The Oak That Held a Murderer's Portrait - Whose Face Stared Back?

The Oak That Held a Murderer's Portrait - Whose Face Stared Back?

A faded studio portrait was nailed at chest height to an eighty-foot white oak on Metter Road, its paper curled by seasons and stamped Kelber Studio, Metter - Aug 1891-yet the image contained a second half-shadowed face with mouth open, a detail that would consume a local historian for years. Who actually missed the Thursday card game the night Nora Fenn vanished, and why did one courthouse record leave a crucial name unpursued?

In this episode, we trace how a disposable-camera print found by a church volunteer led a retired records clerk to a single troubling line in an eleven-page trial record, and we ask whether the right man was hanged in 1891.

Person: Duane Dempsey
Date: August 14, 1891
Event: Nora Fenn last seen; body recovered eleven days later
Location: Metter Road; Faber County jail, Metter
Case: Conviction based mainly on Roy Wickes's testimony

- The photograph on the oak carried a Kelber Studio stamp dated Aug, 1891.
- Duane Dempsey was 27 in summer 1891 and was hanged in December 1891 at age 28.
- Nora Fenn was 19 when her body was found in a drainage ditch beneath cut brush eleven days after she was last seen.
- The trial record that led to Dempsey's execution totals eleven pages; Hansen focused on a line on page seven.
- Roy Wickes testified Dempsey missed the August 14 card game, but also noted parenthetically that "Tom was late"-a reference to Thomas Ault that the prosecutor did not pursue.

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