Pearson Blythe Mayfield, 57-year old attorney, city commissioner and member of one of Tennessee's most prominent families, was shot to death in the Cleveland office the morning of November 23, 1936 by Dr. Vance Bell, former county physician for Bradley County. The shooting aroused intense excitement throughout Cleveland and Bradley County.
The slaying, pronounced in Mr. Mayfield's dying statement an act committed in cold blood, was done by the same man who on the preceding September 3rd had shot and seriously wounded County Judge Nat Eldredge and a few days later engaged in a bloody fight with a tenant on the Bell farm near Cleveland.
Bell had employed the Mayfield firm, composed of P. B. Mayfield and his brother, the late Charles S. Mayfield, to represent him in ;the matter of his shooting the County Judge and, although the Mayfield firm did not handle collections, as a special favor to the doctor Mr. Mayfield agreed to handle a selected number of the doctor's delinquent accounts with Mr. Mayfield, who had readied an itemized statement and a check for the amount due his client.
When Dr. Bell appeared for his appointment, Willie Mae McCracken, the Mayfield firm's secretary, widely known to Cleveland lawyers as Miss Willie, noticed that he appeared to be in a friendly mood, although he did not speak to her. Mr. Mayfield said, "Good morning, Dr. Bell", Miss Willie continued, and Bell responded, "Good morning, Mr. Mayfield", and walked into the consultation office, followed by Mr. Mayfield, who was holding in his hand the check and statement Miss Willie had prepared for him. As soon as the office door was closed Miss McCracken heard the doctor heaping vile abuse on Mr. Mayfield, concluding with " the damn people of Cleveland have had it in for me for about two years and you are one of them", followed by two shots in rapid succession. Terror stricken, she screamed and ran into the library where a firm associate, James L. Wolfe, was working. "Doctor Bell has shot Mr. Pearson" she cried, and he is going to kill us all."
Wolfe ran to a back door in an effort to get out without Bell seeing him and summon aid, but the back door was locked, and then he ran to the front office just as Bell was making his exit. In the meantime, C. L. Wilson, assistant cashier of the Cleveland National Bank and a World War I veteran, heard the shot and rushed from his office below to the scene, arriving as Dr. Bell was making his exit. The doctor turned his revolver on Wilson, holding him at bay, Wolfe, again seeking a way to escape, stepped on a piece of loose flooring, causing it to squeak, whereupon the doctor turned his weapon on the attorney. "Hello, doctor" said Wolfe, thinking his time had come. Bell grunted, pocketed his revolver and ran from the building. Wilson, Wolfe, and Miss McCracken rushed to Mr. Mayfield's office, finding the stricken attorney seated on the floor with his head slumped forward. In his left hand were Doctor Bell's statement and a bullet-pierced check. Doctor Speck's subsequent examination disclosed that on bullet had passed through Mr. Mayfield's abdomen and another had entered the shoulder and taken a downward course into the body, indicating, the doctor said that Mr. Mayfield was shot while in the act of tendering a check to his assailant.
An ambulance arrived, and the wounded attorney was rushed to the Speck Hospital, about a block distant, where he was attended by Doctor C. T. Speck. "He shot me at my desk..........he didn't give me a change", Mayfield told Dr. Speck a few minutes before he died.
Chief of Police A. M. Trotter, informed of the shooting, sent officers to Bell's room at the Aragon Hotel, where they found him perfectly calm and reading from the Second Book of Numbers in his Bible. He surrendered his revolver quietly, and was taken first to the Bradley County jail and later to the Mc Minn County jail because of the intense feeling against him in Bradley County aroused by the killing.
After a few weeks delay caused by the illness of his attorney, H. M. Candler of Athens, Bell was finally brought to trail before Judge Sue K. Hicks and a jury at Cleveland during the February term 1937.
When the State offered its proof and rested its case the defendant, visibly agitated, loudly demanded the right to testify in his own behalf. Col Candler objected, but Judge Hicks, after consideration held that under the Constitution and laws of Tennessee Bell had the right to testify. Then came perhaps the most dramatic scene ever witnessed in a Cleveland courtroom when the defendant took the stand and launched into an incoherent recital of his early life, shouting profanity and abusive language toward the court and others.
The Trial continued over the admonition of Judge Hicks and became so violent that the Judge ordered deputies to remove Bell from the Courtroom. He was carried out bodily struggling and screaming while the officers carried him through the crowded room. Colonel Candler hurriedly filed a plea of present insanity and after proof had been presented on the issue the jury retired and quickly reported the following verdict: "We the jury find the defendant insane." The Court thereupon directed that the defendant be committed to the State Hospital for Criminal Insane at Nashville, where he lived out the rest of his life and died.
Dr. Vance Hutsell Bell, born Dec. 18, 1902, died May 1, 1961.........after 25 years in the Central State Hospital for Criminal Insane, Nashville, Tennessee........Davidson County. Buried in Benton Town Cemetery, Polk County, Tennessee.
Provided by Pam Rathbone
Material from "Blue Grass and Tennessee Valley" by Col. James F. Corn.
