James Waybern Hall, called Red, was convicted in May 1945 of the first-degree murder of his wife, Fayrene Clemmons Hall, and sentenced to die in Arkansas's electric chair. She had disappeared in September 1944 after an evening at a dance in Little Rock. Six months later Hall was arrested in Little Rock, confessed to killing her and led officers to her remains. A Pulaski County jury rejected his plea of insanity, and the Arkansas Supreme Court upheld the verdict and the death sentence in October 1945.
Hall's confessions went much further than the one case the state tried. A 2021 profile of his biographer, the Conway writer Janie Nesbitt Jones, in the central Arkansas magazine 501 Life, said he confessed to at least 24 homicides in the late 1930s and 1940s, in Arkansas and elsewhere in the United States, and described him as likely the deadliest killer in the state's history. Only his wife's death went before a jury.
Little is known about Hall's early life. The 501 Life profile describes him as a native of Faulkner County, Arkansas. His full name, James Waybern Hall, and his nickname, Red, are given in the same profile.
His wife was Fayrene Clemmons Hall. The Arkansas Supreme Court described her only as young and in good health. Her parents were living when Hall was tried, and both testified.
On September 14, 1944, Fayrene Hall went with her husband and a woman friend to a dance in Little Rock. The couple quarreled during the evening, according to the testimony summarized by the Arkansas Supreme Court, and Fayrene said she was going to leave him. The Halls drove the friend home. After that, no one saw or heard from Fayrene again.
Hall did not report her missing. The court noted that he made no report to the police about her disappearance; the report came from her mother and her half-sister. To her neighbors, her friends and her parents he gave what the court called "different and conflicting stories" about where she had gone.
Police arrested Hall in Little Rock on March 15, 1945. The next night he was questioned at the headquarters of the Arkansas State Police. Several officers and a newspaper reporter later testified that he talked freely, without threats, force or promises, and that he admitted killing his wife. He then took officers to the place where he said he had left her, and her remains were recovered.
The witnesses at trial included Detective Harold Judd and Agnes Watson, a reporter for the Arkansas Democrat. Fayrene's father and mother, the friend from the dance and other witnesses gave evidence identifying her.
On March 26, 1945, the prosecuting attorney filed an information in Pulaski Circuit Court charging Hall with the first-degree murder of Fayrene Clemmons Hall on September 14, 1944. The information said that the means he used were unknown to the prosecutor.
Hall pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity. On March 29 the court committed him to the State Hospital for Nervous Diseases for observation, with orders for a written report on his sanity within 30 days. The hospital's superintendent, Dr. Kolb, later testified at trial that Hall was sane.
The trial began on May 7, 1945, in the First Division of the Pulaski Circuit Court before Judge Lawrence C. Auten. M. V. Moody represented Hall.
The defense rested on insanity. A number of physicians and lay witnesses testified for Hall. Their evidence, as the Supreme Court later summarized it, tended to show that he had a psychopathic personality, that there was insanity in his family, and that he had at times behaved strangely. Hall did not testify. On the other side stood the confession, the remains and their identification, and the hospital superintendent's opinion that he was sane. Dr. Kolb also told the jury about statements Hall had made to him during the sanity examination.
The jury was instructed that Hall was presumed sane and that the burden was on him to prove insanity by a preponderance of the evidence. On May 9, 1945, the jury found him guilty of murder in the first degree. On May 14 Judge Auten sentenced him to death by electrocution.
Hall appealed to the Arkansas Supreme Court. The state was represented by Attorney General Guy E. Williams and his assistant, Oscar E. Ellis. Justice McHaney wrote the opinion in Hall v. State, delivered on October 22, 1945.
The appeal raised four main points, and the court rejected each.
The first concerned the confession. Hall's lawyer relied on McNabb v. United States, a decision of the United States Supreme Court on the admission of confessions. The Arkansas court followed its own recent decision in State v. Browning, which had distinguished McNabb. Hall's counsel had conceded that the point failed if Browning stood, and the court reaffirmed it.
The second was insanity. The court approved the instructions on the presumption of sanity and the defendant's burden, and the tests of mental defect taken from an earlier Arkansas case, Bell v. State. It held that the superintendent's testimony was substantial evidence supporting the jury's finding that Hall was sane.
The third was the corpus delicti, the proof that a crime had been committed at all. Under Arkansas law a confession made out of court could not support a conviction without other proof that the offense occurred. The court said the proof had three parts: that a death occurred, that the remains were those of the person named, and that the death was caused by a criminal act. It found the death and the identification well established and the evidence of a criminal agency conclusive, so the confession had been properly put to the jury.
The fourth was Dr. Kolb's testimony about what Hall told him in the hospital. Hall argued that an Arkansas initiated act, Initiated Act No. 3, and the physician and patient privilege kept that evidence out. The court disagreed. The questions had been asked to judge his sanity, the privilege did not apply to the examination, and his statements to the doctor only repeated the confessions he had made to others.
Finding no reversible error, the court affirmed the conviction and the death sentence. It denied a rehearing on November 19, 1945.
The 501 Life profile of Janie Nesbitt Jones, published in May 2021, reported that Hall confessed to at least 24 homicides. It placed them in the late 1930s and the 1940s, in Arkansas and in other states. It said he did not appear to have killed for money or for sexual gratification, and that a personal charm probably helped him persuade unsuspecting motorists to give him rides. None of these confessions was the subject of the trial, and the Supreme Court's opinion deals only with his wife's death.
Jones, a Conway writer of true crime, published The Arkansas Hitchhike Killer: James Waybern "Red" Hall with The History Press in March 2021. According to 501 Life, she worked on it on and off for about eight years, after first writing about Hall in a two-part magazine article in 2011. Because little had been written about him, she drew on old newspaper articles, interviews with members of his family, documents and courthouse records, and five articles about him in vintage detective magazines. A friend of hers told her she remembered being warned about Hall as a child.
September 14, 1944: Fayrene Clemmons Hall attends a dance in Little Rock with her husband and a friend; she is not seen again.
March 15, 1945: Hall is arrested in Little Rock.
The next night: questioned at Arkansas State Police headquarters, he confesses and leads officers to her remains.
March 26, 1945: information filed in Pulaski Circuit Court charging first-degree murder.
March 29, 1945: committed to the State Hospital for Nervous Diseases for sanity observation.
May 7, 1945: trial opens before Judge Lawrence C. Auten.
May 9, 1945: jury finds him guilty of first-degree murder.
May 14, 1945: sentenced to death by electrocution.
October 22, 1945: Arkansas Supreme Court affirms in Hall v. State.
November 19, 1945: rehearing denied.
March 2021: Janie Nesbitt Jones publishes The Arkansas Hitchhike Killer.