Goat Castle

A True Story of Murder, Race, and the Gothic South

By: Karen L. Cox

Narrated by: Pam Ward

Length: 7 hrs and 8 mins

Publisher's summary

In 1932, the city of Natchez, Mississippi, reckoned with an unexpected influx of journalists and tourists as the lurid story of a local murder was splashed across headlines nationwide. Two eccentrics, Richard Dana and Octavia Dockery, enlisted an African American man named George Pearls to rob their reclusive neighbor, Jennie Merrill, at her estate. During the attempted robbery, Merrill was shot and killed.

The crime drew national coverage when it came to light that Dana and Dockery, the alleged murderers, shared their huge, decaying antebellum mansion with their goats and other livestock, which prompted journalists to call the estate "Goat Castle". Pearls was killed by an Arkansas policeman in an unrelated incident before he could face trial. However, as was all too typical in the Jim Crow South, the white community demanded "justice", and an innocent black woman named Emily Burns was ultimately sent to prison for the murder of Merrill. Dana and Dockery not only avoided punishment but also lived to profit from the notoriety of the murder.

Strange, fascinating, and sobering, Goat Castle tells the story of this local feud, killing, investigation, and trial, showing how a true crime tale of fallen southern grandeur and murder obscured an all too familiar story of racial injustice.

©2017 Karen L. Cox (P)2017 Tantor

Critic reviews

" Goat Castle is a riveting exploration of a true crime that illuminates the complicated relationship between race and the law in the post-Civil War South." ( Foreword Reviews)

Pronunciation

The butchering of local Indian dialects is shameful. “Tensas” is pronounced Tensaw
Rewriting history never is a good idea

amazing true crime and historical book

Devoured in a day. Can't believe it's true. Karen cox brings an honesty to her storytelling not often found in southern literature.

Wild story, well told

There's nothing exactly surprising in the racist outcome of a murder story set in the Depression-era South, but this story has so many hair-raising and unexpected details about all the families involved and is so well told that it is riveting from beginning to end.

Justice for Jennie Merrill??

This is a strange take on the old Goat Castle Murder. Instead of focusing on the victim and the facts, it focuses on how an accessory to murder, who aided and abetted the actual murderer, went to prison, but the two mentally ill people involved did not. The book says this was because they were white. But another accessory to murder was not even indicted, and he was black. Everyone will agree that Jim Crow laws were harsh and unfair. But continual bellyaching over the punishment of someone aligned with a home invading robber and murderer of an elderly woman instead of the woman who was shot in her own house seems very misguided. And the narration—please—go to Natchez before you attempt to mimic a Natchezian. Not even close.