Authors: Thomas H. Cook
WARFIELD
: So she wasn’t playing hooky, was she, Mrs. Dinker?
And so, as Mrs. Dinker related under Warfield’s questioning, Ellie had decided to walk up the mountain to see a school friend, Helen Slater. The plan was to have lunch with her, then for the two of them to walk back down the mountain to help decorate the courthouse for the Fourth of July fireworks.
WARFIELD
: Did you actually see Ellie head up the mountain?
DINKER:
Yes, sir. I seen her go.
WARFIELD
: Do you remember what she was wearing?
DINKER:
A green dress and a pair of black shoes.
WARFIELD
: What was the dress made of?
DINKER:
Cotton.
WARFIELD
: Was it dark green or light green?
DINKER
: Dark green. And it had a little white lacy collar that I made for her.
WARFIELD
: Mrs. Dinker, did you ever see your daughter again?
DINKER:
No, sir.
WARFIELD
: Mrs. Dinker, do you see this pair of shoes I have in my hand?
DINKER
: (whimpering) Yes, sir.
WARFIELD
: Whose shoes are these, Mrs. Dinker?
DINKER
: Those are Ellie’s shoes.
WARFIELD
: How do you know that?
DINKER
: By them shiny little buckles.
WARFIELD
: Mrs. Dinker, did you ever see Ellie’s green dress again?
DINKER
: (crying) No, sir.
WARFIELD
: Mrs. Dinker, do you see this dress I’m holding up to show the jury right now?
Martha Dinker had, indeed, seen that dress, and she went on to identify it positively as having been the one her daughter had worn the day of her death.
By eight that same Friday evening, Mrs. Dinker had begun to worry about Ellie, but since, as she put it, “kids is kids,” she had waited until ten before acting on her concerns. She’d had no phone, she told Warfield, and so she’d walked the mile or so from her home to the Sheriff’s Office. There she’d talked to Sheriff Maddox, who’d advised her to return home, after assuring her that he would alert all police patrols to be on the lookout for her daughter.
Maddox followed Mrs. Dinker to the stand. All during the night following Ellie’s disappearance, he told the jury, the members of his department had kept an eye out for the missing girl. None of them had spotted Ellie by morning, however, and Maddox had begun to suspect that something very bad might have happened.
WARFIELD:
S
O
, in light of the fact that Ellie Dinker had not been located during the night, what did you do the next day, Sheriff Maddox?
MADDOX
: I went up to Mrs. Dinker’s house. I thought maybe the little girl had showed up. I figured since Mrs. Dinker didn’t have no phone, maybe she wouldn’t have been able to let me know if Ellie had come home.
WARFIELD
: And what did Mrs. Dinker tell you when you arrived at her house?
MADDOX
: She was real upset. She’d already walked all the way up the mountain to the Slater girl’s place, and the Slater girl had told her that Ellie never did come to her house.
WARFIELD
: So Ellie Dinker never made it up to Helen Slater’s house, is that right, Sheriff?
MADDOX
: No, she never did.
WARFIELD
: What did you do then?
MADDOX
: I got started on a roadblock, just to see if maybe somebody had seen the Dinker girl going up the mountain.
WARFIELD
: And someone had, isn’t that right?
MADDOX
: Mr. Coggins seen her.
WARFIELD
: All right, now, you also had occasion to search the woods north of the mountain road, isn’t that right?
MADDOX:
One of my deputies did. Deputy Ben Wade.
WARFIELD
: And what did he find?
MADDOX
: (pointing) That dress you got in that bag there.
WARFIELD
: The one Mrs. Dinker identified as Ellie’s.
MADDOX
: Yes, sir.
WARFIELD
: Now we’ll be hearing from Deputy Wade in a minute, but for the record, Sheriff, Wade brought that dress back down to your office, didn’t he?
MADDOX
: Yes, sir, he did. That’s procedure.
WARFIELD
: What did the dress look like?
MADDOX
: Just like when you held it up.
WARFIELD
: Bloody?
MADDOX
: Just like you showed it.
WARFIELD
: Were there any other signs of Ellie Dinker in those woods, Sheriff?
MADDOX
: No, sir. We looked everywhere, but we couldn’t find hide nor hair of her.
WARFIELD
: All right, Sheriff, now, if you could, just tell us what happened after you found the dress. How did your investigation proceed?
It had proceeded just as Kinley thought it might, strictly by the book of rural law enforcement. A roadblock had been positioned along the mountain road to question any of the people going in or out of Sequoyah about what they might have seen the day before. As a police canvass, it had worked superbly. They’d found several people who’d seen things relevant to Ellie Dinker’s disappearance, and one by one, as Warfield called them to the stand, they told the jury what they’d seen.
Luther Tyrone Coggins
WARFIELD
: Now, Mr. Coggins, when the police stopped you at that roadblock, they asked you about Ellie Dinker, didn’t they?
COGGINS
: They asked about a girl in a green dress.
WARFIELD
: Did they say her name?
COGGINS
: No, sir, but I told them who I reckoned it was.
WARFIELD
: And who was that?
COGGINS:
Ellie Dinker.
WARFIELD:
So you knew Ellie Dinker, did you?
COGGINS:
I knowed her mother. She’s on my peddling route. She always buys a few things from my truck.
WARFIELD
: So what did you tell the police officer you spoke to at the roadblock?
COGGINS
: I allowed as how I’d seen Ellie Dinker on the road. I told how she was wearing a green dress, and that she was standing next to a guy I knowed. They was by his old truck, and the hood was up on it.
WARFIELD
: And what time would this have been, Mr. Coggins?
COGGINS
: That would have been around twelve-forty, something like that.
WARFIELD:
S
O
you told the police that you’d seen Ellie Dinker with a man you recognized.
COGGINS
: I sure did.
WARFIELD
: Do you see that man in the courtroom here today, Mr. Coggins?
COGGINS
: Yes, sir, I do.
WARFIELD
: Could you point him out for the jury?
COGGINS
: That’s him, right there, sitting with Mr. Talbott.
WARFIELD
: The man in the blue shirt?
COGGINS
: Yes, sir.
WARFIELD:
Your Honor, I ask that the record show that Mr. Coggins identified Charles Herman Overton, the defendant, being the man he saw with Ellie Dinker on the afternoon of Friday, July 2, 1954.
COURT:
So ordered.
Even without turning to the next volume of transcript, Kinley knew who the next witness would be. Warfield was handling things just as prosecutors had always been taught, lining up his witnesses in such a way that each added bit of testimony moved the jury’s mind just a little further in the direction of the defendant.
Officer Ben Wade
WARFIELD
: And you heard Luther Coggins’s testimony just a few minutes ago, didn’t you?
WADE
: I did.
WARFIELD
: And was that a true and accurate report of what transpired between you and Mr. Coggins?
WADE
: Yes, sir, it was.
WARFIELD
: All right, sir. Now, could you tell the jury in your own words what action you took after hearing from Mr. Coggins?
WADE
: I kept on with the roadblock for a while, then I went down and told Sheriff Maddox about what Mr. Coggins had said.
WARFIELD
: And what did Sheriff Maddox do?
WADE
: He said we’d look into it directly.
WARFIELD
: And did you look into it soon after that?
WADE
: We did early the next morning.
WARFIELD
: But before that, you conducted a search of the woods north of the mountain road, isn’t that right?
WADE
: Yes, sir.
WARFIELD
: Where was that search exactly, Deputy Wade?
WADE
: In the woods up from Mile Marker 27.
WARFIELD
: And that is a location directly north of where Mr. Coggins told you he saw Charles Overton and Ellie Dinker, isn’t that true?
WADE
: Yes, sir, it is.
WARFIELD:
And what did you find in those woods, Deputy?
WADE
: I found a green dress sort of hanging over a limb.
WARFIELD
: Which you brought down to Sheriff Maddox, isn’t that right?
WADE
: Yes, sir.
WARFIELD
: And what happened the next day, Deputy Wade?
WADE
: That was Independence Day, and Sheriff Maddox and I went to check on what Mr. Coggins had said. You know, to ask Mr. Overton about it. But nobody was home. They’d all walked down to the courthouse for the celebration.