A 20-year quest for freedom

Keith Morrison Correspondent • Profile

CLOVER, S.C. - There is an old town, a quintessential Southern place with manners, called Clover, South Carolina. in this town lived a sweet lady named Melva Niell.  Everybody called her Miss Mel. She was quiet, respectable, and devoted to her church, her friends and her town.

Melva Niell was 82 and healthy. Which made the worst, last day of her life all the more difficult to bear.

It was September 16^th, 1981, Melva Niell had uncharacteristically failed to keep a morning appointment.

A neighbor, worried, went to investigate. The screen door was unlocked. The inside door was wide open. There was a rush of dread; the neighbor withdrew, and ran home and called the Clover police.

At first glance the home appeared tidy as usual, but stunned officers soon found Miss Niell’s bed splattered with blood... a church newsletter and her own zucchini bread recipe scattered nearby.

And there, in the bathtub, was Miss Niell.  It was ugly.  Apparently, she had been tortured on her own bed, sexually assaulted with some foreign object. Then the killer had strangled her and left her body lying in bloody water in her own bathtub.     

The small Clover police department had no experience with such horror. State police were called. Investigators looked at that gruesome scene and soon developed their own picture of the case was "open and shut," as they say.

What happened in the next few hours and days would echo over decades; would ruin lives and reputations.  Behind almost every twist in this strange tale lurked allegations of ineptitude, misconduct, injustice, racism. And more murder. But not yet.  Not at the beginning.

Sharon Spann: I heard the news report when she was murdered and it was scary.

Sharon Spann was like everybody else in town—fearful that the killer was still among them.

Sharon Spann: We wanted the person to be arrested.

The investigators discovered that some things were missing from Miss Niell’s house; some cash and jewelry notably a very unusual pendant made from an 1881 gold coin like this one.  It was something, at least, to go on.  If they could find that coin, would they have found the killer?

Days past with no lead, no suspect, you could almost feel the tension rise in Clover.  And then, three days after Ms. Niell was killed, a police dispatcher got an anonymous call.

The female voice said “Sterling Spann killed that lady.”  Officers knew that name; a local high school dropout who liked his dope, and his booze.  They found him at a popular beer joint just minutes from the police station.

The arrest was announced on local TV.

Sharon Spann:  The reporter said “an arrest has been made in the death of Mrs. Melva Niell, a young man from Clover...Sterling Barnett Spann.”

How do you measure shock? She stood there, trying to understand. The murder suspect was her own baby brother.

Sharon Spann: It was a feeling of helplessness of hopelessness. We were in shock.

Sterling was just 19.  He was the youngest of six, whose mother was a respected school teacher.

His brothers and sisters had gone to college, while he had drifted frequently into his favorite beer joint, but never for a moment did his family think he would be a killer.

Sharon Spann: He was just nice, he was just happy-go-lucky.

But Sterling Spann was not lucky this night. Officers took him to the police station.

Spann admitted he had once worked for the victim, had done some yard work. He told them he lived just a few blocks from Ms Niell’s house. But Spann insisted he had nothing to do with her murder.     

But then came the report from the crime lab. Spann’s fingerprints matched prints found on the zucchini bread recipe and church envelope on Miss Niell’s bed. And there was one more thing.

Remember that gold coin?  The one police believed might pinpoint the killer? They found it, alright.  It was in Sterling Spann’s pocket.

Spann gave them what they thought was a flimsy excuse.  He told them a man named “Cool Breeze” had given him the coin, days before.

Had to be nonsense, they thought, nobody had heard of such a man.

And with Spann behind bars, charged with a capital murder it seemed everyone in Clover was freed from fear that the “Bathtub Strangler” might kill again.

Robert Sutton, juror:  It was a very intense time. It’s still the most serious thing I’ve ever done.

Robert Sutton was one of the dozen jurors called to the York County courthouse to decide if Sterling Spann was guilty of killing Melva Niell.

Many days this grand historic courtroom was filled with curious spectators, with friends of the victim, with members of Sterling Spann’s own family.   They heard what was the prosecution putting up what it admitted was a circumstantial case.  But a case which day after day seemed to pile up damning evidence against Sterling Spann—particularly the finger prints on the zucchini bread recipe, the envelope and that gold coin.

Sutton: As the trial progressed we saw little pieces of evidence that were not refutable.   

And, in response, the juror remembered, the defense seemed to sputter—offering very little evidence to discount the coin or fingerprint evidence, or anything else.

Finally the defense of Sterling Spann depended on the one person who could clear him absolutely—an impeccable witness, his church-going respected grandmother who would tell the court that at the very moment Melva Niell was dying her horrible death, Sterling Spann was at home with her. It was an alibi.  But then something would happened that would turn a great witness into a disaster, before she even said a word.

Sutton: I remember that when she was called forward to testify, and was asked to place her hand on the Bible, she hesitated about doing that. And finally her hand was placed on the Bible.

Morrison: By the court clerk?

Sutton: By the court clerk.

Morrison:  What impact did that have on the view of the jury?

Sutton: Several of them felt like she was not telling the truth.          

And with Spann’s fingerprints on the zucchini bread recipe and the church newsletter and Miss Niell’s gold coin in his pocket, it took less than 90 minutes for Robert Sutton and the rest of jury to find Sterling Spann guilty of 1^st degree murder.

His punishment:  death in the electric chair.  It was unanimous.

Morrison: Nobody really had any doubts?

Sutton: Nah.

Morrison: This was the right thing to do?

Sutton: The right thing to do.

And so ended another of hundreds of such apparently obvious cases.  The right man was sent away and the legal wheel began slowly turning toward death.

But maybe this was not so obvious. 

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