Boston boys’ 1948 deaths remain a mystery

Brother thinks they were killed, then left on train tracks.

BOSTON — John Stanaland has vivid memories of a hot, humid Saturday night in the summer of 1948.

Stanaland was 11 when he overheard his older brother, Ernest, and the brother’s friend, Billy Jordan, discuss their plans for later that night.

“They were sitting on the front porch after I had gone to bed,” Stanaland said. His bedroom window opened onto the porch where his brother and the friend were talking.

Jordan operated the projector at the Bean Theater in Boston, a town in Thomas County about 21 miles west of Valdosta. So the boys’ camping and fishing trip to the Arch Hole three miles west of Boston would have to wait until after the last feature.

The boys eventually left the Stanaland home at 439 S. Main St. between 10 and 11 p.m.

They had not returned home on Sunday morning, but that was not unusual when the teens camped out at the spot a short distance south of the old U.S. 84 overpass.

When the boys had not returned that Sunday afternoon — July 18 — Stanaland’s mother, Mae, told John to go to town several blocks away and see if he could find his older brother.

“A man stopped me and asked, ‘Boy, where’s your brother?’ Well, go home, and tell your mama he’s dead, and we think the train ran over him,’” Stanaland recalled. He will never forget the lack of sympathy or feeling in the man’s harsh words.

Stanaland returned home and found his mother crying and hysterical.

Ernest, 17, and Billy, 18, were good boys. They did not indulge in drink or mischief. Both were recent Boston High School graduates. Billy, son of Mr. and Mrs. P.C. Jordan, received the Citizenship Award and the American Legion Award.

Ernest’s death took a huge emotional toll on the Stanaland family. Unfathomable sadness struck the family two days later when the six Stanaland children’s father, Lee, died as a result of a stroke suffered prior to Ernest’s death. The elder Stanaland never knew about Ernest’s death.

Edna Louise “Polly” Stanaland Hopper, Ernest’s sister, was 8 when her brother died.

“It was a very sad time. It was very, very sad,” Hopper recalled. “When you’re 8, you don’t really understand a lot of the things that are going on with your parents.”

A coroner’s jury that convened in Boston a few days after the deaths determined the boys met their untimely demise when struck by an Atlantic Coast Line train about 2:48 a.m. while being between the rails.

Billy and Ernest, who today would be in their late 80s, died 63 years ago. Their deaths continue to bewilder Stanaland, his sister and others.

Two names were mentioned as being responsible for the deaths.

“There was also talk of a hermit who lived in the woods down there,” Jerry Aspinwall, a Boston resident as a teenager, said.

A person who has since died told Aspinwall an investigation into the deaths was reopened in the 1960s, but the probe never went anywhere.

About 3 o’clock that Sunday afternoon in 1948, an engineer on an eastbound passenger train saw the bodies on the ground at the foot of the embankment, according to a July 19, 1948, Thomasville Times-Enterprise story about the deaths.

It is believed by some that Ernest, who was said to have been a heavy sleeper, might have been sitting on the tracks while Jordan fished at the bottom of the embankment.

Stanaland, who had fished at the site with Ernest, wondered aloud: Ernest could have lain on lush grass by the water, so why navigate a steep hill covered in briers to train tracks and lie down on railroad rocks?

A man who lived in a house by a road that led to the railroad tracks saw a car turn in at a fast rate of speed that night.

The engineer and fireman on the train that is presumed to be responsible for the boys’ deaths said they were alert and observant that night in the Arch Hole area.

The Times-Enterprise reported that the engineer would not have noticed the boys at close range because of the train’s light focusing some distance down the track.

Also, if the train occupants had seen the boys, it would have been impossible for the train to stop in time to prevent striking the teens.

The teens’ fishing tackle was reported to have been in disarray, indicating the user left abruptly.

An open pocket knife was found near the campfire. Inquest testimony showed the knife belonged to neither boy.

“I think somebody killed them and knocked them out and put them on the track to silence them,” John Stanaland said.

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