Remembering Viola Hyatt: Play at JSU recalls notorious double-murder
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It took teams of state investigators almost a month in the summer of 1959 to uncover the details 
behind a grisly set of killings that stunned communities in three Alabama counties.

In the end, the culprit who went to jail was a 30-year-old farmer's daughter who some believe 
carried many secrets to her grave.

Kelly McBurnette-Andronicos' award-winning new play, "To Tread Among Serpents," premieres at 
Jacksonville State University's Stone Center for the Performing Arts April 9 through 12 2015.

A native of Ballplay in Etowah County, Andronicos' based her play on the story of Viola Hyatt, who 
spent 10 years in Tutwiler Prison for the murders of two men living on her family's farm.

Hyatt, who died in June 2000, never gave an explanation for the crime, and never granted interviews 
on the grisly "torso murders" she was convicted of in 1960.

On June 28, 1959, the torso of a white man was found outside Attalla along U.S. 11. A day later, 
another torso was found in Whitney Junction along the highway outside Ashville. Both had been killed 
by gunshot wounds and had their arms and limbs removed.

The two bodies, dubbed "Mr. X" and "Mr. Y," went unidentified for 20 days as investigators weighed 
everything from mob killings to revenge murders as the possible cause.

Unable to gain any leads, investigators asked Charles Brooks of The Birmingham News to sketch the 
faces of the bodies, which had been exhumed and were in cold storage.

Then, authorities got a tip that the two sketches resembled Lee and Emmett Harper, two brothers from 
Andalusia, who had been missing from their jobs for about two weeks. About that time, they were able 
to trace a laundry mark on the shirt of the one of the torsos as belonging to "Lee."

The Harpers lived in a trailer on a farm in White Plains near Jacksonville, with Viola Hyatt, her 
father and stepmother. Hyatt confessed to the crime after six hours of questioning, and then took 
Sheriff Roy Snead Sr. on a 50-mile journey along what she called the "whiskey trail" to show where 
she had stopped to dump body parts along the way.

Various reasons for the killings were given, such as Hyatt shooting the two over a failed romance or 
abuse. Some investigators believed she either had help with the killings, or may have taken the blame 
to shield a family member. She pleaded guilty to two counts of murder and received two life sentences, 
never telling her story in open court.

She was paroled in April 1970 after spending the decade as an "exceptionally good" inmate.


By William Thornton 2015