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Tippin details Pearl Bryan saga and the new book it spawned
The devil is in the details -- or so the old idiom goes -- meaning there is a mysterious element hidden within those specifics that might seem simple at first but will need much more time and effort to complete than expected.
The devil was definitely in the details both in the murderous tale of Pearl Bryan, the 23-year-old Greencastle girl whose headless body discovered in a Kentucky field in 1896 to set off a sensational "Crime of the Century" clamor, and the 2016-17 research done by Putnam County Historian Larry Tippin of Roachdale to bring to light the real facts in a 122-year-old case that still fascinates the masses today.
Addressing about 70 spectators -- including at least two dozen members of the Bryan family who applauded his efforts along with everyone else -- during a special program and book signing at the Putnam County Museum Thursday night Tippin detailed how he researched the fascinating story that produced five hours of museum lectures last year and evolved into his 168-page recently released book, "The Betrayal of Pearl Bryan: Unraveling the Gilded Age Mystery That Captivated a Nation."
Thursday night's program was scheduled intentionally on Pearl Bryan's birthday -- Oct. 25. She was born in 1872.
Tippin detailed the daunting process of researching the incident -- combing through 3,000 pages of trial transcripts to produce 4,000 pages of notes in creating 40,000 words of non-fiction with a conversational tone that reads like a murder mystery novel. All that using the same detailed approach to follow victim and killers from Greencastle to Cincinnati and over to Fort Thomas, Ky., and back. From "Pearl finding out she's pregnant" to going to Cincinnati to confront her boyfriend and "what she did those four fateful days in Cincinnati."
"How this whole process happened," Tippin began after signing books for 30 minutes, "was two years ago I gave a little program on cemeteries in the county." Presented almost exactly two years ago (Oct. 29, 2016), it was titled "Graveyards and Cemeteries!"
"During that program I made brief mention of the lack of information available on Pearl Bryan," Tippin said, noting that Bonnie Bryan and her daughter, Kathy Gross -- descendants of Pearl's brother James Bryan -- happened to be in the audience that night.
They exchanged pleasantries and ideas and Tippin learned that not even much oral family history existed on the infamous case.
"That got me going," Tippin said, indicating he has had always been intrigued by the story, its details further fueled by Pearl's burial at Forest Hill Cemetery and the fanfare surrounding her final resting place there.
Tippin decided he and research partner Toni Ford needed to go to Fort Thomas, Ky., to find out what they could about the case that resulted in the public hangings (the last such executions in Campbell County, Ky.) of Pearl's dental student boyfriend Scott Jackson of Greencastle and his dental school roommate and apparent accomplice, Alonzo Walling.
Details indeed did them in. Despite cutting her head off in hopes the body would never be identified, Pearl's uncharacteristically tiny, size 3 shoes were quickly traced to a Greencastle shoe store, Louis and Hays, and her rare webbed-foot condition led to positive identification of the body by family members.
At the Kentucky courthouse where Jackson and Walling met their fate, Tippin was astounded to learn a paper trail exists to this day.
"We have trial transcripts if that would help," the county clerk told him.
"You've got to be kidding me," Tippin said, relating his response Thursday evening, suggesting that those records were kept all these years due to the public interest in the case. Many times such records would have been destroyed within so many years of the case being closed.
Good stewards or not, the clerks couldn't do anything about the brittle nature of those records, which were far too fragile to take apart and run through a scanner.
"We had to do it the hard way," Tippin said, noting it "took days" to retype the transcripts into a laptop computer while carefully reading every page and making notes.
He also learned how difficult a task awaited him when the transcript of the very first witness referred to the man as John Huling, who described finding the headless body of a woman on Feb. 1, 1896. Tippin subsequently found documentation elsewhere that the witness' name was actually John Hewling, a fact that escapes other books and articles -- among what he said were "hundreds and hundreds of newspaper accounts" -- on the Pearl Bryan case.
It was after Tippin's second lecture in July 2017 that he was asked when his book would be coming out. Up until that point, such a project wasn't really on his radar.
"I thought we do need to document this," he said Thursday. "We do need to get this on paper. We don't want to lose it."
The biggest challenge, the Roachdale man said, "was not to make it read like a term paper."
In other words, he didn't want to just string facts together. And he worried that he didn't have any written material from Pearl herself to illuminate the facts. No letters, no diary to reflect her thoughts and dreams.
"And because these two knuckleheads never confessed, we have some unanswered questions," Tippin said of Jackson and Walling.
Questions that still persist include:
-- Who was the father of Pearl's unborn baby?
-- Who killed Pearl?
-- What happened to Pearl's head?
-- Did Pearl die where her body was found?
-- Who or what claims to be haunted by Pearl?
Since Pearl was five months pregnant when she died, according to the autopsy, her baby was conceived between late August and early September, with anecdotal information "making it pretty clear" Jackson was the father, Tippin has said.
"In my opinion," Tippin said at the 2017 program, "she went to Cincinnati to convince Jackson to man up and do the right thing and marry her."
But instead, the evidence points to the killer being Jackson.
The book walks the reader through the revelation that Jackson leaves the scene of the crime with Pearl Bryan's head in his overcoat, later transferring it to a Bryan family valise that is still held in evidence in Campbell County, Ky., after 122 years.
Court records note there was the blood in the valise that Jackson left behind in the Wallingford Saloon overnight, then returned and picked up and brought back again, returning it to the same location near an icebox.
Trial transcripts indicated that an 18-year-old tavern employee, Dot Legner, picked up the bag to clean beneath it and noted how unexpectedly heavy it was that first night. When she did the same thing a night later, it was much inexplicably lighter.
"It's a good thing Dot Legner didn't look in that bag," Tippin told his previous audience. "She would have never slept again the rest of her life."
The book also includes a section on the Bryan family, "the most fascinating family I've ever read on," Tippin said, noting that Pearl's father owned several buildings in Greencastle along with operating a local dairy.
It also features a Bryan family photo in what is essentially an appendage to the book, although Tippin suggests perhaps reading it first to soak up some flavor of the family and the climate in Greencastle in 1896.
"It's not against the rules to read that section first," he grinned.
Tippin and Ford read from the book to wrap up the museum presentation. She read from newspaper accounts included in the book about the body being brought back to Greencastle in Pearl's final journey home. Tippin picked up the story with details about the "simple and quiet" funeral, noting that the family "really wanted to bury all of Pearl but gave up hope two months later."
That section of the book tugged at Tippin's emotions.
"If you can get through that entire section (on the funeral) without getting choked up, you're a better person than I am," he said.
Asked if he would do the tedious, time-consuming research all over again, Tippin was adamant he would.
"It was a very fascinating journey," he said, "to get answers for myself and for the family and for other people who've been following the story through the years."
"The Betrayal of Pearl Bryan" is available for sale at the Putnam County Museum at Kara's Country Cottage at Roachdale or on Amazon.
Tippin is scheduled to make additional appearances at the Roachale Library on Nov. 10 and at the Putnam County Public Library Dec. 4.