Circuit Judge Joseph Elder has set a trial date of March 13 for local physician Thomas J. Cage in the murder of Viola Turner. In a case that has drawn national attention, Dr. Cage is accused of murdering his 65-year-old former nurse in the wake of a pact that would have required him to euthanize the terminally ill woman, who had been his employee thirty-eight years earlier. The fact that Dr. Cage is white and Nurse Turner was black has complicated the situation, since it has been revealed that Mrs. Turner had a child by Dr. Cage in 1968, when Cage was married. Mrs. Turner was a 28-year-old widow at the time, her husband having recently been killed in the Vietnam War.
District Attorney Shadrach Johnson stated: “I don’t want anyone to be confused about this murder charge. This is not a case of euthanasia. If a doctor simply provides the drugs that a patient uses to end his or her life, that is a special class of crime in Mississippi: physician-assisted suicide. But if a physician administers those drugs himself, it’s murder, plain and simple—even if it’s done as a so-called mercy killing. But this is a case where the physician had a personal stake in keeping his patient silent about a fact that could destroy his reputation, and also his marriage. That is why Dr. Cage has been charged with first-degree murder.”
Adams County sheriff Billy Byrd said that his department has been working around the clock to be sure that the DA’s office is fully prepared to give Dr. Cage the speedy trial guaranteed by law. “Some Mississippi counties drag around for a year or more getting ready to prosecute,” Byrd commented. “But this poor woman was dying from cancer when she was murdered, and her family deserves justice. I’ve met extensively with the relatives, and they are really broken up about what happened. I don’t want to bias anybody, but I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a case where the facts were so clear. But I’ll leave that to DA Johnson to sort out with the jury.”
Jury selection will begin ten weeks from today. At this time Dr. Cage is not confined at the Adams County jail, but at the Federal Correctional Institution at Pollock, Louisiana. Special Agent John Kaiser of the FBI explained: “Dr. Cage is being held in protective custody. He’s a material witness in a major federal investigation, and his life is in danger.” Asked if Dr. Cage would be in danger if held in the Adams County jail, Agent Kaiser declined to comment.
Dr. Cage will be defended at trial by noted African-American civil rights attorney Quentin Avery of Jefferson County, Mississippi, and Washington, D.C. To date Dr. Cage has made no statement in his own defense. But in a telephone interview yesterday, Mr. Avery said: “It should not be overlooked that Viola Turner’s brother was murdered by the Double Eagle group in 1968. Events surrounding that crime could very well impact this case.” Natchez mayor Penn Cage, the son of the defendant and a former Houston prosecutor, declined to comment on either the trial date or the statements by District Attorney Johnson, Sheriff Byrd, or Mr. Avery.
NATCHEZ EXAMINER
January 3, 2006
Knox Likely to Be Removed from FBI’s Most Wanted
by Keisha Harvin
Last week’s apparent suicide by a former member of the infamous Double Eagle group may lead the FBI to remove the name of Chester “Snake” Knox from the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. Sources close to the investigation report that evidence found at the scene of former Ku Klux Klansman Silas Groom’s death links him to several felonies, including the bombing of an FBI plane carrying evidence from the Vidalia airport to the FBI crime lab in Washington on December 17.
Groom was discovered in his home last Thursday, shot through the head, a revolver still in his hand. Sources say a suicide note and additional evidence discovered at the scene may link Groom to several murders, including those of Natchez Examiner publisher Caitlin Masters, who was killed on December 16, 2005, in Lusahatcha County, and also of Double Eagle founding member Sonny Thornfield, who supposedly committed suicide in the Concordia Parish jail eighteen days ago.
Local supervising FBI special agent John Kaiser declined to comment on this new evidence, but FBI spokesman Eric Templeton in Washington said: “While Snake Knox may be guilty of kidnapping and even other murders, it was the bombing of the Bureau jet that placed him on our most wanted list. We are generally satisfied that Groom was the culprit in that case, and the list will probably be altered accordingly.” When asked how a seventy-eight-year-old man could have planted a complex explosive device on an FBI jet, Agent Templeton stated: “The Double Eagles were mostly military veterans with explosives experience. Silas Groom had more weapons expertise than your average Al Qaeda terrorist, and you don’t have to be an Olympic athlete to sabotage a small plane.”
At least one local law enforcement official, Concordia Parish sheriff Walker Dennis, has raised doubts as to whether Groom actually committed suicide. Sheriff Dennis said, “I’m going to wait for the medical examiner to release his findings, but anybody would have to concede that there’s been an awful suspicious rash of suicides recently. And Groom’s death could take a lot of heat off Snake Knox, which, if you ask me, is where the heat belongs. My department won’t let up in our hunt for Knox, even though the FBI seems to think he’s lit out for a nonextradition country.”
The contents of Silas Groom’s suicide note remain undisclosed. But in a macabre touch, the Examiner has learned that a rare twenty-dollar “Double Eagle” gold piece that served as the group’s membership badge was found atop the bloody note that reportedly confessed some of Groom’s crimes. Like all authentic Double Eagle badges, that gold piece was minted in the year of the holder’s birth, in Groom’s case 1933. According to the diary of journalist Henry Sexton, the only exceptions to this practice were that Double Eagle members born after the gold piece was no longer minted carried original JFK half-dollars minted in 1964. This is supposedly the badge still carried by Snake Knox.