Witness Interview: Detective Jack McPhail, Retired

Jack McPhail, retired Yoknapatawpha Sheriff's Department Detective, and the lead detective on the original Izard murder cases, met with Detective Terrence Nelson, current investigator, on Monday, June 8, 1998, at 10:15 a.m. in his home.

N: Detective Nelson
JM: Jack McPhail

N: You've been keeping up with the story about this Hammack woman who thinks she's LeAnne Izard?
JM: Hard to avoid it, it being in the paper and all. Y'all re-opening the case?

N: Not officially, at this point, sir. But it does raise some interesting questions.
JM: Raised 'em back then, too.

N: You remember the case well?
JM: Too damn well. Twenty-seven years working law enforcement in this county, and that was my only completely unsolved case. Stuck in my craw. Did then. Does now.

N: Mind if I get you to run over some things from the original investigation?
JM: You've got my records, I assume.

N: Yessir. Sure do. I've read them all.
JM: It was a helluva case. People not in the business don't understand that most murder is pretty easy to solve, especially in a small town like this. Passion. Hot temper. Liquor. A squabble over something that gets out of hand. Family in-fighting. Generally, you can narrow down the suspects in a day or so, and pin it down in three or four days. Not this one. This one was like trying to catch minnows with a fork.

N: (laugh) Lot of possibilities but hard to pin down?
JM: Exactly. Once in a while you get a case where there don't seem to be any suspects, but the Izard case, shoot, it was like half the world were suspects. But every time we tried to get enough together to make an arrest, it was like we hit icebergs. No, that's not right. It's more like what looked like evidence just turned out to be dust. Useless.

N: What do you mean by that?
JM: Use your head, son. We're talking 40 years ago. Law enforcement work around here wasn't like what it is now. We weren't that far from old Barney Fife, sometimes it felt like.

N: I know that's not true, Mr. McPhail.
JM: Now, now... We did real well with what we had, I grant you. But it was nothing like what you boys have now, what with fiber analysis and DNA matching and things we hadn't even dreamed of back in '58.

N: So tell me about how the evidence was back then.
JM: Look at what we had for evidence in the Izard case... A boot print. Some tire marks. Dirt. Blood. A lot of reasons for hot tempers. A fever-hot situation for the whole town, what with that damned union agitator, Perch, getting everybody all unsettled.

N: And?
JM: And? (snort) ... And ... hell, a quarter of the men in this town wore boots like that, and size 11's not that unusual. That print coulda been Dick Izard, coulda been three dozen other men. So that was pretty much useless. Then there's the tire prints - 14-inch Goodrich. Same thing. Common as fleas on a dog. Nowadays, y'all could probably do a more precise tread wear analysis or find microscopic fibers or something, but back then we had a print of a tire that could have belonged to damnear anybody. The blood was the Izards'. Dirt was from the Izards' garden, as far as we could find out. It just all went like that.

N: I can see where that would have been tough, with the physical evidence. But how about suspects and alibis?
JM: Well, that was another thing. We'd just had a massive layoff, and probably half the possible suspects were pissed off, down on their luck, and getting drunk. Ever try to get solid stories from drunks, son?

N: It's a challenge.
JM: I'll say. They'd remember one thing, then they'd remember it another way when you asked 'em the next time. One minute somebody'd be sure they remembered Jimmy Warren talking death threats at Sid's, but then later on they'd go all hangdog and allow as how it maybe wasn't exactly a death threat. More like just blowing steam. Drunk and crazy. If I heard that one time, I heard it a hundred times. "He didn't mean nothing by it, detective. He was just drunk and crazy." They ever want to really do something about crime in this country, they'll figure out a way to make prohibition work. Liquor makes people as crazy as some of these drugs nowadays do. Guess the only advantage is that liquor'll make'em pass out, maybe before they do too much harm, if you're lucky.

N: Sounds like you've had some bad experiences with alcohol?
JM: Some bad experiences with seeing what it can do to people, more like.

N: So, overall about the Izard case...?
JM: Overall? It coulda been easily a half-dozen people, from that crazy good-for-nothing Jessie Danahy to that union fellow, Perch, to a hothead like Jimmy Warren. Always seemed like more talk than action, but that kind'll sometimes snap and go all the way.

N: But your primary suspect was Elbert Warren, wasn't it?
JM: Sure was. Had that cockamamie story about getting jumped by strangers out at the reservoir and left unconscious. Sure. And I had peacock feathers growing outta my butt. I never believed him, but there wasn't a damn thing we could pin on him. It was like mud wouldn't stick to him. Never saw anything like it.

N: He had motive and opportunity.
JM: Who didn't? But he had more than most. He'd been putting up that Perch fellow at his house, talking union all the time. How come Perch to take up with Elbert Warren is anybody's guess. Man was a drunk, even then, and hot-tempered. Thought he was smart, gonna make his fortune in inventing someday. Right. Then Perch came along and all of a sudden Elbert Warren was gonna be a big-time union organizer real soon. Nothing but a lazy drunk with big dreams. And a bigger mouth.

N: Mr. McPhail, I hate to bring this up, but isn't it possible...
JM: That I had a personal grudge against Warren?

N: Well, yessir. I wasn't going to be so blunt.
JM: No need to deny it. I didn't like the man. Never did. But I kept it in perspective, in investigating the case. He was just one of the main suspects.

N: You did have a personal interest in Warren, though.
JM: He married my first wife. You know that. I shouldn't have married Jean in the first place. She wasn't too bright, but she was a pretty thing. Charm the socks off any man. I married her. It was a mistake. We got a divorce.

N: And she married Elbert Warren seven months later.
JM: No secret about that. Married him and starting popping out babies like a breeding mare. He wasn't making but just enough to keep their heads barely above water, and all those kids coming along bam bam bam one after another.

N: Sir, is it possible that your feelings...
JM: Anything's possible, son. Anything. But I'll tell you this... I'm nearly 77 years old now, and not a law enforcement officer any more, and I don't have to be nice if I don't want to be. I never liked Elbert Warren, not from the start. Not for a lot of reasons. But if I'd let that interfere with my investigation of the Izard case, I'd have found a way to arrest him. Fact is, the evidence just wasn't there. Not for Warren. Not for Perch. Not for Danahy. Not for Jimmy Warren or Frank Abbott or Howard Hadley or Joe Mitchell. It just wasn't there. Any one of 'em coulda done it. Or none of 'em. I didn't know then, and I don't know now.

N: Would those be your primary suspects?
JM: Those, and maybe Ed Rebstock. Maybe the younger Hinkley boy, but I doubt it.

N: If you had to make a guess now, all these years later and with time to look back at it, what would it be?
JM: Son, this case has worried hell out of me for 40 years. You think if I could've narrowed it down to one good suspect, I wouldn't have done it by now? It coulda been any of 'em. Dammit.