Judge Morrison said, “Mr.

Hail, please rephrase.

” Mr.

Hopkins, you claim you saw Billy Thompson.

Why didn’t you mention this to the sheriff when you were first questioned? I didn’t think it was important.

Or perhaps you’re mentioning it now to deflect blame from yourself and your friend Roy.

That’s not true.

No further questions.

After 5 days of testimony, both sides rested their cases.

Closing arguments began on the morning of April 21st.

Douglas Hail delivered a passionate summation, reminding the jury of Bertha’s innocence of her family’s grief and of the overwhelming circumstantial evidence pointing to Roy Roins.

Roy Roins had motive, a jealous obsession.

He had means, a 32 caliber pistol that conveniently disappeared.

He had opportunity.

He was the last person seen with the victim and he has provided no credible alibi.

The evidence is clear.

Justice demands that you find him guilty.

Marcus Webb’s closing was equally impassioned.

The Commonwealth has presented a case built on speculation, circumstantial evidence, and the testimony of a questionable witness who may have had his own reasons to harm Bertha Hood.

Roy Roins is a 15-year-old boy who made mistakes, who exercised poor judgment, but who did not commit murder.

The prosecution has not proven guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

You must acquit.

Judge Morrison gave his instructions to the jury, and they retired to deliberate.

The wait was agonizing.

Hours passed.

The crowd outside the courthouse grew restless.

Inside, the family sat in tense silence.

Finally, after 7 hours, the jury sent word that they had reached a verdict.

Everyone rushed back into the courtroom.

Judge Morrison took his seat and the jury filed in their faces grave and unreadable.

Has the jury reached a verdict? Judge Morrison asked.

The foreman, a coal miner named Samuel Preston, stood.

We have, your honor.

What say you? Samuel Preston looked directly at Roy Roins and in that moment Roy knew.

We find the defendant Roy Roins guilty of murder in the second degree.

The courtroom exploded.

William Hood let out a sob of relief, embracing his wife.

Frank Roans cried out in anguish.

Roy collapsed in his chair, his face in his hands.

Judge Morrison banged his gavvel repeatedly until order was restored.

Roy runions.

The judge said solemnly, “You have been found guilty of seconddegree murder in the death of Bertha Anne Hood.

I hereby sentence you to 25 years in the Virginia State Penitentiary.

You will be remanded into custody immediately.

” “Two deputies came forward to take Roy away.

” As they led him from the courtroom, he looked back at his father one last time.

“I’m sorry, P,” he whispered.

And then he was gone.

The verdict sent shock waves through Wise County, but not everyone was satisfied.

While many felt justice had been served, others harbored doubts.

Seconddegree murder meant the jury believed Roy had killed Bertha, but hadn’t premeditated the act.

It had been a crime of passion, a moment of rage rather than calculated evil.

This distinction troubled some who had followed the case closely.

William Hood stood on the courthouse steps after the verdict was read, surrounded by well-wishers offering congratulations and condolences.

But his face showed no triumph, only exhaustion.

“Is it over?” Martha asked quietly, clutching her husband’s arm.

“I don’t know,” William admitted.

“He’s been convicted, but Bertha is still gone.

Nothing brings her back.

” As spring turned to summer in 1931, life in Wise County slowly returned to normal, or as normal as it could after such tragedy.

The Hood family continued to grieve, visiting Bertha’s grave every Sunday after church.

The small headstone they’d finally been able to afford bore a simple inscription, Bertha Anne Hood.

1915 1930, beloved daughter with the angels.

Now Roy Roins was transported to the Virginia State Penitentiary in Richmond, where he would serve his sentence among hardened criminals.

Despite being only 15 years old, the prison system in 1931 made no special accommodations for youth.

Roy would be treated like any other inmate.

Frank Roan sold his farm within 6 months, unable to bear the whispers and the judgment of neighbors.

He moved to West Virginia where he died two years later from complications of alcoholism.

Having never recovered from the loss of his son, Shorty Hopkins, charged only as an accessory after the fact, received a suspended sentence after his family’s attorneys argued he had been terrified into silence by Royy’s threats.

The Hopkins family continued to maintain Shorty’s complete innocence, insisting he had been wrongly implicated.

But the story didn’t end there.

In November 1933, exactly 3 years after Bertha’s murder, a man appeared at the Wise County Sheriff’s Office asking to speak with Sheriff Bentley, the man was trembling, clearly intoxicated and kept looking over his shoulder as if expecting to be followed.

“I need to talk to you about the hood girl,” the man said, about what really happened.

The man was Billy Thompson, now 19 years old.

Sheriff Bentley, who had been preparing to leave for the day, stopped and studied the young man carefully.

Billy had changed significantly.

He was thinner with hollow cheeks and dark circles under his eyes.

He looked like someone haunted by demons.

“What about Bertha Hood?” the sheriff asked cautiously.

“I lied,” Billy blurted out, tears streaming down his face.

“I lied at the trial.

Roy didn’t kill her.

Sheriff Bentley felt his stomach drop.

You need to be very careful about what you’re saying, Billy.

You testified under oath.

If you’re telling me now that you committed perjury, “I know,” Billy sobbed.

“I know what I did, and it’s been eating me alive for 3 years.

I can’t sleep.

I can’t live with myself anymore.

I have to tell the truth.

” The sheriff ushered Billy into his office and closed the door.

He poured the young man a cup of coffee and waited for him to calm down.

“Start from the beginning,” Sheriff Bentley said.

“And tell me everything.

” Billy took a shaky breath and began.

I was out hunting that evening, like I said, and I did see Bertha with Roy and Shorty.

They were arguing, but when Roy left and Shorty left, Bertha was still alive.

She kept walking toward the church.

Then what happened? Billy’s hands trembled as he gripped the coffee cup.

I followed her.

I’d been drinking some moonshine I’d stolen from my daddy’s still.

I wasn’t thinking straight.

I’d asked Bertha to the church social a few weeks before and she’d said no.

It hurt my pride, you know, and seeing Roy and Shorty fighting over her when she wouldn’t give any of us the time of day, it made me angry.

Sheriff Bentley leaned forward.

What did you do, Billy? I caught up with her on the tracks.

I called out to her, asked her why she thought she was too good for me.

She got scared.

She told me to leave her alone, that she was going to tell her father.

And I I got angrier.

I grabbed her arm, trying to make her listen to me.

Billy’s voice broke.

She pulled away from me.

My rifle was slung over my shoulder, and when she pulled away, it swung around.

My finger was on the trigger.

I don’t even know why.

And it just it went off.

The confession hung in the air like a physical weight.

It was an accident, Sheriff Bentley asked.

I swear it was, Billy said desperately.

I didn’t mean to shoot her.

But when I saw her fall, saw the blood, I panicked.

I knew what people would think.

I knew they’d say I murdered her, so I ran.

And you let Roy run Roins take the blame.

I know, Billy cried.

I know what I did was wrong.

When the sheriff started investigating when Roy and Shorty got arrested, I thought maybe I’d get away with it.

Then the prosecutor came to me asking if I’d seen anything.

I thought if I gave them a story, made Roy look guilty, everyone would believe it, and I’d be safe.

So, you fabricated the entire testimony? Most of it? Yeah, I did see Roy and Shorty with Bertha earlier.

That part was true.

But everything about seeing Roy shoot her, about him dragging her body, I made that up.

Sheriff Bentley sat back in his chair, his mind racing.

If Billy was telling the truth now, it meant an innocent boy had been convicted of murder and was currently serving 25 years in prison.

It meant the entire trial had been based on perjured testimony.

“Why are you coming forward now?” the sheriff asked.

because I can’t live with it anymore,” Billy said simply.

“Every time I close my eyes, I see her face.

I hear that gunshot and I know Roy Roins is in prison for something I did.

It ain’t right.

I have to make it right, even if it means I go to prison instead.

” Sheriff Bentley called Commonwealth Attorney Douglas Hail that same evening.

An emergency meeting was convened with Judge Morrison and Marcus Webb, Royy’s defense attorney.

Billy repeated his confession, this time in front of all the relevant parties.

A court stenographer recorded every word.

“This is a catastrophic miscarriage of justice,” Judge Morrison said, his face pale.

“If this confession is genuine, we’ve imprisoned an innocent boy.

“We need to verify Billy’s story,” Hail said.

“We can’t simply take his word for it.

” Over the next several weeks, investigators re-examined all the physical evidence.

The bullet that had killed Bertha, which had been kept as evidence, was compared with test firings from Billy’s 22 rifle.

The ballistics experts report was damning.

The bullet matched Billy’s rifle, not a 32 caliber pistol, as had been assumed.

How did we miss this? Hail demanded.

The original analysis was done quickly, the expert explained.

The assumption was made based on the wound size, but a 22 caliber bullet fired at close range can create similar trauma.

No one thought to test Billy Thompson’s rifle because he was a witness, not a suspect.

Additional investigation revealed more troubling facts.

Several people came forward to say they’d seen Billy acting strangely in the days after Bertha’s death, drinking heavily, talking to himself, seeming paranoid and agitated.

One neighbor reported that Billy had asked her what she thought happened to poor Bertha with an intensity that had made her uncomfortable.

Most damning was evidence that Billy had researched penalties for accidental killings versus murder in the weeks after Bertha’s death, asking questions of a clerk at the courthouse that now took on sinister significance.

On January 15th, 1934, Judge Morrison issued an order vacating Roy Roins’s conviction.

Roy Roins was released from the Virginia State Penitentiary on February 3rd, 1934.

After serving 2 years and 10 months for a crime he didn’t commit, he emerged from the prison gates a changed person.

The thin, frightened 15-year-old boy who had entered was now an 18-year-old man, hardened by prison life.

His eyes, once capable of softness, now held a permanent weariness.

Marcus Webb was there to meet him along with a small group of supporters from Weise County who had believed in his innocence.

“But Frank Roins was not among them,” Royy’s father had died the previous year, never knowing his son would be exonerated.

“I’m sorry this happened to you, Roy,” Webb said, shaking his client’s hand.

“What was done to you was unconscionable.

” Roy nodded, but said nothing.

He had learned in prison that words meant little.

The case against Billy Thompson moved swiftly.

He pleaded guilty to seconddegree murder and perjury.

Judge Morrison in sentencing acknowledged that Billy’s confession had at least partially redeemed him, but the damage he had caused was incalculable.

You allowed an innocent boy to be imprisoned while you walked free.

Judge Morrison said from the bench, his voice filled with anger and disappointment.

You shattered the faith of this community in our justice system.

You compounded tragedy with betrayal.

Billy Thompson was sentenced to 30 years in the Virginia State Penitentiary.

As Billy was led away in handcuffs, he looked at William Hood, who sat in the courtroom gallery.

“I’m sorry, Mr.

Hood,” Billy said, his voice breaking.

“I’m so sorry for what I did to your daughter.

It was an accident, but that don’t make it right.

I’m sorry.

” William Hood stared at the young man who had accidentally killed his daughter and then lied to cover it up, sending an innocent boy to prison in his place.

He wanted to feel satisfaction to feel that justice had finally been served, but he felt only emptiness.

Martha Hood had not attended the hearing.

She had stopped leaving the house except for church, her grief having broken something essential inside her.

She would die less than two years later from pneumonia.

But those who knew her said she had really died the night Bertha did.

The true story of Bertha Hood’s death eventually became clear through Billy’s confession and the subsequent investigation.

On the evening of November 2nd, 1930, Bertha Hood had indeed encountered both Roy Roins and Shorty Hopkins near the railroad tracks.

They had argued with Bertha, making it clear she wanted nothing to do with either of them.

Both boys had eventually left, leaving Bertha alone.

Billy Thompson, who had been drinking moonshine while hunting in the woods, had been watching the entire interaction.

When Bertha continued toward the church alone, Billy, emboldened by alcohol and resentful of her rejection of him, decided to confront her.

He approached her on the tracks, his 22 rifle slung over his shoulder.

He demanded to know why she had rejected him, why she thought she was too good for him.

Bertha, frightened and angry, tried to walk away.

Billy grabbed her arm and Bertha pulled free forcefully.

The sudden movement caused Billy’s rifle to swing around.

In his intoxicated state, Billy had his finger on the trigger.

When the rifle swung, it discharged.

The bullet struck Bertha directly in the heart.

She died almost instantly, collapsing onto the railroad tracks.

Billy, realizing what he had done, panicked.

He dragged Bertha’s body off the tracks into the nearby ditch, hoping it would look like she had been attacked elsewhere.

Then he fled, hiding the rifle and trying to act normal when the search parties formed.

When investigators began focusing on Roy and Shorty, who were known to have been pursuing Bertha, Billy saw an opportunity by fabricating testimony that he’d witnessed Roy commit the murder.

Billy could ensure the investigation went in a different direction while simultaneously making himself appear as a helpful witness rather than a suspect.

The plan had worked perfectly until guilt consumed him.

Roy Roins tried to rebuild his life after his release, but it proved nearly impossible.

The stigma of having been convicted of murder, even though he was later exonerated, followed him everywhere.

Employers wouldn’t hire him.

Neighbors treated him with suspicion.

Young women avoided him.

Within a year of his release, Roy left Virginia entirely, moving west to Tennessee and eventually to Oklahoma, where he worked in the oil fields under an assumed name.

He never married, never had children, and died in 1962 at the age of 47 from a heart attack, having spent most of his adult life trying to outrun a crime he never committed.

Shorty Hopkins also left Weise County, his family’s reputation tarnished by association with the case.

He moved to North Carolina, married, and raised a family.

He spoke rarely of the Bertha Hood case except to insist to his children that he had been innocent, that he had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

William Hood lived another 23 years, dying in 1953 at the age of 71.

He never fully recovered from the loss of his daughter.

His general store, once a thriving business, declined as William lost interest in everything except sitting on his porch staring at the mountains.

Neighbors said that in his final years, William would often walk to Bertha’s grave and sit beside it for hours, speaking quietly to his daughter as if she could hear him.

The Bertha Hood case became a cautionary tale in Virginia legal circles.

An example of how a justice system could fail catastrophically when assumptions replaced evidence, when pressure to solve a high-profile crime led to shortcuts, and when the testimony of a single persuasive witness could send an innocent person to prison.

It also revealed the fragility of truth in a small community, where reputation and family connections could matter more than facts, where prejudice against the poor could tip the scales of justice, and where one person’s lies could destroy multiple lives.

The small white headstone in the cemetery behind the Free Will Baptist Church, still stands today, weathered, but readable.

Bertha Anne Hood’s grave is sometimes visited by historians interested in the case, by true crime enthusiasts drawn to the story, and occasionally by descendants of the families involved, seeking to understand the tragedy that shaped their ancestors.

On the anniversary of her death each November, someone, identity unknown, leaves fresh wild flowers on Bertha’s grave.

The tradition has continued for decades, long after everyone directly connected to the case has died.

Perhaps it’s a descendant of William Hood, honoring a great ant they never knew.

Perhaps it’s someone from the community keeping alive the memory of the innocent girl whose death revealed both the worst and eventually the best of human nature.

Or perhaps it’s simply a reminder that in the Cumberland Mountains of Appalachia, where family and honor and memory run deeper than the coal seams beneath the earth, some stories are never truly forgotten.

Bertha Anne Hood was 15 years old when she died.

A girl full of promise cut down by a moment of drunken stupidity and followed by years of calculated lies.

She never got to graduate high school, never fell in love, never had children, never fulfilled the potential that everyone saw in her.

But her story endures as a testament to the innocent victims of violence, to the failures of justice and to the heavy price of truth delayed but ultimately revealed.

In the end, three lives were destroyed that November evening.

Bertha’s ended by a bullet.

Royy’s stolen by false imprisonment and Billy’s consumed by guilt and ultimately imprisoned by his own confession.

and a community learned that sometimes the real monster isn’t the person accused but the lie that everyone chooses to believe.

End from the living.

 

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