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After her separation from Smith Reynolds, Anne Cannon Reynolds went home to Concord, where she was involved in further publicity over the death of a local bank-cashier who fell off a balcony during a drinking party. Mrs. Reynolds had been the last person to see him alive. Last spring she married a Charlotte realtor named Brandon Smith.
Libby Holman Reynolds came to Manhattan in 1924, the talented, pretty and vivacious daughter of an able Cincinnati lawyer whose professional abilities she was presently both to tax and to advertise. She rapidly acquired fame and a fortune estimated at $150,000 by singing "torch songs." After the death of Smith Reynolds, Libby Holman Reynolds and Albert ("Ab") Walker, Reynolds' friend and secretary, were indicted for murder; it was established that Libby Holman Reynolds was pregnant. Last November the State of North Carolina lacked evidence to prosecute its case against Mrs. Reynolds and Ab Walker. Libby Holman Reynolds went to Philadelphia to have her baby.
Far more important than the adult personages in the case of Reynolds v. Reynolds by last week were two diminutive protagonists neither of whom was yet able to make much sense either about the Reynolds' estate or any other matter.
One was small Anne Cannon Reynolds II, two-year-old daughter of Smith Reynolds' first wife. In a deserted house near Atlanta last week, police used a special electric trap to catch an ex-convict and parachute jumper named Odell Boyles who had been threatening to kidnap small Anne Reynolds II so persistently that she had had a police guard for the last three months. The Brandon Smiths had kept the house lit up, lights burning on the grounds of their estate night after night for three months to foil marauders.
The other was picayune Zachary Smith Reynolds Jr. (not yet officially christened). On the same day that little Anne's would-be kidnapper was arrested, Zachary Smith Reynolds Jr., 3½ lb., was born at the Pennsylvania Hospital. He was promptly dumped into an incubator to remain for some three months.
With the appearance of picayune Zachary Smith Reynolds Jr. there arose immediately the question of who was to inherit the estate—now grown to $20,000,000—of Zachary Smith Reynolds. Before his second marriage he had made a will in New York bequeathing it to his brother and two sisters. The will omitted mention of Libby Holman and her son. It provided $50,000 each for Anne Cannon Reynolds and Anne Cannon Reynolds II.
In Wilmington last week, Lawyer Alfred Holman, father of Libby Holman Reynolds, issued a statement which said: '"Mrs. Reynolds has offered to relinquish her child's right to the inheritance as far as she is legally able and her own share as a widow save a comparatively modest sum in each case . . . hoping the remainder may be devoted to public uses through an endowment established in her late husband's and his father's memory. . . ."