Double homicide in MD jail examined by author Stephanie Fowler in new book

Stephanie Fowler, awarding-winning author of “Chasing Alice: How the Life, Murder, and Legacy of an English Teacher Changed a Delmarva Community” has just released her newest book “Into the Night.”

It’s a true crime deep dive into the 1968 double homicide of Wicomico County Sheriff Samuel Graham and jailer Albert Kelly by prisoner Joseph Bartholomey, Jr.

Bartholomey used a gun that was smuggled into the jail.

“My grandfather ended up being one of the first people on the scene the night this happened,” Fowler said.

Her book opens with interviewing her grandfather Bud, going over the events of that night from his perspective when he was working the downstairs desk as a deputy.

“When I was growing up, he never spoke about it. It was never a thing that came up,” she said.

It wasn’t until Fowler was in her 30s that she learned that her grandfather was there the night Graham and Kelly were killed.

“I had no idea who Sam Graham was. I did not know who the jailer was. I didn’t know anything about the story. I sort of began to have sort of natural fascination with it,” she said.

A ‘mountain of evidence’ on the case of Joseph Bartholomey

To learn more about the case, Fowler reached out to Charles County, where they held the trial for Joseph Bartholomey.

She filed a FOIA request for everything Charles County and the circuit court had.

What she got back were trial transcripts, autopsy reports, logs from the jail, blueprints and copies of things that were put into evidence.

“Because Bartholomey pled not guilty by reason of insanity his defense team entered into evidence, like 10 years’ worth of psychiatric records, social work records, probation officer notes,” Fowler said.

It was a mountain of information to comb through to figure out what the story was and the why of it all.

The deeper she went into the case the more that she became completely fascinated by it.

“I always sort of liken this case to an onion. As I peel back one layer there was something underneath. It was a multilayer, multifaceted story and it just kind of grabbed a hold of me,” she said.

Fowler’s new book dives into broader history of Salisbury, Wicomico County

Along with the homicide, the book covers related local history of Salisbury, of Wicomico County, the courthouse and the history of the time it took place in.

“The murder happened at the end of 1968, which was a very tumultuous year,” she said.

The assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy happened earlier that year.

It is more than saying it was a different time as a case that happened almost 60 years ago.

Fowler read newspaper articles and interviewed people alive then who were connected with the case to gain a better sense of how things were.

“Heck, I even listened to music from that time period to try to get a sense of that time period,” she said.

She needed that understanding to find out things like how a gun was able to be smuggled in as easily as it was. Much more difficult today than back then.

“One of the more surprising things that came to me early on as I was doing the research was to find out that the morning of the murder, Sheriff Graham was in the Daily Times, on the front page of the Delmarva Living section, talking about how safe and secure his jail was,” she said.

He had written a rebuttal to a Baltimore Sun expose that had run in November of 1968.

On Sunday, Dec. 8, 1968, Graham’s rebuttal ran in the paper, and that night he was murdered in that jail.

“As a writer I couldn’t walk away from the irony of that. I’m like, good gracious, here he is talking about how safe his jail his and he’s literally murdered in that jail the same day. That was something that caught me by surprise,” she said.

Reporting by Lauren Roberts, Salisbury Daily Times / USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect.