J.A. Cox had called it an early night. Having spent most of the warm spring afternoon of April 30, 1944 at the convict camp just outside of Cuthbert, Cox, as was his practice at the time, had come home, eaten a light dinner and was spending a few relaxing moments savoring the sweet breezes of an April night. He suddenly began to feel queasy. Maybe it had been the sun, or the food, or the dampness of a southern spring. He excused himself at about 9:00 p.m. and went to bed. It wasn't long, though, before he heard a small commotion on the porch outside and before he could rouse himself to investigate, two of his friends came to tell him he had a visitor.

"Lena Baker is out here," Tom Overby told him. "She wants to see you."

Cox had known the Baker family and, Lena in particular, for most of his life. Her family had earned its keep chopping cotton on the Cox family's farm. Even though J.A. Cox was now a man of substance he had been elected Randolph County coroner he was still fond of Lena and her family. Of course, there were limits. As close as he felt to the Baker family, and as much respect and affection as Lena Baker might have had for him, there were certain social strictures that were inviolate. That's why Lena had waited out in the darkness at the edge of the road and sent her young son up to the front door to fetch Cox.

All the same, Cox knew that something serious must have happened for Lena Baker to seek him out for what was clearly not a social call.  Even before he reached the road, he could tell that Lena Baker was drunk "mighty drunk," he would later say as he described her weaving in place at the roadside. "She could barely walk."

"Lena," Cox said. "What the devil do you want this time of night?"

"Come here, Mr. Cox," she whimpered. "I got something to tell you. I didn't know no one else to go to but you.  Mr. Cox, I am in trouble. Bad trouble."

"I have killed Mr. Knight," she said, then blurted out something about a pistol and tussle, about how the gun went off and how Knight collapsed to the floor of the old gristmill he kept at the edge of town. "I have killed Mr. Knight and I want you to tell me what to do," Lena Baker sobbed. "You have been a friend of my family a long time and we have lived in your house and the old folks worked for you a whole lottell me what to do."

Cox was dumbfounded. He had known Ernest Knight almost as long as he had known Lena Baker, and while he was familiar with all the rumors about the pair, he still found it hard to believe that Baker's story could be true. He needed time to sort through the story, to see for himself whether Knight was really dead, and above all to find out what had happened. Although he was authorized to do so Cox also served as a bailiff in the Randolph County courthouse he didn't even arrest her. He simply instructed her "go to the sheriffand tell him exactly what you have told me, and exactly what you have done. No use trying to get away."

Lena Baker never made any efforts to escape. But she didn't go to Sheriff W.E. Taylor's house either. Instead, she went back to her mother's house, curled up under the blankets in her bed and tried to fall asleep.

In the meantime, Cox, Overby, and a third man made their way out to the gristmill. The door to the old place was locked but the trio climbed through a window. Inside, it was one large room, dominated by the oily engine and the elderly drive shaft it powered. The room was dark and crammed with seemingly discarded furniture and trash.  There was a bed on one side of the mill, covered with dirty bedclothes, as if it had been left there for storage. At the north end of the dusty old building, not far from the door and near a rusted bucket of filthy water, they found the body of Ernest Knight, just as Lena Baker had said they would. He was lying on the floor on his right side, his face almost pressed against the cold floor. A trickle of blood ran down his neck and pooled alongside his head. Beside his left ear there was a small wound where a bullet had ripped into his skull. On the other side there was a gaping exit wound. The pistol, the same one that Knight had always carried with him, was missing.

It was true, Cox realized. Knight had been killed, just as Lena Baker had said. He had no reason to doubt that she had been telling the truth when she said that she had killed him. The only question that remained was why.

E. B. Knight's Death Certificate