A Search for Answers

Even before the shooting, the Reynolds brothers, Dick and Smith, were well-known outside of Winston-Salem. People hungry for news that took their minds off the Depression eagerly read about their exploits and their combination of youth, wealth and extravagance.

Add tragedy to the mix, and the story was irresistible.

Within two days of Smith Reynolds' death on July 7, 1932, 15 newspapers - respectable and otherwise - had sent reporters to Winston-Salem to cover the story. Many were well-versed in this sort of perfect storm of death and celebrity. The kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby was still fresh in the public's mind. The child's body had been discovered May 12.

A few days after the shooting, Western Union and Postal Telegraph had established emergency offices at Smith Reynolds' Reynolda estate to help reporters file their stories. Journalism wasn't as much a profession back then as it was a raucous trade. There were few standards, and gossip, rumors and anonymous sources were all considered fair game for reporters if they made the story more interesting.

As the presumptive head of the family, Dick Reynolds was already a familiar figure. A few years earlier, his Rolls-Royce was found abandoned in Long Island Sound. Then came a national manhunt, which ended 10 days later in a chop suey house in St. Louis.

Dick Reynolds was simply eating dinner.

"I'm tired and fed up with New York. I wanted to get away from Broadway and the nightclubs where money talks," Reynolds said, in a story that was reported in The New York Times.

When his brother was shot, Dick Reynolds was cruising in his freighter-yacht off the coast of Africa. It took several days before the news reached him.

It was on the front page of newspapers around the country.

"New York shocked at news of death of Smith Reynolds," said a dispatch from The Associated Press.

"R.J. Reynolds heir commits suicide," said The New York Times.

Reynolds was quickly buried in the family plot at Salem Cemetery the morning of July 8, but the funeral was not the day's only event. Solicitor Carlisle Higgins and his assistant, J. Erle McMichael, began a three-day coroner's inquest to determine how Reynolds had died.

From the start, it was apparent that this was no routine inquest. As a convenience for Libby Holman, the widow, the inquest was held at Reynolda. And it wasn't just in any room at the estate. At the beginning, the inquest was conducted in Holman's bedroom.

Reporters were barred the first two days, and they referred to the event as a "secret inquest."

One by one, party guests and servants made their way up to Holman's bedroom where they gave their accounts. No one was allowed to hear anyone else's testimony.

And if Higgins and his team thought that there was a clear answer to what had happened, they quickly found out that wasn't the case.

According to the guests, there had been no liquor.

Or there had been much bootlegged liquor and Holman got into a drinking contest with one of Smith's friends, Babe Vaught, during which they alternated shots of corn whiskey with beer chasers.

Holman and Reynolds were very much in love and gave evidence of it, guests said.

Or they had quarreled openly and at one point Holman had thrown her arms around Ab Walker and said, "Smith doesn't love me."

Holman stayed sober. Reynolds was happy.

Or Holman got drunk. Reynolds got moody.

Reynolds' close friend Walker said that by 1 a.m., with most of the guests gone, Reynolds tossed Walker his wallet, said "I'm going to end it all," and disappeared upstairs.

A few minutes later, he said, Holman leaned over the balcony upstairs and sobbed, "Smith shot himself."

Holman was the star witness. Everyone waited to hear what she had to say about that night. Testifying from her bed, she said that her mind was blank from 24 hours before the shooting until 12 hours afterward.

All she could remember, she said, was a brief flash when she awoke.

"The only picture I have is Smith standing over me on the sleeping porch," she said. "First he called my name. Then there was a flash and then that crash of the universe - just like everything falling all around me."

Because the testimony was secret and the house was surrounded by armed guards, reporters worked the phones, badgered the locals and hounded people going to and from the estate. A constant string of leaks and unnamed sources kept reporters running from one end of the city to the other.

In its July 9 edition, the Winston-Salem Journal gave a peek into how reporters got part of the story from a midnight tipster.

"An aged Negro came into the Journal & Sentinel office inquiring as to the news on 'the Reynolds case.' He said he had just seen 'two of the Reynolds' big cars down in front of the jail' and wondered what was happening.

"The tip was sufficient to send the local reporters and the representatives of news associations scurrying. They finally ascertained that Walker was being held."

Walker had indeed been taken into custody. McMichael said, "The move was made merely to prevent intermingling of witnesses before the completion of the coroner's inquest." Later, Reynolds family influence got him transferred to the Hotel Robert E. Lee, where he was spared the miseries of jail food.

Rumors continued to float over the weekend. And with Walker's arrest, the story changed from that of a tragic suicide to something more sinister, a possible murder.

Holman's slippers had been found in Walker's bedroom and the sweater that she had been wearing at the party was found in his bathroom the morning of the shooting.

So there was another question: How did they get there?