Hall, James Waybern (1921 - 1946)

Killed 4 people, including his wife, in Arkansas between 1944 and 1945. Was sentenced to death in May 1945 and executed on January 4, 1946.

James Waybern Hall

Drafted by the navy in 1943, despite his best efforts to escape military service, Hall was dishonorably discharged after eight weeks of training. Back home in Little Rock, he married 19-year-old Fayrene Clemmons on March 14, 1944, but their relationship was a stormy one, marked by a brief separation in June. 

On September 28, Hall paid a visit to his father-in-law, reporting that Fayrene had deserted him three days earlier. Police were notified, logging reports of the young woman's promiscuous behavior, and they closed their investigation after a week, declaring her a probable runaway. Their theory was bolstered two months later, when relatives received a Christmas card with Fayrene's signature, postmarked from Bakersfield, California, but Jim Hall "borrowed" the card and envelope before officers had a chance to examine it, and it was subsequently "lost."

On January 29, 1945, loggers discovered an abandoned car in Ouachita County, southwest of Little Rock. There was a dead man slumped behind the wheel, a bullet in his heart, identified from fingerprints as Camden barber Carl Hamilton. The victim had been dead for several days when found, but homicide detectives had no reason to connect his murder with the disappearance of a wayward spouse in Little Rock.

The toll began to mount on February 1, when E.C. Adams vanished en route to his job at a Little Rock war plant. His car was found outside of Fordyce, northwest of Camden in Dallas County, and searchers located his body in some nearby brush, a single bullet in his brain. That same day, trucker Doyle Mulherin was reported long overdue on a scheduled meat delivery, his vehicle found hours later near Stuttgart, 40-odd miles to the southeast of Little Rock, in Arkansas County. A sweep of the area turned up his body, one shot through the head, his pockets emptied of $125 in company cash.

Police were still without a suspect on March 2, when James Hall was arrested in a Little Rock bar fight, fined $106.90 on his plea of guilty to simple assault. Authorities became more interested in Hall when an acquaintance told of loaning him a car on January 28. There was a loaded pistol in the glove compartment, and a single round was missing from the clip when Hall returned the car on January 29. Ballistics tests revealed the gun had been employed to kill Carl Hamilton.

On March 9, 1945, a burned-out car was found near Heber Springs, in Cleburne County. An incinerated body was recovered from the back seat, identified from dental charts as J.D. Newcomb, Jr., late of Little Rock. A search of Jim Hall's lodgings, meanwhile, had revealed substantial quantities of ammunition and shaving gear stolen from Hamilton. Picked up near Little Rock on March 15, Hall readily confessed to the series of holdup-murders that had earned him less than $300 overall. He led detectives to the site where his wife was buried, surprised to learn a farmer had retrieved the skull months earlier. Identified from crooked teeth, Fayrene was finally laid to rest.

Convicted of murder after a two-day trial, in May 1945, Hall was sentenced to death. Escorted to the chair on January 4, 1946, he was all smiles, laughing and joking with his guards. "Boys, I'm not afraid," he told them as they strapped him in and fastened the electrodes. "I can take it."

Michael Newton - An Encyclopedia of Modern Serial Killers

Serial killer behind mystery death?

By Kevin Ellis - Gastongazette.com

May 16, 2016

As far as Bill Cook of Belmont knows, no one was ever held responsible for killing his cousin, Cpl. Charles Nipper of Lowell, more than 70 years ago.

“Aunt Minnie (Nipper) talked quite a bit about it,” said Cook. “She went to her grave not knowing.”

Charles Nipper, just 21, was found fatally shot on Oct. 30, 1944, along with a Kansas osteopath Dr. M.E. Lambert, on what was described as a lonely road in McPherson County, Kansas. Investigators at the time surmised Lambert had picked up Nipper, who was in the Army and probably hitchhiking back to his military base near Salinas, Kansas. Both men were shot three times each.

“They suspected a serial killer may have killed him,” Cook said, “but that’s all we ever knew.”

Nipper’s death, along with Lambert’s, has sparked an interest in an Arkansas author writing a book about James Waybern Hall, a man referred to as “The Arkansas Butcher” in true crime magazines, who was put to death for killing four people in that state, but suspected of many other killings.

Janie Jones, 65, has written two Arkansas travel books and several true crime magazine articles, including one on Hall. While doing research, she said she discovered investigators from Kansas had traveled to Arkansas to question Hall on the killings of Nipper and Jones but said he was never charged.

“When he was traveling around with detectives they said, ‘So you’ve killed about a dozen people,’” Jones said. “And he said, ‘It was more like 24 than 12.’

“When he was arrested and word got out about what he had confessed to, lawmen from other states would come down and talk to him about their unsolved killings,” Jones said.

She said Hall would talk freely about certain killings. He confessed to killing a woman in Salinas, Kansas, in 1938, a man in San Marcos, Texas, in 1944 and 10 migrant workers from 1938 to 1944 in Arizona. But on others he would offer clues and then decline to talk.

Hall, who was called “Big Jim” for his size and “Red” for his wavy red hair, took offense at those who suggested he was mentally ill, although that was ultimately the defense his attorneys chose for the two-day trial that ended in his death sentence.

The deaths of Nipper and Lambert fit Hall’s pattern, Jones said.

“The thing about Red was that he would travel the country hitchhiking. People would give him rides and he would kill them for their money,” Jones said. “He did always steal something, but I think the most he ever got from someone was $126. He would kill someone for a carton of cigarettes or something he could turn around and sell for $5.”

Hall, who was a few days shy of his 25th birthday when executed, was convicted of killing his 19-year-old wife and three other men around Little Rock, Arkansas. In her research, Jones learned that Hall was one of 10 children born to strict parents, including a father who was a preacher and farmer.

Through research and interviews with Hall’s family members, Jones said she learned that Hall suffered a brain injury as a boy, possibly the result of a beating from his father.

“Red walked at a fast pace and leaned toward the left when he walked,” Jones said. “All the hair on one of his legs was gray.

“I think he had sustained a head injury when he was 12 years old, and brain injuries can really mess you up,” she said.

Law enforcement agencies in McPherson County, Kansas, said their records do not go back as far as the Nipper and Lambert slayings.

Mark Malick, a senior special agent and spokesman for the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, said a check with that agency’s records system failed to come up with any names or investigations associated with the date of Nipper’s and Lambert’s death.

“I know the KBI was founded in 1939, but in the early days the bureau was primarily formed to work bank robberies and cattle thefts,” Malick wrote in an email.

Cook, now 81, was about 10 years old when his older cousin was slain. He remembers he and his brother looking up to Nipper in part because he was in the military during World War II. Nipper’s parents owned a grocery store in Belmont, which Minnie Nipper sold a short time after her husband’s death in 1954. Minnie Nipper would die in 1998 in Hendersonville, where she moved a short time after the sale of the grocery business.

Cpl. Nipper graduated from Lowell High School and was a member of the Belmont Abbey College football team before joining the military, according to news accounts of his death.

“I remembered him being in the service, and he gave me and my brother both hats — soft, military-style hats — and I wore the hound out of it,” Cook said. “We’d play soldier at 9 and 10 years old while wearing those hats.”

“We were just kids, and he was 10 years older,” Cook added.

Hall may have taken the secret of Nipper’s death with him to the electric chair.

He was electrocuted Jan. 4, 1946, less than a year after his conviction.

“Boys, I’m not afraid,” he reportedly told the guards as they fastened the electrodes to his clean-shaven head. “I can take it.”

SEX: M    RACE: W    TYPE: T    MOTIVE: PCICE

MO: Murdered his wife, followed by three men in apparent robberies.

DISPOSITION: Executed Jan. 4, 1946.

James Waybern Hall

James Waybern "Red" Hall, to the left wearing the cap, looks at the skull of one of his victims in this news photo first published in the Arkansas Gazette. Photo used from the University of Arkansas Little Rock Archives. Part of the J.N. Heiskell Collection.

Cpl. Charles Nipper of Lowell was misteriously killed in McPherson County, Kansas, on October 30, 1944. He was in the Army at the time.