This story is pretty hard for me to tell. Those are the stories worth telling though, so bear with me.
July 1988. I still worked for my dad at Missco and lived at Pebble Creek Apartments in Jackson. I opened the mail with my dad at six-thirty that morning. He was uncharacteristically silent. It was the busy season, and the company was doing well. Usually, I'd have coffee and chat with Mrs. Jeffreys, Mrs. Noel, and him after finishing the mail until eight am when the workday started, but he went straight to his office that day. I began to suspect something was up.
Three or four times during the day, he asked his secretary to close the door to his office. That rarely happened. I knew something was up, but what? That night, I brought laundry to my mom's house. There were machines at Pebble Creek, but I had a bad feeling, so I used hers. My brothers were at their homes, and my sister was with her college friends.
My dad watched television in the den without making a sound. I made a fried egg sandwich in the kitchen while my laundry cycled. Mom sat in the kitchen, watching her little television and drinking her scotch and tab (I know that sounds gross, but it was her drink of choice). She held the plastic glass in her hand but didn't sip it while the ice melted. She didn't want a sandwich. My dad didn't either.
The doorbell rang. It was Leon Lewis. Leon Lewis in the middle of the night, without Mrs. Lewis. Something was up. Dad and Mr. Lewis retired to the living room, not the den. The living room we never used. They spoke quietly. I began to worry in earnest. Dad came to the kitchen and gave me a ten-dollar bill. "Get me a couple packs of Viceroy, buddy." My dad wanted two packs of cigarettes in the middle of the night. That had never happened before.
I went to the gas station next door to what used to be the Tote-Sum at Maywood Mart, now converted into one of Jackson's first Subway franchises. I got the two packs of Viceroy and added one pack of Merit Ultra Lights and a pickle in a napkin for me. I put his smokes in a bag with the change and ate my pickle on the drive home.
Brum Day joined dad and Mr. Lewis in the living room when I got home. Whatever was going on, Trustmark was involved. I loved Brum, but his appearances carried weight. I was very worried and gave my mother a look. She said she'd tell me later. After delivering the bag with the Viceroys, all three men left silently but together. I still don't know where they went. They looked horrible.
That night, Mayor Dale Danks went on television to say that Annie Laurie Hearin, wife of Bob Hearin, Trustmark Chairman, had been kidnapped the day before. Danks was a pretty good lawyer in his own right and often took a leading role in bigger police affairs. The FBI took over the case from JPD. It was that big of a deal.
Bob Hearin was my dad's mentor, and my dad loved him. He was the principal stockholder for Trustmark National Bank, Mississippi Valley Gas, Lamar Life insurance company, and Yazoo Big Wheel Mower Company. As I understand it, Yazoo made the best mowers in the world but couldn't compete with the less expensive Snapper versions. Besides Trustmark, Mr. Hearin got my dad involved in MP&L, Bell South, Lamar Life, and The PineyWoods Country Life School. He also could tell you about every barbeque place in central Mississippi. For Mr. Hearin, the best was near Pocahontas, where he had a farm. He was friendly and spoke kindly, but he still terrified me.
In his office, Mr. Hearin smoked a cigar the size of a big carrot. His still dark hair was arranged neatly with pomade. Everyone else was doing Christmas party things, but he was working. I was nineteen at best, maybe eighteen. "You were named for somebody," he said to me. I'd heard that about a million times before. By "somebody," he meant my Uncle Boyd. I was flattered but dumbfounded. He knew who I was. Twenty years before, my uncle died at the Walthal Hotel across the street. They used to say, "the only thing separating Trustmark from Lamar Life was Capitol street. Eventually, the feds stepped in and made Trustmark divest most of its Lamar Life stock, but the boards were still tangled as a bird's nest.
Some Saturdays, Mr. Hearin came by Missco to visit with my dad. "Tell Mr. Hearin the story about the gorilla," My dad said. I honestly cannot tell you the story about the gorilla here. It was filthy, and I stole it from a Redd Foxx album. Pretty funny, though. Mr. Hearin laughed, my dad laughed, and the pattern was set. From then on, I had to have an equally inappropriate joke for Mr. Hearin every time he visited.
Mrs. Hearin was in her seventies. She was very involved in Jackson becoming a vital patron of the arts, especially the symphony. The Hearins lived humbly but well in Woodland Hills. Despite their vast wealth, the Hearin's never led what you would call a flashy life. They maintained their membership at their Capitol Street church long after everyone else in town moved to the one on North State Street. He was a fan of West Capitol Street, maintaining the Mississippi Vally Gas offices there long after everyone else moved northeast.
Everyone loved Mrs. Hearin; she was friendly and very much a lady. The day she disappeared, she had a bridge party at her house. The idea that anyone might do her any harm that way is still disturbing.
In the late sixties, Mr. Hearin purchased a company called School Pictures Inc. They sold franchises to photographers who took student portraits and then sold the prints to the parents. If you're my age from the South East, you probably had your pictures taken by a School Pictures franchise. I still think it was a pretty good business model. Considering how much gross profit they made on the photos, it should have made a mint. My dad had stock; lots of people in Jackson did. The franchisees took the photos, School Pictures developed the negatives, made the prints, and packaged them for parents. It was slick.
The company ran into problems when some of the franchisees weren't paying the company their processing fees. Hearin sued the franchisees that were in arrears. That proved fatal. The ransom note for Mrs. Hearin demanded Mr. Hearin repay the people he sued.
The FBI soon made a case that Newton Alfred Winn, a School Pictures franchisee in Florida, conspired to kidnap Mrs. Hearon. Two of his co-conspirators made a deal to testify against him. At trial, he was convicted of conspiracy, but not murder. Mrs. Hearin's body was never found, and Winn never confessed or gave any information on what happened to her. Winn left prison in 2006 and died six years later. After the kidnapping, School Pictures collapsed in on itself.
Before the kidnapping, Mr. Hearin seemed like Agamemnon, vital and legendary to me. After the abduction, he was a broken man. He continued to visit some Saturdays. I continued to tell questionable jokes, but it wasn't the same. He lost weight, making his suits hang on him. His eyes lost that fire that paralyzed me on our first meeting.
Two years after the kidnapping, Robert Hearin died, never knowing what ultimately befell his beloved wife. The courts declared her legally dead the next year to help settle his estate. Her fate is still a mystery and an FBI open case.
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