Writings from Arthur Earl Grimm, Jr.
Small Town Editor Wears Many Hats
Allendale, South Carolina is a small town of maybe 3,500 Southern souls, hardly a Yankee among them and most of them liked it that way. This was how things were when I retired from a job as a magazine editor in Nebraska and my wife, Betty, and I moved to a home she owned in Allendale in 1984.
The word spread: A Yankee who has been writing for magazines has come to town with our own Betty Bee. It got to the editor of the nearby Barnwell weekly who was also acting as editor of the Allendale weekly. He urged me to take over the Allendale paper. It was simple as that. I became editor of the Allendale Citizen-Leader before I knew more than a handful of Allendale people.. Since no one seemed to object to a a Yankee as editor I began writing stories as if I had lived there all my life. And, I soon found out one thing: A weekly newspaper has many hats to fill. There are no "beats" as in daily papers. You are all the "beats."
You are sports editor, farm editor, schools editor, political editor, human interest story editor as well as any other "editor" post you can think of. Including explaining the major Southern rural pest -- the Mighty Gnat.
I did get some help--at least for a time by Jim Lowe, who also worked for radio station The Big Dog, and Pat Nichols, a columnist. But, as you can imagine, i was in tjhe position of reporting news by writing: "I was there, and this is what I saw and heard, So, that's what follows:
I was there when Constance Satchell, the star of the Allendale-Fairfax high school Lady Tigers stole a ball to tie the score, then sank the winning baket to win the state championship for her team in March of 1987. The story i wrote about this won a second place in sports writing among weeklies.
Football was the sport that really brought the town together. Win or lose. I was there when the Allendale-Fairfax had a huge upset over the Barnwell Warhorses in October, 1962. It was heralded by fans as the upset of decades. The Tigers had lost 13 straight to Barnwell and it took a great performance by running back Raymond Priester to seal the 29-25 win. My story on this win garnered first place in sports among weeklies for 1962..
But the really big story of the year came in farming. To say it was a bad year is a vast understatement. For farmers, 1985 was a depression year on the farm. Beset by low prices, high interest rates, loss of land value used to get loans, high equipment prices -- and bad weather.The result? Allendale county farmers were gong broke and many could not pay the loans they had made with Farner's Home Administration, Production Credit Association, or private banks. It was a familiar story down on the farm but when a fine farmer likie John Kirkland can do well fromm the end of World War II, things aee really bad. One of the better farmers in the county, Irvin Mathias, a "model farmer," was one of the 37 victims in the county. John Kirkland joined a national protest group who met in Omaha, Nebraska, to plan a traxctor protest drive to Washington, DC.
That's the way things were on the faarm in 1985, and really the last time I've looked at the Allendale farm scene. Needless to say, I hated doing those stories about a farmer's bankruptcy
While i was writing stories on the decline of farming in the county, there were several other front page stories to cover. Let's look next at the crime scene in the county. Begin with a 21-year old sentenced to 30 years for multple rape charges.
Wiley Kneece was killed in a fight for Corporal Charles Smith's gun outside Fleetwood's One Stop on Mnorth Main Street. Kneece's wife had called the cops after an argument in the couple's car. The tuffle with Smith followed.
In July, 1992,six years after Wiley Kneece had died in a fight for his gun, Deputy Charles Smith was shot and killed while sitting in his patrol car by a drug dealer called "Chico." Hundred of cops from all nearby towns were immediately on the scene, hoping to chase Chico down before he got away.
It did not take authorities long to track Chico down to a motel outside town. The subsequent chase saw Chico break away into nearby woods where a poice sharpshooter sighted him and killed him.
This takes us to the biggest murder story I covered in my career as editor of the Allendale Citizen-Leader. It's the story of Dale Allen, a seemingly nice, polite white guy around 37, and two murders. The strory of Allen's involvment with these two murders actually began on December 12, 991. It involed one Susan Weeksx, a blonde beauty, who was to have a big part in Dales downfall. Did I say BIG part? Pardon me. Susan had Dale fully in love. He would -- and did -- anything for Susan. This was not one of those "jump in the sack" togetherness. It was Susan holding the ring in Dale's nose, and Dale complying to every tug.
. In saying this, I must confess that I am getting ahead of my story. Susan's dirty tricks before she involved Dale involved her husband, Jimmy,and an undercover FBI agent named Don Rozier. It appears that the Weeks somehow discerned that Rozier was a cop and beat the hell out of him with the help of a friend named Jones. Susan told the others to "either kill him or let him go", perhaps inducing the desperate cop to manage an escape as the car that could have been taking him to an excecution , rounded a curve. The trio left Rozier's mangled body to be discovered by a search team.
If you have guessed right about here in my story that the Weeks were not the Sunday school type, you'd be right. They were drug dealers and they faced jail before Weeks gave himself up as the sole dealer. He got ten years. Susan and Jones went free.
How Susan Weeks and Dale Allen got together during the near fruitless seaarch for the person who killed Jenny Johns Allen, is a matter for conjecture. But they did and things begn to slowly lead to the death of Jimmy Weeks. Susan wanted her husband dead because he had a $100,000 double indemnity insurance policy made out to her. What more reason does a girl need to wish her darling hubby dead? Perhaps Dale Allen did have a reason to be Susan's triggerman other than jumping into the sack.
Jimmy Week's demise was planned in a Holiday Inn in Santee, SC.in October, 1989. Suxsan was to invite her darling hubby for a walk in the moonlight. Turns out there was plenty of light for Dale Allen to wait in the brush for a clear shot at Weeks The trial for Dale Allen for the shotgun muder of Jimmy Weeks ended on July 14, 1991 with Allen escaping a death penalty hearing by accepting a 30-year sentence offered in a plea bargain by Prosecutor Randolph Murdaugh. Suan gotr five years.
The ending of the Weeks murder case allowed the public to turn once again to the unxsolved murder of Jenny Johns Allen. The case had evidently reached a dead end. Jenny's parentxs had offered a $10,000 reward for conviction of the killer and had gone so far in their desperation to hire an Alabama womon who claimed she could find the murder weapon through her powers of deduction. She ended up with a non-answer, ending with a declaration that the gun was somewhere in the Savannah River.
But this did not end the Jenny Johns Allen murder case. Back into the picture came none other than Dale Allen. The 37-year old prisoner for 30 years in the Weeks case, volunteered that he knews the person who waylaid and murdered Jenny. It was, he said, one David Singleton, a black friend from Sycamore. Singleton did it, he said when he -- Dale Allen -- asked him to. .Allen testified at a hearing in Hampton that Singleton had shot Jenny Johns Allen from a pickup being driven by by Marion Williams of Allendale in February of 1989. The jury did not believe Allen at the Singleton trial in Hampton in October of 1991. The not guilty verdict by the jury was an unusual triumph for Public Defender Steve Plexico.
The Singleton trial ended attempts by the police to find and convict the person or persons who killed Jenny Johns Allen back in February of 1989. But there are likely to be many who still think that Dale Allen did the deed.
There are many more stories i can -- and probably will -- be telling in the future. But I think thie Jenny Johns Allen case is enough for a time. Good reading!!!