Overview: Zona Shue Project
The general research plan involves researching the characters involved in this drama that was high-lighted in Walt Gavenda’s story about Zona Shue, The Ghost Who Testified. There is a great deal more to this odd episode than has appeared in previous stories, most of which were “circular,” depending on the expanded research preciously done. Some of the best work was done by Katie Letcher Lyle in her book, The Man Who Wanted Seven Wives, but the interruption of her research by the insertion of fiction into the book.
The characters are fascinating to study and have not been adequately explored previously.
- Trout Shue, the husband whose wish to have seven wives, is a character who closely parallels the Drew Peterson case of the modern time. Both had wives who died under mysterious circumstances and appeared defiant about the authorities gaining sufficient access to evidence to find them guilty. Lyle suggests in the final pages of her book that Shue’s frequent assertion that he desired seven wives may have been an attempt to conceal his homosexuality, something that seems to fit as a possible explanation. Earlier in the book, Lyle describes an episode in which a group of young men grab Shue in mid-winter and drag him to the nearby Greenbrier River where they threw him through ice into the cold water. The suggestion was made that this event was provoked by Shue’s wife-beating, but there are many wife-beaters and reports of these brutal husbands being attacked by young men are seldom found. Shue had a single scar on his ankle when he was sent to Moundsville prison for horse theft, but when he was returned to Moundsville following Zona’s murder he had numerous scars – an indication that people didn’t like him much. Finally, during the trial his family didn’t appear as character witnesses and one brother was subpoenaed in central West Virginia where a deputy had to search for him in order to get the brother to the trial. Two central question remains: Was Shue framed for horse theft when he had only “borrowed” the horse in order to get home on a very cold winter day, knowing it would return to its stable once released? Was Mary Jane Heaster’s testimony of Zona’s ghostly visit a second framing by the community that was trying to remove a very violent man from their midst – for good? Profiles done on serial killers often note that homosexuality is a part of their psychological makeup. Was Shue a serial killer? Were there other unsolved murders or missing persons in the region during this period?
- Elva Zona Heaster Shue, the dead woman, reportedly had a child out of wedlock, but is also described as having been married. There is no mention of the child in the available reports or census materials. She was also reported as being pregnant and a child was in her coffin at the time of her burial, but this is not mentioned elsewhere in the few historical records.
- Mary Jane Heaster, the mother, is described as an “old woman,” when she was actually 49-years old at the time of the trial and seems to be both vigorous and intelligent. The transcript of her testimony is also curious in that she seems to have reached out toward Zona to see if a coffin was with the apparition, something that seems to be widely believed about ghosts in Appalachia. There was no reason to mention this during the trial and the fact that she did so seems to add credibility to her explanation of Zona’s appearance.
- TheLaywers and Judge are also very interesting characters in their own right. Both prosecutors were connected to the recent Confederacy and the lead prosecutor was a veteran of the was who had married into David Creigh’s family, an elderly man executed by the Union Army in 1864 after he killed a Union straggler who was “attacking” the women in his family, creating a major outcry within the entire Confederacy that viewed this execution as an injustice. The lead defense attorney was apparently an abolitionist from eastern Virginia who had been jailed by Virginia’s Confederate authorities and charged with “treason against Virginia,” the same charged brought against John Brown after his raid on Harpers Ferry. The second defense attorney was described in the census as “mulatto” at a time when black attorneys were scarce, especially in the previously Confederate town of Lewisburg, West Virginia, where the immediate area supplied three companies of infantry to Stonewall Jackson’s Brigade. Only 25 of these men received paroles at Appomattox at war’s end, a factor that left a deep-seated anger regarding the creation of West Virginia and the “Test Oath” to the new state that was required for them if they sought to register to vote. The disenfranchisement of most of the Confederate veterans in the new state left them both angry and frustrated at the new Republican Party.
A key factor remains undiscovered: Was the Shue family of nearby Droop Mountain, where a major Civil War battle occurred, Unionist? If so, this fact would add yet another layer of complexity to the Zona Shue study.
Copyright © David L. Phillips 2012
