CRIME: On St. Simons Island

Hugging the coast of southern Georgia lie half-a-dozen bosky islands—Jekyl, where the Vanderbilts built up an estate; Sapelo, where Calvin Coolidge vacationed; Sea Island, developed as a swank resort by Howard Coffin. St. Simons Island, connected by a causeway with the mainland and with Sea Island, is sparsely populated, but many a tourist travels its white-shell roads, lined with Spanish moss-hung trees, to see its Wesley Oaks. Beneath these, and in old Christ Church nearby, the founder of Methodism preached two centuries ago. In the dark of one night last week, someone stole past the Wesley Oaks to the Christ Church rectory. He fingered a .38, peered through a downstairs window, fired.

Within sat Dr. Charles H. Lee, 71, second cousin of the South’s Robert E. Lee, for eleven years the rector of Christ Church. He was preparing his Sunday sermon and his wife sat quietly nearby. They were both slightly deaf, and when they heard a sound they said something about a motor backfiring. Presently Mrs. Lee went to bed. Then the .38 outside cracked again and Dr. Lee slumped down, shot clean through the temple.

Next day, while in Christ Church a lay reader with simple prayer kept unbroken the chain of Sunday services which John Wesley began, a schoolman, Headmaster G. C. Durand of Sea Island School, declared that there were “many dives” in the county. Dr. Lee, concerned over them, had said: “Some great tragedy will have to occur before Glynn County will have law and order.” Said Headmaster Durand: “This looks like the tragedy.”