A Red-Handed Pair of Black-Hearted Deuces

None of it ever would’ve happened if Julia Lowther hadn’t gone to the picture show.

It was a sunny spring day in May, 1930, and the movie showing at the theater in Ashtabula, Ohio might have been Free and Easy, a Buster Keaton number about a beauty contest winner who conquers Hollywood. That would’ve appealed to her.

At 23, Julia had packed a lot of living into a short amount of time and had dreams beyond her place. She grew up in West Virginia, wed and had a child at age 15, then divorced her baby’s daddy and replaced him with an Ohioan twice her age.

But her second marriage was in sorry shape by 1930. Julia was forced to find work as a housemaid and have others care for her 7-year-old son. Then one day, probably thinking she earned a bit of a break, she treated herself to a motion picture. While there, she’d have a life-altering encounter with one Tilby Smith.

Smith was 27 years old and worked as a trucking contractor, and if a picture show was an odd place to pick up a girl, Smith didn’t let that slow him down. Nor did his wedding band stop him, if he even wore one.

Both would later say that they fell in love immediately. They vowed to run away together. But first Tilby had to get rid of his wife, Clara.

It would be easy. Tilby promised it would be. He had an old revolver and a plan. With shocking ease, Tilby Smith recruited Julia Lowther into a plot to murder his wife.

Ten days after she met Tilby, Julia found herself standing in the dark on an old country road outside the town limits. She wore a pair of large men’s boots to throw off the cops. And she waited. And waited. Three hours passed before she finally saw a truck coming down the road.

The truck came to a stop, just as Tilby had said it would. Julia stepped from concealment and saw Tilby behind the wheel. His wife sat on the passenger side. A small child sat between them; Mrs. Tilby had another baby in her arms.

Julia rushed to the side of the truck and hit Clara Smith with one shot. She died almost instantly.

Tilby summoned the police, tried to play it off. But he was unconvincing and so was his murderous new lover. The pair confessed in writing that very night.

Months later, as she sat on a witness stand, Julia would say, “I killed Clara because I loved Tilby. He told me I would not have to work again, that he would take care of me and my boy and that we would go to Florida after this thing blew over.” She was convicted of premeditated murder. A jury of 12 men declined to recommend leniency, and thus she was automatically sentenced to the electric chair.

But the appellate court granted her a new trial. She then pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was resentenced to life imprisonment, the sentencing judge remarking that “her general background was entitled to mercy.” It was felt that Tilby Smith was primarily to blame, even though Julia pulled the trigger.

Tilby Smith was convicted and also sentenced to death, but he received a new trial on the grounds that he had the mental capacity of an 8-year-old (State v. Smith, 123 Ohio St. 237 (1931)). Smith soon got his new trial, but the result was the same – a conviction and sentence of death. He was executed in Ohio's electric chair on November 30, 1931.

PHOTO: Tilby Smith’s last photograph from the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation & Correction, http://www.drc.state.oh.us.

Julia served her life sentence at the Marysville Reformatory, working at the prison hospital's maternity ward for 17 years. In 1954, when she was 47, Governor Frank Lausche gave her an Easter commutation by reducing her conviction from first to second degree murder, making her eligible for release. She was then paroled. At that time, she announced plans to move in with her sister in eastern Ohio and find a job at a hospital. Then she disappeared from public view forever.

Julia paid a price – 24 years in prison, all told, for murdering a woman she never even met. She was colossally stupid. That’s obvious. But as to Tilby, one has to wonder whether he was really as dumb as his lawyers made him out to be ; he was at least slick enough to convince a stranger to kill his wife for him. Then again, he paid a much higher price than did the girl he met at the picture show.

Comments

[Amy]

Laura, thanks for the submission, I would never have found this site with out it and am glad to include your post in the upcoming carnival.

Tilby Smith is a relative of my family. I'm not really sure how, but i come from the Smith family. And my Great Great Grandfather was his father. Interesting, huh.

[KH]

Tilby was also a relative--He was my great-grandfather's cousin...It's crazy what kinds of things you can find out about your family if you just look...