Town note
Named after William Grayson, George Washington's aide-de-camp, who was given a 70,000-acre tract of land for his services.
about 0:05:06The story
Within days he began a relationship with Minnie Burton, a few years older than him and also his ex-wife's aunt. Burton lived rent-free in a duplex apartment in Grayson in exchange for acting as chauffeur and helper to her 84-year-old neighbour, Bess Stidum Horton.
The argument became a rampage: he threw pickles and other food, hurled a chair, threw knives, smashed the television and other property, punched through a sliding glass door and cut his right arm badly, and threatened his brother with a knife before leaving with the remaining beer.
Burton, locked out of her own apartment, sat on the porch. He then ripped the screens off her windows; another tenant, Elmer Pritchard, called the police. Officers Lyndeman and Green, responding to Pritchard's call at about 1.57 am, saw a light on, found the garage door open and the inner door locked, and entered through the same window. Bess Horton lay dead on the bed, her throat slashed and a knife driven through her right temple so hard that the point came out of the left.
I stabbed her,' and later said he did not know she was in the house. Blood typing and DNA testing then produced the puzzle at the heart of the case: none of the blood on his clothing was Horton's, and none of the blood on her bed was his.