Carol Jenkins:1968, Martinsville, Indiana

    

  Carol Marie Davis Jenkins was selling encyclopedias with a team of other young salespeople. Carol was eager to make money and glad to be part of a team like this. She had on a very fashionable and professional outfit. She was motivated, polite and ready to knock on doors and make some sales. 

   She and the other young people would park, split up and knock on doors. They would do their sales pitches and then come back together at the car to move on to the next area. They were in Martinsville, Indiana that day. It was to be a long, full day of door to door sales. 

   Martinsville is known by many as the hometown of legendary Basketball coach John Wooden. He started his career in Indiana before moving on to National Fame coaching legends like Kareem Abdul Jabbar. 

   In Indiana, Martinsville has a certain infamy because of what happened to Carol Jenkins that day. There’s a lingering shame over the fact that Carol Jenkins and her family and friends never saw Justice in this case.  

   It was Carol’s first day on the job. She volunteered to go to Martinsville even though it had a reputation already as a sundown town. Carol probably felt like if she was kind and polite that people would also be polite or at least civil. I imagine many people think that way. It’s generally a good attitude. 

   That day, September 16th, 1968, Carol Jenkins was attacked by at least two racist young men. She was not just attacked but stalked. Two young men followed her in their car as she walked. They yelled racist slurs and insults. Carol knocked on the door of the Neal family seeking help. Mrs Neal was sympathetic and called the police. The young men seemed to have gone. Mrs. Neal walked up and down the streets with Carol to help her find her co-workers. She offered to let Carol stay longer at her house where she would be safe. Carol politely declined. She said she didn’t want to trouble the Neal’s any further. They both thought maybe the young men were gone and wouldn’t come back. 

   Sadly, that wasn’t the case. At around 8:30 p.m. Carol headed to the rendezvous point for the sales team. It was time to head back to Rushville, Indiana.    

   Carol Jenkins was then ambushed by two young men. One held her arms behind her back. Another stabbed her in the heart with a screwdriver. She died almost immediately there on the street. 

    Decades of silence would pass. Decades of inaction. Many people knew who had murdered Carol. They kept quiet. 

   In the early 2000’s a tip led to the arrest of one man. Kenneth Clay Richmond was charged but later deemed incompetent to stand trial. He died of bladder cancer two weeks later. The second perpetrator has yet to be identified. 

   The prevailing rumor in Indiana has always been that the killers were local teens. That’s not accurate, though. 

   Kenneth Clay Richmond was 36 years old when he murdered Carol Jenkins in cold blood. Kenneth Clay Richmond was born in Kentucky and grew up in Indianapolis in the home of his uncle, George A. Bailey. He and his accomplice or accomplices were passing through town that day. Maybe they were at a restaurant eating dinner and overheard racist locals discussing and loudly complaining about Carol Jenkins being in their town. Who knows? But, Kenneth Clay Richmond was not a teenager when he committed this murder of a stranger to him. He was, however, in the company of his 7 year old daughter, Shirley. She watched from the backseat of the car while her father and another man murdered Carol. The two men had been drinking all day. She did not know the name of that man. Trauma and terror kept Shirley silent for decades until she was finally able to speak out as an adult. Shirley provided details which led to the arrest and indictment of Richmond in the early 2000’s. 

   I wonder what else he did? 

   Kenneth Clay Richmond (February 21st 1932 to August 31st 2002) was cremated. He does not have a page on Find-a-Grave. 

   Carol Marie Davis Jenkins was buried in East Hill Cemetery in Rushville, Indiana. Her grave has a beautiful stone and is lovingly tended. She was loved and missed by her mother Elizabeth Jenkins Davis and her stepfather Paul Davis. 

   In 2017, Martinsville placed a memorial plaque honoring Carol Jenkins’ young life and her enormous promise and potential. 

  The city of Rushville, Indiana also wanted to honor and remember Carol Jenkins in 2017. They named a city park in her honor. 

   Rest in Peace Carol Marie Davis Jenkins. You deserved much better from this life.