The Night Marauder

Two a.m., Knoxville, Tennessee. The night was warm, and the windows were open. Sixteen-year-old Ruth Cox awoke to find someone touching her leg. Confused, she checked to see that her little sister still slept beside her. Then she saw him—a man standing over them in the darkness.

Ruth survived her ordeal. Others were not so fortunate.

The Night Marauder, which grew out of Maryville College Professor Nancy Locklin’s popular “History of Murder” class, recounts the harrowing tale of an early-twentieth-century serial killer who preyed on women in East Tennessee. Until the summer of 1919, Knoxville leaders had taken pride in their city’s harmonious race relations. That harmony was shattered by two critical incidents: the murder of a White woman, Bertie Lindsey, and the subsequent arrest of a popular Black restaurateur and former deputy sheriff, Maurice Mays. The infamous Knoxville Race Riot of 1919 began when a lynch mob stormed the county jail looking for Mays.

Similar killings continued long after Mays was executed for the crime, and two White men—including well-connected Maryville resident Will Sheffey—were later tried for the subsequent murders. Both the killings and trials ceased when Sheffey was acquitted and fled to California. Mays has yet to be exonerated. Nancy Locklin’s The Night Marauder is the first comprehensive historical examination of this tragic cold case with harrowing implications for Tennessee’s past miscarriages of justice.