The Sweet Little Murderess Across The Street

Some Murderers I Have Known

This is the first in a series:

I don’t know what pushed her over the very sharp edge of murder. I never got up the nerve to ask, and no one ever volunteered. It was sometime in the late 1970s.I don’t remember exactly when; but I was off at Youth Camp with the church, so it had to be after 1976, and it couldn’t have been much after 1980. When I got home from camp, there were interesting tales in the Parker house about the night when 8 billion cops showed up at the house across the street, along with an ambulance or two. A conference of neighbors and a quick check with the newspapers revealed that the lady across the street had shot her husband, and done quite a good job of it. He was not just merely dead; but, really, quite sincerely dead. 

She had then shot herself in the right temple, and hadn’t done quite as good a job. When the paramedics arrived, she was only mostly dead; and, as Billy Crystal can tell you, mostly dead is still partly alive. The EMTs and the nurses and the doctors must have done a deal with Miracle Max because she did survive the attempted suicide, although she looked like a stroke victim. The right side of her face drooped. She had trouble talking clearly, and she had to walk with a cane. 

I’ve no idea what the legalities were; but, somehow or other, she got out of jail within just a year or two. One day a lady in her 30s (early 40s? Teenagers stink at estimating age) knocked on my door to ask if I could cut “Muther’s” grass. I spell it like that because she pronounced it like that. It is now 40 years gone, but I remember that the way she pronounced “Muther” bothered me a great deal more than cutting grass for a murderess did. 

I cut the grass that summer, but I doubt that I made them very happy. I ran over a tree stump and tore up the lawn mower within just a few weeks of beginning. The son fixed it, and I went on about my job; but I don’t remember that being a long-term situation, probably because of how great I am at cutting grass. 

I spent very little time with the old lady herself. She would occasionally call me into the house to give me something to drink, or to pay me for cutting the grass. The first few times I talked to her, I was waiting for her to do something murderess-like, such as grow a new head, or sprout fangs; but she never did, and I relaxed. She was consistently a sweet, reserved, little, old lady of the kind you can find at any church on any Sunday in the South. Her manners were impeccable, and she was never anything but gracious and welcoming.

I never saw her wear anything other than a pink house robe and slippers, so I got the feeling that she never changed into real clothes. I am pretty sure that she never went out of the house, except when her daughter took “Muther” to the doctor. She locked herself into the house where she had murdered her husband, and had tried to murder herself. Whatever the legalities, she served a life term of imprisonment in that house, with only memories as her cell mates. 

P.S. At this time, we lived on Sparkman Drive, just at the foot of the big hill, about a half-mile from Blue Spring Rd.