On the Record with S. Thorne Harper, Author Speaking This Saturday at Birmingham Public Library
S. Thorne Harper, author of The Alabama Tryst Murder Mystery: A conversation with the journalist who spent 15 years investigating Birmingham's forgotten 1927 Tryst murders
Written by Roy L. Williams, Public Relations Specialist at the Birmingham Public Library
As a former newspaper reporter, I have always been fascinated by the stories that make journalists stop and dig deeper. So when I learned about S. Thorne “Sam” Harper’s 15-year investigation into a nearly forgotten 1927 Birmingham double murder, I knew there was a story worth telling.
Harper and I have something in common: We spent decades reporting other people's stories before becoming authors. In this conversation, Harper talks about what drew him to the Tryst murders, what his research uncovered about race and justice in 1927 Alabama, and how his experience covering an electric-chair execution in 2000 influenced his decision to revisit Alabama's first electric-chair execution.
I found this conversation particularly compelling because Harper isn't simply telling the story of a nearly 100-year-old murder. He is asking a question that still resonates today: What can the past teach us about justice, race and who gets to have their story remembered?
Q&A with S. Thorne “Sam” Harper
BPL:
You spent 15 years researching and writing The Alabama Tryst Murder Mystery.
What was it about this 1927 Birmingham case that first grabbed your attention?
S.
Thorne Harper: In 2003, I covered the electric chair execution of Robert Tarver
Jr., an African American man convicted of the robbery and murder of Hugh Kite,
a well-liked White man who operated a general store in rural west Georgia.
Tarver’s trial was a travesty. In his appeal, the Alabama Court of Criminal
Appeals noted that “evidence against Robert Tarver was of questionable
reliability,” that he had “maintained his innocence throughout the
proceedings,” that he had “passed a polygraph test when denying that he had
killed the victim,” and that “very little evidence made Tarver” a better
candidate than a second Black man police had in custody at the time.
Furthermore, even though the court ruled that
evidence against Tarver had been of "questionable reliability," the
appeals court allowed his execution to proceed. This didn’t feel like blind
justice. It felt old. It felt racial.
I went
back to the beginning – to Alabama’s first electric chair execution. What I
found astonished me. In 1927, the Ku Klux Klan controlled Alabama. Klansmen
occupied the governor’s office, the attorney general’s office, the majority of
the state’s legislature, and both of the state’s U.S. Senate seats. In 1927,
the Heart of Dixie still celebrated Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s
birthday as a state holiday.
The
majority of Birmingham’s law enforcement were also Klansmen. Alabama was among
the last to execute its condemned by means of hanging. Plagued by the
occasional decapitation, hanging was considered primitive. It was incompatible
with evolving mores, the return of King Cotton, and the state’s modernizing and
booming steel industry.
BPL:
You have spent more than three decades as a journalist, including years as a
crime reporter. What made you decide that this particular story needed to
become your first book?
Harper:
I wanted to explore whether Alabama has progressed in terms of race and
justice. Not very far, as it turns out.
BPL:
One of the most fascinating aspects of the case is how quickly the
investigation seemed to move once eight Black men were arrested, despite
questions surrounding the evidence. What did your research uncover about the
investigation and the eventual conviction of Horace DeVaughn?
Harper:
Police of the day often used brutal means of interrogation to coax confessions
from suspects. DeVaughn was a recently released convict who had returned home
to Alabama from a Virginia prison several weeks before the Tryst Murders. He
was a Black man and ex-convict who had served time for second degree murder. He
was an easy mark.
BPL:
The case took place during the Jim Crow era, and the Ku Klux Klan publicly
announced that it was joining the investigation. How important is understanding
Birmingham's racial and social climate in understanding what happened in this
case?
Harper: The
Klan essentially ruled Alabama at the time, enforcing racial domination and
Christian mores through violence and fear. This included bullwhip-carrying
“Morality Patrols” made up of Klansmen who roamed the remote night-time woods
outside Birmingham hunting for “trysting” couples. Those caught faced extortion
of money and valuables in lieu of being hauled before the justice-of-the-peace
where their exploits would be made public, exposing them to public ridicule. At
worst, they could be extorted, lashed with the whip, and exposed.
BPL: DeVaughn became the first person executed in Alabama's electric chair, yet even a Birmingham newspaper reportedly questioned whether he was actually the Tryst murderer. After researching this case for 15 years, where do you stand on the question: Was Horace DeVaughn guilty?
Harper:
I don’t believe so. Other than his forced confession, no credible evidence
emerged clearly supporting his guilt. Early in the murder probe, investigators
appeared to suggest that the double-slaying had been the result of a morality
patrol shakedown gone wrong. Forty-eight hours later, a sheriff’s spokesman
indicated that investigators were on the brink of arresting a White suspect in
the case. Suddenly and inexplicably, the sheriff’s investigation inexplicably
collapsed. The Klan announced its intervention in the investigation the
following day. Horace DeVaughn was in police custody less than 48 hours later.
BPL:
You actually witnessed and reported on an Alabama electric-chair execution in
2000, and later appeared in the PBS documentary Race to Execution. How did that
experience influence the way you approached researching Alabama's first
electric-chair execution in 1927?
Harper:
My appearance on Race to Execution focused on Robert Tarver and the
overwhelming role race played in his execution. Jury selection in his 1995
trial was blatantly tainted by racial bias. The prosecutor in his case used 13
of his 16 permitted “peremptory strikes” to eliminate 13 of the 14 qualified
Black jurors from the jury pool.
Alabama’s
criminal appeals court later noted that “despite the fact that Russell County
was nearly 40 percent African American, Tarver was tried by a jury composed of
11 Whites and only one Black juror.” The state appeals court also called out
Tarver’s court-appointed attorneys’ strategy “to concentrate on preparing for
the guilty phase,” seeking merely to keep him out of the electric chair, rather
than proving his innocence. Initially, that strategy appeared to have worked.
Tarver’s
jury did find him guilty and sentenced him to life imprisonment. The folly of
that strategy came crashing down, however, when trial Judge Wayne Johnson
overruled the jury’s life-saving sentence, ordering his death in Alabama’s
“Yellow Mama.” Making matters even worse, and for reasons that were never
explained, Atmore Prison officials did not permit a single Tarver family member
to witness his execution.
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| S. Thorne Harper at the 2026 BPL Local Authors Expo. |
BPL:
You discovered that the original court transcripts from the Tryst case are
missing and presumed lost. As a journalist and researcher, what was it like
trying to reconstruct a nearly 100-year-old case when some of the most
important records were no longer available?
Harper:
Various accounts of the arrest, trial and execution of Horace DeVaughn appeared
six of Alabama’s major newspapers: Birmingham Age-Herald, The Birmingham News,
The Birmingham Post, The Montgomery Advertiser, The Birmingham Post, and the
African American-run Birmingham Reporter.
With
the decline of newspapers, particularly local ones, it is unclear how and if
the digital age is up to – or even interested in – archiving news stories. What
will be the primary source of history? For the time being, I will continue to
enjoy getting lost in newspaper archives, researching first drafts of history.
You've covered everything from crime and
police abuse to the Iraq War, Somalia and Kosovo. How was researching a 1927
Birmingham murder case different from the kind of journalism you've done
throughout your career?
Harper:
Everybody has a story. Stories can bind us together and create a shared
history. Stories of crime, war, and tragedy can provide insights or inspiration
into how we can deal with and overcome tragedy. Stories inform and remind of us
who we are and where we come from.
Whether
its Kosovo, Somalia, Kuwait, Iraq, Birmingham, Alabama, or Barstow, California,
it is the stories that we read and create that bind us together. The best ones
persist in questioning who we are and how we can become better. It is stories
that mark time and plot our personal geography: our place in the world.
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| S. Thorne Harper, left, speaking with author Emmett Woods at 2026 Local Authors Expo. |
BPL:
Your book is called The Alabama Tryst Murder Mystery. Without giving away too
much, what do you hope readers will discover about Birmingham — and Alabama —
beyond the mystery itself?
Harper:
Good question. Hatred, ignorance, and violence dwell do not age well. It is
good to know where you are from, where you are now, and where you want to be.
Birmingham has come a long way. From the execution of Horace DeVaughn and the
era of horrific lynchings, to police beatings, and church bombings and the
deaths of four young girls, to a city where African American leadership is now
as common as biscuits and gravy.
You
have spent much of your career reporting other people's stories. What was it
like finally becoming the author of your own book?
Harper:
It means my little contribution to what I might call an empathy-based history
has a chance to exist beyond my earthly years, selfishly providing me a glimpse
of immortality: a Dream.
BPL:
You're bringing The Alabama Tryst Murder Mystery to Birmingham Public Library
for a special local author event. What can people expect when they come to your
presentation?
Harper:
Perhaps useful insight into empathy and its application to history.
BPL:
Finally, if someone has never heard of the Tryst murders, why should
they come hear this story on Aug. 15?
Harper:
In terms of race, they might be surprised at how little Alabama’s criminal
justice system has progressed over the past 100 years.
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