A Murder on South Street: When Jealousy Struck Charlotte High Society

“You know, there was a murder.”

In 2002, we had just finished signing the documents to buy our house in downtown Davidson when Dorothy Beam, the 87-year-old widow we bought it from, casually dropped that historical tidbit. She had names and a few details that hinted at a scandal. So I began to piece the story together through old newspapers, documents, and interviews with the few people I could find who knew the story—and were willing to talk about it.

I learned that, on Wednesday morning, Feb. 11, 1914, residents across the Charlotte region woke up to shocking front-page headlines. Two of our small town’s most prominent citizens were at the center of a high-society murder. One of them was the doctor who built our two-story 1890s Victorian with the wraparound front porch.

Monroe Jetton, the town pharmacist, was accused of fatally shooting his friend and business partner Dr. W.H. Wooten “in a fit of jealousy” over the doctor’s supposed relationship with Jetton’s wife of less than a year, Josie Shipp Jetton. A “distressing affair,” one news account called the killing. Not only were the druggist and the doctor friends, but Josie was a cousin of the doctor’s wife. “The two families stood among the highest in the community,” the Charlotte Daily Observer wrote a few days later.

The scandal was news across the South. But in Davidson, it wasn’t discussed in polite company for decades afterward, and there’s nothing about it in Mary Beaty’s 1979 book Davidson: A History of the Town. “It seems like there was a tacit understanding that we just don’t talk about it,” says Jan Blodgett, a former Davidson College archivist and co-author of the 2012 Davidson history One Town, Many Voices. (She did mention the murder.) “It’s upper-class white people. Everybody knows everybody. But nobody in town was talking about it.”

Not talking, maybe. Whispering, definitely. People took sides. Wooten’s brothers from out of town wired the county prosecutor and urged him to charge Jetton with murder. Within days, Jetton was indicted, and a trial was scheduled—amazingly, for the following week. It was a spectacle. Supporters of both men packed the Charlotte courtroom.

“It is safe to say,” the Daily Observer reported, “that no trial ever before held in the county attracted quite as much interest owing to the prominence of those involved and the peculiarly distressing circumstances attending the affair.”

At the trial, witnesses testified about the good character of both men. But there was a big disagreement over what led to the shooting. Did Wooten have an inappropriate relationship with Mrs. Jetton? Was he seeing a patient? Did Jetton let jealousy get the better of him?  

Those were burning questions in February 1914. Nearly nine decades later, as we prepared to move into the house where the doctor died, those were my questions, too.  

Walter Herbert “Hub” Wooten was born in 1867 in Clarkton, in Bladen County. He came to Davidson in 1889. He took classes at Davidson College and the newly established North Carolina Medical College, where he was one of the first graduates in 1893. Wooten stayed in town and set up a medical practice. Also in 1893, he married Mary Potts of Davidson, whom he had met while he rented a room in her family’s home. They built the house on South Street and started a family.

In 1914, the Wootens were at the pinnacle of local social life. Besides being one of only a few doctors in town, Wooten was serving his first year on the Davidson Town Board, having won election the previous fall. They earned frequent mentions in the social columns of Charlotte’s newspapers when they traveled to the city for shopping and socializing. 

Robert Monroe Jetton, born in 1881, was from a prominent family that owned land and farmed in north Mecklenburg County for generations. Roads and parks now bear the Jetton name. Monroe Jetton grew up in Davidson. He became a close friend and eventually a business partner with Wooten in White-Jetton Drug Co. on Main Street. Before he married, it wasn’t unusual for him to spend the night at Wooten’s home.

Robert Monroe Jetton, around 1910. Photo courtesy of UNC Charlotte Special Collections, Jetton Family Papers.

Monroe Jetton circa 1910, Photo courtesy of Special Collections & University Archives, J. Murrey Atkins Library, UNC Charlotte

Josie Shipp Jetton grew up in Yazoo County, Mississippi, and lived in Gulfport in the years before her marriage. She had a sister in Mount Holly, and the two sisters first visited Davidson around 1904 or 1905 to see an aunt of Monroe Jetton’s. That’s when she met both Jetton and Wooten. She frequently visited Davidson before she married Jetton in October 1913. At first, they lived with Jetton’s mother in Davidson. In January 1914, they moved to a cottage at Spring and South streets, just down the hill from the doctor.

The story of the murder is spelled out in sometimes-conflicting news accounts and court testimony reported in local newspapers, the Daily Observer and the Evening Chronicle. (The narrative and quotations here are from those sources.) 

The Jetton and Wooten families were close. Besides the men’s business ties, the couples socialized together. Wooten’s wife, Mary, and Monroe Jetton were cousins. Wooten had previously seen Josie Jetton as a patient and, at least once, had written a prescription for her. She later said Wooten had once come by without her invitation to treat her after he heard she was ill. 

Mary testified that on the afternoon of the shooting, Josie had stopped by to see the Wootens at their home. Mary said Josie had invited them to her house to see a dress she had bought for Mardi Gras. Josie told Wooten specifically “that he ought to come down and see the dress,” according to Mary’s account.

Around 7 p.m., Wooten left his South Street home and walked a couple of blocks to the White-Jetton Drug Co., at 131 N. Main St. (The brick building is now the celebrated Kindred restaurant.) The doctor stayed only a few minutes, saying hello to Monroe Jetton and one of the company’s junior partners.

After he confirmed that Monroe Jetton was at work, Wooten left and walked back down Main Street to South Street, past his own house, to the Jettons’ cottage at South and Spring streets. After previous conversations with his wife about Wooten, the doctor’s evening visit made Monroe Jetton suspicious. “He acted peculiarly after I came (back) from supper. He walked to and fro through the store, seeming to keep an eye on me. When I went to the rear of the store, he walked out of the front.”

Monroe Jetton said he watched the doctor leave: “I then went back into the store and waited a few minutes. I went to my desk and got my pistol and put it in my pocket and followed him.” The pistol was a Smith & Wesson Special, a blue-steel, .38-caliber six-shooter.

Monroe Jetton and Josie Jetton, with family. From UNC Charlotte Special Collections, Jetton Family Archive

Was Wooten’s visit to the store routine? Or was he checking to see if Jetton was there in the hopes of visiting Jetton’s wife alone? Were the doctor and Josie merely longtime friends, or was something more going on?

What happened next depends on whom you believe.

During the trial, Monroe and Josie Jetton told stories that matched perfectly—and at times differed from their statements right after the shooting. Josie testified that Wooten came into the house and tried to assault her by pulling her into a bedroom and pushing her twice onto the bed. 

Monroe Jetton testified that he watched from the window and listened for two or three minutes. “She wanted him to leave,” he testified. “They were scuffling, and he was dragging her by the arm.”

That’s when he arrived with his pistol drawn.

A news report the day after the shooting said Monroe Jetton told police he fired a shot from outside the bedroom through the door. But his story changed the following week. Now, his defense centered on a supposed fight.

Jetton testified that he entered the bedroom and confronted the doctor, and the doctor attacked him: “I said, ‘What are you doing here?’ to Dr. Wooten. ‘I saw you; you have ruined my home.’ … He said nothing, but sprang at me. I had my pistol in my pocket. He struck me in the side and knocked me to the floor breathless. I fell back and he seized me by the neck with one hand and held me by the right arm with his other hand. I then pulled my pistol and shot. I only shot one time.”

The bullet hit Wooten on the left side of his chest, just below the heart. The coroner said later that Wooten had been standing and was fully clothed, including a raincoat: “The coat, vest, shirt and underclothes all were pierced.”

We moved to Davidson in 1993, when Davidson College hired my wife as an Asian politics professor. We started a family, and the house on South Street had more space for our two young children than our one-story bungalow a few blocks away. I’d always dreamed of owning a Victorian home.

The author’s Davidson home. Photo by Herman Nicholson

Living just a block from Main Street, near shops, restaurants, and Town Hall, was a treat. It was also an advantage when, in 2006, I started an online newspaper, DavidsonNews.net. Every day, I chatted with neighbors, business owners, and fellow residents, who supplied an endless stream of news tips. Web-based local news was still new, and I was thrilled to have a platform to tell stories about Davidson—and an excuse to study its history. A few years later, I began to dig into the murder case and think more about the doctor whose dead body once rested in what’s now my living room.

I first shared my research in a lecture to the Davidson Historical Society in 2013. Afterward, a couple of people in the audience shared tips for further research. One introduced me to her aunt, Monroe Jetton’s niece, who was living in The Pines at Davidson, a senior living community. A year later, on the 100th anniversary of the murder, I gave an updated lecture and published a story on DavidsonNews.net.

I think that by uncovering and dusting off the old scandal, I helped break Davidson’s silence. I was invited to talk about it at book clubs and community groups, and I met more than a few older residents who said they had heard people whisper about the incident over the years. Now, here was the story made real. 

During the trial, the state’s attorney portrayed Josie Jetton and Wooten as merely friends and argued that Monroe Jetton shot Wooten out of jealous anger. Monroe Jetton’s defense lawyers tried to paint a picture of Wooten as a predator. Their star witness was Josie, who went from protesting her innocence in the moments after the shooting to delivering damning testimony about her encounters with the doctor.

Josie insisted that she had no improper relationship with Wooten. But she said he made her uncomfortable. Wooten was “too familiar” with her and had once kissed her, she testified. But she never told her husband. “I knew it would cause trouble and create a scandal,” she said, “and I did not want that.”

A century later, a story like hers might qualify as a “Me Too” moment.

What about Wooten’s version? All we have are his wife’s testimony and the reports of friends who talked to him as he lay dying. They reported that Wooten insisted he was innocent, and that Monroe Jetton didn’t give him a chance to explain and shot him “in a fit of jealousy.”

Wooten died within an hour. His friends carried his body to his home up the hill. 

Jurors had no doubts. After a two-day trial, they deliberated for just 30 minutes. At 11 p.m. on Feb. 21, 11 days after the killing, the jury unanimously found Jetton not guilty. “An outburst of cheering swept the building from end to end,” the Daily Observer reported. “The verdict is regarded as a pronouncement in favor of the unwritten law that a man may with impunity slay the man who has invaded his home.”

That ended the legal case. But nothing got back to normal for the families involved. Wooten’s funeral, one of the largest gatherings ever in town, was held at Davidson College Presbyterian Church on Feb. 12, two days after the killing. He was buried in the Davidson College Cemetery off North Main Street.

White Drug Co., at 131 N. Main St., shown above in 1927 (after it dropped the Jetton name). It’s now the Kindred restaurant (below).

Photo by Herman Nicholson

Despite—or because of—his acquittal, Monroe Jetton’s life turned rocky. Weeks later, White-Jetton Drug Co. reorganized, and he either quit or was pushed out of the business. Then, one night in April, men on horseback vandalized the Jettons’ home with splotches of red paint, some in the shape of crosses.

Monroe and Josie Jetton left Davidson and moved to Georgia, where they lived quietly. They never had children. Monroe Jetton died in 1939 and was also buried at the Davidson College Cemetery, only 25 yards from Wooten. Between the two men is the grave of Josie Shipp Jetton, who died in 1949 at 61 or 62. (Her birth date doesn’t turn up in public documents, and it’s not on her marker.) If there’s more to the story about her relationship with Wooten, it died with her.  

Wooten’s widow, Mary Potts Wooten, and daughter, Sara, continued to live at 231 South St. Last year, a descendant of the Potts family gave me a yellowed black-and-white photograph of Wooten from around 1900. A note on the back tells the doctor’s story and says, “Mary and daughter Sara lived tragic lives from then on.”

The inscription—written by Mary’s niece, Margaret Potts, decades after the murder—says Wooten was “killed (shot) by Monroe Jetton (cousin of Mary) when he discovered his wife (Josie) and ‘Hub’ Wooten were having an affair.” Mary died at 63 in 1933. Sara inherited the house and remained there with her husband, Willis Neal Johnston. Sara lived an unhappy life, according to neighbors who knew her. One who lived on South Street, Dr. Jim Withers, treated her, possibly with Valium.

“He would go to see Sara. She was so sad, grieving over her father’s death,” Withers’ late daughter, Dr. Charlotte Daly, told me in 2013. “She was embarrassed because of how her father had died.”

Sara Wooten Johnston died in 1962, four years after her husband. The Wooten house was sold two years later to the Beam family. When we bought it in 2002, we became only its fourth owners.

Members of both families are buried in Davidson College Cemetery. Photo by Herman Nicholson

The killing is one of the most widely publicized murders in Davidson, a town that thinks of itself as Mayberry, not the set of Murder, She Wrote or Broadchurch. The case has become part of town folklore. A few years ago, it inspired Davidson songwriter Barbara Gardiner to compose a humorous ballad titled “The House Call.” It’s the centerpiece of the Ghosts of Davidson tour, led by Davidson resident and amateur historian Rachel Workman.

“I think crazy stories like this in general are very appealing,” Workman says. “It’s fascinating that somebody would go that far as to kill somebody. It’s not a normal, everyday thought that one would have. How do you go from maybe being angry at somebody to actually committing a murder?” Davidson’s historic streets can spark the imagination, she adds. “Main Street is similar today to what it was in 1914, so you can kind of see and feel what was really there. It is just as intriguing to us over 100 years later.”

At Wooten’s former house on South Street, my wife, Shelley Rigger, and I are surrounded by this history. During a renovation, we found an old photo that we believe to be of Wooten behind a mantelpiece. Demolition in the living room revealed the doctor’s original green office wallpaper.

We don’t think about it much. But we like telling the story. “It doesn’t bother me to live in a house that’s associated with a murder,” Shelley says. “I think it makes the house a little more colorful and interesting.” It’s also a reminder that the good old days in Davidson probably weren’t any better than today. Amid the history, it’s easy to find people behaving badly.

DAVID BORAKS is a longtime Charlotte-area journalist for WFAE and The Charlotte Observer. From 2006 to 2015, he owned and edited DavidsonNews.net, an online publication that covered the Lake Norman area.