The Tragedy of Eunice (The unsolved murder of Eunice Johnson McGhee PART 1)

Eunice Johnson McGhee

  Eunice Johnson was born in Colon, NC on Christmas day, 1902. Her parents, Hettie and Arthur, were poor tobacco farmers who raised six children together. Eunice was born third after Myrtle and Willis, followed by brother Hoye, then sisters Minnie and Maxine. Not much is known about her childhood, but family journals reveal that Eunice only had an eighth or ninth grade education, which suggests she probably had to leave school to help her family at home, as was often the case in farming communities. In 1923 at the age of 20 years old, Eunice married John McGhee from nearby Durham. John was also noted to only have a ninth grade education, and his family were both farmers and moonshiners.

John McGhee

  Just two months after marrying John, Eunice gave birth to a daughter named Inez. Five years after that, a son was born, named Charles after his paternal grandfather. Eunice was not the most attentive mother...for example, little Charles was discovered at 2 years old wandering outside a store a couple blocks from home and returned to an unworried mother by the store owner. But if being a mother didn't agree with Eunice, married life didn't either. In 1938, she and John divorced, though they hadn't been living together for some time.

Inez and Charles

  John had very little to do with his children, and Eunice embraced the night life, leaving her children home alone often while she went out drinking. She changed jobs frequently, working in various hosiery mills. She moved the children from one house to the next. One day she even sent Charles to school with the instruction to look for their green rocking chairs on the next street over at the end of the day. When the little boy couldn't find his new home, a worried teacher helped him by knocking on the door of a vacant house. A nonchalant Eunice answered the door with, "Oh, I forgot to put the rocking chairs out."

Eunice, Hettie, Maxine, and Inez

Eunice, Hettie, Maxine, and Charles

  In the summertime, Eunice sent Inez and Charles away to the family farm. This gave her plenty of free time to date around, and soon she abandoned her children entirely and moved to Arizona with new husband and draft dodger, "Finney". This was at the start of WWII, so when the new marriage became a casualty of domestic violence, Eunice and Inez reconnected and left for Oakridge, TN to work in a defense plant. Eunice's father was dead now, and the old homeplace divided among squabbling siblings, so Charles was sent to live with John McGhee's mother, Ella Goodwin in Durham.

  When the war ended and Eunice didn't have money to send Ella for Charles's care, she was forced to take her child back. It wasn't long before she felt the burden of motherhood too great, and made it known to a 16-year-old Charles by telling him he was her greatest disappointment. Eunice's callous statement to her youngest child had sent Charles reeling, and the following year, he enlisted in the US Marine Corp to escape his mother's emotional abuse, and perhaps finally make her proud... He was only 17-years-old, and thus forced to ask Eunice, his legal guardian, to sign for him. The absentee mother couldn't resist one final guilt trip and cried and wailed that her "baby" would be killed. Still, she signed...

Charles the Marine

Inez McGhee Brown

  With Charles gone and daughter Inez newly married to her first husband, Wade Brown, Jr, Eunice returned to the old homestead and spent her days and nights boozing with sister Maxine. She enjoyed partying and entertaining men and had little distractions from doing so. Inez was busy with her own life, and when on leave from the Marines, Charles would stay in Durham with his father, who by now had a new wife and two young sons. Eunice worked very little but earned a small sum of money each year by leasing her share of her father's land for tobacco crops.

Simon, Inez, Polly, Charles

  By 1951, Inez had divorced Wade and married a promising young chemist named Simon Kantor. Together they had a son named Michael and moved to Schenectady, NY. The Korean War was on, and Charles had deployed to Pusan, Korea after marrying a Granville County girl named Polly. Eunice's parents were both deceased now, and she filled her time with alcohol and men. She had little contact with her children, and one must suspect she was lonely, especially as her relationship with her siblings had been strained ever since the division of her father's land.

  Then one day after the Korean War had ended, Charles found himself back in North Carolina. He drove to the old homestead to surprise his mother but found her in bed with a man. Disgusted by her behavior, Charles told Eunice he never wanted to see her again and drove away. It was the last time he would see his mother alive.

Eunice's grave in Sanford, NC

TO BE CONTINUED.......

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