On the morning of September 27, 1933, two men held up the Bank of Berry in Berry, Alabama, while a third man waited in a stolen getaway car. The robbers, who did not wear masks, escaped with approximately $5,000. Later that day, their abandoned getaway car, a 1928 Ford coupe, was located by police about 14 miles from Berry.
The next night, police picked up local coal miners 24-year-old Glenn Davis and 26-year-old Herschel McCarn after receiving a tip that the two men had been seen in the stolen car prior to the robbery.
At the city jail, Leon Studdard, the bank’s assistant cashier, identified Davis from a three-man lineup. Studdard said Davis was the man who had pulled a pistol on him and locked him in the bank vault. Studdard said he did not see the second robber’s face. Several other witnesses identified both Davis and McCarn as the robbers, though none had been as close to the robbers as Studdard.
Fayette County Sheriff Joe McConnell heard that 26-year-old Bill Hathaway, another coal miner, was seen in the company of Davis and McCarn shortly after the robbery. On October 8, 1933, McConnell arrested Hathaway on the charge that Hathaway was the driver of the getaway car.
The robbery case against Davis went to trial in Fayette County Circuit Court in early November 1933. Attorneys R.A. Cooner and R.F. Peters represented Davis. Studdard identified Davis in court, as did several other witnesses. In his defense, Davis attempted to show he was in Birmingham, Alabama, at the time of the crime. The jury found Davis guilty of robbery on November 12, 1933. Judge Ernest Lacy sentenced him to 25 years in prison.
McCarn was convicted of robbery in Fayette County Circuit Court on March 15, 1934 and also sentenced to 25 years in prison. Available records do not include additional details about his trial. On the advice of his counsel, Hathaway pled guilty shortly after McCarn’s conviction and was sentenced to ten years in prison, though few details are available about his case.
All three men maintained their innocence and their families worked for years to secure their release, with the effort led by Davis’s mother, Lulu Davis.
Private investigator Milton McDuff, the former head of the City of Birmingham’s Bureau of Investigation, became involved in the case and uncovered evidence that three other men had been the robbers. He presented this evidence in 1935 to Lawrence Lee, the legal advisor to Alabama Governor David Bibb Graves. Persuaded that there might be substance to this evidence and wanting to look into the matter further, Lee agreed that Davis, McCarn, and Hathaway should be temporarily paroled while authorities investigated. On May 16, 1935, a judge released all three men on temporary parole based on this new evidence.
However, Davis and McCarn were arrested in May 1935 for parole violations and returned to prison. Hathway was also sent back to prison for a parole violation in December 1935. No further information is available about Lee’s investigation.
In 1940, a man confessed to the Alabama State Board of Pardons and Paroles that he and two other men were guilty of the Bank of Berry robbery. The man said that Davis, McCarn, and Hathaway were not involved. He provided the names of his accomplices. One was dead; the other was in federal prison in Atlanta, Georgia.
The Pardons Board then conducted an investigation and sent an investigator to interview the purported accomplice in Atlanta. The accomplice admitted to the crime and provided corroborating details. The Board ultimately concluded that Davis, McCarn, and Hathaway were innocent.
The Pardons Board issued a statement saying the crime had been committed by three men who bore “remarkable resemblance” to the convicted men and that “recent developments have proven to the satisfaction of this board that the conviction of Davis, McCarn, and Hathaway was the result of mistaken identity.”
Davis, McCarn, and Hathaway were pardoned and released on November 23, 1940, with each man given $12.60 and a suit.
“I’ve been saying we were innocent all these years,” Davis said at the time of their release. “And now, thank heavens, someone believes us. I’m not embittered, but I certainly am glad to get out."
- Meghan Barrett Cousino
Posting Date: 12-07-2025
