Murder of Sam Parker
Sam Parker was a standout athlete at the University of Tennessee who was murdered in his hometown of Helenwood on July 5, 1906, allegedly over a woman.
Background
Samuel Young Parker was the son of James Crawford “J.C.” Parker and Mary Burke of Helenwood. His father had grown up at Sheep Ranch near Robbins, the son of Joel and Maria Hurt Parker, and then went on to become Scott County’s first superintendent of schools and was then elected Scott County Judge. His mother, Mary Burke Parker, was the postmaster in Helenwood.
Sam Parker was one of nine children born to J.C. and Mary Parker. His father was prominent in Republican politics and maintained a law office in his hometown of Helenwood. He was appointed judge of Tennessee’s 3rd Judicial District.
The young Parker followed his father into the practice of law. He attended Baker-Himel School in Knoxville, a forerunner of University School, and then attended law school at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Tenn., where he was known by the nickname “Judge” among his friends.
Athletic prowess
Sam Parker’s greatest accomplishments weren’t in the classroom but in sports. One newspaper in particular called him “one of the best known college athletes of the South.” The Knoxville Journal & Tribune called him “the best all-around athlete in the university during the three years he remained there.”
Parker played both football and basketball at Tennessee, taking part in the 1903, 1904 and 1905 seasons.
In football, Parker was a fullback. He was named All-Southern by Nash Buckingham in 1904. Buckingham, who had also played fullback for the Vols, selected the All-Southern team for the Memphis Commercial Appeal each year, and it was a prestigious honor to be included.
The 1904 team had the distinction of being the first Tennessee team to beat Alabama. It did so in the season finale in Birmingham, winning 5-0 (a touchdown was worth five points in those days). Parker was listed by The Birmingham News as the starting right end for the Vols in that game.
Parker was the university’s ace pitcher in baseball, and had offers to play professional baseball. Instead, he opted to return home to practice law.
The murder
Parker was 26 years old, a practicing attorney, and was very popular in Scott County in 1906. He was also still a ballplayer. On Thursday, July 5, 1906, he played a baseball game in Oneida, then hopped aboard a train back home to Helenwood on the Cincinnati-Southern Railroad. (Highway 27 had not yet been built to link Helenwood and Oneida.)
As Parker stepped off the train at the Helenwood Depot, Judge James E. Fulton was waiting on him.
Fulton was another practicing attorney from Scott County. While the Parkers were diehard Republicans, Fulton was a staunch Democrat. But the two families were close. In fact, Sam Parker’s father would later say that he had boarded Fulton at his home and had provided him a law office without charge.
With his 13-year-old son looking on, Fulton emptied both barrels of his double-barreled shotgun into Sam Parker’s stomach. He would later say that Parker was having an affair with his wife. Parker denied the allegations as he lay dying.
Passersby rushed Parker to the home of his father, and a special train was sent to fetch a doctor from Somerset, Ky. But Parker would ultimately die from his wounds. Before he did, he made an “emphatic denial,” as the New York Times put it, of the allegations Fulton had made against him.
Fulton’s Trial
Fulton surrendered to law enforcement and was taken to Knoxville, Tenn. for a preliminary hearing. He claimed insanity, saying it was heavy drinking and smoking too many cigarettes that had caused him to kill Sam Fulton.
However, prosecutors produced a witness, Church Pemberton, who told the court that Fulton was neither insane or intoxicated when he fired his shotgun at Parker. He said he had never known Fulton to be “in a better or more rational mood.” Pemberton also said that Fulton had shown up at the train station and waited a full hour for Parker to arrive.
Several doctors and other witnesses testified on Fulton’s behalf, saying he was crazy. He had been spotted in front of the county courthouse in Huntsville a few months earlier, ripping up $10 bills.
Fulton and his wife had separated prior to July 5, 1906. However, she and his mother sat by Fulton’s cell at the old county jail in Huntsville, refusing to leave until the sheriff made them do so because Parker’s friends had threatened to drag Fulton out of jail and hang him.
When J.C. Parker learned of his son’s murder, he sent three of his daughters to see Jerome Templeton, one of Fulton’s defense attorneys. His request was that Templeton not defend his son’s killer. Templeton was so moved by the plea that he withdrew from the case.
Fulton was indicted by a grand jury on a first degree murder charge on Sept. 24, 1906. A judge denied bail following a habeas corpus hearing in Chattanooga, Tenn. on Oct. 21, 1906.
That decision, delivered by Circuit Court Judge M.M. Allison, included the following statement by Allison:
“Life in this country is getting too cheap, it is already too cheap. A deplorable condition of affairs is that which permits a man, upon hearing rumors of derogatory remarks concerning his family, however unfounded and without investigation as to their truth, to kill another and escape the vengeance of the law … I am aware of the fact that in Tennessee juries do sometimes execute the unwritten laws, but the courts do not … In order to admit this defendant the bail there is but one thing I would have to believe — that the defendant, at the time of the killing, was not sane. In order to arrive at this conclusion I should be obliged to accept as true everything the defendant has said on the witness stand, and every explanation of his acts made by him … In my opinion all the elements of murder are shown by the evidence, deliberation and premeditation, and proof of temporary insanity would have to be plenary before I would assume the responsibility of turning the defendant loose.” (As reported by The Tennessean.)
At trial, Fulton’s attorneys argued that Parker had accused Fulton’s wife of making sexual advances towards him. Fulton and his wife had split after she accused him of having an affair with two other women, and Fulton testified that it was Parker who had told his wife that her husband “had been too friendly with other women.”
Although Parker had denied with his dying breath that he had acted inappropriately toward Fulton’s wife, the defense later produced a deposition from attorney Robert S. Young stating that Parker had visited his Knoxville law office in the spring of 1906, while he was pitching at the University of Tennessee. During that time, Young testified, “he was in my office in Knoxville one afternoon and we were talking about various things, and I don’t remember how the subject came up exactly, but during the conversation Sam E. Parker stated in substance that he had had intercourse with Mrs. Fulton.”
The conversation was substantial because the Young family were friends of the Parker family. Sam Young Parker was named after Robert Young’s father, Col. Sam Epps Young, an attorney from Sweetwater. The elder Young prosecuted Fulton’s first murder trial in Knoxville at the behest of J.C. Parker, and was emotional as he discussed the case.
Fulton’s first trial was held Jan. 29-Feb. 2, 1907, and resulted in mistrial. Robert Young’s deposition was introduced as part of that trial. A majority of the jury (nine of 12) thought he was guilty but could not agree on a verdict.
James Fowler, a noted lawyer and former mayor of Knoxville traveled to Huntsville to serve as a special prosecutor in a second trial from June 24-28, 1907, and Fulton was convicted of second degree murder.
The judge sentenced Fulton to 10 years in prison. After he had served just 10 months, his sentence was commuted by Tennessee Gov. Malcolm Rice Patterson.
The aftermath
J.C. Parker was already ill when his son was killed. His wife had died in 1885 and he had another son — Burdette — who had died in 1900. When he learned of Sam Parker’s death, he essentially grieved himself to death, dying three weeks later.
J.C. Parker, his wife, and his two sons are all buried at the Helenwood Cut Cemetery.
Laura Neil, Judge Fulton’s wife, divorced him in June 1909. By that time, Fulton had been released from prison.
Ten years after his conviction, Fulton had been named the city attorney for Oneida, which had just been granted a charter by the state. He got into an argument with the Scott County News and its editor, J.E. Bell.
Bell had written an editorial in the spring of 1917 that angered Fulton. He threatened to kill Bell. Court documents later revealed that he hounded Bell for two weeks. On one occasion, Bell had to escape into Cooper’s Store to hide from Fulton.
The two men eventually came face to face in the office of Judge W.H. Potter. By that time, Bell had armed himself. He fired on Fulton with a double-barreled derringer, severing Fulton’s spine and rendering him paralyzed. Fulton died soon thereafter at a Knoxville hospital.
Bell was convicted of involuntary manslaughter, but was promptly pardoned by Tennessee Gov. Thomas Clark Rye.
Fulton died on July 2, 1917 — almost 11 years exactly from when he shot Sam Parker on July 5, 1906.
Years later, Laura Neil, Fulton’s former wife, who was hospitalized with illness, made a statement: “I know it was said that Judge Fulton killed Sam Parker on my account, but Judge Fulton himself declared that it was not true, and that his wife was entirely blameless. He killed Sam Parker on another account.”
The remaining Parker children moved out of Scott County, with many of them dying at relatively young ages due to heart disease.
John Parker, Sam’s younger brother, died of heart disease in Kentucky in December 1938. Another son, Luther, moved to Knoxville to work as a stenographer and later to Chicago to work as a motel clerk. He died in 1936 at the age of 57.
The three daughters who J.C. Parker sent to plead with Fulton’s attorney: Ella married William Jefferson Ryan and moved to Oklahoma. She died of influenza during the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918, at the age of 50. Belle married a Newman and moved to Memphis, where she died in 1954 of a heart attack. Ida married W.M. Brooks and died of heart disease in Kentucky two days before Thanksgiving in 1924.
Read More: Murders in the Heartland: The Death of the Baseball Star