The Body in the Well (1)
The Body In the Well
On Tuesday, February 22, 1949, a grey 1947 Chevrolet with a blue top with a sign that read Veteran’s Cab arrived at the Asta Café on Main Street in Jasper. The driver, Earl Holbert, thought it was going to be a short evening. He was right, but not in the way he planned.
Around 6 p.m. Earl had picked up a passenger at the cafe (inside what is now the Old Mule House building). At 7 p.m. he traveled to Low’s Service Station in Talking Rock and filled up his gas tank. An hour later, in Gilmer County, Earl and the passenger were seen at Hub’s Place, a local restaurant. At the restaurant, am employee who happened to be a friend of Earl’s interacted with the passenger and later described him as being well dressed, wearing an expensive watch and ring, 6’ tall and weighing 190 lbs. He witnesses them heading south when they left. It would be the last time Earl had ever been seen alive.
Earl was a WWII veteran of the U.S. Army, a Purple Heart recipient, who was wounded at the Battle of the Bulge. (His jeep drove over a mine and he was not found for many hours.) His unit held off a German attack in Belgium with bad ammunition to the point they were all but down to throwing rocks. Earl was 23 years old, 5’11”, 145 pounds, brown-haired and blue-eyed. He was reliable and a creature of habit, so when he didn’t return home, his father became concerned. The following day, Garland Holbert contacted the authorities when he failed to find his son. And beginning the next night, each half hour, the State Patrol would broadcast a description of Earl and his passenger.
It would be two days before two men, Bryan Tatum and Ernest Silvers, brought Earl's two-toned Chevy to a used car lot on Baker Street in Atlanta to sell it. The car salesman had heard the State Patrol broadcasts on WSB, and when the men tried to trade in the ’47 model Chevy for a ’37 model and $400 he became suspicious and called in his report to the GBI.
Within a few hours both Tatum and Silvers were apprehended. Tatum originally provided a motive for what became of Earl. Holbert knew too much about an illegal liquor ring. Tatum named an additional six co-conspirators besides he and Silvers. Weldon Sullivan was arrested along with the others. Tatum took the men to the former farm property of a relative named Emma Tatum in Talking Rock. There, at the bottom of a well was the body of Holbert submerged in five feet of water. Holbert’s watch was stopped at 7:58 pm, having frozen when it hit the water. A Coroner from Atlanta as well as Dr. C.J. Roper examined the body. It was determined that Earl Holbert had died from blunt force trauma to the head caused by claw hammers. A claw hammer was recovered from the well. A second was recovered not far from the well, near Antioch Church Road. Holbert also suffered a bullet wound to the back of the skull and near his shoulder, but those were thought to be postmortem.
Later, Tatum testified that the story about six other co-conspirators was made up. However, he admitted he'd offered Weldon Sullivan $100 to help him. Weldon testified to the same and that per his knowledge, only he and Tatum were involved. Silvers was released for having nothing to do with the murder. The other people originally named were Estelle Reece and Ernest Quarles from Gilmer County, J.C. Henderson from Jasper, and J.O. Smith of Rome. They were held on bond but never charged with murder.
Ernest Holbert was laid to rest that Sunday at Crossroads Baptist Church.
That April the trial for Tatum and Sullivan commenced. Both men were sentenced to death by electrocution. Tatum successfully appealed for a new trial on the grounds that many of the jurors had contributed money for the appointment a special attorney to assist the prosecution. The Georgia Supreme Court agreed and ordered a new trial for Tatum.
In April of 1950 the case was retried. Tatum was found guilty of murder, but his sentence was changed from the death penalty to life in prison. Weldon’s sentence was also changed to life in prison. Both men were indicted on additional charges of robbery by force.
In 1957, Weldon Sullivan was paroled after spending eight years in incarceration. Tatum’s parole request was denied at the time.
Later in 1962, the original charges of robbery were brought against Tatum, and he was sentenced to two years concurrent with his ongoing life sentence. Again, his parole request was denied. Then in 1965, Tatum applied for parole again. He claimed he found work out of state and a place to live. Earl Holbert's sister, Elizabeth Holbert Davis, told the parole board she would kill Tatum if he were released. Regardless, ten days later, the parole board granted Tatum his freedom and he moved out of state. 25 years later, Bryan Tatum died at the age of 62 on Halloween in 1990, in Bremen, Georgia. He was buried at Antioch Baptist Church.
Weldon Sullivan moved away to Anderson, South Carolina after his release and started a family. His name on his tombstone reads James Weldon Sullivan. He got married to Shelby and had a son. He died in 2001 at the age of 71.
Shelby passed in 2017 and was cremated. Their shared tombstone was only occupied by Weldon. Alone at last.
One of the saddest parts of this case, apart from the tragedy of Earl's murder, was the broken heart it left in his father. February 22, 1951, two years to the date after Earl's death, Garland Holbert's obituary was published in the Pickens Progress. He died from a heart attack.
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