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Third in a four-part series

More than six decades ago, a grand jury assembled to hear a grisly case. Four Black men had been shot to death and a fifth seriously wounded in a hail of gunfire on Ticheli Road near Monroe.
The all-white grand jury would do something in character for the segregated South of the early 1960s, finding that the white shooter had acted in self-defense. Later that day, the panel made another decision that also says a lot about the justice system back then: It charged the lone survivor with attempting to murder the white man.
“That’s when the justice system just gets flipped on its head, which it did so many times in these cases,” said former U.S. Sen. Doug Jones of Alabama, who prosecuted two Klansmen in the 1963 bombing of a church in Birmingham that killed four Black girls.
Jones and other criminal justice experts said the self-defense claim of the shooter, Robert Fuller, does not add up.
“It made no sense,” he said, after reviewing U.S. Justice Department documents on the case and other evidence provided by the LSU Cold Case Project.
Jones said it was common then for law enforcement to “try to protect those who committed the crime, to try to put the onus on the victims or their community.”
Damon T. Hewitt, the president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a group based in Washington, D.C., went even further in criticizing how the case was handled.
“This case is unique in that the victim in the same incident is being falsely accused, and the legal apparatus is being used to punish someone who is a victim of a heinous crime,” Hewitt, a New Orleans native and LSU graduate, said after reviewing the documents. “This case flips justice on its head, upside down and inside out.”
News accounts said that Fuller, then 39, was behind in paying the men, all employees in his sanitation business, and shot them when they went to his house to collect their pay.
He claimed that they charged him with knives. He told law enforcement officials that he ran to his truck and grabbed a double-barrel shotgun, reloading three times as he shot his attackers one by one.
He would later ride the notoriety from the killings — and a new nickname, “Shotgun” — to join the Ku Klux Klan and become a statewide Klan leader.
Fuller’s self-defense claim quickly received support when his next-door neighbor, Patricia Sherman, rushed over as Fuller held the shotgun over the wounded survivor, Charlie Willis. Both Fuller and Sherman told sheriff’s deputies that day that when Fuller had ordered Willis to tell Sherman what he and his friends had been up to, Willis responded: “We came to hurt Mr. Robert.”
But Sherman, now 94, recently told the LSU Cold Case Project that she thought Willis would have said anything Fuller wanted to save his life. Another witness who spoke to the FBI many years later said that Fuller had threatened to kill Willis if he did not support Fuller’s version of events.
The FBI also quoted the witness, whose name was redacted in the documents, as suggesting Fuller had planted knives near the dead men and as having “personally observed” one of Fuller’s sons “finish off” some of the wounded men with a pistol.
Six months after the shooting, on Jan. 10, 1961, a 20-person grand jury convened at the Ouachita Parish Courthouse, a gray stone building on South Grand Street in downtown Monroe, to decide whether to charge Fuller with a crime.
Sherman remembers testifying before the grand jury, but she does not recall the specifics of her testimony.
It is unclear who else was called. No record of the proceedings exists other than a document in the Ouachita Parish Clerk of Court’s office that references the grand jury’s decision that day — that no charges would be filed against Fuller.
Some of the witnesses who have talked about the case in recent years say they were scared to come forward right after the shootings, and it appears that little forensic evidence was collected at the scene.
But it also was clear from the sketchy coroner’s reports that at least one of the men had been shot in the back.
Ronald Hampton, the former executive director of the National Black Police Officers Association who also was a police officer in Washington, D.C., for 23 years, said that if five men were attacking Fuller, they “wouldn’t stand around and wait for him to reload and then shoot them.”
Hampton said the files should have contained photographs of the crime scene, the bodies and their locations, testing of the gun or guns and ammunition, autopsy reports with details about the weapons used and how the men were shot, as well as interviews with witnesses.
“These steps were not new to policing at that time,” he said, adding that it was not uncommon in the South for elected sheriffs to do “whatever they wanted depending on the crime and who was the victim.”
Hampton added that the autopsy reports should have provided more information about where the men were shot and on the type of weapons and bullets used, which would have been critical in determining if there was more than one shooter.
Southern University Law Professor Russell Jones, who grew up in Monroe, says Fuller’s self-defense claim is “incredulous.” He said self-defense cases “don’t look like this.”
Jones said the local sheriff and the district attorney probably let the grand jury process play out to make it look fair, but they likely had no intention of prosecuting Fuller.
He said he believed that Fuller should have been charged with first-degree murder and put in jail.
On the same day that the grand jury declined to indict Robert Fuller, it indicted the wounded survivor, Charlie Willis, on a charge of attempting to murder Fuller.
Ouachita Parish District Judge Jesse Heard set Willis’ bail at $2,500. Sheriff Bailey Grant then detained Willis in the parish jail because he could not make bail.
Three and a half months later, on April 25, 1961, Willis returned to the courthouse and changed his plea to guilty.
No record of the court proceedings in the case — "State of Louisiana vs. Charlie Willis” — exists, although 17 possible witnesses were named in a court document.
The proceedings did not last more than a day. Judge Heard gave Willis a five-year suspended sentence with probation based on good behavior.
According to Sen. Jones, a probation sentence for an attempted murder conviction meant that the justice system officials knew Willis was not guilty of attempted murder.
In most cases, a Black man guilty of attempted murder at that time would have received a prison sentence, not probation, he said.
After his court hearing, Willis went to live with his older sister, who had reared him, after their parents died, on a farm on the outskirts of Monroe. Within months, Willis moved to Monroe and worked in construction.
Four years later, a year before his probation was set to end, Judge Heard issued a warrant for Willis’ arrest for a probation violation. The court documents state that Willis had left the state without permission.
On June 10, 1966, the court revoked Willis’ probation and sent him to the Louisiana Corr-ectional & Industrial School in DeQuincy, Louisiana, some 200 miles away.
After the grand jury’s decision, Fuller helped organize the Original Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Monroe in 1961.
While Fuller led Klan recruiting efforts in Monroe during 1961 and 1962, including heading up a “goon” squad designed to inflict violence on targeted victims, he longed for a statewide leadership role, according to FBI documents.
In 1963, to fend off a power purge, Original Knights leaders made Fuller the first head of the Klan Bureau of Investigation. The position gave Fuller the power to approve or reject any projects involving arson, beatings, whippings or murders.
But as FBI records show, that was not enough for Fuller, who in late 1963 and early 1964 helped lead a takeover of the Original Knights, resulting in the ousting of the grand dragon and the imperial wizard.
Throughout the decade, Fuller frequently held Klan meetings at his house, serving up barbeque for Klansmen and their families. His son William A. Fuller, who had been listed in grand jury documents as a possible witness to the shooting of the five Black workers, became an active Klansman, serving as captain of the guard, according to the FBI records.
In perpetual debt and often broke, Robert Fuller’s paid leadership roles in the Klan provided cover for his money problems.
In January 1966, the House Un-American Activities Committee subpoenaed Fuller to testify at hearings on the Klan.
The lead investigator, Donald T. Appell, noted that Fuller disguised the Klan organization under the name of the Monroe Hunting & Fishing Club. Fuller declined to answer questions. Appell did not ask about the July 13, 1960, shooting.
Known inside and outside the Klan as a habitual liar, Fuller claimed that he had Gov. John McKeithen in his pocket and that the Original Knights membership amounted to 100,000 statewide, although informants indicated to the FBI that at its peak, membership may have reached 3,000.
FBI documents note that Fuller’s claims were baseless, and over time his influence in the Original Knights diminished.
By the 1970s, he had formed his own Klan group, often counting less than a dozen members.
Fuller’s Klan organization ceased all operations by 1975, according to FBI documents.
Fuller later claimed that he had cancer, but an FBI report indicates he falsely made the claim to garner sympathy and money from fellow Klansmen.
Within a few years of his Klan group’s demise, Fuller turned state’s witness against two friends, according to newspaper accounts. Fuller testified against the two, saying they had planned a series of arsons to defraud an insurance agency.
In exchange for his testimony, the district attorney provided Fuller with conditional immunity. Fuller admitted his motive for turning state’s witness was because his partners owed him money.
After serving his prison sentence for the probation violation, Willis returned to Monroe.
He stayed in touch with his sister and her family, checking in a couple of times per month and with relatives of the slain men.
A few years later, he was diagnosed with cancer, according to Willie Mae Pitts Sallie, the sister of two of the men who were killed. Willis’ nephew, Charles Smith, said shotgun pellets were still in his body. Smith remembers Willis asking him to rub his back to relieve the pain from the wounds.
Fuller also had health issues in his later years.
After suffering a stroke and losing his ability to speak in 1986, he was moved to Monroe Manor Nursing Center, less than three miles from the killings in 1960.
At the end of his life, Fuller was forced to face Sallie, who was one of his nurses there.
“He recognized me,” Sallie said in an interview before she died late last month.
During his final days in the home, she defended him from other Monroe Manor workers even though he had killed her brothers Albert, Jr. and David Lee and their cousin Alfred Marshall as well as coworker Earnest Lee McFarland and injured her friend, Charlie Willis.
“I wouldn’t let them beat up on him,” Sallie said, telling them, “He can’t talk. His mouth is open, dripping water.”
For the Black men’s families, sometimes the hope of justice in the afterlife is the only thing left.
Let God handle Fuller, Sallie said, adding that she prayed with him and suggested he ask God for forgiveness.
Fuller died on March 7, 1987.
Four years later, Willis, a lifelong bachelor, passed away. He is buried at Richwood Memorial Gardens, less than three miles from where the shooting took place on Ticheli Road.
Additional reporting by Alaysia Johnson, Ashlon Lusk, Courtney Brewer, Karli Carpenter, Kaitlan Darby, Evan Garrity, Sydney Reynolds, Anna Jones, and Bailey Williams.

Ralph Hall, 65, a resident and native of Patterson, passed away at 12:12 a.m. Sept. 6, 2021, at Ochsner Medical Center in Jefferson, Louisiana.

Memorial services will be held on Monday, September 13, 2021, at 11 a.m. at Jones Funeral Home, 715 Sixth St., Morgan City. All visitors are asked to adhere to the CDC/local regulations by wearing masks and practicing social distancing).

He is survived by a host of relatives and friends.

Arrangements have been entrusted to Jones Funeral Home.

DEAR ABBY: I am a 41-year-old divorced woman. My two grown children live with their dad. I have been in a relationship with “Sir Talks-a-Lot” for 16 months. I feel like I love him, but I’m having lots of doubts. When I don’t see him, it doesn’t bother me. If I made a pros-and-cons list, there would be more cons than pros.
And he talks nonstop — about anything and everything. If he’s not texting me, he’s calling me. We don’t go on real dates; all we do is hang out or go out to grab a bite. He contradicts himself often, and if we argue, he is always the victim. He talks a good game, but I feel like it’s all talk. I have gotten flowers once in 16 months, and no holiday or birthday gifts. But his talk game is so good that I feel guilty for thinking about breaking things off. Is it me? Or am I just feeling suffocated? Please give me some advice.
CONFUSED IN THE WITCH CITY

DEAR CONFUSED: It’s not you, and stop feeling guilty. When someone’s actions don’t mirror what they say, it is a big red flag. You are being overdosed with “smother love,” which is really less about you and more about Sir Talks-a-Lot’s insecurity. He can’t let you have your space because he’s afraid that if he does, you will escape. It is important that you listen to your intuition, because it’s sending you an important message.

DEAR ABBY: There are several bad habits my husband has, but the one that frightens me the most involves our 2-year-old son. I’m afraid to leave them alone when we are out shopping. I have walked up on them a few times and noticed my husband reading or looking at stuff with his back to the buggy while our son is in it. When I tell him it scares me, he says I’m overreacting. I’m worried someone will steal our son. He always says, “He’s within arm’s reach. No one is going to run away with him before I have the chance to stop them.”
Abby, this kind of crime has happened before. I have seen it in the news. My husband is no superhero. Am I wrong to think he should keep the buggy in front of him at all times when our son is in it? He shouldn’t let our 2-year-old walk up the aisles unattended either. Or am I wrong?
LAURA IN OHIO

DEAR LAURA: You are not wrong to want to err on the side of safety. If it would put your mind at ease, your husband should accommodate your request. Toddlers should not wander unattended in the aisles either, not only because of the danger of kidnapping, but also the possibility of an accident.

DEAR ABBY: I don’t trust the woman I’m with. She flirts with other guys and says disrespectful things about me when she talks to other people. We are also not on the same page sexually. I feel obligated to her because we have been together for 15 years. I don’t want counseling. What should I do?
NOT ON THE SAME PAGE

DEAR NOT ON THE SAME PAGE: What you should do is tell your longtime girlfriend exactly what you have told me and end the relationship. If you do, you will be doing both of you a favor. Trust me.
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Abby shares more than 100 of her favorite recipes in two booklets: “Abby’s Favorite Recipes” and “More Favorite Recipes by Dear Abby.” Send your name and mailing address, plus check or money order for $16 to: Dear Abby, Cookbooklet Set, P.O. Box 447, Mount Morris, IL 61054-0447.

On Oct. 3, 2002, a Category 1 hurricane by the name of Lili made landfall at Intercoastal City. There were 15 storm-related deaths, and the cost of damage was estimated at $925 million.
St. Mary Parish happened to be on the eastern side of the hurricane, and one of the things I distinctly recall was the tidal surge.
At the time, my father-in-law, James Duay, was the land manager for St. Mary Land & Exploration Co. There was a caretaker’s house located down Highway 317 near Burns Point, where he and his wife lived.
The day after the storm, James’ brother-in-law Harry Lee Wiggins, Harry’s son Shane, James, and myself, rode down the Calumet Cut to check out the land damage and the old caretaker’s house.
The flag and cut grass in the marsh were flattened, and water was still over the banks. About the only way to navigate was to pay attention to the tree lines along the various bayous and canals, trying to stay in the middle as much as possible. Of course, it didn’t hurt knowing the land too.
The caretaker’s house (Note: still there today) sits on higher ground and is also raised off the ground about 4 feet. Unfortunately, Lili’s tidal surge turned out to be roughly 8 feet and flooded much of St. Mary Parish’s coastline, including the caretaker’s house at Burn’s Point.
My father-in-law lost everything they kept in the house, and he and his wife really suffered for while like everyone does when these things happen.
The thing I’ll never forget was seeing two spotted fawns curled up next to the house on the higher ground. We left the poor things alone wondering where the old doe was who bedded them down there.
We also wondered how in blazes they survived. The truth is wildlife in all sorts of climates around the world seem to do alright when it comes to catastrophic storms.
Last week, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries issued a press release titled, “Public Reminded to be Mindful of Displaced Wildlife in Wake of Hurricane Ida.”
The release makes note that wildlife species seek higher ground and are often displaced into habitat with which they may not be familiar.
The release explains that rising waters force wildlife from flooded habitat into adjacent residential and commercial areas where they may come into contact with residents. Therefore, the LDWF urges citizens to minimize contact with animals while they seek temporary refuge from their flooded home range.
It is recommended by the department that wild animals not posing a threat to humans should be left alone and should not be fed. Feeding wild animals will encourage those animals to remain in the vicinity of a new food source when they should be allowed to find natural habitat and food sources on their own, the release says.
The LDWF offers these basic tips. Avoid areas where displaced wildlife take refuge. Avoid interaction with and do not feed displaced wildlife. And avoid roadways near flooded areas to reduce likelihood of disturbance and collisions with wildlife.
Burns Point is located in Deer Hunt Area Number 7. In the aftermath of Hurricane Lili, the first gun season, which started the third week of October, was postponed for several weeks until the department could complete a habitat assessment and allow a period to reduce stress on deer who went through the coastal flooding.
When the season finally opened the next month in early November, I recall not seeing but one or two deer the whole month. It wasn’t until December that they started showing up again in the numbers I was accustomed to.
It appeared they had moved up on the levees and were quite content to stay there until the marsh began to recover.
By December, the alligator weed, willow leaves, and even a few cow peas began to grow in the marsh again.
Since we are still a couple of weeks away from the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season, it’s difficult to say if Hurricane Ida will be the last one, we’ll see this year. Last year five storms impacted Louisiana’s coastlines.
The least we can do is give wildlife a break during times like these.