The Murders on Love’s Farm, Part II: Confrontation and Fatal Consequences

 Annie B. Lawson was Ruth Love’s neighbor and good friend, and would often call Ruth on the shared, single telephone line that served their neighborhood to discuss the day’s happenings. On the evening of May 31, 1943, she picked up the receiver at her home to make the call, but the line was in use.

Annie recognized Ruth’s voice and that of Bill Clatterbuck, and listened-in on the call for a few moments. She would recall later hearing Clatterbuck–to whom she had once sold a dog–say that he was going to come to the Love’s house the next day at 8:30 a.m. “to settle up” on the loan he had with her husband, Morris Love.

The essence of this overheard conversation was that Clatterbuck wanted to be sure that Morris would be home–and Ruth asked Clatterbuck if he was sure he was coming, since he had missed several earlier appointments to discuss the loan. He assured her he would be there this time. As events later unfolded, the overheard conversation would prove critical to the case.

The following narrative is drawn from Clatterbuck’s June 3 statement to law enforcement officers, his June 5 transcribed confession before Commonwealth’s Attorney Charles F. Harrison, and subsequent court testimony.

As promised, Bill Clatterbuck arrived at the Love’s home at 8:30 a.m. in his 1939 Chevrolet, which he parked in front of the house outside of the yard fence. As he entered the front yard gate, he saw Morris Love and his son James coming from a lower gate, and joined them as they walked toward the house, engaging in small talk about the weather until reaching a side porch off the dining room.

At that point, Morris told Clatterbuck that he needed to go inside to get his eyeglasses, and Morris and James entered the house through the dining room porch door. Morris returned to the porch alone, bringing a copy of Clatterbuck’s note in a small billfold. Seeking a cooler place to talk, he directed Clatterbuck to the front porch of the house, where he sat in one chair, and Clatterbuck faced him in another.

The discussion started off calmly enough. “I don’t remember one unpleasant word being said by either one of us while we sat there, except that he told me he was going to prosecute me for my forgery,” said Clatterbuck in his later confession. “He said, ‘I really mean it; I’m not going to give you any more time.’”

Clatterbuck asked Love to hold off until he received his payments from the government for hauling sand, which he claimed he could come “any day.” But to emphasize his point, Morris produced the note–with the forged signatures–and Clatterbuck’s “dishonored” check for $800, sent earlier as partial payment.

 

The killing begins

“I was scared I was going to prison. I didn’t see any way out but to kill him,” said Clatterbuck. “I hadn’t taken anything there with me, but I looked around and saw this croquet set on the bench back of Mr. Love. There were mallets right at the top.”

Clatterbuck rose from his chair and grabbed one of the mallets, and “…drove it down over the top of his (Love’s) head. I struck him over the head twice, I think.”

Love’s billfold fell to the porch floor, and Clatterbuck picked it up and put it in his pocket. He threw the bloody croquet mallet out into the yard, and as he walked toward the dining room door, he was confronted by James Love, who was holding a rifle.

“He said, ‘What have you done?’ I can’t remember what else he said. I don’t believe he knew I had killed his father,” Clatterbuck continued. “I grabbed the rifle and took it out of his hands.”

Struggling on the porch, Clatterbuck struck James with the rifle–an old, single-shot .22–before James broke free and tried to get back in the house. Clatterbuck caught him at the screen door, and pushing the barrel against his chest, fired. James staggered to the dining room floor. As James lay bleeding, Clatterbuck struck him on the head several times with the rifle. He picked up several .22 cartridges that James had dropped on the floor, and reloaded.

“Mrs. Love came walking in the door from the back porch into the dining room,” recalled Clatterbuck. “I was standing there looking at the boy. She screamed. I said nothing to her.” Clatterbuck shot Ruth at close range, across the dining room table. “I never opened my mouth to her. She was screaming when she saw the boy on the floor…loud enough to be heard by the Russells,” said Clatterbuck. “I looked at her until I was satisfied she was dead.”

Still not done at the house, Clatterbuck went back on the front porch, where Morris lay dead in his chair. He found a large piece of mattress ticking on the porch railing, and covered the body. He then went out in the field where he had observed Walter Russell thinning corn. “It was my intention to kill them (the Russells), because I was convinced they knew what I had done,” he said.

Hiding the rifle behind his back, Clatterbuck quietly approached Russell, who was completely unaware of what had transpired. He engaged Russell in small talk until he was about four feet from him, at which point he pulled the rifle from his belt, pressed it against Russell’s chest, and fired. Russell dropped to the ground. To be sure he was dead, Clatterbuck delivered several blows to Russell’s head with the rifle butt before leaving to find Russell’s unsuspecting wife.

 Clatterbuck entered the Russells’ tenant house through the kitchen door, where he encountered Katheryn Russell at the kitchen sink straining milk. When she saw Clatterbuck holding the rifle, she started backing away into the dining room. “She never said a word. I placed the rifle close to her body and fired, and she fell back through the door,” said Clatterbuck. She was still moving as she lay on the floor, so he shot her a second time, in the head.

Returning to the field where Walter Russell lay, Clatterbuck positioned the rifle and remaining cartridges next to the body. He then put the billfold that Morris had dropped–containing registration cards and a check for $1,300 from a local milling company–in Russell’s pants pocket. “I put them there because I thought that whoever found them would think he had committed the crimes,” said Clatterbuck.

Business As Usual?

Returning to his car, Clatterbuck discovered he had a flat tire on the right front wheel, which he used a hand-pump to inflate sufficiently to get on the road. He stopped at the Love’s farm gate before heading to Hamilton, where he parked the car at Richmond Ely’s Garage. While in town he saw a Theodore Reid, the attorney for the Hamilton bank. “I asked him not to push it (the hearing about his delinquent loan) until I got caught up, and he told me he wouldn’t, and to go see the Sheriff,” recalled Clatterbuck.

Arriving in Leesburg, Clatterbuck did not see Sheriff S. Paul Alexander–who at that moment was rushing from his home in Aldie to the murder scene–but did engage State Trooper M. F. Ritter in a 10-minute conversation about getting a chauffeur’s license for a young truck driver he had hired. Afterward, he stopped by the County Clerk’s Office to ask about his Selective Service card, and called on his insurance agent concerning his claim on the truck that had burned.

Finally, in an effort to destroy the documents taken from Morris Love, Clatterbuck drove into the lane that lead to the Court House parking lot, and tore up and burned the notes and checks he had taken from Morris Love. He then headed to Hillsboro–stopping at his sister Sarah’s house along the way for a drink–and arrived home at about 12:15 p.m.

 

Next Week: Circumstantial Evidence Leads to a Quick Arrest