John Wallace and the Murder in Coweta County: Trial and Legacy

The murder in Coweta County committed by John Wallace was the April 20, 1948 killing of a Black sharecropper named William Turner, beaten to death with a shotgun barrel at a roadside tourist camp near Moreland, Georgia. Wallace, a wealthy white landowner and moonshiner from neighboring Meriwether County, was convicted of the murder and executed at the state penitentiary in Reidsville in 1950. The case became one of the first in Georgia in which a white man was sentenced to death based on the testimony of Black witnesses.

Who John Wallace Was

John Wallace (1896–1950) grew up in Meriwether County, about 75 miles southwest of Atlanta. His father died when he was eleven. By adulthood he had built a large moonshine operation and had become one of the most powerful men in the county.¹ Neighbors described him as generous to his community and cruel to anyone who crossed him.² His reach extended into local law enforcement, including Meriwether County Sheriff Hardy Collier, a connection that shaped what happened in April 1948.

The Dispute Over the Cow

William Turner, sometimes called Wilson Turner, was a sharecropper on Wallace’s land. Wallace fired him after a payment dispute and evicted him from the property. Turner then stole one of Wallace’s registered Guernsey cows.² Wallace had already consulted Mayhayley Lancaster, a well-known fortune teller in Heard County, who told him Turner was the thief.³

Turner was arrested in Carroll County and held at the Meriwether County Jail in Greenville. Wallace did not wait for the courts. He arranged with Sheriff Collier to have Turner released at a set time. Wallace and three associates, Herring Sivell, Henry Mobley, and Tom Strickland, were waiting outside when Turner walked out.²

The Killing at Sunset Tourist Camp

Wallace and his men chased Turner north along Highway 27. The pursuit crossed from Meriwether County into Coweta County. Turner’s truck ran out of gas near Moreland, and he pulled into the parking lot of the Sunset Tourist Camp, a roadside lodging run by Steve Smith.⁴ There, on April 20, 1948, Wallace beat Turner to death with the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun.²

Where the truck stopped decided the case. A few miles earlier, the killing would have fallen in Meriwether County, where Wallace’s ties to the sheriff could have protected him. It didn’t. It fell in Coweta.

The Cover-Up

Wallace and his associates took the body back to his farm in Meriwether County and dumped it in a well. Two Black farmworkers, Albert Brooks and Robert Lee Gates, were forced to help pull the body out with drags and ropes. Gates later testified that the back of Turner’s head appeared crushed.⁵

Brooks and Gates carried the body about half a mile by horseback to a pit, where it was laid on cordwood, soaked with ten gallons of gasoline, and burned. The next morning Wallace ordered them to shovel the ashes and dump them in a creek.⁵

Sheriff Lamar Potts’s Investigation

Coweta County Sheriff Lamar Potts had authority over the case because the fatal assault happened within his jurisdiction, at the Sunset Tourist Camp. One account described him tracking Wallace “like a hungry bloodhound.”²

Potts also went to see Mayhayley Lancaster, who reportedly described a vision of the body surrounded by green flies, then moved and thrown into water. Following the lead, investigators found bone fragments in a stream on Wallace’s farm and identified them as William Turner’s remains.³⁴ Wallace was arrested and brought to the Coweta County Courthouse in Newnan.

The Trial

A Coweta County grand jury indicted Wallace for the murder of William H. Turner. His accomplice Henry Mobley was tried alongside him.⁶ The courtroom was packed, and local boys reportedly rented their seats to latecomers.⁴

The prosecution’s case rested on Albert Brooks and Robert Lee Gates, the two Black farmworkers Wallace had forced to burn the body. Their willingness to testify against a powerful white landowner in 1948 Georgia was extraordinary. The bone fragments from the creek corroborated their accounts. Wallace testified in his own defense, a choice observers said hurt him.²

Mayhayley Lancaster appeared as a prosecution witness in a bright red dress and a Shriner’s fez. When defense counsel asked whether her information came from special God-given wisdom, she reportedly answered, “No, I feel my importance.”⁷

On June 18, 1948, the jury found Wallace guilty of murder without a recommendation of mercy. Under Georgia law at the time, that meant an automatic death sentence.²

Appeal and Execution

Wallace appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court, which decided Wallace v. State, 204 Ga. 676, on January 11, 1949. His attorneys challenged the admission of opinion testimony, a remark by the trial judge, and certain photographs entered into evidence. The court rejected each argument and affirmed the conviction, holding that “the evidence amply supported the verdict.”⁸

John Wallace was executed by electrocution on November 3, 1950, at the State Penitentiary in Reidsville, Georgia.²

Why the Case Still Matters

The Wallace trial is remembered as one of the first cases in Georgia in which a white man was sentenced to death based on the testimony of Black witnesses.⁹ In the Jim Crow South of 1948, the outcome was remarkable. The case did not overturn any particular legal doctrine, but it showed that cross-racial testimony could carry the weight of a capital conviction in a Georgia courtroom.

The personal cost lingered. According to Albert Brooks’s grandson Al Brooks, his grandfather refused to talk about what had happened and grew angry when the subject came up. The Brooks family also came to believe Albert was John Wallace’s biological son, adding another dimension to the racial dynamics of the case. They nonetheless celebrated his bravery in testifying.⁹

How the Story Survived

The case might have faded into local memory if not for Margaret Anne Barnes, a Newnan native and University of Georgia journalism graduate who had been reporting for The Newnan Times-Herald in 1948. Barnes spent years researching the story, and her 1976 book, Murder in Coweta County, became a bestseller and won the Edgar Allan Poe Special Award for outstanding fact-crime study from the Mystery Writers of America. The work drew death threats, including a caller who warned that her body would be dumped in the Chattahoochee River.¹⁰

A 1983 made-for-television movie of the same name was based on Barnes’s book, with Andy Griffith as Sheriff Potts, Johnny Cash as Wallace, and June Carter Cash as Lancaster. It was among the first significant productions shot primarily in Georgia.²¹⁴

A Legacy Split by the County Line

More than seventy years later, how people remember Wallace still depends on which side of the county line they live on. Coweta County residents have generally regarded Sheriff Potts as the man who brought a powerful figure to justice. In Meriwether County, some have viewed Potts as pursuing a personal vendetta and remember Wallace as a man who looked after his community.²

A road in Meriwether County still bears the name John Wallace Road. Asked whether the county had ever considered renaming it, the Meriwether County public works director replied, “No sir. Not to my knowledge.” Residents interviewed about the road described Wallace as “well liked” and a man who “looked after his own.” Arthur “Skin” Edge, a grandson of the sheriff who arrested Wallace, said he was mostly untroubled by the road’s name.¹¹ In Coweta County, the case is marked by driving tours and anniversary events at the courthouse in Newnan.²

1
University of Georgia Press. No Remorse
2
Newnan-Coweta Magazine. Touring Murder in Coweta County
3
The Times-Georgian. Mayhayley Lancaster: The Murder in Coweta County
4
The Newnan Times-Herald. Murder in Coweta Still Draws a Crowd
5
CaseMine. Wallace v. State
6
Digital Library of Georgia. Wallace and Mobley Murder Trial
7
Newnan-Coweta Magazine. Chasing Mayhayley
8
vLex. Wallace v. State, 204 Ga. 676
9
The Newnan Times-Herald. Murder in Coweta County Discussed by Descendants 70 Years Later
10
Georgia Center for the Book. Margaret Anne Barnes
11
USA Today. Murderers Road