Murder on Maryland's Eastern Shore

Race, Politics and the Case of Orphan Jones

By: Joseph E. Moore

Narrated by: Marcio Catalano

From a former Maryland attorney comes the true crime story of accused murderer Orphan Jones—a case mired in the racism and politics of 1930s America.

Euel Lee, alias Orphan Jones, was an African American accused of murdering his white employer and family over a single dollar. The tumultuous events and cast of characters surrounding the racially charged crime garnered national media attention and changed the course of Maryland history.

With exacting research, former Maryland State's Attorney Joseph E. Moore reconstructs the murders, the ensuing roller coast of a trial, and the eventual conviction and execution of Orphan Jones. Moore details all of this in the context of Jim Crow politics and American society during the Great Depression in this gripping true crime account.

©2006 Joseph E. Moore (P)2022 Tantor

Fighting the good fight against a rigged system

It's understandably tragic when miscarriages of justice occur. And this country has had more than its fair share, particularly of the institutionally racist type. But, it's cases like these, where it's uncertain whether the condemned man isn't in fact guilty, that are more poignant. Because, if the society cannot rely on a fair trial when the defendant is very likely guilty, how can it ever trust the system? Rigging the system against Orphan Jones created questions that need never have been brought up. Perhaps we should be thankful they were, and they were exploited by the likes of Bernard Ades. Otherwise, the inherently racist judicial system would have had one less heinous example.

It's telling that, at that time in the 1930s, it was Ades, the communist lawyer, who advocated the appropriate representation of Black citizens in juries, the fair disposition of trials involving working class poor people, the vigorous defense of those on trial against an overzealous government. None of the patriotic American institutions could be bothered. Not local authorities, State authorities, or Federal. None. It was the communist who, demanding fair treatment of Black people, poor people and fighting against authoritarian government, was deemed "a threat to the American way". A man who was much earlier than these "patriotic" Americans in seeing the rise in fascism in Europe, joining the fight against it in Spain. But yet somehow, he's the threat. It's no wonder we still have brainwashed zealous white nationalists running around like fools nearly a century later. Whose side would you like to be on? And why would anyone hold the same prejudices now?