Carolyn MORRIS

• Name	Carolyn MORRIS  [1, 2, 3]
  Gender	Female
  HIST	of Manning, South Carolina Family of alleged Stinney victim oppose retrial of executed teen BRISTOW MARCHANT / THE ITEM The living relatives of murder victim Betty June Binnicker hold a photo of their aunt. George Stinney Jr. was convicted and executed for Binnicker's killing at the age of 14, and the family is opposing new efforts to overturn his conviction. From left are Harold Bailey, Carolyn Geddings, Gerald Bailey and Frankie Dyches. BY BRISTOW MARCHANT bmarchant@theitem.com Betty June Binnicker has nieces and nephews she never met. All of them were born after the 11-year-old Alcolu girl was murdered on March 23 or 24, 1944. But those children of Binnicker's late siblings are determined to keep her memory alive. The family is now speaking out to ensure the deaths of their aunt and her 8-year-old friend Mary Emma Thames aren't overshadowed by the coverage of a potential retrial of George Stinney Jr., who was convicted and executed for the girls' murders at the age of 14. "We feel like it's necessary to connect a face to her name," said Carolyn Geddings, whose mother was Binnicker's sister. "It's like nobody's defending them." The two young white girls were out on a bicycle picking wildflowers when they disappeared. Stinney, the young son of a black millworker, was arrested the day the girls' bodies were discovered and sent to the death chamber within a few months. Activists have taken up Stinney's case as an example of Jim Crow-era injustice, and on Tuesday a hearing will be held at the Sumter County Judicial Center on a motion to have Stinney posthumously retried, effectively vacating his conviction. But the victims' surviving family members and other Alcolu residents with memory of the case are opposing the motion. In contrast to supporters' portrayal of Stinney as a railroaded innocent, some locals who remember Stinney say he was "mean" and a "bully" who they think is guilty of the killings. 'I KNEW GEORGE STINNEY' "Mom didn't like us to drink out of (our) well, so we went to one behind Green Hill Church," in the area where the missing girls' bodies would later be found in a shallow ditch, said Sadie Duke, who was 7 years old at the time. "George Stinney came up to us pushing a tricycle with his foot on the back. He asked us what we were doing there ... and then he told us 'get away from here, or I'll kill you.'" Duke remembers the encounter occurred the day before the girls went missing. She and her friends recognized him because he was often seen in the area grazing the family cow. Duke said she was threatened along with Violet Freeman, who was also friends with Binnicker. "My mother remembers (Binnicker) came to our home and asked for Violet" on the day they disappeared, said Freeman's sister Ruth Turner. "She told her Violet wasn't there, and they went on down toward the church." Evelyn Roberson remembers her late husband, Bethea, would graze his family's cows "on the edge of the railroad tracks," and Stinney, who was younger but a similar height, would often try to "wrestle" or "fight" with him. "It wasn't like it was once a week; it was every day," she said. "He always just tried to pick a fight with him, for no reason." THE REVEREND SPEAKS Turner said she thinks Stinney's motive for the crimes was to steal the girls' bicycle, citing a story told by Francis Batson that Stinney once tried to push him off his bicycle. Batson today said he "vaguely" remembers the interaction as he rode near the black part of town. "I don't know if he meant to be malicious or playful," he said. "I thought I got along with everybody in Alcolu." Batson, a former pastor at Alice Drive Baptist Church who now lives in Arkansas, was a year older than Stinney and recalls the younger boy often coming into the store where he worked. A preacher's son, Batson would go on to play a key role in discovering the bodies of Binnicker and Thames in a shallow ditch and is cited in defense motions pushing for a retrial because he was never called to testify about the scene. But Batson said he still believes in Stinney's guilt, as he did at the time. "I was always told that," he said. "If he didn't, I hope they find the person who did." The defense motion says Batson "did not see any footprints or drag marks leading to the ditch," and "(t)here was not a significant amount of blood in or around the ditch," facts they assert show the girls "were probably murdered elsewhere." But Batson said he wasn't looking around for any such evidence, merely trying to find the missing girls. "I've blotted a lot of that out" of his memory, he said. "I don't appreciate it being intimated I said anything like that." The retired preacher is still friendly with relatives of George W. Burke, another man in the search party that day who went on to serve as foreman of the coroner's inquest that blamed the murders on Stinney, something defenders say constituted a due process violation. "I don't want them to think I'm trying to implicate their father in anything," he said. THE MISSING EVIDENCE Another Binnicker niece, Frankie Dyches, said she spoke to one of the officers who arrested Stinney, the late S.J. Pratt, who happened to discuss the case while Dyches' husband was cutting his hair. "He came to me and said there was never a broken link in the evidence, and he never had any doubt who killed my aunt," she said. While defense attorneys assert no evidence can be found from Stinney's original trial, family members have heard over the years how more evidence was collected but was never introduced at trial because Stinney confessed, and they cite previous reporting on the case to support the legitimacy of Stinney's confession. "I would swear on a stack of Bibles today that that boy was guilty," James E. Gamble Jr. told The Item in 1995. The son of J.E. Gamble, Clarendon County's sheriff at the time of the Binnicker and Thames murders, Gamble told how he rode with his father and Stinney on the way to the young convict's execution in Columbia. During the ride, Gamble remembered Stinney "repeated his confession several times." "He repeatedly told my daddy how he hit one of the girls and the other girl was squealing, so he hit her to stop her squealing," he said. "The boy said he was mainly trying to make them be quiet, but he didn't mean to kill them." Locals then and family members now also say they heard how law enforcement seized bloody clothes from Stinney's home, or even recovered a murder weapon, but there's no record any such evidence was introduced at the trial. CLOSURE REOPENED Geddings and Dyches said they and other relatives met with Third Circuit Solicitor Ernest "Chip" Finney III to encourage him to defend Stinney's original conviction when the retrial motion is heard at the Sumter County Judicial Center on Tuesday but aren't optimistic much can be done. "I know what's going to happen," Dyches said. "I think they'll grant him a new trial, and then he's not going to be indicted because there's no evidence left, and then it will be as if it never even happened." Marsha Bailey, a daughter-in-law to Binnicker's sister, said growing up with the violent murder of her sister as a child had a lifelong impact on her mother-in-law. "It was devastating for her to have to live with that," she said. "It changed her perception of people." If the 1944 verdict in the Stinney case is overturned, the family of the victims feel they'll never have any closure for the brutal murder of the aunt they never knew. "The solicitor said he was sympathetic to the Stinney family," Geddings said. "And so are we. But I'm sympathetic to my family, too." Reach Bristow Marchant at (803) 774-1272. Posted in Local news, News on Saturday, January 18, 2014  [2, 3, 4]
  _UID	5C90EE434CEC453FA62C0E9F2CEA81D9C854
  Person ID	I83303	Singleton and Related Families
  Last Modified	18 Jan 2014

  
  

  Father	Thomas Eugene MORRIS   d. Bef 25 Jan 2008
  Mother	Vermelle BINNICKER   d. Bef 25 Jan 2008
  _UID	64F546D1F72D4E5282A1655A8199DA78820F
  _UID	64F546D1F72D4E5282A1655A8199DA78820F
  Family ID	F147968	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family	Living
  Family ID	F50277	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	23 Mar 2026

  
  

• Sources

  [S1812] page 7. [S9964] Annie Y. Brown. [S17701] Linda Dale Tucker. [S20504] The other side of the Sinney case - Family of alleged Stinney victim oppose retrail of executed teen.