There were no indictments lodges against prominent citizens of Winfall who made no interference when George Moore attacked his father-in-law on the streets of that village on the morning of October 2 and who stood supinely by, making no interference when Raymond Jordan, 17-year-old son of Alex Jordan, came upon the scene with a stick of timber and beat George Moore to death.
A jury of the Superior Court of Perquimans County heard the case against young Ramond Jordan, but they didn’t have the heart to convict him. He was only a simple, big-hearted, impetuous youth who thought his father needed help and who rushed upon his father’s adversary with a deadly club, dealing him blow after blow upon his head from which he died 40 hours later.
The jury seemed to think that the bystanders who witnessed the whole affair from start to finish and who took no hand to part the belligerents were guilty of the murder. But there were no indictments against the bystanders.
Maybe the jury sympathized with the bystanders too. Winfall is a sleepy, struggling, weather-beaten little town that has had no excitement within the memory of the oldest inhabitant. Winfall folk are generally sober, easy-going, neighborly and law-abiding. Other towns are always getting on the front pages of the newspaper with ? [word obscured], scandals, accidents, etc. But not so with Winfall. Winfall has pursued the even tenor of its way thru all the years with hardly anything more exciting than a run-away horse, a shot-gun wedding or a sugar stew for the benefit of the church.
And so when George Moore had an altercation with his father-in-law, dragged him out of a store and sat upon him on the sidewalk, Winfall folk didn’t take a hand because they were witnessing what promised to be an exciting incident. They were hardly prepared for what followed.
The jury was helped considerably in arriving at a verdict of not guilty in the case of Raymond Jordan by the testimony of his sister, the dead man’s wife. Mrs. George Moore testified at the trial that her husband had on previous occasion threatened the life of her father and that her brother had been alarmed by these threats.
The Moore family lived at Chapanoke. Moore was employed as a railroad engineer in Baltimore, stood high with his neighbors, and seemed devoted to his family. He had returned home on October 1 to visit his family and finding his wife and two small children gone to the home of his father-in-law, Alex Jordan of Winfall, got in his car and went for them.
His father-in-law said he was drinking a counselled Mrs. Moore against going with him. The upshot of it was that his family failed to return with him, he had row with Mr. Jordan, and returning the next morning for his family, he accosted his father-in-law, and in a few moments was fatally wounded by young Raymond Jordan.
From the front page of The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., Friday, Nov. 12, 1926
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn83025812/1926-11-12/ed-1/seq-1/
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