“The Downgrade:” A Very Richmond Kind of Murder

The 1950s was the golden age of trashy men’s magazines filled with adventure and daring and crime and sensation. The names of these publications were always eye-catching and lurid: True Detective, Inside Detective, Actual Detective, Front Page Detective, and Detective World were among the dozens of titles available to the reading public. The victims in these stories were usually young and innocent women, like the casual tennis player on the cover of the June 1954 issue of Official Detective Stories who is blithely passing an assailant with a gun hiding in the bushes.

 

The story of the murder of Mildred Townes was told in the June 1954 issue of Official Detective Stories.

 

Official Detective Stories magazine was unusual in that there was a radio program with the same name on the Mutual Radio Network. The stories both in print and on the air all had eye-catching titles, like “There She Was, Huddled in the Driveway…. Only Seventeen, Lovely, Young and Vital….” The editors of Official Detective Stories were careful to note where each crime took place in the table of contents. This technique, combined with advertising in local newspapers and echoed by promotion on the radio network created local excitement and readership.

The procedure seems to have been to assign a writer and a photographer to travel to the cities where crimes, usually against young women, had been committed. The local police would be brought into the story and could usually be depended on to coordinate with the Official Detective Stories staff. Just before publication, the upcoming story would be promoted. In the winter of 1954, Official Detective “Special Investigator” Richard Cornwall was sent to Richmond to look into the murder of Mildred Townes.

 

The home of Mildred and George Townes at 612 North 28^th Street. Official Detective Stories, June 1954.

 

Townes was a 29-year-old woman who lived at 612 North 28^th Street in Richmond and who was married to George Townes, who had been drafted into the Army the previous year and was serving at Fort Sheridan, Illinois.

 

 

A map showing the vanished streets on the western side of Richmond’s Union Hill neighborhood including Jay Street, where Mildred Townes’ body was found. From “Old Richmond Neighborhoods,” by Mary Wingfield Scott.

 

On the cold morning of February 11, 1954, Mildred’s body was found in an abandoned panel truck parked in a vacant lot on the corner of Jay Street and 17th Street. This intersection and the surrounding blocks of homes no longer exist as they were obliterated by the construction of the Martin Luther King Bridge and the Jefferson Townhouses in the late 1970s.

 

The ”death truck” where the body of Mildred Townes was found at 17^th and Jay Streets, February 12, 1954. Official Detective Stories, June 1954.

 

The man who killed her apparently moved Townes’ body as the corpse was first reported seen in a parked car before the murderer returned and moved it to the abandoned truck. This gave the Official Detective Stories “Special Investigator” the catchy hook he needed for the title of his article: “She Died Here – She Died There.”

 

 

The upcoming story of the Townes murder was promoted in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, May 19, 1954.

 

The story follows a classic police procedural track where world-weary Richmond Police detectives Clifford Brown and Floyd Wakefield are sent out to first inform the grieving mother and then conduct interviews and follow various clues. George Townes was eliminated as a suspect because of his Army alibi, but the detectives discovered he knew Mildred was seeing other men while he was away. An important witness came forward and said he had seen Mildred Townes in a heated argument with a man at the top of the “Downgrade.” In the Official Detective article, even one of the Richmond detectives (who you would expect to know the term) asks, “the Downgrade?”

 

 

This photo from the Mildred Townes murder article shows the steps called “the Downgrade” at the end of Carrington Street, marked by a white arrow. The photo is looking east from the end of Clay Street where the Confederate White House is located on the edge of the hill. Official Detective Stories, June 1954.

 

 

Richmond Detectives examine the top of “the Downgrade” stairs where Mildred Townes was last seen alive. Official Detective Stories, June 1954.

 

Richmond has always had to compensate for its dramatic topography, and the long stairs from Carrington Street to the valley floor below was not unique. Church Hill has several long sets of steps that give access to the top of the hill, and looping, horse-friendly roads were necessary to give access to Church Hill from the east. The Marshall Street Viaduct once even had an elevator that carried streetcar passengers up to the bridge deck from Shockoe Valley, seventy feet below. Richmond historian Mary Wingfield Scott described the western boundary of the Union Hill neighborhood as “the cliffs overlooking Shockoe Valley…” The term, “the Downgrade” may, however, be the product of Official Detective Stories Special Investigator Cornwall as no other reference for that name can be found nor is it mentioned in Richmond newspapers.

 

The description of the argument at the top of the stairs led police to issue a warrant for a man who apparently had no first name but was only known as “L.D. Gail.” A hint of both his scale and nature might be seen in his nickname, “Big Boss Man.” Gail was a 22-year-old who lived below “the Downgrade” on Seventeenth Street, and who was finally arrested in South Carolina and returned to Richmond. Gail (sometimes spelled “Gaile”) was convicted and sent to prison for 20 years for the murder of Mildred Townes. After Gail served his sentence, he died in 2003 at the age of 71 and is buried in Evergreen Cemetery.

 

 The Evergreen Cemetery marker of the grave of L.D. “Big Boss Man” Gail. Findagrave.com

 

Mildred Townes was buried in Richmond’s Woodland Cemetery, but either her grave has not been found and recorded by volunteers or perhaps George Townes simply did not provide one for his unfaithful wife. Detectives Wakefield and Brown received an award from the Official Detective radio show in May of 1954 for their work on the Townes case. Special Investigator Cornwall moved on to another city and another crime.

Alert Richmond history enthusiasts who read where these people were buried probably already noted the one, single, glaring fact about the story of Mildred Townes, her husband George, and her murderer L.D. Gail. This would have been an element in the story that anybody reading it in Richmond would instantly know what was omitted by Official Detective: all these people were Black. Local newspapers clearly identified the Townes couple and L.D. Gail as “Negro” and “Colored,” but the magazine completely omitted the race of those involved. These crime magazines usually invariably ran photos of victims, but the only people who appeared in the images for the Townes article were the White Richmond detectives working on the case.

Someone made the editorial judgement that murder among Blacks was not interesting to the readership of Official Detective Stories who were accustomed to a steady diet of dead White coeds.  Rather than let a good story go to waste, that critical point was simply avoided. Readers in Richmond would immediately realize the omission, but even here the decision would be greeted as just one more peculiarity in a segregated society where race permeated every facet of life – even murder.

 

 

-Selden