The 1968 murder of W. Haynie Gourley, founder of Capitol Chevrolet, remains one of the most notorious unsolved crimes in Nashville history. In a summer of heated conflicts, assassinations and political turmoil around the nation, reports on the Gourley shooting consumed local news coverage. The ensuing trial gripped the local psyche as no trial had done since the shooting of Edward Carmack in 1908. Because it involved money and power and a onetime football hero, it seemed larger than life. Because it remains unsolved, it still fascinates.
In researching this story, Bob Holladay interviewed police officers, attorneys and reporters who recalled the Gourley case. His account is also based upon trial transcripts, which were reprinted, in full, in both daily papers. Members of the Gourley and Powell families refused to be interviewed.
This is a case in which friendships were betrayed, terror surfaced and a prosperous business changed hands. It was every bit as lurid as the cases of O.J. Simpson and Susan Smith. It is a story that deserves a retelling because, to this day, some Nashvillians are convinced that justice was never served.
Nashville Tennessean, April 4, 1968
King Indicates Disregard of Order to Halt March
Memphis (AP) - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. indicated last night that he will disregard a federal court injunction prohibiting another mass march here this weekend.... King had promised after last week’s spurt of window breakings, lootings and battles with police that he would return to lead another demonstration in support of the garbage strikers, 98 percent of whom are negroes.
Buford Ellington, governor of Tennessee, was going to be late for the opening of the new Chevrolet dealership. He couldn’t help it. Strange things were happening in Memphis. The National Guard was on alert, just in case. Even in the middle of a crisis, the governor couldn’t miss the opening of Haynie Gourley’s new building. Haynie Gourley was his friend.
The new Capitol Chevrolet building was expensive—it had cost $1.5 million and occupied 6.3 acres in the 600 block of Murfreesboro Road. It was a long, low, modern building, with space for almost 140 cars. Inside there were plush carpets, a conference room and private offices for the honchos. The new headquarters was a long way from their old, shabby surroundings of 500 Broad. Capitol Chevrolet was an uptown operation, and Haynie Gourley wanted the world to know it.
Seventy-two-year-old Haynie Gourley owned 75 percent of Capitol, which, along with Jim Reed Chevrolet, Beaman Pontiac and Hippodrome Oldsmobile, formed the “Big Four” among Nashville’s car dealerships. He had founded the dealership on a shoestring in 1932, in the middle of the Depression, and he’d watched it weather the rationing of the war years. Amid the postwar prosperity, with Dinah Shore singing “See the U.S.A. in a Chevrolet,” Gourley’s business had zipped into high gear. Capitol’s parts department now maintained a $200,000 inventory. Gourley’s new palace boasted a paint and body shop and offered truck sales and rental services.
Ellington was scheduled to participate in the opening, along with bigwigs from Chevrolet and General Motors. By mid-morning a crowd of hundreds had already gathered. The first 300 customers through the door received little model Chevys as souvenirs.
Haynie Gourley was big in Nashville. Born in Cross Plains, Tenn., he was Belle Meade all the way now, a deacon at Vine Street Christian Church, past president of the Nashville Automobile Trade Association and the Tennessee Automotive Association. Friend of mayors, confidant of governors. Only one thing was more important to Gourley than his business: his 24-year-old son, Billy. Working as a salesman at Capitol, Billy Gourley was heir apparent to the family fortune. Like virtually everybody else in town, his father expected Billy to take over the business.
Nashville Tennessean, April 5, 1968
Dr. King Slain in Memphis
Guard Seals, Patrols North Nashville Area
Advance units of the Tennessee National Guard entered Nashville early today and sealed off North Nashville, patrolling the area.... Armored personnel carriers, jeeps and trucks, loaded with troops, were called at the request of Mayor Beverly Briley after rock throwing began about 6 p.m....
Capitol’s new building was owned by Nashville dentist Bruce P’Pool. He was leasing it to the company for a sweet $85,000 a year.
In the ’60s everybody wanted a car, especially that hot little number, the Camaro, just rolling off the line in Detroit. Still, P’Pool was shrewd. He wanted a backup signature on the Capitol Chevrolet lease. Haynie Gourley was one of the most respected men in his profession. But he was already 72. There was a good chance he wouldn’t be around when the 20-year lease ran out. On the other hand, Billy Gourley was just a kid, hardly ready to make decisions yet.
William E. Powell was vice president and general manager of Capitol. At 41, he still looked like he could play center for the Vandy Commodores. In 1948 he had, in fact, played center on the most famous of all Vanderbilt teams. Fans of the black and gold recalled how the Commodores, coached by Red Sanders, had surged forth to win eight games in a row. By the end of the year, they’d been acknowledged as the best football team in the nation. Steady as rock, Bill Powell had anchored the line. On campus, fans called him “Big” Bill.
Powell had been in the automobile business since college, first at the old Palmer-Hooper dealership, then at Hippodrome Olds. In 1965 Haynie Gourley had lured him to Capitol, offering a chance to buy into the action. Now, as Capitol’s executive vice president, Powell held 25 percent of the company stock. He was pulling down $83,000 a year in salary and benefits.
When Haynie Gourley and his attorneys approached Powell about co-signing the Capitol lease, he cooperated. He had always been a good team player. What’s more, Haynie Gourley had always taken care of him. Their contract clearly seemed to state that, if anything happened to Haynie Gourley, Bill Powell would take over the Chevy franchise.
Nashville Tennessean, April 6, 1968
U.S. Declares Siege Lifted
The 76-day enemy siege of Khe Sanh was officially declared lifted yesterday and U.S. Marines and Army units struck out through the hills, looking for vanishing North Vietnamese.
In Belle Meade, the Gourley house and the Powell house were about two miles apart. The quiet, withdrawn Helen Powell and the more outgoing Josephine Gourley were good friends. Josephine and Haynie Gourley had been married 52 years; Big Bill, football hero, had married his college sweetheart.
The Gourleys knew what Bill Powell had done for them and for their company, and they were grateful. By May of 1968, however, they were getting uneasy. Profits were up. They had a brand-spanking-new building. And there was young Billy Gourley in the wings. He had always loved cars, and his father wanted him to take over the business. That had been one of Haynie Gourley’s reasons for bringing in Bill Powell—not just to raise profits, but to train the Gourleys’ only son and make sure the business stayed in the family.
Powell, a go-getter, had been with Capitol for three years. Billy, however, was still a salesman. He was earning a good living, but it was Powell who was running things. At the opening ceremonies for the new Powell had been there, standing right up there alongside Haynie Gourley and the governor, just as if he owned the place. Whose business was this, anyway?
Nashville Banner, May 15, 1968
End Draws Near in Derby Probe
The climax of the 1968 Kentucky Derby, 11 days late, appeared near at hand today as a stewards hearing into the disqualification of Dancer’s Image neared its close.
It is not clear exactly when Haynie Gourley first approached Bill Powell with the idea of buying back Powell’s 25 percent of Capitol Chevrolet stock. By May, however, talk of a split had spread across Nashville’s automobile business. It was widely rumored that the Gourleys had already talked to Bob Frensley, who had once served as Powell’s assistant at Capitol, about coming back and taking over day-to-day managerial duties at the dealership. Frensley, by that point, was running his own dealership in Louisville—a dealership Powell had helped him start.
Still, the Powells and the Gourleys remained friends. They made plans to travel together to an automobile dealers’ convention in Memphis.
The trip to Memphis went well. Bill Powell had even danced with Josephine Gourley. Still, the future of Capitol Chevrolet—and the futures of Bill Powell and Billy Gourley—remained unresolved. It was like a big tree in the middle of a road—the Gourleys couldn’t go through it or around it.
The Gourleys prepared to make an offer. Bill Powell waited.
Back in Nashville, on the evening of May 22, the Gourleys invited Bill Powell over for a talk. Josephine Gourley would recall the meeting this way: Haynie Gourley had told Powell that he wanted Capitol Chevrolet to stay in the Gourley family. What would it take, he had asked, to get Powell out of the way?
At that point, according to Josephine Gourley, Powell turned to Billy and asked, “Are you afraid of me, physically?”
Billy said he wasn’t afraid.
Powell said, “Well, it looks like there’s nothing left but for me to get out.”
Josephine Gourley recalled that her husband seemed surprised by Powell’s willingness to cooperate. “We’ll make an agreement on price,” Haynie Gourley told Powell. “Sell me back the 25 percent, and I’ll do everything I can to help you get another dealership."
The Gourleys and the Powells parted amicably that evening. In Josephine Gourley’s words, her husband had been “thrilled” that an agreement had been reached. Finally, the path was clear for Billy.
Nashville Banner, May 24, 1968
Group Sees JFK, King Killing Link
The head of a research group looking into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy said today a photograph of a man arrested near the assassination scene in Dallas just after the shooting strongly resembles a sketch of a man wanted in the killing of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Larry Brinton, ace reporter for the strictly conservative Nashville Banner, was at home mowing his lawn when he heard the news. It had already been one hell of a spring so far. First, Bobby Kennedy had jumped into the race against LBJ. Then Johnson had decided not to run.
In April Martin Luther King Jr. had been shot in Memphis. In the ensuing turmoil, tanks had rumbled into Centennial Park. Like most other reporters, Brinton had wondered, “Who’s gonna fire the first shot? Who’s gonna do it?”
If it moved, Brinton covered it for the Banner. The cops all trusted him. They’d talk to him—and not just in the press room at the Metro Police building. Brinton could call them at home too, late at night, when nobody else was listening. Brinton was a cop’s reporter. A lot of the time, he was a step ahead of them on a case.
Brinton was mowing his lawn when he got a call from Doug Looney, who was working the Banner city desk.
“Did you hear what happened?” Looney asked.
No, Brinton told him
“There’s been a murder over at Capitol Chevrolet. Some negro just killed Mr. Gourley and shot Bill Powell.”
For the first time in five years—for the first time since JFK’s assassination—the Banner ran an extra edition. The story ran under Doug Looney’s byline. The 60-point headline read, “W. Haynie Gourley, Owner of Capitol Chevrolet, Slain: Negro Gunman Injures Powell in Robbery Try.”
The picture that accompanied the story had been taken, a month earlier, at the Capitol Chevrolet grand opening. Bill Powell, Haynie Gourley and Gov. Ellington were pictured with the bigwigs from Detroit.
By the time Brinton arrived at Capitol Chevrolet, Tennessean reporters Jim Squires and Jerry Thompson were already on the scene, as were Channel 4’s veteran anchor, Judd Collins, and Chris Clark from Channel 5. This was big news: Haynie Gourley dead! Three bullets. Two in the neck and one in the right ear.
By the time the reporters arrived, an ambulance had already taken Bill Powell to Vanderbilt Hospital, a gunshot wound in his left leg. Then Sherman Nickens from the Metro Police Homicide Squad had swept in, followed by George Curry and 26-year-old Hal Hardin from the D.A.’s office. When Brinton arrived, they were all in the Capitol Chevrolet parking lot studying Bill Powell’s car, the one with the glass shot out, the one in which he’d taken Haynie Gourley for a ride that very morning.
At about 11 a.m., witnesses would testify, Powell had borrowed the keys to a new Chevrolet and asked Haynie Gourley to take a ride with him. Powell had told his secretary he would be back in 15 minutes. Apparently, Haynie Gourley knew Powell wanted to talk about business. Before he got into the car, Haynie Gourley tracked down Billy and told him he was going for a ride with Powell. Billy recalled that his father said, “I’ll let you know what he says when I get back.”
Haynie Gourley, however, never returned. Bill Powell drove out of the Capitol Chevrolet parking lot and turned right onto Elm Hill Pike. At Spence Lane, the two men stopped at the light.
Haynie Gourley never saw the light turn green.
In the hospital, “Big Bill” was already sedated by the time he talked to the police. This is the story he told the investigating officers: “As we started to stop at the intersection, a negro man opened the rear door and jumped into the backseat. He told us, ‘Give me the money,’ and we started reaching for our billfolds. He said to Mr. Gourley, ‘Don’t reach for your pistol,’ and then the man started shooting. When Mr. Gourley slumped over, I reached for him and I got shot.”
Just before the sedative took hold, just before he went under, Bill Powell said, “I’ll never forget the eyes of that man.”
Nashville Banner, May 29, 1968
McCarthy, Nixon Win in Oregon
Eugene J. McCarthy stunningly defeated Sen. Robert F. Kennedy in the Oregon Democratic Primary that Kennedy said he must win to keep his presidential aspirations alive. They headed today for a do-or-die showdown in California.
Already, there was talk about a race war. Reporters envisioned a summer of streetside shootings, with the police and Guard just waiting for the next call.
Nickens and Curry didn’t know where to start. They were looking for a negro man. How many of were out there? Who had seen him? What did he look like? According to Powell, he had been wearing a mask and dark glasses. The investigators knew one thing for certain: They’d better get the right man. For the past three years, summertime in America had meant riots in the streets. They couldn’t have that in Nashville, not in the wake of Dr. King’s murder.
The only evidence seemed to be Powell’s car: shot to pieces, right side window gone. There were a couple of fingerprints, to be sure, but they didn’t seem to match anybody’s—least of all Leonza Perry’s.
Police had hauled Perry in on May 25, the day after the shooting, charging him with assault and battery and carrying a concealed weapon. Perry was 27 and black, a janitor at Hickman School. He owned a .38 caliber two-shot derringer. Haynie Gourley was killed with a .38.
Dreams of a lucky break quickly evaporated. Five shots had been fired at Gourley and Powell—the one that struck Powell, the three that struck Gourley and the one that had shattered the car window. Perry would have had to reload his derringer in the midst of the robbery. What’s more, Perry said he was at school during the robbery—several hundred kids backed up his alibi. Scratch one suspect.
In search of the murder weapon, Nickens sent a crew of 75 workers to scour the Elm Hill Pike roadside, climbing through the tall grass, sifting through the dirt where workers were laying pipe, trudging through the creek bed. No luck. Nine metal detectors cut across the fields like an army on patrol. Still no luck. Nickens had never seen a case with so few clues.
Brinton, Looney, Squires and other reporters were hanging around the search area. They picked up on the investigators’ desperation. The headline over Looney’s next story read, “Not at Dead End, Police Emphasize”—which meant, of course, that the police had no idea where to turn. Another headline promised, “District Attorney ‘Optimistic’ over early solution to Gourley Murder Case.”
Attorney General Tom Shriver was feeling the heat. After only two years on the job, he’d never had a case that attracted so much attention.
Shriver was Old Nashville. His father had been a famous lawyer and a Chancery Court judge, a pillar of the community. Tom Jr. had worked his way up through the ranks of the Democratic Party. He had served as an assistant U.S. attorney under Jack Kennedy and was widely known as a protégé of Tennessean editor John Seigenthaler. Shriver was young, but his friends said he had guts and a love for the give-and-take of the criminal trial. They said Shriver took to the courtroom better than any D.A. in memory. They said he “liked the responsibility of trying the big cases.” The only mark against him was that, sometimes, he moved too early and went to the Grand Jury before all his evidence was lined up. The homicide boys downtown thought Tom could sometimes be a bit hasty.
Now, two days after Haynie Gourley’s murder, Tom Shriver wasn’t being hasty about anything. He was just hoping he would have a case to try.
Nashville Banner, May 29, 1968
Victorious Nixon Sees Nomination in August
Richard M. Nixon today headed for the high road toward the Republican national convention in Miami Beach with a new prediction that “we are going to win the nomination.”
Shriver didn’t need to worry. Something didn’t seem right about the Gourley case. Something didn’t seem right about the way the body was lying. There was something strange about the bullet holes. Something just didn’t add up. A black man in dark glasses? Easy story for these times. If there was a robbery, why was Haynie Gourley’s wallet still lying on the backseat with $200 bucks in it? Powell, on the other hand, hadn’t even brought his wallet along for the ride. Right away, Nickens and Curry and Hardin had begun to think that, perhaps, Powell’s story was a little too pat. They warned ambulance personnel not to let him wash his hands until they could do a paraffin test for traces of gunpowder.
When Powell arrived at Vanderbilt Hospital, his first act was to wash his hands. Once he was out of the recovery room, friends convinced him to call Cecil Branstetter.
At 51, Branstetter, noted for his sharp jaw and his withering glance, was in the midst of one of Nashville’s great legal careers. In 1962, he had almost singlehandedly written the Metro Charter, the most important governing document in Nashville since the Cumberland Compact. He had defended the unions, the ACLU, the teachers. He had even defended Jimmy Hoffa.
Cecil Branstetter had a lot of experience. But for all his experience, Cecil Branstetter had never defended a murder suspect.
For a while, it didn’t look as if he would be defending a murder suspect this time either. A week after the shooting, Nickens still hadn’t turned up a murder weapon. On May 29 Brinton reported that two people claimed they they’d seen Gourley and Powell in the car, that they had seen the car stop at Elm Hill and Spence Lane and that they had seen a man leave it. They could not, however, describe the man they had seen.
Meanwhile, the Gourleys had sent their family lawyer, John Hooker Sr., to meet with Nickens and Detectives William Larkins and Ernest Castleman to review the evidence gathered in the investigation. There wasn’t much to go on. Some of the padding from the car’s interior was sent to FBI headquarters for microscopic examination.
To the public at least, the murder investigation seemed to be going nowhere fast. Powell, still in the hospital, didn’t look like a suspect. Instead, he looked like a hero—the Vanderbilt football star who’d tried to save Haynie Gourley.
From his hospital bed Powell issued orders that Capitol was to keep operating “just as it has been in the past.” Once he got out of the hospital, he even offered to retrace for police officers the route he had taken on his drive with Haynie Gourley. Brinton and Squires, with their photographers in tow, stood by the side of the road while the detectives took Big Bill for another ride. The story made Page One.
Nevertheless, such showmanship amounted to little more than window-dressing. Both the Banner and Tennessean ran editorials urging the investigation onward. The top reporters at both papers already knew that Powell was under suspicion. Still they had no story to report. There was no gun. Powell’s hands were clean. From May 24, the day he was shot, though June 5, Haynie Gourley’s murder had been the news. The City of Belle Meade and the Nashville Automobile Trade Association had posted rewards totaling $12,000.
Nashville Tennessean, June 5, 1968
Sen. Kennedy Shot; Condition Called Critical; Hit Twice
Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, brother of assassinated President John F. Kennedy, was shot in the head and shoulder early today by a gunman whose bullets turned a scene of political triumph into one of shock and confusion.
In an instant, after the younger Kennedy’s death, the Gourley case disappeared from the front page. Nickens and his crew kept looking for the gun, and officers began to question Josephine and Billy Gourley. Gradually, it became clear that all had not been sweetness and light at Capitol Chevrolet. Investigators continued to look for the “negro gunman,” but they were also keeping an eye on Bill Powell. Then, on the night of June 9, all their theories were blown to smithereens.
Late in the evening of June 9, Robert and Barbara Jean Bolte were asleep in their house on Edmondson Pike in South Nashville. Sometime after midnight, Barbara Jean Bolte was awakened by sounds that, she later said, reminded her of somebody slicing a watermelon. When she looked up, she discovered her husband, lying on his stomach. His head was almost completely severed from his body. Above him stood a tall, slim black man, who wore something that resembled either a hearing aid or an earphone.
Barbara Jean Bolte screamed like hell. Her husband’s killer turned, and she realized that he was holding an axe. He swung at her. Reportedly, he then picked up her baby by the feet and bashed its head against the wall again and again. But Barbara Jean would not stop fighting. She kept screaming, until the intruder fled. When police arrived, they found as grisly a scene of carnage as Nashville had ever witnessed.
No one thought to connect the Bolte murders with the Gourley case except in the context of the general racial unrest of the day. But on June 27, with Bill Powell out of the hospital and Barbara Jean Bolte in good enough shape to talk, Shriver and Metro Homicide officers decided to get some sketches made. Listening to Barbara Jean Bolte’s description, Bob Turner, artist for the Banner, drew a sketch of a tall, slim black man with dark eyes and a high forehead.
Then it was Powell’s turn. He described a tall, slim black man with dark eyes and a high forehead. The only difference was that Powell’s attacker was wearing a hat and not a hearing aid.
Turner’s sketches made it clear: The two murderers were the same man.
Nickens, Hardin and other investigators were no longer so suspicious of Powell. Instead, Nashville feared a serial killer. Police officers combed the city, bringing in every tall, slim black man they could find. The dragnet paid off for the Boltes when James Thomas Jefferson was charged with Bob Bolte’s murder. Officers, however, couldn’t connect him to the Gourley case. Haynie Gourley’s murder slipped further and further back in the papers.
Then one day in September, a few weeks after the Democratic Convention in Chicago, police brought Bill Powell downtown to look at a lineup. They brought out a row of tall, slim black men. There was no James Thomas Jefferson in the lineup, but there was one James Wingard, a 17-year-old already charged with the murder of a grocer.
Powell squinted, scratched his head and squinted some more. Yes, he said, one of the men in the lineup did look like the man who shot him and Haynie Gourley. He pointed at James Wingard.
That’s the way it hit the streets: Powell Identifies Suspect. Nashville breathed easier—too easily, as it turned out. The story hadn’t been on the street 24 hours when Powell started hedging. Police insisted he had positively identified Wingard, but Powell told Shriver he was “less than certain.” To make matters worse, he told the newspapers the same thing.
Brinton and other reporters started their own investigations. Wingard, it turned out, hadn’t even been in town on May 24. Records showed that he had been in California, participating in a training program sponsored by that state’s Department of Employment Security. He’d even gotten into a fight that same day.
Powell said he had made a natural mistake. Wingard looked something like the murderer, Powell said, but he couldn’t be 100 percent sure. He suggested that police officers stage another lineup, this time including James Thomas Jefferson. Police officers, however, knew that Jefferson’s face had already been seen on television and in the papers. He would have been a sitting duck. Increasingly, Nickens, Shriver and Curry began to suspect that the black man in the dark glasses had been nothing more than a red herring.
Nashville Banner, Nov. 6, 1968
Nixon Wins, Pledges Unity
Illinois Vote Settles Race
Richard M. Nixon, in his second try, won the presidency of the United States today and pledged to try to reunite the nation.
The Gourley murder case had moved from the front pages of the Tennessean and the Banner, but the Police Department and the D.A.’s office had not forgotten the crime. In Belle Meade people were still talking. There were even rumors that a murder weapon had been, in fact, found.
Autumn deepened into winter, with few new developments in the case. The holidays would come and go, and three men would circle the moon. With the new year, a new president would enter the White House.
It would be March, and spring would be in the air, before the court would send down an indictment for the murder of Haynie Gourley.
Next week: The trial that fascinated Nashville. Belle Meade takes the witness stand. A tale of careers made—and careers destroyed.
