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KWAME WALKER: Is that how you justified burying the body for them on your family’s farm and keeping it a secret for so long?
MARJORIE O’NEIL: Yes, but I knew it was wrong. Ate me up inside. I’m actually relieved now it’s all come to light. And I’m willing to face the consequences.
Cue VOICE-OVER
Marjorie, in her eighties, has been cooperating with authorities. She pled guilty to concealment of a human corpse and being an accessory after the fact… prosecutors offered her a deal, which includes a fine, community service, and probation, but she says her real punishment is the weight of the secrets that have been buried for years. Marjorie was there, waiting and watching from the barn about a dozen yards from Wade’s final resting place when I visited her farm with JJ.
MARJORIE O’NEIL: Seeing his friend JJ break down. That’s what really undid me. I could feel his pain in the way he spoke about Wade and how much he loved him. I could see why. Wade was sweet, quiet but quick with a smile.
Cue VOICE-OVER
Yes, Marjorie also knew Wade. She was a waitress at her family’s diner where Tate students regularly hung out—mainly the white kids. And on occasion, Wade. She was fond of him, they were friends, or something close to it, so how did she live with her actions?
MARJORIE O’NEIL: You have to understand how scared I was. Larry and Roger were these rich kids. The world seemed to revolve around them. It was almost like I couldn’t say no to what they were asking of me. Like I didn’t have a choice.
KWAME WALKER: Seems to me that’s what people often say when they’ve made the wrong choice. They act like the right choice wasn’t an option. But it’s always there. Looking back, do you regret the one you made?
MARJORIE O’NEIL: ’Course I do! One of many mistakes I’ve made in my life, and I gotta high heap of ’em. Maybe they’re all connected. Neither of my two kids speak to me, one of ’em got caught up on the oxy. Not knowing what’s happening to my girl is worse than watching her do the drugs that were killing her. I picture her on the streets, picture her suffering. It’s the being in the dark, that’s what kills me every day. She could be dead right now, and I’d have no clue. So I know the pain I put Wade’s parents through. It kills me they never got closure. Maybe that’s karma. Maybe I’ve gotten exactly what I deserve.
Cue VOICE-OVER
Does karma count the same as justice? It’s an intriguing idea, but not necessarily a satisfying one. Twenty-five years ago, Roger Macon died of a long and painful battle with throat cancer, after a storied career in state politics. And just six months ago, Lawrence Hartwell, the other man with Wade that night, passed away after rapidly escalating dementia. Did the secrets of that night die with both of them? I had someone, a credible source, who I could pose these questions to: my ex-girlfriend. Yes, you heard that right. In one of those astonishing turns of fate, I discovered when I started investigating this story that it would prove the world was smaller than I ever thought possible. Simone Hartwell and I met back in college, and… Larry was her husband Alex’s grandfather. The man who raised Alex, after his parents died when he was a child. Lawrence Hartwell was Alex’s father figure, mentor, and boss, and he passed on to Alex the lucrative chain of grocery stores that bears the family name before it was recently sold to a large conglomerate based out of Chicago. By all accounts, Lawrence was a successful businessman, devoted family man, and pillar of the community. But was he also a cold-blooded murderer?
SIMONE HARTWELL: Cold-blooded? No, no, I don’t think so. But I also don’t think we’ll ever know the full truth of what really happened that night. And believe me, I want all the answers. I wish there was actual hard proof of who did what. But what we have is a dead body. There’s just no way to know, one way or another, what exactly happened.
KWAME WALKER: But a Black kid gets into a car with two white kids in 1961 and dies, and it’s… an accident? I find that hard to believe. If it was a white friend who died, even accidentally, do you think these two would have just left the body and never told a soul? What I’m asking is… surely, you think race was at play here one way or another? And surely that complicates your feelings about the situation as a Black woman married to the grandson of one of the perpetrators?
SIMONE HARTWELL: Well, yeah, my feelings about all of this are complicated… to say the least. And impossible to unpack or parse in a podcast sound bite or at all, just ask my new therapist. [awkward laugh] But I will say that I’ve never been convinced my father-in-law was racist. He was never anything but welcoming to me. I didn’t see any signs, if you will, or anything to give me pause. But that’s the only thing I can comment on, my personal experience with him over ten years.
KWAME WALKER: So you’re buying the claims that it was an accident and not a cold-blooded lynching?
SIMONE HARTWELL: I’m not buying into anything. And like I said, I don’t think we will ever know what exactly transpired. All of it. Apparently, before Poppy… Lawrence… passed, he said that he and his friend Roger were trying to get Wade to sleep through his final exams and they overdid it with whatever they put in his drink. They didn’t mean Wade any harm.
KWAME WALKER: Doesn’t sound so “harmless” to me. Also doesn’t sound like you fully believe this account?
SIMONE HARTWELL: It’s hard, because Larry had dementia, so everything he said is a little unreliable, but yeah, it’s also possible that he could have been lying. Also, I didn’t hear his account for myself. Alex relayed it to me…
KWAME WALKER: Do you believe your husband? Meaning, is it possible that Larry confessed more and your husband is covering for him? Protecting him?
SIMONE HARTWELL: (Silence)
KWAME WALKER: Simone?
SIMONE HARTWELL: (barely audible) Ex-husband.
KWAME WALKER: Ex?
SIMONE HARTWELL: Uh, not really ex… yet. We’re separated. It’s pretty recent.
KWAME WALKER: Whoa, I had no idea. This is not the news I expected this podcast to break.
SIMONE HARTWELL: That makes two of us, but it doesn’t feel right for you to keep calling him that. Anyway… I get why Alex would want to give Poppy the benefit of the doubt. He doesn’t believe him capable of something so heinous. Also, Larry was just a “stupid kid” at the time.
KWAME WALKER: Is that your defense or Alex’s… and is that a mitigating factor? Larry was legally an adult.
SIMONE HARTWELL: Well, not quite, he turned eighteen a few months after Wade’s death. But I’m not saying that’s an excuse. I was only relaying what Alex said, and no, I absolutely do not agree. Being a “stupid kid” is not a defense or an excuse. It doesn’t give him a pass for doing something so reprehensible. I would hold my own son to the same standard. But I would also like to believe Langston, my son, wouldn’t be capable of doing anything that would result in someone losing their life. I like to believe that I’ve raised him better than that. But we can never know, we never know if we’ve done enough.
KWAME WALKER: I guess the challenge is—we really never truly know what people are capable of, do we? Our sons… our grandparents. Our friends. Our lovers.
