Catch and Release: The Christmas Eve Capture of Asa Patterson
On Christmas Eve 1925, 80-year-old Asa Patterson a.k.a. Ace and Uncle Asa was pulled over in Pickens County. Asa assumed he was being stopped for something in which he was not. Asa had traveled to Jasper from South Carolina to visit his son. The season's sentiments had gotten a hold of him and he badly missed his son. To the prohibition agents' astonishment, he told them he was convicted of murdering a man during a drunken game of cards in Marble Hill. He mistakenly believed the murder was the reason for his stop.
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On Mar 12, 1881, Asa and his brother Kinsey were playing cards deep in the woods with Robert Simmons and his two brothers - Squire and Joseph. After much reveling and too much whiskey, a knife fight ensued and guns were drawn. The began over an accusation of stolen money. But the accounts of what actually happened vary a great deal. Asa was shot in the ear and stabbed multiple times, as was Robert. Robert was discivered Asa left and made his way home.
When Asa opened his door his daughter saw him covered in a tremendous amount of blood. Blood was even coming out of his boots when he removed them. The Simmons family found Robert's badly mutilated corpse and told the sheriff what transpired. Not long afterward, Pickens County Sheriff Rufus Henderson arrested Asa on charges of murder.
On April 30, 1881, Ace Patterson was tried by Judge Brown in Pickens Superior Court. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.
What happened next is straight out of the movies. On May 18th, 1881, a group of nine disguised men went to the rock jail and demanded Asa Patterson be freed. Asa, along with all the other prisoners at the time, walked out of the old rock jail and promptly fled. Ace wenr home and gathered his wife and children fled the state - first to Tennessee, and eventually to New Prospect, South Carolina. His first wife died in 1887 from complications of goiter.
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Asa remained in hiding for over forty-five years in South Carolina. Fourteen years after his escape he got married in 1895. He married Florence Amanda Patterson and fathered nine children.
His freedom remained intact until his sentiments finally got the best of him. And that's when he returned to Pickens County, Georgia to see his son James from his first wife on Christmas Eve. He was pulled over by prohibition agents looking for illegal liquor.
Asa was too old and infirm to serve time in the Pickens County chain gang, so he was transferred to the State Prison at Milledgeville. Eventually a clemency effort initiated by Asa's son James in conjunction with influence from Colonel Sam Tate himself, Governor Walker pardoned Asa on April 17, 1926.
Asa returned to South Carolina only to be free for a brief while. In August of 1925, Asa was busted on a prohibition charge and sentenced to nine months. He appealed to the Supreme Court, but his appeal was denied. He was taken into custody in July on 1926 where he served nine more months before finally being released in the spring on 1927.
In totality, Asa spent a little more than four months after his arrest in 1926 in prison for the murder he committed. Asa spent the last eight years of his life as a free man.
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