A mystery on the vine

The house where the dying girl's body lay on the wooden porch is long gone, her unmarked grave forgotten under tall grass and patches of moss. Her parents and most siblings have passed away; the investigative files are nonexistent.

Left behind are a few newspaper clippings about the 1947 rape and murder of 11-year-old Myrtle Everett of Una and the lingering question: Who killed her?

Monday marks the 60th anniversary of one of Spartanburg County's oldest unsolved murders. The child began the day of July 23, 1947, picking blackberries with her family near their old home on Carver Road, now Carver Mill Road, just northwest of Spartanburg. Her life ended that afternoon, after resuscitation attempts failed.

The child's parents said they had found her severely beaten, sexually assaulted and stuffed in a closet.

It was known around town as the "Blackberry Murder."

Myrtle's death was one of only two murder cases former Spartanburg County Sheriff B.B. Brockman said he never cleared during his 16-year tenure, from 1945 to 1961. At the time of the killing, and in a 1988 interview with the Herald-Journal, Brockman consistently told reporters the child never regained consciousness from the time her body was discovered until her death later that day.

But one of his daughters, Hilda Suitt of Greenville, said her father told her a different story. He told her Myrtle had spoken, said Suitt, now 80.

Brockman, who died in 1990 at age 92, told Suitt the child was conscious long enough to let officers know her father - who many in the community thought killed Myrtle and created a story to cover his tracks - was innocent, Suitt said.

"It just broke dad," she said. "It just crushed him. He could not arrest the father. The public wanted him to, but he said, 'I cannot do it. I cannot do it.' There was no evidence. He said, 'I can't arrest an innocent man.'

" … It bothered dad more than anything, I think, that ever happened in his 30 years of law enforcement and 16 years as sheriff."

source:www.goupstate.com