While perusing my Spotify account, a suggested "song" popped up. It was a Bobby Darin song that I remembered, and I had bought the 45 rpm when it came out.
"Long Line Rider" was the title. I liked this song because of the groove and bass line in it. The lyrics are telling too: "There's a farm in Arkansas, got some secrets in its floor in decay, in decay."
The song was about three bodies discovered and unearthed in a shallow grave on Jan. 29, 1968, partially enclosed in rotted caskets at Cummins Prison Farm in Lincoln County, some 28 miles south of Pine Bluff. Black inmate Reuben Johnson, 59, had discovered this and actually said in later interviews that he knew all along where the site was, and got word of the location to higher-ups. Johnson also stated that many more bodies are buried in the surrounding area.
A "long line rider" was a "trusted" inmate who watched over other inmates while on horseback, armed with either a shotgun or pistol to intimidate inmates working the fields that consisted of soybean, cotton and rice (grown and harvested for their use), and make sure no inmates attempted to escape. Prison guards looked the other way if a "trusty" shot an inmate attempting an escape and were not held accountable.
Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana were the only three states nationwide that still used the "trusty" system during the mid-1960s.
In early 1967, Thomas Murton was hired to oversee the Arkansas prison system as warden, namely of Cummins and Tucker Prison Unit. He was hired by newly elected Republican Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller, who narrowly won the election for governor in 1966 against Democratic foe James D. "Justice Jim" Johnson, 54.36 percent against Johnson's 45.64 percent.
When the news of the unearthed bodies broke nationally, fingers were pointed at the new governor and his office. Rockefeller tried to distance himself and lay the blame on previous prison superintendents. This somewhat backfired. The press was not biting and began to, pardon the pun, dig deeper into the discovery.
Rockefeller's administration incurred horrible national publicity upon the gruesome discovery, so much that Prison Director Murton was terminated two months after the discovery.
The three corpses were sent to what was then the University of Arkansas Medical Center after exhumation to be examined. Rockefeller intentionally withheld any results until the cause of death was determined.
Governor Rockefeller also insinuated that Murton had created a "sideshow" over this discovery, and ordered that further excavations of other rumored bodies at or near the same site be halted. The official report released by the governor's administration, ghost-written by the Arkansas State Police, reported that the bodies were in a location of the farm known as a historical pauper's grave area. Obviously, we know now that it was not.
(DROP CAP) Thomas Murton almost immediately left the state after his termination. Murton's career in the prison system was over. He eventually retired to Oklahoma and later taught a college course on criminology at Oklahoma State University from 1985-88, and owned and managed a duck farm until his death in 1990.
Oh, and Bobby Darin's career had also taken somewhat of a hit after the release of that song. It peaked at No. 2 on a radio station in San Bernadino, Calif., and was popular in Washington State, but did not do much nationwide.
Randal Berry is a musician, former snake wrangler at the Little Rock Zoo, and an amateur historian.