A Dogged Lawman on the Case

The Reynolds Building had only been open since 1929, but as a symbol of wealth and power it already dominated the skyline and psyche of Winston-Salem.

People liked to say that important decisions in the city were made not at City Hall, but on the 19th floor of the Reynolds Building, where the tobacco company's top executives had their offices.

Anyone who was called on to investigate the death of a Reynolds wasn't likely to get very far unless the family - and the company - wanted to cooperate.

That was the task Sheriff Transou Scott faced when he began investigating the shooting death of Z. Smith Reynolds in 1932. By all accounts, he was up for the job.

Scott was from outside the city's power structure. His grandfather had been a Socialist candidate for governor and Transou himself had defeated the sheriff's candidate backed by the Reynolds family. He was not likely to be intimidated by the attempts of Reynolds' family and friends to hide what happened the night of the shooting.

Only 34, he was known as an intrepid investigator who trafficked in footprints and fingerprints, trajectories and money trails.

"No case is closed so long as it remains a mystery," Scott told reporters. "And this case is certainly a mystery."

An editorial in the Greensboro Daily Record acknowledged the roadblocks that Scott faced. "Regardless of what has and what hasn't been done in this case, which in many respects was badly bungled from the standpoint of police work and official investigation," the paper said, "Sheriff Scott asserts he is determined to continue his efforts to unravel the mystery...."

Several things troubled Scott about the shooting, and he was not willing to allow the vagueness of the conclusions reached by the coroner's inquest to stand. First and foremost, the crime scene at Reynolda had not been sealed. He and his deputies got there about six hours after the shooting.

Using a drawing of the shooting scene, he testified before the grand jury on Aug. 4 for more than two hours, as he traced the many discrepancies in the case.

Scott was also bothered by the lack of blood found at the house. Head wounds bleed profusely, but the only blood found at Reynolda was a spot beside the bed and some smears. There was no blood on the rugs, tile floor in the front hall or the white gravel in the driveway. Scott wondered whether Libby Holman, his wife, and Ab Walker, his close friend, had delayed taking Reynolds to the hospital and, if so, why.

In his first walk through the house on July 6, the morning of the shooting, Scott found bloody fingerprints on Reynolds' and Holman's bathroom-door frame and a bloody towel hanging on the back door in their bathroom. He told the staff not to touch it.

When he returned the next day, the fingerprints had been washed to a faint trace and the towel was gone. He later took part of the door to Roanoke, Va., to get the prints analyzed, but experts couldn't determine whose they were.

Scott was also bothered by the trajectory of the bullet that killed Reynolds. The bullet left a hole in a screen over 6 1/2 feet above the floor. That didn't seem right. Reynolds was six feet tall and the coroner had determined that the bullet's direction had been downward, entering his head at the right temple and exiting behind and below his left ear.

The cartridge shell was found on the sleeping porch and the steel jacket around the lead core of the bullet broke into three pieces, which were also found in the sleeping porch.

The fact that the bullet entered Reynolds' head on the right side was significant. Friends said that as a child Reynolds was left-handed and that photos of him as a boxer showed him in a left-handed position. But his flying instructor said that he was right-handed, and friends who knew him as an adult said he batted and played tennis right-handed.

If Reynolds had been standing up, as Holman claimed in her "flash" recollection of the shooting, Scott wondered why his body was said to have been crumpled across the bed instead of on the floor.

The gun, a .32 caliber automatic Mauser, was found several hours after the shooting, although three people were reported to have already searched Reynolda and not found it. It appeared on the sleeping porch rug in plain view, only after Walker returned from the hospital around 3:30 a.m. Walker said he had returned to the house to change out of his bathing suit and to clean up the evidence of bootleg liquor.

After hearing Scott's testimony, the Forsyth County grand jury indicted Walker and Holman for first-degree murder on Aug. 4.

Walker was arrested at his father's house in Winston-Salem and was freed on a $25,000 bond.

Scott telegraphed police in New York and Cincinnati for help in finding Holman, who had gone into hiding.

Four days of cat-and-mouse games followed.

Holman's father, Alfred, who stayed in Winston-Salem after his daughter left, sent a telegram to Scott and other investigators that scolded them for their tactics.

"The plain physical facts surrounding the death of Mr. Reynolds that without one word of human testimony incontrovertibly establishes his self-destruction, sought now to be overcome by zealous functionaries, such zeal must be attributed to self-seeking motives ignoring every canon of decency and right and humanism and justice. But so was Jesus Christ crucified and Jeanne D'Arc burned."

An editorial in the Journal noted: "The histrionics of Libby may be traced to the father - a slender, emotional man who does not reveal his 65 years. Seemingly gentle, he is given to hasty outbreaks of emotion, during which he upbraids and praises in turn."

Holman finally made contact with authorities and agreed to surrender to officers in the Rockingham County seat of Wentworth, 40 miles northeast of Winston-Salem.

Though the town had only a few hundred people, curiosity seekers lined the streets by noon of Aug. 8. They had come to get a look at Holman and all her notoriety.

Around 3 p.m., a limousine with Ohio license plates came into view and stopped in front of the post office. Holman emerged, dressed in black with a long black veil over her face, and stepped into chaos.

"Girls and women fought to get a glimpse of the woman whose 'Moaning Low' and similar songs brought her acclaim and fame in the theater world, and whose seven months of marriage to a millionaire youth six years her junior, ended in a tragedy that made her name a household word," said an account in the Journal.

"Photographers swarmed around the young widow, seeking to get the best pictures they could. A movie machine, mounted on top of a truck, ground out films."

Holman and her entourage went into the courthouse, posted the $25,000 bond and then left for the Belvedere Hotel in Reidsville, the closest hotel of a high enough caliber to house a Broadway star. Holman had a "non-speaking role," the Journal said. Through her attorney, she asked only that she be left alone in order to recover her health.

Everything seemed to be building to Holman's next star turn, this time as a defendant.