HIGH POINT CONFIDENTIAL: A burglary gone wrong: Brutal murder shocked Jamestown in 1911

JAMESTOWN — It’s hard to imagine the unspeakable horror that befell this otherwise peaceful and quiet community — much less one of its most prominent and respectable families — more than a century ago.

Cold-blooded murder? In Jamestown? Who could have committed “such an atrocious crime,” as The High Point Enterprise called it?

It happened in the summer of 1911. Poor Ida Ragsdale Hill, daughter of the famous Ragsdale pedigree of Jamestown, was going through a difficult time in her life. Her beloved husband of 24 years, prominent Lexington physician Joel Hill, had died last November after a long battle with tuberculosis. She became so depressed that she went to a Philadelphia hospital for treatment.

After his release, Hill took a train back to North Carolina. Rather than return directly to her home in Lexington, she decided to spend a few days with her widowed mother, Emily Idol Ragsdale, in Jamestown – a decision that would prove not only fateful, but fatal.

On the morning of June 8, Hill – who was sleeping in an upstairs bedroom in the house – did not come down for breakfast. His mother and other family members staying at the home were not alarmed, however, as Hill was known to sleep late.

Meanwhile, a mysterious discovery in the dining room had caught everyone’s attention. On the table was a bundle of silverware wrapped in a napkin. A similar package was lying on a chair by the window – the window open.

Who had wrapped the two bundles of money? And why? Was a burglar stealing the silverware when he heard a noise and feared being caught, so he hastily threw it away and fled out the window? Or was there a simpler explanation? After all, nothing seemed to be missing in the house.

Family members pondered the question over breakfast and wondered if Hill might know anything about the silverware. After breakfast, they decided to wake up Hill, who was sleeping even later than usual… or so they thought.

Waiting in Hill’s room was another mystery, a discovery so gruesome it would almost erase the memory of those two bundles of silverware in the dining room. Hill, 42, was lying on the floor at the foot of her bed – not asleep, but dead.

“Mrs. Hill lay dead on the floor at the foot of the bed, gagged, her arms tied, a strap around her neck and her body tied tightly to the iron bed,” The Enterprise reported.

One of her black stockings and a black mask had been stuffed into Hill’s mouth, presumably to prevent her from screaming and waking the other people in the house. One eye was blackened and bloodshot, as if she had been struck. The body was still warm, suggesting she had died early in the morning.

The room had been ransacked, making it clear that the crime had been committed by a burglar. Further investigation led to the discovery of a chair that had been used to reach the roof of the porch, where the attacker then entered Hill’s bedroom through a window. It was believed either that he had found her already awake, or that he had woken her when he entered the room.

“It is assumed that he then restrained and carefully gagged her,” The Enterprise wrote. “He stuffed a stocking into her mouth, tied another stocking around her neck, tied her arms and then tied her to the bed. There must have been a struggle, because the black mask worn by the burglar was also stuffed in his mouth. Either the mask strap had broken or Ms. Hill had removed it during a struggle.

Eight other people were in Ragsdale’s house that night, but none of them reported hearing anything unusual.

Newspapers described Hill’s death as one of the most brutal murders in Jamestown history, and it would be difficult to prove otherwise. Law enforcement — and even friends and neighbors who had heard about the murder — scoured the neighborhood for suspects or clues, but found neither.

Rewards totaling $1,400 have gone unclaimed. The Ragsdale family even hired private detectives to investigate the murder, but they found nothing.

In August 1911, about two months after Hill’s death, news broke that a ne’er-do-well named Lonnie Chamblee was suspected of committing the murder. Citizens reported that he had spent a lot of time in Jamestown at the time of the murder and was a known criminal, having recently been arrested for stealing a mule. He was also wanted on other charges.

From his prison cell, however, Chamblee spoke freely to a reporter about his life of crime, vehemently denying the murder charges.

“Before God, I didn’t hurt anyone,” he said. “I wouldn’t break into any building and hurt anyone. I just lived a wild life, had a lot of fun, but no one ever got hurt by me.

Chamblee claimed he was in Rockingham County the night Hill was murdered, and he said he could easily prove it.

Apparently, that’s exactly what he did. The charges against Chamblee were eventually dropped, and to this day – some 113 years after Hill’s death – his murder remains unsolved, a tragic stain in the annals of Jamestown history.