Knowles v. State

271 S.E.2d 615, 246 Ga. 378, 1980 Ga. LEXIS 1116
CourtSupreme Court of Georgia
DecidedSeptember 5, 1980
Docket36340, 36341, 36342
StatusPublished
Cited by17 cases

This text of 271 S.E.2d 615 (Knowles v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Georgia primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Knowles v. State, 271 S.E.2d 615, 246 Ga. 378, 1980 Ga. LEXIS 1116 (Ga. 1980).

Opinion

Undercofler, Chief Justice.

These appeals are from convictions for murder and sentences of life imprisonment. Sara Bell Longshore is the widow of the victim, Jimmy Bernard Longshore. Eula Belle Knowles is her mother and Emmett L. Thompson is her mother’s brother. The State prosecuted the appellants jointly as co-conspirators. Appellants did not testify.

The evidence was essentially as follows:

Approximately 8:00 a.m. on Sunday, October 28th, the victim, Jimmy Longshore, a resident of LaGrange, received a telephone call from an unidentified caller asking about a car Longshore was trying to sell. A second call was received about 1:30 p.m. and at the conclusion of the conversation the victim told his family he was going to the Day’s Inn located on 1-85 outside of LaGrange to meet the potential purchaser. When both calls were answered by the victim, the victim’s daughter, twelve-year old Isabelle, simultaneously answered the phone. She could not recognize the voice and did not hear her father identify the caller by name.

Sunday evening the victim had not returned. Sara Longshore cooked dinner for her husband and left for evening church activities. Bernard (Buster) Longshore, the victim’s son, acknowledged that his father, the manager of the AVCO Finance Company in LaGrange, would occasionally go “chasing” bad accounts on Sundays, and when the victim had not returned that evening, there was apparently no immediate concern.

The victim failed to return home that night. At 4:00 a.m. on Monday, October 29th, Sara Longshore called Jerry Smith, a co-worker of her husband. Smith stated he had not seen Jimmy and knew nothing of his going to Pine Mountain “chasing.” Linda Smith, another co-worker, was called around 4:00 a.m. by both Jerry Smith and Sara but she indicated she knew nothing of the whereabouts of the victim. Several other calls were made by Sara to the AVCO office later that morning in an attempt to locate her husband.

In the afternoon of the 29th, Sara and Bernard Longshore drove to the Day’s Inn looking for Jimmy. They found his car at the rear of the motel. The hood latch was ajar, the driver’s window was open and the floor mats were uncharacteristically dirty and in disarray. Bernard drove the car home and the police were called.

At 6:30 p.m. on Monday the 29th, Terry Webb began loading hay into an old barn located off the Waldrop Road, ten or eleven miles from LaGrange and seven miles from the Day’s Inn at 1-85. The barn *379 is located seventy-five yards off the road with a dirt driveway leading to the entrance. As he backed his tractor into the barn, he ran over something he subsequently discovered to be the body of Jimmy Longshore.

Detectives were summoned and arrived on the scene shortly thereafter. Both Don Mallory and Jerry Bryant, sheriffs deputies, conducted a preliminary investigation. There were no eyewitnesses, no footprints or tireprints, nor was a weapon discovered. The victim had two bullet wounds in his head and it appeared that he had been struck by a blunt instrument. The medical examiner subsequently verified the cause of death but there was no evidence related to the time of death; i.e., whether death had occurred on the 28th or the 29th.

The Sheriff of Troup County, L. W. Bailey, on the evening the body was found, talked with Sara Longshore. She was not under suspicion at that time. Two days later, however, both Sara Longshore and Eula Knowles made statements to the detectives after being advised of their rights. Until the statements were made there had been no mention of Emmett L. Thompson.

Sara Longshore made two statements — one written and the other tape recorded. Sara’s verbatim written statement is as follows:

“Jimmy and I had gone back together in May 1979 and Jimmy started doing the same things that he was doing prior to our previous separation. That is he was doing things to mentally to stress me. He was doing anything to make me think that I was loosing my mine, like tapping on the bed after the light were out and waking me up in the middle of the night and telling me that I was loosing my mine. It got so bad that two weeks ago Isabelle ask me please lets me and her get everything and leave. I had been to Doctor Hall and he realized the state of mine that I was in. Dr. Hall advised me to put Jimmy’s ass out and Buster’s ass out. Dr. Hall advised me that if I remained under the stress I would or he would be filling out papers to send me mental hospital within a month. I put Jimmy out first then I put Buster out. From there Buster got so messed up on drugs I took Buster back in. Then Buster got to writing so many bad checks on me that I had to ask him to leave. Buster was then picked up and sent to the Turning-Point in Columbus, Georgia for drug treatment.

“Prior to May 1979 while Jimmy and I were separated there were so much harassment at the office from Jimmy that the thought came up from Calvin Enmon that I ought to do something about Jimmy. I told Calvin that I felt I could just blow his head off and as the conversation went along Calvin give me the impression that he would kill Jimmy for me. Calvin said he would do so we discussed how much money and he said he would do it for twenty-five hundred *380 dollars. We discussed this on or during the week and then on that weekend Calvin called on Sunday and said he needed something at the office. When I met him down there Calvin beat me and raped me. The following Tuesday I went to the West Georgia Medical Center Emergency Room and had X-rays taken. This was about two months ago. About two weeks ago I called my uncle Emmie Thompson in the Atlanta, Georgia area and he met me at the Farmers Market in Atlanta and we discussed having Jimmy my husband killed which was on October 24,1979. My uncle Emmie told me he would have it done but he would not do it himself. Then on Thursday October 25, 1979 at approximately mid-day my uncle Emmie called and said that he had not been able to get in touch with anybody and if he did he would call back. The first time I called my uncle Emmie he said that most people that done things like that who were professionals charged ten-thousand dollars and it would have to be paid within two weeks. My uncle Emmie had said that he would call back when he found someone he would call but he never did so when the phone calls came for Jimmy Sunday October 29,19791 didn’t think much about it until Monday morning. I realized what had happened when Jimmy’s body was found Monday evening.”

The tape recorded statement differed in several respects. Sara additionally related, after questions were propounded to her, the matter of insurance on the life of her husband, that a policy had been taken out in March 1979. No mention was made by Sara, in either her written or her oral statements, that insurance proceeds were to be the means to pay for the murder of her husband or that Emmett L. Thompson knew anything about insurance or the amount of the proceeds payable upon Jimmy’s death.

In the taped statement, Sara recounted in detail the proposition she and her mother Eula made in August of 1979 to Calvin Inmon to kill her husband. That agreement, in essence, was that Calvin Inmon would kill Jimmy for $2,500.00, but the deal was terminated when Calvin raped her.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
271 S.E.2d 615, 246 Ga. 378, 1980 Ga. LEXIS 1116, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/knowles-v-state-ga-1980.