Sutherland Murdered in Okefenokee Swamp

Nineteen Forty-Seven was an unusual year for Charlton County. Folkston High School fielded its first football team, the Folkston Indians. Arthur Prochaski, tennis professional, was hired as the team's first football coach. Most World War Two veterans had returned home and were working into jobs as close to home as possible.

However, it was in mid-July of 1947 that Charlton County and its Okefenokee Swamp burst into the headlines. It was murder in a small log cabin inside the swamp.

It all began when a cattle farmer of the area in the Okefenokee, while rounding up strays, noticed a dozen buzzards soaring over a dilapidated old shack in the wooded patch near his pastures. He decided to investigate. He pushed open the door of the shack and stepped back in horror.

Inside was the skull and parts of a skeleton; wild hogs and the buzzards had devoured the body. The cattle farmer hurried into Folkston and to the county jail where Sheriff Jim Sikes lived. It was Sunday afternoon.

Sikes gathered up some deputies and rushed to the scene. Sikes examined the remains and placed them into a casket.

Sikes, who had the ability to draw testimony from usually recalcitrant witnesses, began to question people of the area.

They knew the victim, Myron (Dick) Sutherland, a Jacksonville, Florida resident who worked in a tool and die company there for $145 dollars a week, a handsome salary in 1947. Sutherland often took a break on weekends to target shoot in the edge of the Okefenokee He was known by his friends as a mild-mannered man who had two hobbies; playing tennis and collecting and shooting expensive firearms.

Sheriff Sikes' questions bore fruit. Sutherland often went to the cabin early in the morning. Few residents ever recalled him driving into the swamp at the early hour. Several, however, knew him and remembered his car leaving the swamp on that Sunday. Only one fact differed. Sutherland was not driving Sutherland's car. A man with flaming red hair was driving it. Most of those questioned knew Sutherland by sight. His visits to the Okefenokee had been going on for quite some months.

Sikes soon pieced the puzzle together. That same night he drove to the Jacksonville Police Headquarters, following a hearse that contained the remains of Sutherland. Laboratory tests and dental records on the remains verified the victim's identity. He had been shot to death. Jacksonville police helping Sikes were detectives R. B. Whittington, H. V. (Tiny) Branch, and L. S. Eddins.

Sutherland had a girl friend in Jacksonville. Sikes and the Jacksonville officers made their way to her home. She was devastated by the story of Sutherland's death.

Questioning of the girl friend, revealed Sutherland had met a man named Wayne Woodruff at a social gathering in Jacksonville just weeks earlier. Woodruff had struck up a conversation with Sutherland about guns, and asked to accompany him to the Okefenokee on a weekend to target practice. Woodruff even offered to pay for the gasoline. Sutherland patted his billfold and replied that would not be necessary. He always carried several hundred dollars on his person, he told Woodruff.

Sikes and the officers began looking for Woodruff. Sutherland's car was found abandoned on Washington Street in Jacksonville, filled with telltale fingerprints of Wayne Woodruff. Following the trail the officers found out Woodruff had stolen several valuable guns of Sutherland and sold them for a fraction of their value. Woodruff was now running scared.

The officers found out Woodruff and his wife had taken a bus to El Paso, Texas. Hurriedly Sikes and the Jacksonville homicide detectives called police in El Paso, asking them to be on the lookout for Woodruff. Two El Paso detectives met Woodruff and his wife at the bus station. They were carrying several of Sutherland's guns when they gave up without incident to the El Paso detectives. It had been exactly eight days after Sutherland's death when his killer was taken into custody. Woodruff had killed Sutherland for his money; several hundred dollars, his car and his guns.

Woodruff made a full and complete confession of the murder to El Paso police. Sheriff Jim Sikes and a deputy drove to El Paso to return Woodruff to Charlton County to face trial for the murder of his newfound friend, Dick Sutherland.

In Charlton County during the trial in 1947, excitement reigned. Woodruff was found guilty of murder and sentenced to die in Georgia's electric chair. There was no recommendation for mercy.

Before the sentence could be carried out and Woodruff executed, some Jacksonville friends of Woodruff had hired skilled Jacksonville lawyers to represent Woodruff and attempt to block the execution. The lawyer's efforts proved successful. Woodruff's sentence was commuted to life in prison. A few years afterward, Woodruff was paroled from a Georgia prison and was back in Jacksonville, a free man.

The excitement of the trial in Folkston filled the courtroom with visitors. Sheriff Sikes would bring the prisoner from the Charlton County jail to the courthouse every day of the trial. Numbers of onlookers around the courthouse craned for a look at the man that killed Dick Sutherland in that Okefenokee cabin on a Sunday in mid-July of 1947.