The Devil in Pew Number Seven (18 page)

The phone went dead.

* * *

Mr. Watts, Roger Williams, and Charles “Wayne” Tedder were huddled in the house directly across the street from the parsonage. The phone from which the call had been made sat on the table between them. Mr. Watts, the owner of the residence, had asked Roger to make the call and insisted that Roger cover the mouthpiece with a handkerchief as he spoke. Wayne watched as Roger did as he was told.

Wayne, like Roger, was another one of Mr. Watts’s brute squad who took frequent trips on the wrong side of the law. Much of Wayne’s life had been a cocktail of bad judgments and even worse behavior, mixed with a history of pill popping and heavy alcohol consumption. Wayne was willing to do whatever Mr. Watts required, primarily due to his own indebtedness to the man.

Like a wayward fly, Wayne was stuck in Mr. Watts’s web with little chance of escape, and he knew it. At one point Wayne privately confessed to Roger, his cohort in crime, a desire to stop taking orders from Mr. Watts, saying, “I’ve just got to get out
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of it. My nerves won’t take any more.”

After the call was finished, Mr. Watts retrieved the handkerchief, tucked it into his pocket, and then withdrew a twenty-dollar bill. Even though it was payment for services rendered, when Mr. Watts “asked” for something to be done, Roger knew Mr. Watts was not the sort of man to be crossed. The last thing Roger needed was to be in his crosshairs. Handing the cash to Roger, Mr. Watts said, “You’re a good ole boy,
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and we’re going to get along just fine.”

Mr. Watts, like a seasoned military commander in the heat of the battle, was directing a private war against the young Navy veteran turned pastor. This call was just the latest maneuver to provoke and unsettle us. All that was left for Mr. Watts to do was to watch. And wait.

And, if necessary, strike again.

* * *

By God’s grace, from November of 1975 until August of 1976, the better part of a year, we savored what amounted to a cease-fire. Though our family continued to receive occasional threats over the phone, there were no more bombings. No shootings. No cut phone lines. To be candid, I’m not sure how Daddy or Momma would have coped had there been a string of attacks during that year. God knew what we could handle. The Good Shepherd knew we needed that season of refreshment to restore our souls in green pastures.

Daddy had been welcomed back by a church eager to be reunited with their beloved pastor, and he returned to the business at hand as best he could. For her part, Momma resumed her work with the Spiritualaires, an eleven-piece music and singing group she founded in 1970, not long after she and Daddy began to serve in Sellerstown. Although Momma stopped traveling with the band after Danny was born, she was actively involved in rehearsing and arranging their music.

Virtually every weekend the group was booked to conduct “sings” at churches throughout North Carolina and the neighboring states. With the men dressed in red jackets, white shirts, and blue ties, and the women sporting handmade navy blue and white dresses, the Spiritualaires was, in many ways, one of the pioneer music groups to debut on the contemporary Christian music scene.

To facilitate their heavy travel schedule, James Tyree made arrangements to purchase a 1948 Greyhound Silverside bus. The oil-burning tan and white bus was nicknamed “Old Lizzy” because it was older than anybody on the bus. He had the exterior of the aging bus painted with the band’s name accented with a series of musical notes.

Week after week, the singers, often with their children in tow, would load the electric organ, piano, drums, and lead and bass guitars and then pray they’d make it to the next location. The Spiritualaires relied upon love offerings rather than tickets, and the group recorded two albums that were sold at their events. After each concert, they took the opportunity to offer an altar call for those who needed prayer or wanted to invite Jesus into their hearts.

Early in their music ministry, Daddy would travel with the band on occasion—a practice he had to quit due to stress and the need to prepare for his sermons on Saturday. Even though Daddy no longer accompanied the band, he remained supportive of their musical outreach—as long as the team was back at their posts on Wednesday night and both services on Sunday.

The unifying nature of the Spiritualaires was yet another reason the church family remained united in the face of Mr. Watts’s persecution. They lived together, sang together, and experienced a precious bond of friendship. Ironically, the Spiritualaires had rerecorded Dottie Rambo’s song, “One More Valley,” which promised that after enduring “one more valley, one more hill
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. . . you can lay down your heavy load.” Little did they know that in the summer of 1976, Daddy and Momma would be entering the valley of the shadow of death with a series of attacks that would further test their resolve and faith.

* * *

August 1, 1976, was an insufferably hot Sunday in Sellerstown, with temperatures topping ninety-one degrees. The sweet, robust smell of tobacco leaves drying in the nearby barns, carried on the wings of a gentle breeze, filled the air. People arriving for the evening service found spaces to park their cars on the grassy front yard of the church. We didn’t have a paved parking lot; the casualness of leaving vehicles on the natural grass just seemed to fit the intimate, welcoming feeling worshipers enjoyed.

Inside the sanctuary, Momma was stationed at the organ and played a medley of favorite hymns as the faithful packed the church. Trading looks with Daddy as the clock inched toward 7 p.m., she transitioned into the call to worship to start the service. When Daddy took to the pulpit, he seemed to preach with a renewed strength of purpose. He was in his element, teaching the Word of God to those eager to learn.

That evening, Mr. Watts returned to his old tricks,
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igniting the sixth explosion across the street from the parsonage. I think the blast was his way of letting the church community know that he hadn’t given up—not by a long shot. By detonating this bomb while church was in session, he wanted everyone to know he was still in control and a force to be reckoned with.

A month later, in early September, when his series of threatening letters, shootings, and bombings had still failed to drive us away, Mr. Watts waved the promise of a pile of cash under the nose of one of his henchmen. Roger Williams was summoned to the home of Mr. Watts. Facing the former county commissioner, Roger listened as Mr. Watts vented. Mr. Watts groused once again that Daddy was a thorn in his side. “I’ve tried so hard to scare him out but it don’t seem like he’ll leave,” Mr. Watts said, adding, “We’ve done everything we know to do.”

That’s when Mr. Watts presented Roger with a tempting offer to make some serious cash.

The deal was simple.

Use your car to run the pastor over.

Make it look like an accident.

There’s $100,000 in it for you if you succeed.

As before, Mr. Watts was the mastermind who preferred to leave the dirty work to others. He peeled five one-hundred-dollar bills from his wad of cash and placed the crisp bills on the table. You know, just a little gift to whet Roger’s appetite for the big payday. Something to show he meant business.

Roger snatched up the money and tucked the cash into his pocket. Intrigued by the plan, Roger wasn’t entirely ready to act. This, after all, was a really big deal with serious consequences. Mr. Watts was asking him to kill the popular pastor, and he wanted to know what would happen if he were somehow implicated in the death. Roger wasn’t a wealthy man. If he faced charges, he wouldn’t be able to hire a good lawyer to keep him from life in prison.

Mr. Watts told Roger not to worry, saying, “If you make it look like an accident,
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I don’t think you’ll be caught. But if you are, there is plenty of money, plenty of it, for your defense and for doing that for me.” With a pat on the back as Roger turned to leave, Mr. Watts said he’d be in touch. For reasons unknown, Mr. Watts had second thoughts and never activated his plan.

Instead, on Wednesday night, October 13, shortly after our family received a death threat, Mr. Watts and Bud Sellers ignited yet another bomb in our driveway. This, the seventh powerful explosion, could be heard two miles away. At the time, sixty people were gathered in the church for the midweek service; the other youngsters and I were meeting at Aunt Pat’s house two doors away from the church. An armed parishioner stood guard to ensure our safety. We, too, were shaken by the blast.

While a contingent of police and ATF agents cordoned off the area to investigate the explosion, Daddy spoke with the press. Daddy was grateful to report that nobody had been physically harmed—although there was a close call. Upon hearing a shotgun go off, a member of the congregation stepped outside to patrol the area. Not seeing any reason for alarm, he returned. Had he remained outside, he could have been injured by the blast. Daddy admitted, “We’re all sort of shaken,”
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but reiterated that he had no plans to quit. “We just intend to carry on and take more precautions when we have night services.”

I don’t know whether Mr. Watts read the paper and noticed Daddy’s public refusal to quit. If he had, that might explain why five days later, on October 18, Mr. Watts struck for the eighth time. There was no way he’d let this country preacher beat him. If Daddy refused to go, then Mr. Watts would just have to turn up the heat by detonating an explosion in the field behind our house. Although we weren’t spending nights at the parsonage, I believe Mr. Watts was trying to drive home the point that he was still dead serious: We would leave Sellerstown walking, crawling, dead, or alive.

Three weeks later, on November 10, 1976, gunshots pierced the otherwise peaceful evening and shattered the security light illuminating the church lawn. Minutes later, Mr. Watts and his sidekick Bud Sellers struck again, igniting a bomb that exploded during the middle of our Wednesday night church service.

Billy Sellers, one of Daddy’s loyal and dear friends, narrowly escaped harm. Speaking to the press, Billy said, “I was sitting on the back pew [when] a shotgun blast was heard. I walked outside to see
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what it was and didn’t notice that the light had been shot out. If I had, I might have wandered outside to check it out and might have been blown up when the dynamite exploded. I went back in the church, and the dynamite exploded just as I got back inside.”

Following the blast, three men from the church, E. J. Sellers, Billy Sellers, and Barry McKee, rushed outside and searched the fields around the church property. They found and caught a man, Wayne Tedder, a friend of Mr. Watts, hiding in a nearby field with a shotgun in his hand. The gun was the weapon used to shoot out the night-light on the church grounds. The suspect, who owed Mr. Watts some money, was held until the police arrived.

Catching Wayne Tedder red-handed was encouraging. And yet, Daddy’s fragile nerves were rattled, pushing him closer to yet another mental breakdown. He wasn’t alone. The effect of the bombing unnerved the entire community. Robert Sellers said, “This thing’s got to come to a close.
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Little children are scared to death, running around shaking, and the people are getting tired of this thing. You can’t even so much as rest in [Sellerstown].” Eddie Sellers agreed, adding, “You have to leave home to get a nap. It’s gettin’ so we expect it every night.”

* * *

The pressure was on.

We weren’t the only ones feeling the heat.

Mr. Watts, having initiated four bombings in as many months that summer and fall, knew the law and an organized citizen patrol were watching Sellerstown like hawks. Special Agent Charles Mercer was asking tough questions and pursuing every lead. One misstep and Mr. Watts would be exposed—and he knew it. Needing to do something to divert unwanted attention from himself, Mr. Watts devised a plan. He just needed to call in a favor from one of his minions to carry it out.

On Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1976, police answered a call for help at the residence of Mr. Watts, who reported that someone had taken several shots at his house. The bullets from a high-powered rifle had penetrated the exterior wall just below his front window. What Mr. Watts failed to report
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was that he had paid a man to shoot at his home in order to make himself look like a victim, the same way he had mailed himself a threatening letter.

* * *

Recognizing that entertaining guests in the trailer at Christmastime wasn’t an option due to space limitations, my parents decided to move back to the parsonage just after Thanksgiving. I had mixed emotions upon hearing that news. Although I was happy to be home, I had felt safe in the trailer and wanted to feel the same level of comfort in my own bedroom. And yet knowing that Mr. Watts was, once again, pacing outside my window, watching us through his thick, eye-distorting glasses, I found falling asleep a challenge.

I was okay being home during the day, mind you. Mr. Watts never attacked us in broad daylight. But when the sun went down, my fears soared. Getting into bed was next to impossible. How could I close my eyes and fall asleep with the knowledge that Mr. Watts, a man who hated us, just might choose to assault us in the dead of night?

Momma didn’t seem to share my anxiety. I watched her display a strength and confidence that prompted me to ask, “Momma, what are we gonna do if there’s another bombing? What if I die?”

Stroking my hair, offering me a tender smile, she’d say, “Honey, it’s okay. You know why? Because to die is to be together with Jesus where nobody can hurt you.”

In my mind I understood her point: If the worst thing happened—namely, that I was to die in my sleep—I’d be okay because I’d be in heaven. But getting my heart to go along with what I knew in my head seemed as impossible as climbing Mount Everest.

Much to my surprise, for several precious weeks after moving home, Mr. Watts left us alone. For a short time, it looked as if we’d be able to enjoy Christmas without a further incident.