Death Meted To Informer Negro Who Told of Still Killed by Gang of Whites.. Four Arrested Charged With Crime – South Alabama Is Stirred Again

• Duffie Walker

MOBILE, Ala., June 30. – Another murder in south Alabama, alleged to have grown out of moonshiners’ activities, is now being probed by the state law enforcement department, in addition to those in Choctaw county, accordint to information secured here today.

The scene of the latest crime, which the officers believe to have been caused by the giving of information which resulted in a raid on a still, is in Baldwin county, where a negro, Duffie Walker, was called from his home, beat and shot, and left on the roadside.

Operations of the state officers and the Baldwin authorities resulted in the arrest of four white men, who were given preliminary hearings at Bayminette yesterday afternoon and released on bonds of $1,000 each.

The men, who are charged with second degree murder in connection with the death of the negro are well known, and the affair is said to have created a sensation in the adjoining ounty. The men are Ernest McMillan, Morton Taylor, George Feuler and Feuler Stewart.

State Law Enforcement Officerr Rufus Cannon, who has been stationed at Mobile for some time was sent to Baldwin county by W. K. McAdory, chief of the law enforcement department, to assist the sheriff and other state officers in the case. He returned to Mobile Friday.

The negro was called to the door of his home Tuesday night and told to accompany the party of men, who has aroused him. He went with them, and later his father is said to have heard cries coming from the roadside several hundred yards from the house. He went to the scene, it is said, and found Walker badly beaten, and with a bullet wound in his back. The negro died the next day, but is reported to have named some of his assailants before he died.

According to the officers, the killing is believed to have resulted from the giving of information by the negro which led to the destruction of a still in Baldwin county. The negro resided near Bromley.

Special Agent R. E. Hunt, who represented the state in the probe of two murders in Choctaw county, and who brought to Mobile a box of bones believed to be those of William D. Connor, alleged to have been murdered and his body burned over a year ago, has gone to Montgomery to make a report on his investigations to the attorney-general, it is said.

Hunt left here yesterday, after participating in a grilling of several men, who were brought here form Choctaw county, which lasted all day Thursday. He is believed to have returned to Montgomery via Choctaw county, where the investingation is continuing. Arrests are expected to be made later, it is said.

“Death Meted To Informer; Negro Who Told of Still Killed by Gang of Whites; Four Arrested Charged With Crime – South Alabama Is Stirred Again.” Chattanooga Daily Times (Chattanooga, TN), July 1, 1923.