Florence and James Kellum live on a dirt lane off Kellum Loop Road in Onslow County. Their son, Leonard, and his wife, Shirlene, have the house
next door. Their youngest daughter, Judy Faye, and her husband, Jolly Williams, lived in a house on the Loop, right at its juncture with the dirt road. They were shouting distance from one another. Kellum is a commonplace
name in this corner of the county. There's a Baptist church up the road called Kellum and most of the mailboxes sport the same surname. Generations of Kellums were born and married, raised their children, died and were buried along
the Loop. The Kellums are a thick clan, blood-bound to one another and proud of it.
The corn stood high in the fields alongside the Kellum family's homes on the night Judy Faye died. It stretched tall behind her house,
obscuring it from the view of her family. When smoke from the fire first curled into the sky, it went unnoticed by her relatives, hidden behind a curtain of corn.
Her sister-in-law Shirlene remembers that night in chilling
detail. She quotes autopsy reports and judge's sentencing instructions like a child singing the ABC Song. There is nothing about the death of Judy Faye that she doesn't know except, perhaps, what exactly happened that night,
before the fire was set, before Judy took her last breath.
Hundreds of pieces of paper chronicle the life and death of Judy Faye Kellum. Shirlene, who remembers her sister-in-law as a sweet-faced seven-year-old when she married
Judy's older brother, seems an unlikely repository for such damning and painful minutia. She's one of those loving wives and good mothers who revels in her family. Her house, custom built by her contractor husband, is spotless but
not uncomfortably so. It's family-friendly and inviting, the kind of place where visitors know it's OK to kick off their shoes.
Shirlene and Leonard are the parents of two children. Their daughter is married and a mother
herself. Their teenaged son still lives at home. Both kids are as befit members of the Kellum family close to their parents and grandparents. Their grandparents are and always have been a part of their everyday lives.
Shirlene sits at the table in her large eat-in kitchen. She is awash in the papers she's accumulated court documents and copies of reports, statements and even a couple of magazine and newspaper articlesall about Judy and her
death. A curio cabinet stands behind her, to the right. In it are family photographs, including several of a young Judy.
"I hate him," Shirlene says, the reaction drawn as swiftly and sharply as a knife.
Him. Jolly. Judy's
husband of three years. The man convicted of murdering the pleasant-looking young woman. Shirlene spits his name out as if it tastes bad. She has invested 11 years in hating Jolly Williams for what he did to Judy and her family.
Now she spends her hours working to keep Jolly behind bars. For something propelled by anger, it is, curiously, a labor of love for Judy and the rest of her family: Florence and James, big brother Leonard and older sister, Kay.
Shirlene bitterly recounts how Judy was robbed of a chance to live the rest of her life, have children, be an aunt to her nieces and nephews, a comfort to her elderly parents, part of a big and loving family. But, she says,
Jolly did more than just remove Judy from their lives. He also poisoned the lives of those Judy left behind.
Judy's elderly parents have never recovered from the blow of losing their youngest child, Shirlene says. They are
emotionally fragile, bent with sorrow, tired beyond their years. And, says Shirlene, Judy's death also left a raw place on her own marriage, one that doesn't seem to want to heal.
"He had a very hard time for about four years
after she died it was hell around here, it was really hell," Shirlene says of her husband.
Leonard good husband, dutiful son, devoted father, doting brother found alcohol dulled the hurt, but fueled the hatred. He'd sit
with a paper and pen at the kitchen table, planning ways to kill Jolly right in his cell. Shirlene was terrified.
"Some days I wouldn't know where he was and I'd find him just sitting down there at the house where his sister was
killed," she said.
The house Judy died in was the one where she was brought up. A small brick home, Judy's parents sold it to their youngest daughter and her new husband following their marriage.
But the union between the
27-year-old Judy and her mechanic husband was a fiery one from the beginning. Jolly known for being hot-tempered and difficult threw a tantrum on the day of their wedding, angry over the prospect of someone decorating his car.
Before long it wasn't uncommon to hear angry voices drifting from the little brick house over the rows of corn. But Judy didn't share her problems and they chose not to pry. They didn't know Jolly was hurting her until she was
beyond help.
Instead, Judy held tightly to the dark details of her life with Jolly, complaining only to friends and fellow workers that her husband's temper sometimes flared out of control, hot and high. If she planned to
leave Jolly, only Jolly knows it now Judy died without telling anyone else the depth of her secret hell.
Shirlene believes Judy was trying to leave her husband that night, sparking a final, evil confrontation. But Jolly isn't
talking. He pleaded guilty to murder in order to avoid the death penalty, but has never spoken publicly of his wife's death.
What they do know is Judy was badly beaten and left unconscious and on the verge of death on her bed
a fact confirmed by the autopsy. She died from a vicious blow to her head, but the autopsy also revealed she inhaled smoke, which means Judy was alive when the match was struck. When Jolly went to court, he received a 50-year
sentence as part of a plea bargain approved by Judy's family.
The Kellums are sturdy country stock. People who occasionally recognize the name of an acquaintance in the crime blotter of the newspaper. They are unaccustomed to
dealing with the criminal justice system and don't understand it. But they believed Jolly's sentence would keep him in jail for most of his life and wanted to spare Judy's elderly parents from the horrors of a trial.
When Judge
Henry Stevens handed Jolly Williams a 50-year-sentence, the Kellum family left the courthouse believing that the man who robbed them of their sister and daughter would be in prison until he was 80 years old. But sentences handed
down before current laws went into effect were not honest ones and only the most celebrated killers were kept behind bars.
Shirlene discovered that 50 years in legal terms doesn't mean 50 years in real life. Jolly became eligible
for parole after 10 years. It's a bitter road Judy's survivors must walk down.
"I thought life meant just that life and he'd at least be an old, old man when he finally got out," Shirlene says.
Last December Jolly was
up for work release. Shirlene knew he'd chalked up five infractions of the rules. That, plus the family's opposition, was enough to keep him in prison this time.
For it's not over 'til it's over. On May 21st, Jolly will come up
for parole for the first time and Shirlene's damned if he's getting out of prison. With the help of friends and other family members, she's circulating copies of a petition to keep him there.
Shirlene admits she's afraid of
Jolly. She's worried about what a man who could strike a mortal blow to his wife, then set her on fire, might do to the people who've consistently opposed his release. And she's also worried about Leonard and what might happen if
Jolly does go free.
"They want him to be out in public and go to work," she says with amazement in her voice. Jolly Williams could one day walk through the prison gates the man who wedged a screwdriver in the sliding glass
doors so that no one could get in, effectively sealing off any hope of a last-minute rescue of the helpless dying woman.
Shirlene doesn't look like the kind of person who would hold a grudge. She smiles easily, appears to be
happy with her life, her children, her family. But when she talks about Judy, she turns to the dark side, sparing no amount of vitriol when she speaks of the man who set the killing fire that took Judy and turned her own marriage
upside down.
Leonard stops by for lunch. He's in the kitchen heating up last night's leftovers when he hears his wife talking about Jolly. His jaw sets.
"Bastard. Killing's too good for him," Leonard says, tossing the remark
over his shoulder like he's saying "Have a nice day." Shirlene looks straight ahead. Leonard is back on an even keel now, she says. Or as close to one as he's going to get. As long as Jolly stays in prison, she can live with
Leonard's moods. She knows he still bridles at the idea of Jolly being alive when Judy is not. She knows Leonard hates Jolly so much he'd jump at a chance to get even. Religion and the thought of what his hatred could do to his
elderly in-laws if he acted upon it put Leonard back together. But it doesn't mean he's forgiven Jolly. That will never happen. Not in this lifetime.
It's spring and the air is already warm with the promise of an early summer.
Shirlene Kellum has a lot to do. But it's not picking strawberries and putting up own jam that keeps her busy these days. It's the promise she made to herself years ago, never to give up, never to give in, never to allow Jolly
Williams to walk as a free man if she can help it.
Shirlene sits at her kitchen table counting signatures on the petitions she and her friends have circulated. It's a familiar task and one she approaches with grim determination.
She is Jolly Williams' worst nightmare, just as Jolly was Judy's.
"It would be harder for me to let it go than to keep at it, and if I were to die tomorrow, I know my daughter would carry on in my footsteps," Shirlene says.
And Jolly Williams can take that straight to the prison bank.
