In the middle 1960s,
there was an obscure pamphlet on voodoo, hexes, and the magical arts
that began to appear in advertisements in magazines and newspapers
around the United States. Attributed to a mysterious “Charles Le Verre,”
it was a modest offering, appropriately titled Tales of Voodoo and Black Magic, in which an enigmatic narrator, “Mama Tebe,” gave explanations for the magical curiosities listed throughout the book.
Needless to say, Tales of Voodoo and Black Magic
never became a best seller, and few probably ever had cause for
wondering about its origins, or who its mysterious author “Charles Le
Verre” might have been.
The fact is, there had never been any
Charles Le Verre at all; the curious little pamphlet had been written by
a former blues singer named Charles Glass of Hendersonville, North
Carolina, who managed a record shop in the area.
Glass’s short pamphlet on Voodoo, published under the pseudonym “Charles Le Verre.”
Glass, under the pseudonym “Le Verre”
(merely a French translation for his actual last name) had penned his
short offering on the voodoo arts as an outgrowth for his love all
things foreign and unusual. Many who knew Glass from his record shop in
town were aware that he sold bundles of herbs, spices, and oils to
superstitious residents in town, offering them as “hexes” which were
slipped to customers out the back door of his store. His home off of
Wildwood Road was even more exotic than his place of business: dubbed
“Hong Kong Hill” by Glass, he was known to sit outside his
oriental-styled home clad in robes and a turban in the mornings and
evenings. Visitors would later recall that he would chant mantras he had
read in esoteric books—or perhaps created himself—as moths fluttered
around the ornamental lanterns that adorned the yard.
Those who knew him say Glass had a
peculiar affinity for these fluttering creatures, ascribing an almost
spectral significance to them. According to Lynn Blackwell, an employee
at the Tempo Music Shop where Glass sold records before his death,
“Charles used to say he was going to come back in the afterlife as a
moth.” She recalled one instance shortly after he died where a large
moth appeared on the wall above her as she was doing inventory one night
at the shop; a pleasant reminder of a vivacious character whose life
ended far too early.
Charles Glass, as seen in the mid-1960s.
On July 22, 1966, Glass’s remains had
been found along with two other victims—Vernon Shipman, owner of the
Tempo Music Shop and also Glass’s lover, and Louise Shumate, a
61-year-old woman who lived a solitary life as a factory employee in
nearby Asheville, North Carolina—all of whom had died of cranial
injuries several days before. At the time of their discovery, Charles
Hill and Larry Shipman, who found the bodies while carrying brush to a
dump site near Summit Lake outside of town, first believed they had
uncovered a set of mannequins that had been discarded by one of the
shops in town.
It was a grisly scene: the bludgeoned
bodies were laid out in a roughly circular fashion, Shumate’s remains
partially unclothed, with clear evidence she had been sexually
assaulted. Glass and Shipman’s remains, though fully clothed, were no
less disturbing; a strip of iron had been placed on Shipman’s neck,
around which were more than a dozen puncture marks. Glass’s upper
extremities had been similarly mutilated, with a pair of crutches he had
used since breaking his leg only months earlier placed over his chest
in the shape of a cross. Additional belongings, which included the men’s
wallets and Shumate’s purse, were also found nearby.
The headlines were sensational (which was
fairly typical for that period), and at times fairly unflattering,
especially for a triple homicide that quite literally implied elements
of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. One statement by an investigator who
had examined the case gave the following description of Glass:
“[Charles Glass] had a hand in everything
from authoring a column of advice to the lovelorn to selling rock ‘n’
roll music to teenagers. A student of Orientalism and African
witchcraft, he had friends in every strata of society. He was, in fact,
deeply interested in just about everyone with whom he came into
contact–with the exception of women.”
Louise Shumate, on the other hand,
couldn’t have been more different from Glass, though accounts of her
were similarly embellished at the time (one publication described her as
being “a dark and attractive woman who appeared to be 45”). Those who
knew her said she was single, and lived a quiet life apart from the
factory job she worked. There was, and still remains no known
connections between Shumate and the record shop owners whose bodies
accompanied hers in July of 1966.
Of course, the fact that Glass had been
so heavily invested in “esoteric” ideas certainly contributed to the
sensational air that the story carried in tabloids and true crime
magazines that later covered it. Add to that the unfortunate cultural
attitudes toward homosexuality in a southeastern town at that time, and
it was a virtual recipe for controversy. Hence, it was not uncommon in
the weeks, months, and even years after the incident to see commentaries
written about the case that included such memorable titles as, “North
Carolina’s Search for a Voodoo Killer.”
One of the most ironic aspects of the
case actually hailed from Glass’s short-lived music career earlier in
life; he once recorded a song called “Screamin’ and Dyin’,” which begins
with a woman pleading with her jilted lover before issuing a
bloodcurdling scream, followed by a loud pop reminiscent of a two-by-four smacking a plaster wall.
“The song was released nationwide and
written up in Cashbox magazine,” according to writer Derek Lacey, who
chronicled the incident in a detailed article written in 2016. Richard
Waters, a former employee of the Hendersonville radio station WHKP where
Glass recorded the song, reported that “In the early ’50s, this was as
big as being written up in Billboard.” The single was released on the
Magnet record label, and can be heard below:
Although there were no known connections
between Shumate and Glass or Shipman, there is one odd piece of
testimony that suggests the pair of record shop owners may have come
into contact with her, and another unidentified individual, shortly
before their deaths.
On Sunday, July 17th, several people
reported having seen the victims—Glass and Shipman had been dining
together in the mid-afternoon and were believed to have been consuming
alcohol–and later visited an antique shop that afternoon. Meanwhile,
Shumate was seen leaving her apartment in downtown Asheville at around
the same time. Shipman and Glass had dinner plans later that evening
with another man, Ronnie Amsden, who had been waiting for them to pick
him up at the Echo Inn in Hendersonville, and thought it was strange for
Shipman to have been a no-show.
What was likely to be one of the last
sightings of Glass and Shipman occurred at 6 PM on Evans Cove Road, an
unpaved one-lane road north of Lake Summit, where the victim’s bodies
were later found. Ronnie Holliefield, Circulation Manager of the local Times-News
said he observed Shipman in his 1962 Ford Fairlane with Glass in the
front passenger seat. As he moved to the edge of the narrow dirt road
and waived for them to pass, he noticed two other individuals in the
back seat of Shipman’s vehicle: a woman “with a smirky, odd smile” and a
man wearing sunglasses.
Following the discovery of the victim’s
bodies, a number of odd details would begin to emerge. For instance,
although Shipman and his company were seen in his vehicle close to Lake
Summit on Sunday evening, his car was later found close to his residence
on Maple Street. It was later reported that a group of young men had
found his empty vehicle that night shortly before dark, and elected to
move it back to town near Shipman’s home. Odd though this detail might
have been, none of these young men were considered suspects at the
time.
Of the actual suspects, there were
several, although one of them clearly stood out among the rest. Edward
Thompson Jr. not only lived in Hendersonville, North Carolina at the
time the murders were committed, but just two years later committed
multiple crimes that included the kidnapping of nine individual, five
sexual assaults, and two murders. He even sent threatening letters to
one area newspaper at the time, claiming that he hoped “to get a chance
to blast the daylights out of the whole [newspaper] crew.” Needless to
say, these were tense times, and statements were issued by local law
enforcement saying that any individuals who spotted Thompson were
advised to arrest and detain him at once—and use deadly force if
necessary—without fear of any legal repercussions in the event that the
suspect was killed.
Thompson was eventually captured and died
more than two decades later in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he
remained imprisoned for the remainder of his life.
There is little question as to whether
Thompson had indeed been the killer; many who had interacted with him,
especially after his capture, had confirmed that he confessed to the
murders of Glass, Shipman, and Shumate. Nonetheless, there was a final
disturbing twist in the case, which involved a telephone call to Lewis
Green, a prominent newspaperman in Asheville at that time (and one, I
will note, whose family members this writer had known over the years).
According to Green, he received a call from Jim Burroughs, a friend of
Shipman who resided nearby in Hendersonville at the time of the murders.
Burroughs, who had worked for a short
time as an obituary writer local Citizen-Times newspaper, had recently
been fired, and called Green to tell him, rather cryptically, that
“three prominent citizens” were missing in the area. It had been evident
in the hours and days after the murders that socialites Glass and
Shipman were missing, but the same had not been the case with the
reclusive Miss Shumate. Green later said in an interview that the fact
Burroughs seemed to have had early knowledge of the crime had troubled
him, although there was never any additional evidence that linked him to
the killings.
Although the most likely killer had
indeed been Thompson, many loose ends remained about the case for a
number of years, and in fact, still linger today. Whatever the complete
story of the “Voodoo” murder had actually been, with its unsettling
overtones of the occult and the supernatural the death of “Moth Man”
Charles Glass and the other two victims remains one of the most unusual,
and unsettling multiple homicides ever to have occurred in the
southeastern United States.
Recruits At The Parris Island Old Barracks (Rifle Range)
