A Voodoo Murder?

I think I've remarked on this blog before that one of the ways discrimination against black people manifested itself in the 1880s and early 1900s was the disproportionately small amount of coverage that events involving exclusively black people was given in newspapers. When I remarked on this phenomenon before, I used being the victim of a crime as a glaring example. If a white person killed or assaulted another white person it was usually big news, and if a black person killed or assaulted a white person, it was also big news, with the thrust of the story often being a portrayal of the black person as a brute. This was especially true if a black man assaulted or molested a white woman. However, if a white person killed a black person, the incident was usually not as widely reported, and when it was reported, the story sometimes was written in such a context as to justify the white man's action. And when a black person killed or assaulted another black person, the incident might not even make the news at all. The attitude often seemed to be, "So what?
An incident that happened in Springfield in early 1929 will serve as another example of this. On February 1, a 38-year-old black man named Charles Nunley, who lived on the west side of Fassnight Park, accused his wife of being unfaithful and started "running amuck." He first shot and wounded Ross Cook, a black man who lived in the neighborhood and who might have been the man Nunley suspected his wife was cheating with. Nunley next shot and killed his wife and then turned the gun on himself, shooting and seriously injuring himself.
I could find no mention of this incident in Springfield newspapers at the time it happened. I only learned the date of the incident and a couple of other details mentioned above because I found a very small story about the incident in another Missouri newspaper.
The Springfield newspapers only picked up on the story after Nunley had been convicted in mid-March of second-degree murder in the shooting death of his wife and sentenced to 10 years in the state prison. And seemingly the only reason the story was given much print even at this time was that a novel and sensational element to the story had allegedly been uncovered, which gave the reporter an opportunity to poke fun at the black people involved and to make light of the whole incident.
"Strange tales of a negro voodoo doctor and of mysterious haunts and charms invoked by him for a growing following of Springfield negroes came to light today," said the reporter, "following the recent trial here of Charles Nunley, young negro, for the murder of his wife."
The reporter went on to explain that many blacks were convinced that strange "ha'nts" produced by an old black man named Anderson Carr, who lived on East Division Street, were indirectly responsible for the slaying of Nunley's wife. The rumor was that Nunley, having heard whisperings of his wife's infidelity, forced her to accompany him on the night before the shooting to Carr's home, where he obtained two bags of herbs as charms to discourage the illicit friendship. About the same time, Nunley's  neighbor Ross supposedly placed some spells on Nunley's well water and his milk bottle. Either Ross's "ha'nt" was stronger than Nunley's, or else Nunley's attempt to ward off his wife's infidelity with charms backfired. At any rate, many of the black people of Springfield were convinced that Nunley, who they said was a longtime practitioner of voodoo, killed his wife at least partly because of his involvement in the mysterious religion, with its spells and charms.
Nunley himself, however, denied that "old man Carr" had anything to do with what happened. Nunley said Carr was just "an old herb doctor" that used to help him with his rheumatism. When the reporter broached the subject of voodoo, Nunley didn't want to talk about it. He did say, however, that if justice had been done in his case, he wouldn't be in jail. He also added that no one should blame him for killing his wife.
Nunley was received at the state prison in Jeff City on March 26, 1929, to begin serving his 10-year stint. He was paroled by the governor on June 15, 1933, after serving a little over four years of his term. Two years later, he got his citizenship restored.