The Possession of Marcia Heald: Poetry, demons, and a paring knife

Yesterday's America Editorial Team
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The Possession of Marcia Heald: Poetry, demons, and a paring knife

SUBJECT WARNING: This story contains graphic detail of a 1982 Lafayette, Indiana murder.

It is one of the strangest and most horrifying murder cases in Lafayette history—a case that is still difficult to read about today. Marcia Heald, who may have been possessed, was convicted of brutally murdering a neighbor back in 1982 in a Lafayette apartment.

On August 2 of that year, Marcia attended a poetry reading at the apartment of Gerald and Shelly Smith at 601 1/2 New York Street. Shelly and Marcia discussed poetry, folk music and antiques that night until after 1:00 a.m. Shelly offered her couch for Marcia to sleep on, but she declined and went to her car instead.

Laying with snakes

At 5:00 a.m. the next morning, Gerald left his wife Shelly to deliver newspapers. Some time later, Marcia awoke in her car and decided she had to return to the apartment and kill Shelly Smith because she believed her to be a serpent possessed by Satan.

Marcia first took off all of her clothing in a downstairs bathroom. She also went into the kitchen and grabbed a paring knife. Then she went into Shelly’s bedroom. Shelly was lying naked under the covers. She looked like a snake to Marcia, who yelled, “Yahweh’s kingdom come” and began stabbing her.

Shelly screamed with pain and ran from the bedroom toward the kitchen, but Marcia grabbed her by the hair, pulled her down and then began stabbing her repeatedly in the head, neck, chest and back.

Then she tried to remove the “snake’s” head, because she felt it would be rejuvenated if she didn’t behead it. She sawed with a knife and part of a mirror. Then she tried twisting it off. She gave up in her attempt to remove the head. She went back to the bathroom, showered, dressed and then left. She drove around for a while and stopped and ate breakfast at a restaurant near Purdue University.

Later that day, Lafayette Police apprehended her and got a confession out of the crazed woman.

” I am not a human being; I am an animal.”

Marcia was not your typical murderer. The Plainfield resident had been a librarian at the Indiana State Library. The divorced mother of two spent two Saturdays a month at the Indianapolis Children’s Museum demonstrating weaving. However, she told court psychiatrists that she was Eve from the Garden of Eden.

She pleaded innocent by reason of insanity, but the judge ruled that she was competent to stand trial. Psychiatrists differed on whether she was insane. At her court hearing, Marcia said:

“It was written 2,500 years ago. It would be at Lebanon [where the trial had been moved to]. It is Yahweh’s will. Human beings have no knowledge of my world. They shouldn’t meddle. I am not a human being; I am an animal. I became an animal in March.”

Read more about this and other ghoulish stories in Haunted Lafayette by Dorothy Salvo Davis and W.C. Madden’s 

During the trial, Marcia was the first witness for the defense. She began her testimony by claiming that her name was “Mars, the God of War” and that she was 5,743 years old, but 44 years in her present form.

She later testified, “I began seeing something in front of Shelly [Smith]. I saw this face and I saw it was a snake. Yahweh [God] was sending me messages. I could see something at her neck like scissors or knives. I said to myself, ‘Is this the lady I have to battle with?’”

Marcia believed Shelly to be a serpent. “You always have to cut off the head of a serpent,” she said.

A jury took only four and half hours to convict the woman. The forty- four-year-old woman was sentenced to forty years for the murder and thirty years for burglary. She wouldn’t be eligible for parole for twenty years.

Only Austin natives will recognize these seven pictures

Yesterday's America Editorial Team
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Only Austin natives will recognize these seven pictures

Today Austin, Texas is a technology hub and the Live Music Capital of the World. But those in the know remember it as a sleepy, but delightfully weird, college town.

Austin, Texas’s capital city, is booming like never before. While once a sleepy town, filled with legislators, lobbyists, a handful of hippies, and college students, Austin has captured the attention of the nation as a technology hub and the so-called Live Music Capital of the World, filling its city limits with entrepreneurs, rock stars, venture capital millionaires, and those hoping to be them.

It’s getting harder and harder to find an Austinite who remembers the pre-boom days, as so many cherished traditions and landmarks are bull-dozed for high rises and juice bars, but even those demolished sites can still tell the story of what makes Austin such a remarkable town.

East Avenue

Photos courtesy of the Austin History Center

Few of Austin’s historic older streets loom as large as East Avenue. Historically viewed as a racial and ethnic dividing line, pieces of East Avenue still exist, but most is underneath US Interstate 35, completed in 1960.

This elevated view of a newly paved East Avenue looks south from the stone lookout platform at Twelfth Street, with Bickler Academy (building with cupola) to the right at Eleventh Street.

Here’s what the southbound view between 11th and 12avenues at I-35 looks like today:

Travis County Capitol

Photos courtesy of the Austin History Center,

 Travis County’s courthouse from 1855 to 1875 had been small and simple, but the new courthouse that opened in 1876 was monumental, elegant, and ornate. A three-story limestone building erected for $100,000 by Burt McDonald from plans drawn by Jacob Larmour and Charles Wheelock, it was Austin’s best example of Second Empire architecture.

Complete with ironwork cresting, decorative dormers, and mansard roofs, the courthouse stood on the southeast corner of Eleventh Street and Congress Avenue, directly across from the Texas State Capitol. By 1927, the distinctive cupolas had disintegrated and were removed. It was remodeled as the Walton Building and used as offices for state agencies before it was demolished in 1964. Since then, the site has been used as a parking lot.

Discover Lost history from Austin in Lost Austin by John H. Slate

Brackenridge Hall

Photos courtesy of the Austin History Center,

Brackenridge Hall, known as “B Hall,” was a men’s dormitory built in 1890 that housed generations of student leaders and future greats. Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn and Sen. Ralph Yarborough lived there as students.

The building stood where the campus East Mall abuts the Main Mall. The birthplace of “The Eyes of Texas” (the UT school song) and the site of countless student pranks, B Hall was torn down in 1952.

Armadillo World Headquarters

The Armadillo World Headquarters, known to all as the Armadillo, was Austin’s legendary concert hall, located at 525 1/2 Barton Springs Road. Opened by Eddie Wilson and colleagues Jim Franklin, Spencer Perskin, Mike Tolleson, Bobby Hedderman, and Hank Alrich, the Armadillo was more than just a music venue, hosting other institutions such as the Austin Ballet Theatre and the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar. During its life, from 1970 to 1980, the former National Guard armory featured performers including Taj Mahal, Asleep at the Wheel, The Clash, B.B. King, Jerry Jeff Walker, Parliament-Funkadelic, Willie Nelson, Edgar and Johnny Winter, and the Pointer Sisters. (Photos courtesy Steve Hopson, South Austtin Popular Culture Center, and Jim Franklin.)

Vulcan Gas Company

Courtesy South Austin Popular Culture Center/Gilbert Shelton.

Before the Armadillo, Austin’s premier alternative music establishment was the Vulcan Gas Company. Opened by Houston White in 1966, the spacious club at 316 Congress Avenue featured local favorites, but also played host to touring acts like Johnny Winter, the Fugs, and blues master Mance Lipscomb. It closed in 1970, and the building later housed other clubs, including Duke’s Royal Coach Inn.

Liberty Lunch

Photo courtesy of the Austin History Center.

Another gem that follows after the Armadillo, one of Austin’s most beloved music halls was the visually unimpressive shed called Liberty Lunch. This bare-bones stage and beer garden was opened in 1976 by Shannon Sedwick and Michael Shelton of Esther’s Follies. When it needed a roof, some of the wood and metal from the demolished Armadillo was repurposed.

Its cavernous size made it ideal for traveling acts too large for small clubs. From local acts to Nirvana to Sun Ra, Liberty Lunch became an important tour stop. Into the 1990s under J’Net Ward and Mark Pratz, it hosted many punk and alternative rock groups, but was forced to close in 1999 to make way for downtown redevelopment.

Johnson & Scott Barbershop

Photo courtesy of the Austin History Center.

 Little is known about the Johnson and Scott barbershop at 310 East Sixth Street, but Hubert Jones’s promotional photograph from about 1885 demonstrates the upward movement of African American businesses in Austin.

John Dillinger’s Potential New Digs

Yesterday's America Editorial Team
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John Dillinger’s Potential New Digs

Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis is one of the largest cemeteries in the world, housing the remains of some 200,000 souls from the richest of the rich to the poorest of the poor. That’s the way it was meant to be. At the dedication of the cemetery, former Senator Albert S. White said the cemetery would be for “the rich and the poor, the proud and the humble, alike may enter here.” People from all walks of life are buried there from the homeless to a United States President—to John Dillinger, the infamous gangster. 

This year Dillinger’s remains may be moved to a new location in Crown Hill—or they may not. However the legal battle shakes out, it’s hard to find a boring spot in this Indiana cemetery.

Presidents, Poets, and Pittsburgh Expats

  • Frederick W. Chislett, 1827–1899, was Crown Hill’s first superintendent and served for 36 years. Chislett was a landscape architect from Pittsburgh. He initially developed seven burial sections in the cemetery.
  • His grave is located in Section 14.
  • The funeral of President Benjamin Harrison was one of the largest in the history of Crown Hill Cemetery as seen by this photo from 1902.
  • His grave is located in Section 13, Lot 57. (Photo courtesy of Crown Hill Cemetery.)
  • The top of the summit, the highest point in Indianapolis, belongs to James Whitcomb Riley, 1849–1916. When he died, some 35,000 people filed past his casket as it lay in state under the dome of the Indiana State Capitol.
  • Known as the “Hoosier Poet,” Riley’s poetry became famous and he penned many poems and books. His best-known poems include “Little Orphan Annie,” “The Raggedy Man,” and “When the Frost Is on the Pumpkin.” Born in nearby Greenfield, Riley’s home in Indianapolis is now a museum.
  • Union soldiers” fire-off a cannon during the annual Spirit of Freedom Celebration, which honors the role of African Americans in the Civil War. Some 1,000 students from Indianapolis Public Schools come to the celebration. (Photo courtesy of Marty Davis.)
  • The Gothic Chapel was designed by Diedrich A. Bohlen and constructed by Peter Routiers in 1875 at a cost of $38,922.25. It was originally built to temporarily entomb the remains of as many as 96 bodies when burial was not immediately possible. This was due generally to a delay in burial arrangements or special requests by members of the deceased’s family. Although the interior was designed for funeral services during inclement weather, the unpleasant surroundings and bleak interior made the “vault” an unpleasant place to visit. In 1971, it underwent restoration and became a place for services, lectures, and tours.
  • May Wright (Mary Eliza) Sewall, 1844–1920, was an educator and leader in art and other cultural interests in Indianapolis
  • Born in Greenfield, Wisconsin, Sewall first came to Indianapolis and taught at the first high school. She campaigned for women’s suffrage and helped found the Equal Suffrage Society of Indianapolis.

John Dillinger

The most asked for grave in Crown Hill is that of John Dillinger, the famous bank robber of the 1930s. He was born in a middle-class Indianapolis neighborhood on June 22, 1903. He was killed by federal agents at 10:40 p.m. on the night of Sunday, July 22, 1934, in an alley outside the Biograph Theatre in Chicago. Some 15,000 people went to his wake. He was buried in Crown Hill three days later and a couple of days after that an elaborate protection of concrete mixed with scrap iron and chicken wire was placed at staggered levels above the coffin to protect the grave from any attempt to vandalize it.

His grave is located in Section 44, Lot 94 in a family plot. But there have always been conspiracy theories that Dillinger was not the person buried that day—and that’s why some of his family members are trying to exhume and test the body, despite the protests of Crown Hill. 

Friday Night Heights: The Best of Texas High School Football

Yesterday's America Editorial Team
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Friday Night Heights: The Best of Texas High School Football

“If you want to understand Texas and Texans, watch high school football.” 

— journalist Joe Nick Patoski

In the Lone Star State, high school football is king. From the smallest, most remote communities to the big, bustling cities, high school football brings communities together in intimate ways that start to resemble actual families. If you consider players, coaches, trainers, cheerleaders, groundskeepers, officials, not to mention the parents and fans, then that could be most of your small town. And cross-town rivalries last multiple generations, ensuring strong tribal connections for the team and fans passed down through a community’s history.

In the nearly 100-year history of high school football in Texas, only 204 teams have made the finals more than once, and only twenty-six teams have made it to championships at least four times. So the true legendary high school football programs are only found in these extremely rare, top-of-the-top spots — the so-called “Four or More Club.”

The Tigers are in action before a huge Ohio crowd in the 1927 “national championship” matchup against Ohio’s Latin School of Chardon. Waco decisively won the ballgame 44–12. The win marked the apogee of Paul Tyson’s career as Waco High School head football coach

Origins

Waco, that remote, Central Texas town, not known for much, is the home of the big Texas high school football program. The first, multi-winning team of the newly formed University Interscholastic League (UIL), was the Waco High Tigers. In the 1920s, they rose to prominence under coach Paul Tyson, who would soon be dubbed the “Waco Wizard.”

Coach Tyson took the Tigers to seven state finals, with 6 being consecutive. After winning a national championship in Ohio, the team’s greatness was news throughout Texas and the nation, capturing the imagination of sports fans everywhere, and is credited with popularizing the sport in other communities that would later have their own high school football programs.

Petro-Dynasty

Odessa’s Ratliff Stadium, built in 1982, is not merely a high school football field. It is a Texas football icon representative of the five Texas schoolboy Petro-Dynasties that rose to prominence in the Lone Star State. Appropriately, a pump jack stands in front of Ratliff, reminding fans of the connection between West Texas petroleum and Odessa Permian football success. Courtesy of Mark Sterkel, Odessa American.

As championship football increased in importance to small communities, civic leader would seek ways to recruit better players. Oil boom towns lured the parents of promising players with attractive jobs. Oil rich communities like Odessa could also build tremendous football stadiums too. These oil town teams would beat big city teams, but the UIL eventually tightened eligibility requirements. So legendary were those teams, they inspired “Friday Light Nights,” the tale of blue-collar, oilfield-filled Odessa Permian, where football became everything.

Celebrate and discover history on the Grid Iron in Texas High School Football Dynasties by Rick Sherrod

Metro-Dynasty

After the UIL fine-tuned their school classification system, teams would only play similar-sized schools, making rivalries more equally-matched. Texas’s big cities saw a large increase in population is the 1970s, which meant more students in the inner city schools. Higher population, higher median household income, means more tax money for facilities and staff. Dallas suburb Garland established this model first. Winning two state championships in the 1960s, the Garland Owls showed the rest of the state that the right coach is most important element to winning state championships. 


The 1960 state-champion Brownwood Lions pose for a team picture. These Lions brought Brownwood the first of seven state championships, marking the beginning of the Brownwood football dynasty.

Micro-Dynasty

Some communities built football dynasties without oil money or big-city diversity. Small and mid-sized Texas towns, like Brownwood merged their identities with their local high school football team’s fortunes. In the 1960s, Brownwood, smack dab in the middle of Texas, began a run that ended in seven state championships. Credit goes to Gordon Wood, who was the first coach to have five championships, and would have nine by the time he retired.  His Lions put their town of Brownwood on the map!

Hot Blood in Indiana: The Wayne County Seat War

Yesterday's America Editorial Team
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Hot Blood in Indiana: The Wayne County Seat War

How Two Hoosier Towns Ended up Shooting at Each Other: It was over a court house, and it involved a cannon.

Today the “Wayne County Seat War” is a mostly forgotten conflict, but it featured many battles and even some bloodshed. Residents of Wayne County squabbled for decades about where to put their county seat, and they cycled through six different courthouses. The debate got most heated in the years after the Civil War, when the state courts helped Richmond steal the seat away from Centerville. As the New York Times put it—and yes, the Times covered this war—there was “Hot Blood in Indiana.”

So Long, Centerville…

In the fall of 1873, work began to tear down Centerville’s jail. The plan was to move its prisoners and documents and even parts of its building to Richmond. But the project was beset by vandals desperate to keep the seat in Centerville. They destroyed the workers’ ropes and wooden tools, until armed men arrived to protect the workers. 

On the night of October 28, seven guards were left in the sheriff’s residence and jail over night to guard the tools of the workmen. Late in the evening, between 10:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m., a group of fifty or sixty masked and armed men surrounded the building and demanded that the guards leave.

The guards refused, and the mob began firing their guns into the building, breaking windows and filling the ceilings and walls with bullets. After an hour of the siege, three guards were able to escape and get a horse and buggy from a nearby stable. The men rushed to Richmond to raise the alarm. 

Send the Posse!

Bells in the firehouse and courthouse were rung to rouse help in Richmond. At first, the people thought that there might be a fire. As soon as the word was passed, a posse of nearly one hundred men armed themselves and met at the railroad depot. A special train was made available; they were off to the rescue, arriving in Centerville a little after 4:00 a.m. 

Read the full story in Wayne County Indiana: The Battles for the Courthouse by Carolyn Lafever

The delay in the arrival of the posse had given the attackers time to do a lot of damage. When the remaining guards stubbornly refused to give up, a little cannon was placed facing the door of the sheriff’s residence. They loaded it with scrap iron, old nails, bolts and other metal debris from a blacksmith shop. The cannon was then fired, shattering the heavy front door. A hail of bullets accompanied the cannon fire. The yelling mob rushed inside, and the four guards retreated to barricade themselves in the jail at the rear of the building. 

The attackers demanded that the jail door be opened and gave the guards five minutes to open the door—or they would blow it open with the cannon. Recognizing that they were overpowered, the guards finally gave in. They were promised safety for themselves.

Quiet Returns to Centerville

To be sure they left town, the guards were escorted for about a mile down the road toward Richmond. They were told in no uncertain terms to “git.” 

When the posse arrived, all was quiet. The cannon was discovered in a stable nearby. 

The fence that circled the courthouse, sheriff’s residence, and jail in Centerville in 1873.

Fortunately, there was no more shooting in the following days. Centerville’s expensive $10,000 iron fence, also a point of contention, completely encircled the public square. In three hours, they had it taken down. A train with flatcars was sent over from Richmond. 

A total of sixteen cars moved the fence, which would be used at the new public square—not in Centerville, but in Richmond. 

What is a Houstonian?

Yesterday's America Editorial Team
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What is a Houstonian?

Tidbits of History from Houston

Houston, Texas, the sprawling, noisy city on the Gulf Cost, is always searching for its future. Obsessed with the next economic boom around the corner, Houston isn’t exactly a city about looking back. So, what do Houstonians need with history? Short answer: plenty.

The international and impossibly multi-cultural city is constantly resupplied with Newstonians, new Houstonians who moved here to find work and start a new life. They are all welcomed, but confusion may set in. Contemplating their new home, absorbing all of Houston’s traditions, events, and anniversaries, they inevitably wonder “What is a Houstonian?” 

Well, the answer to that riddle is found in the Bayou City’s rich history, lurking around every corner of the nation’s fourth largest city. Just look at these Houston events, they tell you everything about Houston and her residents’ entrepreneurship, ambition, and generosity.

The Original Boomtown – January 10,1901

Today in 1901, the first major oil well came in at Spindletop, in Harris County, south of Beaumont, marking the birth of the oil industry in Texas.  The original Texas boomtown, this Beaumont home to the salt dome produced 100,000 barrels per day, and made Texas the major player in the modern petroleum industry.

The Ship Channel dedication ceremony. Courtesy of Port Houston.

Presidential Visit – November 10, 1914

Since the birth of Houston in 1836, city planners, politicians, merchants, and industrialists wanted to make Houston a port city. In the early 20th century, Houston boasted seventeen railroads that carried cotton, rice, and lumber to ocean-going vessels. And in 1911, voters approved the creation of the Port Authority and a bond to pay for dredging the Ship Channel to 25-feet deep. On this day in 1914, Houstonians celebrated the improvements at the Ship Channel with President Woodrow Wilson opening the celebration with a cannon fired by remote control in Washington.

Curious to learn more? Check Out The Houstorian Calendar by James Glassman for a daily dose of Houston History!

President Kennedy speaking at Rice Stadium. Courtesy of NASA.

To the Moon! – September 12, 1962

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard..” When President John Kennedy spoke these words on this day in 1962 at Rice Stadium, he rallied the nation to increase its commitment to winning the so-called Space Race against the Soviet Union, making NASA a “program a high national priority.”

Houston was on the verge of becoming Space City; but then again, Houstonians have always been a forward-looking community that embraced invention and innovation.

Hurricane Katrina – September 1, 2005

Houstonians, for better or worse, know all about hurricanes. So much of Houston’s history is intertwined with the deadly, late summer storms – even when the hurricane misses Houston altogether. This was the case with Hurricane Katrina.

Sitting at sea level on the Gulf Coast, New Orleans is constantly protected from flooding by manmade levees. When Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans, the storm surge caused the barriers to fail, allowing flood waters to take over the city’s streets and structures. Even though the storm’s damage was the costliest U.S. hurricane to date, the larger story was in the countless victims driven from their homes, and in the local and federal government that was slow to respond to those in need.

On this day in 2005, Harris County opened its vacant Astrodome as a temporary shelter to evacuees from neighboring Louisiana who fled their flood damaged homes days earlier. Over the following weeks, Houston welcomed nearly a quarter million people from Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi, many making Houston their permanent home. It was one of Houston’s finest hours.

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