Murder on the Macon Road: Memphis in Mourning

Antoinette Rappel, a 15 year old white girl, rode her bicycle every school day to the Treadwell School in downtown Memphis, several miles each way. When she went missing for several days, a search party discovered her body decapitated and sexually assaulted near the Wolf River Bridge along the Macon Road. One witness to the murder included one of the black woodcutters who lived in the vicinity of the murder scene. He was both deaf and mute. The murder investigation is headed up by Shelby County Sheriff Mike Tate working alongside the Memphis Police Department's best detective team of Charley Brunner and John Walter Hoyle. The Memphis police, led by Detective Hoyle, focus on a "white man theory" to the crime based on evidence they have uncovered. The Sheriff is solely focused on the black woodcutters in the vicinity. As the investigation continues, a suspect who has been arrested and brought in for questioning before, is arrested a third time and ultimately confesses to the crime. The suspect, also a black woodcutter named Ell Persons, confesses to the crime under suspicious circumstances. The confession comes quickly under coerced circumstances. Fearing mob violence, Ell Persons is safely whisked away to Nashville by train for safekeeping under cover of night. However, before he can be brought safely back to Memphis over a week later, the mob captures him on the train on the way back in nearby Mississippi and brings him to the original murder site of Antoinette Rappel where he is brutally lynched in front of 5,000 onlookers from the surrounding area of Memphis. The story follows the impact of one of the most brutal lynchings in history and the life of Detective Hoyle