It appeared that the new grave of Mrs. Pruitt’s had been desecrated and the entire population of Eagleville was aroused. Some clothing and hair was found on a fence near the Russell Cemetery about ½ mile north of Eagleville”.

After discovering the robbery of Mrs. Pruitt body, Eagleville residents who had recently buried loved ones began to wonder about their graves. Those who could not stand not knowing had their relatives’ graves reopened. “Were their graves empty, too?” was the unspoken question of others.

As stated in a 1986 newspaper article: Two more bodies were discovered missing at area cemeteries. Stolen were the remains of Stephen Bennett Sr. from the Bennett Cemetery on Mt. Pleasant Road and Mrs. Eva Jane Corbitt also from the Russell Cemetery. Stephen Bennett Jr. particularly wanted to know what had become of his father’s remains. He also had the resources to do something about it. The younger Bennett was a Nashville police officer. Nashville investigators put the pressure on their informants, and on Monday, January 17^th, the police received a tip. Detective Pat Hanifin learned that the body of Mrs. Pruitt had been moved earlier that day to a concealed point about 50 feet off Bramet’s Lane in Nashville. After a three-hour search, her body was found and taken to Hogan’s Funeral Home, where it was prepared for reburial. A reporter from a Nashville newspaper uncovered the motive behind the theft. The body had been taken via back roads from Eagleville to the Franklin Road and then to Nashville where it was delivered to a medical school. But word of the theft had already sped – faster than the mysterious carriage –to the college. Initially, college personnel refused the body and “there was a commotion,” the reporter said. After the argument, the body was accepted and the grave robber was paid his $15.00. Bennett soon learned of the medical school incident and obtained search warrants for all three of Nashville’s medical school morgues. However, extensive searches failed to recover his father’s remains. On Wednesday, January 19^th, a fourth body was discovered missing, and that night police got their first important break in the case. They took a suspect into custody for questioning which was Dr. C. B. Heimark. He was held over 48 hours for surveillance and on the following Friday warrants were obtained. Mean while, a near lynch-mob mentality developed in Eagleville and surrounding communities. The excitement and indignation at Eagleville seemed to grow rather than diminish and a similar state of affairs had developed in the Chapel Hill and Salem neighborhoods where unmistakable evidences of wholesale grave robbing have just been discovered. At that point Detective Hanifin received another tip: The bodies of Mrs. Corbitt and Bennett had been shipped to a medical school in Burlington, Vermont. Both bodies had been hidden in a crate marked “books” and sent by train to Vermont. An urgent telegram was sent to Burlington asking that the bodies be sent back. Hanifin received a wire back: “Send $120 first.” The $120 in question was a refund to the Burlington member of the grave-robbing team. He had paid his Nashville connection $110 for the corpses. The remaining $10 was for shipping.

Hanifin confiscated the bodies when they were returned to Nashville and a huge, angry crowd witnessed the reburial. Hanifin stated that the people of Eagleville are greatly excited and made open threats of violence against Dr. Heimark. Due to the threats, Heimark remained in custody in Nashville.

In 1986 when asked by a reporter of the grave-robbing incident, Pearl Tucker, recalled that she was 6 to 8 years old at the time. “We were scared to death,” she said. “Of course they weren’t interested in us little children, but we were scared of our own shadows.” She remembered seeing the clothes of Mrs. Pruitt on the fence. “Not only this community, but every community around here was extremely upset,” Miss Tucker said.

Prior to his arrest, Dr. Heimark had been the Tucker’s family physician. “I remember when I was a little girl, my little brother had a fever and Dr. Heimark waited on him. The fever was a prolonged thing, you know, and he would ride a horse out there every day to look in on my brother.” “It is a wonder that he didn’t kill him. I’m glad he didn’t, because my memories about this are bad enough,” she said.

In an early1940’s publication this account was given on the gruesome discovery.

Above: Original grave marker of Stephen Bennett

Mr. Charles P. Gillespie: “One day I was sitting on the front porch of my store about 200 yards from the road between Murfreesboro and Eagleville when Bill Elmore, hack driver, came along and said, “Well, have you heard about the grave robbery at Eagleville?” I told him I hadn’t and he said, “Well, they’ve dug up Mrs. Pruitt and Mrs. Corbitt”. Then I remembered hearing my children say, “It looks like a sinkhole’s fell in grandpa’s grave”. My father in law, Stephen Bennett had died on January 1, 1898. So I said to my wife, “Well I guess your daddy’s gone too”. We went to the graveyard and there we found the coffin box sticking up out of the ground. The coffin was in it but they had taken the body, stripped it and left the clothes. I called my brother in law, Stephen Bennett, Jr in Nashville and he call the Governor. They got the militia to search all the medical colleges in Nashville and that got the grave robbers scared. About that time somebody found Mrs. Pruitt’s body where it had been thrown over a fence. My brother in law put a detective by the name of Pat Hanifin on the case and he traced the bodies of my father in law and Mrs. Corbitt to Burlington Vt. They had been shipped there in a box labeled “books”.

Henry A. Gee, for fifty years caretaker of the Russell Cemetery where Mrs. Pruitt and Mrs. Corbitt were buried, said that the robbery was discovered when some of Mrs. Pruitt’s gray hair was seen hanging on a barb wire fence. He said he helped bury the bodies of the two women twice.

Gillespie recalled, “there hasn’t been such a country gathering since as the day they brought the bodies of Mrs. Corbitt and Steve Bennett back from Vermont. The bodies arrived in Murfreesboro by train and were met by two horse drawn hearses” he said. “Folks crowded to see them and buggies followed the hearses all the way to the Cemeteries at Eagleville. (Neither Mrs. Jane Corbitt nor Mrs. Pruitt have a grave marker in the Russell Cemetery. Mr. Bennett’s original grave marker has deteriorated. His name and dates are now included on a family monument in the Bennett Cemetery.)

Detective Pat Hanifin with the aid of Sheriff J. J. Lee began a little unearthing on their part and dug up some facts on the ghoulish activities of Dr. Heimark. It seems that an Eastern concern had contracted to pay him $45.00 for each “stiff” he furnished them, to be sold to medical schools for dissection. So far as was known, he hadn’t furnished any bodies of white persons other than the three discovered, but as Mr. Gillespie put it, a black woman was said to have died of a harmless ailment the following morning after Dr. Heimark’s visit. That led to speculation as to how many unknown victims the doctor might have had. He admitted that he kept the bodies in the cottage he rented until he could take them to Nashville to ship away.

Dr. Heimark was arrested and arraigned before Squire R. S. Brown. The law at that time made it a misdemeanor to disinter a body for unlawful purposes. The black man who helped Dr. Heimark escaped. Jody McGowan was identified as the other helper in the robbing of Steve Bennett’s grave by an old “arctic overshoe” that stuck in the mud. His shoe had been torn and his mother had previously sewed it up with needle and thread. They were able to trace the shoe back to him. Pressure of public sentiment let him go free with only a fine.

The case attracted such statewide attention that the Legislature in 1899 passed a law making it a “felony punishable by imprisonment in the penitentiary for a period of not less than two or more than five years for any person who removes any dead body or disinters any dead body from its place of interment for the purpose of selling or otherwise disposing of same to any person, company or corporation for the purpose of dissection or otherwise mutilating said body without first having obtained the consent of the family or relatives of the deceased.

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Editor’s note: The previous information is from two newspaper articles. There are a few discrepancies between the articles. Recollection of any incident that happen 107 years would naturally be changed as it’s passed down through generations.

While checking old circuit court records, I found three cases, State of Tennessee vs. C. B. Heimark and one case, State of Tennessee vs. Jody McGowan. There were several witnesses who testified before the Grand Jury in February 1898.

P J. Hanifin: (Detective): “ Sometime about the middle of January I received a telephone message stating that a body had been stolen at Eagleville. We found a body out in a lot Mr. Pruett identified as his mother. Mr. Worton acknowledged that he bought the bodies from Harry Satterfield. He told me of the time that he got old man Steve Bennett. He told me of the time he got Mrs. Corbitt. Dr. C. B. Heimark also told me that Jody McGowan lost his shoe in the grave of Mr. Bennett.”

Harry Satterfield testified: “ I work at the University of Nashville Medical College. I know Dr. Heimark. Have known him about 4 years.”

W. R. Rolson (Ralston): “I took an over shoe out of Mr. Steve Bennett grave.”

D. J. Bennett testified; an over shoe was found in his father’s grave.

T. E. Hooper: “I seen the over shoe on Joey McGowan’s foot on the flat form at Mr. Hays store in Eagleville.”

Dr. Blount Hyde: “Dr. Heimark told me that he got the 3 bodies out at Eagleville and confessed the same to Mr. Hanifin.”

D. W. Quarles: “Dr. Heimark confessed to me that he had taken the body of Steve Bennett from the grave and others.”

The execution documents, case 7014, 7015 and 7016 revealed Dr. Heimark was sentenced to 6 months in the county jail and a fine of $150.00 on each of the 3 cases and a total court cost of $179.58. Included in the court cost, 8 cents a mile for transporting Dr. Heimark from Nashville to Murfreesboro and a return trip.

Case # 7017, execution documents for Jody McGowan revealed a fine of $25.00, a portion of the court cost of $35.56.

Dr. Heimark was excluded from the Eagleville Baptist Church in March 1898 for disorderly conduct. According to The American Medical Association Directory Dr. Heimark was practicing medicine in Battle Lake, Minnesota in 1906.

For a long time after this grave robbing incident family members would watch new graves for a period of time. According to Mrs. Maye Taylor, a small building was built in the Bennett cemetery for people to stay in to watch new graves when the weather was bad. Lanterns were also used to light the graves. In the Hudson Cemetery on Mt. Pleasant Road, a large rock was placed over the grave of Bettie Hudson Edwards by her family so her grave would not be disturbed. The grave watching continued for period of time and is thought to have evolved in the practice of “sitting up with the deceased”. Dr. Heimark confessed to three stolen bodies but no one really knows how many empty graves there are in the Eagleville area.