The Pocket Watch, the Ledger and a Confession Buried in 1931

The Pocket Watch, the Ledger and a Confession Buried in 1931

A sealed pocket watch stopped at 2:11 and a hand-trimmed strip of bookkeeping paper with fourteen months of payments were the only things pulled from a culvert the morning Richard Porter’s body was found; who kept that secret ledger and why did Porter call it his “insurance”? What did those green-ink columns-totaling $2,060-actually pay for, and who would take the stand to explain them?

In this episode, we follow the discovery of the watch and the paper, the immediate scene details, and the records that tied a roadhouse owner’s routine to a mystery that led to a four-month jury trial; why did Porter walk willingly to the place he died, and who wrote the ledger hidden in his watch?

Person: Richard Porter
Date: June 14, 1931
Location: Cutter's Bend / culvert on Supreme Road Nine near Saline Ford
Status: Body found with two blows to the skull; murder weapon never recovered
Amount: $2,060 recorded over fourteen months

- The pocket watch was found at 8:17 AM by Brenda Tillman and photographed in the culvert where she set it back down.
- The watch crystal was sealed and the interior bone dry despite three inches of water in the culvert the night before.
- The hand-trimmed strip had six columns of figures written in a slightly bluer green ink not matching Porter’s Waterman’s green.
- Payments on the strip ranged from $40 to $200 per month and totaled $2,060 over fourteen months.
- Richard Porter’s truck was parked 0.3 miles west of the culvert; scuff marks ran from the truck east to the culvert but none continued from the culvert to the body found 60 yards east.

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