Currituck Highwaymen Case to be Tried in Camden Next Week, March 5, 1920

From The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., March 5, 1920

Excitement for Camden’s Court. . . Ehringhaus Would Try Currituck Highwaymen Cases in Camden Next Week

Indictments of James Pope Mixon, Edward Parr, W.L. Pennington and W.T. Saunders, the young white men charged with sensational robberies in Currituck county, will be presented to the grand jury of the Superior Court of Camden county which convenes at Camden Court House Monday, March 8.

The four were to have been tried at Currituck Court this week, but there was no court in Currituck. On account of the epidemic of Influenza in that county only 15 of the 30 jurors drawn for Currituck Court put in their appearance Monday. It takes 18 jurors to empanel a grand jury. The court had to be indefinitely postponed. Rather than carry the prisoners in jail indefinitely, Solicitor J.C.B. Ehringhaus will ask for their indictment and trial in Camden county, where Court convenes Monday. It is understood that the defendants will agree to this. In fact it is believed that the defendants will fare better in a trial outside of Currituck county where their alleged crimes were committed.

Handcuffed, the four young men were taken from the Elizabeth City jail and carried to Currituck Monday morning. Handcuffed, they were brought back to the Elizabeth City jail Monday night. The youthfulness of the quartette made a strong appeal to the sympathies of the many who saw them for the first time.

The leader of the young gang is undoubtedly James Mixon, and Mixon is not a bad appearing sort. He may be 24 years old or he may be 27. He was formerly in the navy, was wounded in the service, was honorably discharged, and given a pension for himself, his wife and his own child. The first any one in Norfolk knew about him was in November of last year when the Red Cross drive was started. He presented himself to the Red Cross headquarters, told the Red Cross women how he had been wounded and how the Red Cross had cared for him. He said he wanted to do something for the Red Cross. They gave him buttons to sell and he turned in $60 from his first day’s work. Norfolk papers made much of the incident at the time.

Mixon is pleasant, talkative and interesting. He says he is not an angel, but he isn’t altogether bad. He insists that his three companions are guilty of no wrong doing and that he was the person responsible for things that happened in Camden. Just what sort of defense he will make for himself, he does not indicate. He seems to know just when to stop talking. He says he was once a reporter on a Brooklyn daily, was at another time a moving picture actor in the employ of the Vitagraph Company, and if he gets out of this mess he will go to a Government Vocational Training School and take a course in vocal music and facial expression with a view to going back to the movies or on the stage.