a short whispered conference with her lawyer.

  She sat almost motionless in the large arm chair with her right elbow resting on the arm and her head inclined to the right in her hand.

  Her plumpish body was clothed in a pale yellow cotton dress and low-heeled yellowish shoes.

  * * *

  CIRCUMSTANCES HAD not permitted her to have her hair done, but she had done the best she could to keep it in order by a hairnet. The presentation of her profile fixed the high cheekbones of her face in the mind. Otherwise, the face is short . . . and feline.

  SILENT!—MOTIONLESS

  Silent . . . all but motionless . . . the undiscerning could gain the impression that this Ruby McCollum was actually indifferent to her fate.

  Her powers of restraint were evident when, near the end of the hearing, Ruby McCollum heaved a deep sigh and cast her eyes upward imploringly.

  In this one gesture, one glimpsed the pattern of her whole life.

  The quiet, restrained matron whom Live Oak had known prior to Aug. 3 . . . and the intensely emotional woman who had gone to Dr. Adams’ office on that Sunday morning with a gun, and had shot him down with one bullet, then stepped over his body and fired others into his body in her rage.

  * * *

  THEN, TOO, there in the courtroom, she had held the pose that she had decided upon during the entire time, and it was evidently tiring by being unchanged. So when His Honor announced that court was dismissed, Ruby McCollum stretched out the right hand that had wielded the gun so effectively, and flexed all of the fingers of her hand.

  THE HUMAN FACE HAS ITS PHASES

  The dark brown color of her skin was accentuated where the dark skin of the back of her hand showed sharp contrast with the pale color of her palm. She looked at it, then rose and went away quietly with the sheriff.

  Never once had she looked at the Negroes in the gallery! Never once had she looked at the assembly of curious whites behind her!

  The human face has its phases like the moon. There is the high flame of a revealed soul on occasion, at other times a waning . . . and even complete absence . . . of light.

  * * *

  FOR THE space of the sigh and the uplifted, imploring eyes, it was full moon in Ruby McCollum’s face. Then a sudden return to the absence of light.

  It is possible that all during that grim session, she sat there feeling sorry for herself . . . a victim inadequate to her fate, utterly stripped, useless and despised.

  But if Ruby McCollum, indicted for first degree murder, has delved into human nature, she must realize how wrong she is. Great misfortune, like poverty, is possessed of a miraculous substance by which others are made cheaply rich and fortunate. It is all in a sense of values. It is there in a point of view.

  * * *

  THE HUMAN soul is the creature of that mother of monsters and angels . . . the mind! As she sat there with her thoughts wandering around among the underpinnings of the world, with voiceless echoes shrieking around her, the spectators in the courtroom, and thousands who had heard of her plight . . . forgetting their own worries . . . felt lucky for not being in her shoes.

  * * *

  HAS ASKED FRIENDS TO PRAY FOR HER

  It is said that Ruby McCollum has asked for the prayers of those who wish her well. She sighed and lifted her eyes like she was hoping.

  * * *

  HOPE IS like the hen making a nest on the Ark when there appeared small chance for a future. So far, she has said little about her reason for taking the life of Dr. Adams.

  Perhaps she has reason to hope. It is possible, even probable, that we shall get some glimmer of this from her sanity hearing this week!

  OCTOBER 11, 1952

  Ruby Sane!

  LIVE OAK, Fla.—Mrs. Ruby McCollum has been adjudged SANE by the local courts . . . and she will face trial for the Aug. 3 killing of Dr. C. LeRoy Adams, prominent white physician and political leader.

  The trial date has been set for Tuesday morning, Nov. 18.

  As I sat upstairs in the section of the courtroom “reserved for Negroes” last Monday morning, I viewed with interest the central figure in this dramatic case . . . Ruby McCollum.

  Mrs. McCollum is not a beautiful woman. She can’t even be called pretty. Well-dressed and groomed, she is the kind who would best be described as attractive.

  As I listened to the testimony being given which ended in the new trial date, I thought of the rumors which are still sweeping this town. I wondered what had made Ruby McCollum kill!

  Had it come as a result of an argument with Dr. Adams over an alleged bill . . . as first stated . . . or is there any truth to the whispered rumors which have made Ruby’s home life an “open secret.”

  Is there any truth to the rumor that what has happened in her life had to come from a strong inner drive to dominate . . . to possess?

  * * *

  OBVIOUSLY, Mrs. McCollum is a most self-contained woman. Never much of a mixer. She had her social life, it is true. But no one places her as ever about town . . . just talking with any and everybody.

  “We saw her passing along in her car,” is the way the average citizen of Live Oak refers to her.

  “Her husband, Sam McCollum, was all over town and we all knew him well. A nice, friendly kind of a man! But we never saw them together. They never went ‘nowhere’ like a couple.

  * * *

  “BUT IT WAS STRICTLY understood that she was real jealous-hearted over Sam, though. She didn’t make it a practice to go out and start no fights in the street, or nothing like that, but folks said she really made it hot for him when he got home.”

  Again and again, gossip has put Ruby McCollum down as a very jealous woman under her own roof. She was possessive, and what was hers . . . or she considered hers . . . she must RULE! Could that be the explanation, in part, of what took place in the office of Dr. Adams on the Sunday morning of Aug. 3?

  Is Mrs. McCollum being correctly pictured by neighbors and acquaintances as ‘the woman scorned’ . . . with the ‘Hell Hath No Fury’ implications?

  No living person knows the answers to these questions but Ruby . . . and Ruby ain’t talkin’ yet.

  * * *

  ON SEPT. 29, two local white doctors took the stand. They stated that Mrs. McCollum had been their patient for the past year. On Oct. 6, testimony developed that she had also visited doctors in Jacksonville.

  Though only the psychiatrist, Dr. William H. McCollough, put a name to it, it was possible to see that Ruby McCollum was a hypochondriac . . . feigning sickness for a purpose of her own. Why? Was she seeking pity? No one can answer that question.

  * * *

  A CHARMING, worldly, ladies’ man once told your reporter:

  “There is nothing so dead . . . as a dead love. And no woman can be so thoroughly hated as she who tries to cling when you have let her know that you no longer want her.

  “The smart women of the world,” he continued, “are those who let you go immediately and without cries of reproach. That kind has a fine chance to win you back, by their indifference.

  “No,” he concluded, “men have no pity for a woman they have ceased to love. They can be more cruel to her than anything on earth. That is why you read so often of men murdering wives and sweethearts. She has committed the unforgivable crime . . . trying to hold him after he is tired of her.”

  * * *

  NOW THAT Mrs. McCollum has been declared “sane,” just what course will the prosecution take when the trial begins?

  Certainly, they have heard the rumors which anyone walking into the town can get! Will these stories be aired, in an attempt to develop a “romance” angle? Or will the prosecution stick to the story, first disclosed immediately following the murder of Dr. Adams, that he was killed because of a “bill”?

  Will the prosecution attempt to prove the rumors going the rounds, that Ruby and her husband had not lived together “as man and wife” since the birth of the last child?

  * * *

  PEOPLE TALK freely to me . . . but will they say the same things if they are put on the witness stand?

  Will Sam McCollum be depicted as the husband who precipitated no scandal, for the sake of his children . . . but had told friends shortly before his death of “strange dreams”?

  Nobody knows but Ruby McCollum! . . . and she ain’t talkin’ yet!

  OCTOBER 18, 1952

  Ruby McCollum Fights for Life

  LIVE OAK, Fla.—The curtain rises this week on the main act of perhaps the most sensational trial ever held in the South. At that time in the County Courthouse of Suwanee County, in the town of Live Oak, Fla., Ruby McCollum goes on trial for her life for the slaying of Dr. C. LeRoy Adams, a prominent and wealthy white physician and politician.

  Ruby McCollum has admitted the slaying of the doctor, but still her act and her defense are saturated in mysteries. Judge Hal Adams, the presiding judge, has announced his determination to see that her trial is fair and just. To that end, he has steadfastly and firmly denied all members of the press access to the defendant. He says that the case is not going to be tried in the newspapers before a jury can be selected.

  * * *

  BUT THIS ORDER can have no power over the imagination of the people in and around Live Oak. Ruby McCollum has been enshrined in legend and folk-lore even before her trial begins. Something on the order of Jesse James, the very boldness of her act and the mystery surrounding it, have made of her a heroine to some.

  People have had visions about her probable fate, and others have dreamed dreams. “She’s going to come clear. I was spoken to in a vision, and the voice told me so. God moves in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform.”

  A woman who said that she was a “praying and pentecostal” soul asserted, and many others agreed with her. “It did not look possible by the white man’s law, but that was the way it was going to be. Look how Paul and Silas had been in jail. The dungeon shook and their chains fell off, didn’t they?”1

  Another school of prophets swear that Ruby McCollum will surely be executed. Several claim to have already seen her spirit in one form or another wandering around free from her imprisoned body. She had appeared in the bedroom of a couple one night in the form of a cat-like animal, and was crying piteously.

  To another, she appeared as a woman with the head of an eagle with a flaming sword in her hand in flowing robes, circling their house for three nights running and crying out in defiance. That meant that she was innocent and was going to her death unjustly somehow or another.

  NOVEMBER 22, 1952

  Bare Plot Against Ruby

  LIVE OAK, Fla.—The trial of Mrs. Ruby McCollum, indicted for first degree murder in the shooting to death of Dr. C. LeRoy Adams, prominent white physician and political figure of West Florida, was dramatically halted here on the first day last week.