The Tale of Tom Dooley (cont.)

Pauline Foster was depraved, immoral, and promiscuous. Furthermore, she might have been a drunkard, certainly a hard drinker, and definitely did not have much common sense, involving herself foolishly in a matter as serious as murder.

Sometime in the middle of July, while Tom Dula was imprisoned in the Wilkes County Jail, Pauline returned home to Watauga County. Three weeks later, Ann Melton went to visit her and persuaded her to come back. A short time after this excursion, about the third week of August, Ben Ferguson and Jack Adkins visited the Melton house. Ferguson remarked that he believed Pauline had helped Tom kill Laura Foster, and had a plan to escape to Tennessee as well. Pauline retorted sarcastically that, yes, she and Tom Dula had "killed Laura Foster and put her away."

A couple of weeks later, Pauline was doing some work at the home of Mrs. James Scott when Ann Melton showed up with a club and commanded, "You've got to go home." Pauline claimed Ann was angry because she had wanted Pauline "to milk the cows and get breakfast both," and Pauline had objected. Ann pulled Pauline out of a chair, and shoved her out the door, where they began fighting over the remarks that Pauline had made. Ann said, "You are a drunken fool; you have said enough to Ferguson and Adkins to hang you and Dula both, were it looked into."

Pauline replied, "It is the truth and you are as deep in the mud as I am the mire." In return, Ann threw her stick at Pauline, then tackled her, throwing her to the ground and choking her, all the while using very abusive language. Continuing to order her to go home, Ann told Pauline that she had wanted to kill her ever since she had made the remark.

As Pauline fled toward the Meltons' house, Ann stopped and went back to "enjoin" Mrs. Scott not to tell what she had seen and heard. Ann then started to leave, then turned back again and threatened that she would follow Mrs. Scott to hell if she told, and if the story got out, she would know it came from her.

Apparently, even though Ann had told Pauline to play "the blind" and pretend to have an affair with Tom Dula, so far she had only suspected them of actually being intimate, an accusation which Pauline had denied to that point.

But now Ann decided to confirm her suspicions, and during their fight, she demanded to know if Pauline had the disease.

"Yes," Pauline spat back, "We all have it!"

Regarding Laura Foster, John Foster West postulates that Ann Melton may have been more jealous of Laura than angry over the syphilis she had contracted. She must have known about Tom and Laura because Tom had kept the affair no secret. And now Ann had reason to be jealous of Pauline as well, but there's nothing to indicate that Pauline was concerned about it. In her trial testimony, she said, "[Tom] remarked to me one day that Ann Melton was jealous of me. I replied I did not know how that could be as I never went into his company unless she put me in it for a blind."

Jealousy certainly may have been a factor in Ann's resentment of Laura, but "sleeping around" was a fairly common practice in that time and place (especially in a less prurient sense). Meanwhile, that same penchant for promiscuity made having a venereal disease even more despicable because of the danger it posed to others. And spreading the disease was definitely a serious matter; Tom and Ann each threatened to kill the girl they believed was the source of it. The Court prosecution also lists this as the motive for the murder, and there's no real reason to think otherwise.

The irony here is that Pauline Foster seems to have been the carrier; she had contracted the disease in Watauga County before she first came to Reedy Branch. Dr. Carter was her physician and Pauline stated that she had begun working for the Meltons to earn money for medicines and treatment of "this venereal disease." Based on the timeframes involved, it's quite likely that Tom Dula actually contracted the disease from Pauline rather than Laura Foster and he in turn infected both Laura and Ann Melton afterward.

At the end of August, Pauline's careless statement to Ben Ferguson, "Yes, Tom and I did kill Laura," was enough to get her arrested as a suspected accessory to the murder. She was questioned before the Justice of the Peace at Elkville, but she swore that she had made the comment "only in jest." She protested that her only involvement was that Ann Melton had told her that Tom Dula had killed Laura.

But after a few days in jail she turned State's Evidence, and began to tell a story. She stated that about a week after the murder, Ann Melton had told her that "she'd accomplished what she said she would do." Moreover, just after Pauline had gone home and then returned to Wilkes County, Ann had said to her, "I want to show you Laura Foster's grave. They have pretty well quit hunting for it." Ann wanted to go to the grave to see if it "looked suspicious" or had been disturbed by rain or animals. If so, Ann mentioned either re-burying the body in a cabbage patch, or perhaps cutting up the body and disposing of the pieces.

The girls left the Melton house, crossed the Reedy Branch Creek, then traipsed through a field until they reached a large pine log on a ridge near the Bates place.

Pauline claimed that at this point, she had become frightened and, despite Ann's wrath, adamantly refused to go all the way to the site. Ann angrily left her at the log and climbed the rest of the way up a nearby ridge alone. When Ann returned, she was still abusive toward Pauline, "cussing terribly" until they got back to the creek and telling Pauline that "if she ever told this, she would put her where Laura Foster was."

Based on Pauline's story, on September 1, a search party was formed. There is no clue as to how many and who were in the group other than Col. James Isbell and his elderly father-in-law David E. Horton, but there were enough men to split up into groups, or at least pairs, while they searched the area.

Col. lsbell was a Caldwell County aristocrat who lived nine miles away from Laura Foster, and a man of his position, even if he knew her, very likely had little personal interest in a girl of her lowly birth and reputation. He was a Justice of the Peace, but his jurisdiction would not have extended into the Elkville township in Wilkes County. But Col. Isbell never lost interest in the search, even as the efforts dwindled throughout the summer.

When asked why he would be concerned about a murder among the hill folk, he said in his testimony, "I am influenced solely by consideration of public good." Apparently, the answer was simply that Laura was a citizen of Caldwell County, as Isbell was, and he felt a deep interest in seeing justice done.

Following Pauline's directions, the search party spread out across what is now called Laura Foster Ridge. Near the pine log where Pauline professed to have waited for Ann, they found a pile of loose dirt covered with leaves and twigs. This was apparently the earth that had been removed from the grave. Finally, David Horton's horse snorted and gave signs of smelling something near a patch of huckleberry bushes. Horton and Isbell searched narrowly about the spot, and upon probing the ground around an ivy thicket, discovered the badly decomposed body of Laura Foster.

Laura had been buried in a narrow grave about 2½ feet deep and 4 feet long, located not far from where Tom had been seen working with the mattock on the path leading from Lotty Foster's to Dula's house. The grave was up on a nearby ridge, secluded under a thicket of mountain laurel, and had been dug so short that Laura was put on her side with her legs "drawn up" so the corpse would fit. Her bag of clothing was crammed in with her. Colonel Isbell said he saw the prints of what had appeared to have been a mattock on the hard side of the grave.

Doctor George Carter was sent for, to conduct an examination, but even after more than three months decomposing in the summer earth, the cause of death was still readily apparent— Laura had suffered a vicious knife wound in her breast.

Some of the accounts of the murder espouse the idea that Laura was pregnant. (A few claim that Ann and Laura both were.) To modern sensibilities this might add depth to a possible motive, but in those times it doesn't seem that a woman's pregnancy was of much concern. Perhaps the notion is presented to make the crime itself seem that much more heinous— and titillating. Whatever the cause or effect of the idea may be, no mention of it was made by Doctor Carter, the prosecution, or any of the witnesses at any of the trials. The only record of Laura's possible pregnancy was made when the New York Herald reporter telegraphed: "It was also believed that the murdered woman was encente [sic]." Who believed it, and on what basis, remains unknown. The reporter never verified this supposition, or mentioned it again.

Upon being removed from the site, Laura's body was taken to Cowles' Store in Elkville, where Justice Pickens Carter's preliminary inquest indicated what would later be the State prosecutor's allegations: Laura Foster was killed where searchers had found the big blood spot at the Bates place months before. Following that, the murderer or murderers were able to carry her about one-half to three-quarters of a mile, at night down a wooded ridge, to the prepared grave. Earlier searches missed finding the grave itself since the earth had been removed and the sod replaced.

Laura's body was placed in a homemade casket, funeral arrangements were made and she was buried at the edge of a high field overlooking the Yadkin River on the farm of John Walter Winkler. The site has been known ever since as "Laura Foster Hill."