The Still Unsolved 1879 Atlanta Double Killing That Rattled the Nation

On July 27, 1879, a front-page headline in The New York Times declared, “AN AGED COUPLE MURDERED; Found Dead in Bed with Their Throats Cut; No Clue to the Criminals.” Martin DeFoor, 73, and his wife Susan, 80, had been discovered by their grandson in their Atlanta home the previous day, with Susan’s head nearly severed.

The DeFoors operated a ferry that carried people across the Chattahoochee River in the Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta, a very rural area at the time. Given the grisly, mysterious nature of the crime and the couple’s high standing in the community, the killings shocked people across Atlanta and nationwide.

“The DeFoors were quiet, peaceable people, not having an enemy, as far as neighbors knew,” The Washington Post reported. “The community is excited, and every effort is being made to discover the murderers.”

Detectives launched a manhunt, and police arrested two suspects who were charged with murder and found guilty. But their convictions were overturned, leaving the DeFoor killings as “one of the most high-profile unsolved murders in Georgia,” according to W. Wright Mitchell, president and CEO of The Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation.

Martin and Susan DeFoor moved to Atlanta in 1853 when they took over the ferry business that James Montgomery had operated. They also bought Montgomery’s small, two-story house at the ferry crossing—one of the oldest homes in Dekalb County.

Martin operated the ferry, later renamed DeFoor’s Ferry, for the rest of his life. He and Susan largely kept to themselves as he ran the business and they raised a family, according to historical accounts.

“They were really prominent Atlanta settlers at that time,” Atlanta History Center archivist Kate Daly tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “They were really well-respected in the community. It was really because of the ferry operation—it was a very well-known place for folks to travel.”

At about 6 a.m. on July 26, 1879, the DeFoors’ 25-year-old grandson, Martin Walker, decided to check on the couple, who usually were up by 4 a.m.

Walker, who lived nearby with his mother, “found the back door open, the iron bar used as a bolt on the inside lying in the yard a few feet from the back steps,” according to The Atlanta Constitution.

The bodies of his grandparents were found in their bed in what The Washington Post dubbed “a double brutal murder.” The Atlanta Constitution described Martin’s gashes as “so deep and so deadly that he seemed to have passed from sleep to death without the shadow of a struggle.” He lay facing Susan, “her head almost cleft from her body,” the newspaper reported.

Investigators found a bloody axe in the fireplace that had belonged to Walker. He had left it in the yard the night before, and investigators believed it was the weapon that killed the couple.

No doors or windows were broken open that would have suggested forced entry, according to The Daily Constitution. Perhaps most chilling, evidence—including muddy footprints and half-eaten food—suggested that the killer may have snuck into the house at least a day earlier and hid in the attic before going on a killing rampage, per Daly.

“They did find some human waste in the attic, as well as a bed that was recently slept in,” Daly says.

The only items missing from the house were Martin DeFoor’s wallet and boots, and the boots were found later in the woods behind the couple’s home. According to an August 1879 article in The Daily Constitution, money that police initially said was missing was eventually located in the house. Investigators ruled out burglary as a motive, as many household items of value were untouched.

Other killings had occurred in the Buckhead neighborhood around that time, but they were rarely random and usually related to disputes, not apparent home invasions, Mitchell says. 

The details that emerged about the horrific crime scene and the fact that the DeFoors did not appear to have obvious enemies rattled people in Atlanta, Georgia, and the entire country.

“Their lives were as blameless as their end was horrible,” a local sheriff told The Daily Constitution in 1879. 

Police launched a manhunt in their quest to identify a suspect. Amid racial tensions in the South after the Civil War, police immediately blamed and arrested Black people. Among them was Asa Gunn, who confessed to the killings.

Though Gunn was tried and convicted of murder in the killings, he later said his confession was coerced and his conviction was overturned by a court that cited a lack of evidence.

Four years later, in 1883, Joe Johnson, also a Black man, confessed to the killings and implicated two men: John Brown and Tom Savinger. According to a June 1883 article in The Atlanta Constitution, Johnson drew an accurate depiction of the interior of the DeFoor house when prompted by a reporter.

In regard to Gunn, Johnson told the reporter, “I know he was arrested for killing the old folks and I knew he never had anything to do with it.” Savinger claimed he did not know Johnson, but Johnson identified Savinger in a police lineup. 

Johnson testified as witness; the other two men were convicted of murder and sentenced to hang in early 1884, but their convictions were overturned when Johnson’s confession could not be corroborated. Authorities didn’t find more evidence and decided not to try them again because of the cost, The Atlanta Constitution reported.

After the acquittals, The Atlanta Constitution reported, “These men thus pass from under the shadow of the gallows, as did their predecessor, Asa Gunn, and the DeFoor murder again takes its place at the head of the list of mysterious tragedies in Georgia.”

The DeFoors were buried in a cemetery near their house, which one of their descendants demolished in August 1879, shortly after the killings. But according to Mitchell, police didn’t investigate many other possible suspects—including family members who might have benefited from the DeFoors’ deaths.

The case remains unsolved, though Defoors Ferry Road in Atlanta honors the couple’s legacy.