After Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (11 page)

It would have been nearly impossible to get an impartial jury in Savannah after three high-profile trials. Defense lawyers got their way, and the fourth trial was held in Augusta, Georgia, where no one had ever heard of Jim Williams. Chatham County Superior Court Judge James W. Head presided.

The trial began on May 1, 1989. Two days later, a jury of six men and women was selected, along with one man and two women as alternates. On May 12, the jury began to deliberate. After one hour, Jim was acquitted. The almost decade-long legal drama was finally over.

According to Spencer Lawton, the quick acquittal came for several reasons. Aside from the inevitable staleness of an eight-year-old trial, the Georgia Supreme Court had placed such limitations on the evidence it was difficult to mount as effective a prosecution as was delivered in the previous trials. Lawton also thought that one of the main reasons for the acquittal was defense attorney Sonny Seiler’s effective argument: After eight years of hounding Jim, the jury should tell the prosecution to let the man alone. This argument played to the jury’s inherent desire to pardon.

Spencer Lawton mounted a very effective prosecution in the Savannah trials; 35 out of 36 jurors voted for Jim’s conviction. The success was due, in part, to the result of persuasive testimony about a staged crime scene and gunshot residue, but there was more. Lawton eloquently expressed his sincere passion about a wealthy, unscrupulous sophisticate exploiting an emotionally unstable young man. His arguments affected the jury. Ironically, in the first two trials, Jim was his own worst enemy on the stand, alienating the jury with his arrogance and his assertion that his sexual relationship with Danny was normal and natural. The jury could not ignore the cumulative effect of publicity and the fact that Jim was found guilty more than once. Finally, there was the issue of homosexuality, which was offensive to the morals of middle-class southern jurors of that era.

I admire Lawton’s persuasive evidence for a staged crime scene, but I have some trouble subscribing to the belief that Jim was guilty of premeditated murder for several reasons. For three decades, Jim had worked relentlessly to make a fortune for himself and to become an important figure in Savannah society. He thoroughly enjoyed living like an aristocrat and exercising the power of deciding who would be favored with an invitation to his famous Christmas parties. The people who came to his parties did not know who Danny was and would have been very disapproving if they had been exposed to him. Jim and Danny were rarely seen together in bars and clubs because Danny embarrassed Jim—the social power broker, the man who had dinner with Jacqueline Onassis, and the man whose home was highlighted in
Architectural Digest
.

To suggest that Jim would go to great lengths to create an elaborate hoax of self-defense over the period of a month —a hoax that would suddenly put the spotlight on his sordid relationship with a male prostitute—does not make sense to me when I weigh what I know about him. If Jim wanted to rid himself of Danny, he had other alternatives that didn’t ensure a scandal: He could pay off Danny and change the locks on the doors; he could wait until Danny’s next suicidal overdose and not rush him to the hospital, as he did twice before; or, if Jim had a murderous intent, he could take the drug-addled kid out to the swamps and make him food for alligators. In fact, Jim did tell Danny to get out of his life at least twice, according to Joe Goodman, but each time, Jim relented and let Danny come back. It was possible that Danny was Jim’s embarrassing obsession.

Clearly, Jim and Danny’s two-year relationship was approaching a crisis stage. Danny knew he was trapped in Jim’s luxurious cocoon. Jim was his sugar daddy and he was chafing under that burden, particularly because he had a girlfriend who had no interest in a permanent relationship with a male concubine. Danny’s demands on Jim increased, perhaps so he could justify continuing the relationship. When Jim refused the demands, Danny lashed out violently.

Whatever the argument in the early hours of April 3 was actually about, Danny was seen shooting a gun into Monterey Square. He had already shot a hole in the upstairs bedroom floor. Jim called the police and wanted to press charges, but then once again relented and had Joe Goodman get Danny out of jail. The fact remains that Danny took one of Jim’s loaded guns and started shooting.

Several days before Danny was shot, another important event in this evolving drama took place. Danny demanded a gold necklace as a gift. Jim agreed to buy him one, but only if he stopped seeing Debbie Blevins. Danny agreed, and Jim spent $400 on Danny’s gold necklace. Two days later, Danny brought Debbie to the house wearing the very same necklace. No matter how intoxicated Danny was, it was a deliberate act of betrayal. Jim told him to get out and never come back. Danny afterward told his best friend that he was really concerned that he had now lost “his meal ticket.”

Danny came back on the night of May 1 and stayed through the early morning hours of May 2—perhaps to try to reclaim his kept status—but at some point, arguments broke out as Danny become progressively more intoxicated. Jim’s call to Joe to cancel the upcoming trip to Europe could easily have been under duress. Whether Danny was holding a pistol at Jim while Jim talked to Joe or whether Danny had threatened Jim with blackmail over the fraud that was going on in Jim’s shop will never be known. Jim’s call to Joe was around 2
AM,
and Danny was dead 20 minutes later.

From my perspective, Danny’s well-documented propensity for violence and the April 3 shooting incident made a reasonable case for self-defense or manslaughter. It could have been as simple as Danny holding a gun pointed at Jim and threatening to use it. At some point, Jim reached into a nearby cabinet and got one of his pistols. With two armed men—one violent and intoxicated and the other afraid for his life—any number of spontaneous trigger events could have caused the shooting. Afterward, Jim may have very possibly fixed up the scene to bolster his case for self-defense. He must have realized the damage this shooting would do to his reputation.

Danny Lewis Hansford’s grave

When Jim regained his freedom in May of 1989, he was in good health and good spirits, even though he was more than $1 million poorer from cost of defending himself in four trials. That December, he held his Christmas parties, inviting only the people that had been on his side during his legal ordeals. In January, he started to suffer from bronchitis, but on the evening of January 13, he went to a party even though he felt run-down. The bronchitis had turned into pneumonia. The next morning, he suddenly collapsed and died, supposedly in the study, the same room where he shot Danny.

Over the years, Jim had told two of his closest friends, Joe Goodman and Doug Seyle, that he was working on a new will, which would give them valuable properties upon his death. Because Jim’s death at age 59 was totally unexpected, it is possible that the new will was never completed. If it had been completed, it was never executed.

Jim made it clear to his close friends that he and his sister never got along, but he dearly loved his mother and his two nieces, Amanda and Susan. The only surviving will was dated September 24, 1984, which made his mother, Blanche B. Williams, the primary beneficiary of his wealth. He gave his sister the “sum of ten ($10) dollars and all rights to my papers and writings together with the copyright on ‘Psycho Dice,’” a game that Jim devised. Mrs. Williams passed away in 1997.

Dorothy Kingery
photo by Jeanne Papy

Jim’s sister, Dr. Dorothy Kingery, netted over $1 million when she engaged Sotheby’s to auction off some of Jim’s finest treasures, including a set of nine pastel drawings by early American female artist Henrietta Dering Johnston, the ormolu coach fitting from Napoleon I’s coronation coach, a Spanish-made silver-gilt and turquoise dagger reputedly used in the murder of Rasputin, and a Fabergé document casket presented by Czar Nicholas II to the Shah of Persia around 1899. Dr. Kingery also listed Mercer House with Sotheby’s in 1999 at a price of nearly $9 million, but it was eventually taken off the market. In the past few years, Mercer House has been open for tours and shopping in the old carriage house.

James Arthur Williams’ grave

The life of Jim Williams came to an inglorious finish. His unwise relationship with Danny ended tragically, his reputation was permanently damaged, his life ended prematurely at age 59, his fortune was diminished by a decade of defense against persistent prosecution, and the sister he disliked was enriched by his financial success. Some said that he deserved this ending because of his crimes. Others believed that he was persecuted because of his sexual orientation. However, because of Jim’s tragic story, he will forever be identified with Savannah as its best-known citizen. His legacy includes not only splendid restorations of historic homes, but Savannah’s transformation into a tourist mecca.

I want to express my thanks to the more than 40 people who were kind enough to offer what they knew about Jim Williams, Danny Hansford and the four murder trials that Williams endured in the 1980s. Special thanks goes to Joe and Nancy Goodman, who were long-time friends of Jim and spent hours helping me understand how good Jim was to the people close to him; Spencer Lawton Jr., who shared with me his observations and strategy behind his prosecution of the Williams case, as well as documents he prepared to summarize it for posterity; Jeanne Papy, who permitted me to publish the excellent photos she took of Mercer House parties and some of the actors in the movie
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
; Jan Skutch, who provided me with important information about the trials and a list of people to interview; and Carol Freeman, whose enthusiastic characterization of Jim brought him to life for me. I must also thank my sister-in-law, Ulla Jensen, who accompanied me on many of the interviews.

This book and the Crimescape series of short nonfiction crime books would not exist if it had not been for the encouragement and marketing efforts of my agent and the CEO of RosettaBooks, Arthur Klebanoff. Special thanks also goes to Tracy Majka for her critical reading of the manuscript, and her counsel on style and editing.

I am also grateful to the following people who shared their stories with me over the past few years: Alison (Ali) Fennell, Mykell Holdren, Randy Shuman, David Sands, Kenneth Worthy II, Miriam K. Center, Diane Silver Berryhill, Joel Moore, Dennis Miller, Dawn Dupree, Alex Raskin, Nancy Heffernan, Esther Shaver, Ruby Mooney, John Duncan, and many individuals who chose to remain anonymous.