This report is the final installment of a four-part series on unsolved crimes in the region.

The first three parts were published June 11, 13 and 18.

A suspicious 1948 train tragedy

John Stanaland has vivid memories of a hot, humid Saturday night in the summer of 1948.

Stanaland was 11 when he overheard his older brother, Ernest, and the brother’s friend, Billy Jordan, discuss their plans for later that night.

“They were sitting on the front porch after I had gone to bed,” Stanaland said. 

His bedroom window opened onto the porch where his brother and the friend were talking.

Jordan operated the projector at the Bean Theater in Boston, Ga., so the boys’ camping and fishing trip to the Arch Hole three miles west of Boston would have to wait until after the last feature.

The boys eventually left the Stanaland home at 439 S. Main St. between 10 and 11 p.m.

Come Sunday morning, they had not returned home but that was not unusual when the teens camped out at the spot a short distance south of the old U.S. 84 overpass.

When the boys had not returned by Sunday afternoon — July 18 — Stanaland’s mother, Mae, told John to go to town several blocks away and see if he could find his older brother.

On the way, he came across terrible news.

“A man stopped me and asked, ‘Boy, where’s your brother? Well, go home, and tell your mama he’s dead, and we think the train ran over him,’” Stanaland said.

He said he’ll never forget the lack of sympathy or feeling in the man’s harsh words.

Stanaland returned home and found his mother crying and hysterical.

Describing his mother as an intelligent woman, Stanaland said every effort was made to prevent her from finding out how badly mangled her dead son’s body was.

Meanwhile, a Boston woman asked Stanaland if his brother had gold teeth. She said she had found gold teeth at the death scene and wanted his mother to have them.

Ernest, 17, and Billy, 18, were good boys. They did not indulge in drink or mischief. Both were recent Boston High School graduates. Billy, son of Mr. and Mrs. P.C. Jordan, received the Citizenship Award and the American Legion Award.

The only times Ernest got in trouble was when he picked camellias from someone’s yard to give to his girlfriend and when he was accused of putting sand in a radiator.

Ernest’s death took a huge emotional toll on the Stanaland family. Unfathomable sadness struck the family two days later when the six Stanaland children’s father, Lee, died as a result of a stroke suffered prior to Ernest’s death.

The elder Stanaland never knew about Ernest’s death.

“It was a very sad time,” said Edna Louise “Polly” Stanaland Hopper, Ernest’s sister, who was 8 when her brother died.

A coroner’s jury convened in Boston a few days after the deaths and determined the boys met their untimely demise when struck by an Atlantic Coast Line train just before 3 a.m.

Their deaths continue to bewilder Stanaland, his sister and others. They’re not convinced the deaths were an accident rather than a double murder.

Two people have come up as possible suspects. Jerry Aspinwall, who lived in Boston as a teenager, said there was also talk of a hermit living near the railroad who was possibly responsible.

“I think somebody killed them and knocked them out and put them on the track to silence them,” John Stanaland said.

Hopper agreed, saying as long as she lives, she won’t believe the boys died accidentally.

Does she have suspicions about who might have murdered her brother and Billy and placed their bodies on the tracks?

“I do but I’m not saying,” Hopper said.

She and her brother think Ernest and Billy knew something or saw something that night — something someone was afraid they would reveal.

An investigation into the deaths was reportedly reopened in the 1960s, but the probe never went anywhere.

Around 3 p.m. that Sunday afternoon in 1948, an engineer on an eastbound passenger train saw the bodies on the ground at the foot of the embankment, according to a July 19, 1948, Thomasville Times-Enterprise story about the deaths.

Found near the scene were some of the boys’ possessions. At the nearby fishing hole, their fishing rod and reel, along with a small paper bag, were found.

Some believe Ernest, who was said to have been a heavy sleeper, might have fallen asleep on the tracks and the train might have hit the boys while Jordan was trying to drag his friend off the tracks.

But John Stanaland said his brother, who delivered newspapers before going to school each morning, was not a heavy sleeper.

He said if Jordan attempted to remove his brother from the railroad, the cow catcher on the front of the train would have knocked him from the tracks.

Stanaland was told body parts from both boys were under the steam-powered engine when the train arrived in Savannah.

Stanaland also questioned why Ernest would have chosen to lie on the railroad rocks instead of the lush green grass by the water.

A man who lived near the railroad tracks saw a car turn onto his road that night, flying by at a high speed. The car was also seen speeding when leaving the area.

The newspaper also reported that Jordan’s shoes were nine feet from the tracks — and more than 18 inches apart — and appeared to have been taken off before the deaths.

The teens’ fishing tackle was reported to have been in disarray, indicating the user left abruptly. An open pocket knife was found near the campfire. The knife didn’t belong to either boy.

On a sweltering, steamy Saturday morning in mid-June 2011, Stanaland, Hopper and Aspinwall traveled a circuitous route through a plantation and around cotton fields to reach the railroad tracks where the boys died.

Hopper had not returned to the site since going there soon after the deaths. John Stanaland camped there a few times during his teen years.

They braved briers and other vegetation and scaled a steep incline to reach the tracks. On the south side of the tracks is the circular, tree-lined, murky body of water where the boys fished. Overflow from the pond, which closely resembles a sinkhole, travels to the north through a culvert under the railroad tracks.

Precisely where the boys died on the tracks, a single railroad tie is painted stark white. The stripe has nothing to do with the deaths but is believed to mark where a drainage pipe runs under the tracks.

Almost seven decades later, how Ernest Stanaland and Billy Jordan died remains a mystery. The train that ran over them was traced to Florence, S.C. Bits of hair and flesh were found on the locomotive.

The last paragraph of a July 21, 1948, Times-Enterprise story about the deaths aptly describes the mystery, the aftermath and the probability of acceptable answers to the many questions that remain:

“Many thought the nature of the disaster never would be known and that the story would enter that long file of similar stories that are passed and discussed for years afterwards.”

-Patti Dozier, Thomasville Times-Enterprise

Editor’s Note: A version of this story originally appeared in the Times-Enterprise on July 24, 2011.

A full slate of unsolved murders

There have four unsolved murder cases in Baldwin County since 2013, and even though none of them are termed cold cases, they remain a top priority for solving by detectives with the Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office.

Francisco Lopez Castillo, 33, was murdered with a shotgun. The killer pulled the trigger once and fired a bullet into Castillo’s chest when he answered the front door of his mobile home.

The shooting happened at 108-A Selma Drive, off North Main Street in Milledgeville on Dec. 27, 2013. Castillo was pronounced dead at the scene.

The body of Walter French, 25, was discovered between two mobile homes in the Litenham Trailer Park, on Feb. 2, 2014. French had been shot twice – once in the neck and once in the abdomen. He died at a hospital in Macon.

Kelvin Dale Stanton, 27, of Milledgeville was shot to death at a friend’s birthday party around midnight on Easter Sunday, March 27, 2016. Stanton was shot twice – once in the chest and once in the arm.

Tanya Renae Massey, 34, of 227 Lee St., Lot 5, Milledgeville, was a victim of a drive-by shooting at her single-wide mobile home on May 31, 2016. Massey, who worked as a housekeeper at Fairfield Inn & Suites Marriott in Milledgeville, was struck by one of 23 bullets fired into her home and in the vicinity as she prepared to watch television in her living room on the night of Memorial Day.

Massey was mother to two boys.

In each of the four unsolved cases, the person or persons responsible for the killings remain at-large, according to Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office Detective Capt. Brad King.

The veteran detective, who heads up the criminal investigation division of the sheriff’s office, said the Castillo case is the oldest unsolved murder in Baldwin County.

Nobody was around to witness the murder of Castillo, a Hispanic who had lived in Milledgeville for 14 years and worked for a landscaping company.

“Mr. Castillo opened his front door and was shot right in the doorway,” King said. “We don’t even truly know if the gunman ever entered the residence.”

Detectives have never been able to establish a motive for the shooting. One man was brought in and questioned but it never materialized into an arrest, King said.

Today, authorities have no suspects and no new leads.

“These cases are all regarded as active, and anytime we get some information on anyone of them, we go back and look at the case,” King said.

Since all four murder cases have taken place during King’s time as head of detectives, he said they sometimes bother him on a personal level.

“Sometimes one of them will just start bothering me and I will pick up the case file and start going back through it,” King said. “It can be something new that happens in the neighborhood where the murder happened or something like that which makes me go back and look at one of these active murder cases.”

When it comes to the murder of Walter French, King said the victim was shot during the playing of the Super Bowl on Feb. 2, 2014. French was a member of the 92 Blood Gang.

At the time, French still was clinging to life, but he died later that night in a Macon hospital.

Again, detectives have theories as to what they think might have happened ,but it’s not the kind of solid evidence they need to make an arrest and get a conviction.

A handgun was also used in the Kelvin Stanton murder, an investigation led by Detective Chris Youngblood.

Stanton wasn’t alone with his killer. Sharmarcus Simmons of Milledgeville was standing beside Stanton and was shot in the leg.

He managed to recover from the injury, but like many other witnesses of the double shooting, no one was able to provide any information to authorities about who did it.

The shooting happened in the midst of two separate gatherings on the same street.

“In that particular case, there’s probably well over a dozen witnesses to that shooting,” King said, noting there was between 50 and 60 people there.

“My instinct tells me that there was well over a dozen people who actually saw this shooting, none of which will provide any information to us.”

Uncooperative witnesses are a trying aspect of the unsolved cases.

“It can be the most frustrating thing about any investigation because I expect to have a little friction when we’re trying to get information from the hospital or we’re trying to get information from the doctor’s office or a bank because of the privacy issue,” King said.

“I expect that and I understand that. But to know that there’s a witness out there that could provide the kind of information we need to not only make an arrest, but also secure a conviction and to provide some closure for the family of the victim.

“That’s a tough pill to swallow when you come to work and work as diligently as my people do to solve crimes for people we don’t even know, and then you’ve got somebody that knows and is friends with them and known them for a long time that won’t say what they saw.”

The most recent unsolved murder case involves Tanya Massey. The case is now just a little more than a year old, but again, if anyone knows anything about the person or persons responsible for the drive-by shooting, they have yet to tell investigators.

Detective Greg See is the lead detective in the case. He said dozens of leads have been run down, but none of them ended in arrest.

King urged anyone with information about any of the four unsolved murder cases to call the Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office at (478) 445-4891 or the sheriff’s office tip line at (478) 445-5102. Anyone with information can also call the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Region 6 Office in Milledgeville at (478) 445-4173.

– Billy Hobbs, The Union-Recorder

The SunLight Project team of journalists who contributed to this report includes Patti Dozier, Thomas Lynn, Charles Oliver, Billy Hobbs, Alan Mauldin and Eve Guevara, along with team leader John Stephen.

To contact the team, email sunlightproject@gaflnews.com.