Jenkins Given 2-Year Sentence on County Roads. . . Girl Paroled Under Custody of J.C. Gold, Klan Representative. . . Jenkins is Under Federal Charge. . . Gold on Stand Tells of Jenkin’s Plan to Beat Girl
Greensboro, Sept. 20—Another chapter of the Taylorsville “kidnapping” case was written here today when S.L. Jenkins, Winston-Salem merchant, was sentenced to serve two years on the Guilford county roads, following his conviction in municipal court on a charge of intimate relations with Margaret Smith, alias Minnie Jones, alias Mrs. C.E. Webb. Judgment in the case of the woman was suspended and she was placed in custody of J.C. Gold of Tilly, Halifax county, who says that he is a special representative of the Ku Klux Klan.
The next term of Guilford Superior court early in October will find the matter again aired. Jenkins appealed from the sentence and in default of bond of $10,000 was placed in the county jail to await trial of his case.
The young woman was the magnet which drew a throng of spectators to the courtroom and she repaid the interest shown in her. When sentence was passed upon Jenkins, she burst into tears. Asked whether he was the man who had lived with her as her husband, she said, “that is the man and I love him.”
Evidence at the trial disclosed the part the Ku Klux Klan played in the apprehension of Jenkins and the clearing up of the fog of conjecture surrounding the matter, since its inception when the pair are said to have been held up on the Taylorsville-Lenoir road Thursday night by a band of masked men, separated and the woman beaten, to return to her room here, disappear again and turn in up in Winston-Salem, there to escape, according to the story of the representative of the Klan, another beating at the hands of the man she loves, who, from the evidence, tired of the woman and planned to rid himself of her.
The woman disclosed the story of her relations with the man without reservation, speaking in a firm voice. She said that she met Jenkins in November, 1919, when she went to work in his store there. They became intimate shortly afterwards, and she added, “I am as much to blame as he.” Continuing, she said that they came to Greensboro on last July 24 as Mr. and Mrs. C.E. Webb, spent the night at a hotel, later securing rooms for two weeks, after which she went home. Later they returned here and secured a room at the home of Rev. H.O. Nash, rector of St. Andrews Episcopal church, three weeks ago, she said.
Mrs. Nash identified Jenkins as Mr. Webb. She said that “Mrs. Webb” paid the room rent. Mr. Nash could not positively identify Jenkins as Webb, not having seen him face to face, but judged that the two were the same.
When W.P. Bynum, assisting in the prosecution, stated to the court that it might like to get further information before pronouncing judgment, Klansman Gold was called to the stand. He said that he was approached by a man in Winston-Salem last Saturday afternoon saying he had a friend in trouble who needed help; that he met Jenkins and was told that Jenkins had been living with a woman and wanted to end the situation. “Jenkins said he had a party arranged for her and men had sheets around them arrayed as Klansmen,” Gold said, adding that he determined then to get at the root of the matter.
Gold stated that he asked Jenkins to meet him later and that Jenkins spent Saturday hunting for the woman. During Gold’s visit to the Jenkins store, the latter’s wife remarked that “the woman must be whipped,” Gold said on the stand today.
Sunday morning, Gold continued, he telephone Jenkins and was told that he had a report that the woman was in the city. Gold pretended to agree to plans for the second framed up beating of the woman, he said, and Sunday night passed Jenkins three times with the woman in the latter’s car.
Jenkins flashed his lights as a signal, Gold testified, stating that finally the woman jumped out of the car and ran screaming, but the three men in Gold’s car, one of them a deputy sheriff, jumped out and stopped her. She asked Gold if they were the ones who beat her near Taylorsville, and “I told her no, we are Kalnsmen,” Gold said. She broke down when taken to the machine of her rescuers, Gold stated, and told her story. He said that the woman told of making trips with Jenkins to New York, Cleveland and other points. Her story told, Gold had Jenkins arrested and brought here Monday.
Attempts were made to kidnap the woman from the home of the deputy sheriff of Forsyth county to which the Klansmen took her, according to Gold. For that reason he asked Judge Colins, presiding at today’s trial, to place the woman in his custody, which request was granted.
Jenkins was not represented by counsel at the trial, although its beginning was delayed a while to wait for Fred M. Parrish of Winston-Salem, who, Jenkins said, is his lawyer. Mr. Parrish did not appear. Representing the prosecution were A.C. Davis, W.P. Bynum and E.D. Kuykendall, all of Greensboro. O.C. Cox of Greensboro represented the woman. Jenkins did not go on the stand and refused to examine the witnesses. Jenkins is married and has four children.
From the front page of the Winston-Salem Journal, Sept. 21, 1922
