Episode #123 1949-08-03 "Blind Justice On Trial," George Goodwin, Atlanta Journal
This story is about injustice, and the way an innocent man was hounded and mistreated by the police and the public for the tragic murder of his wife. That was very bad, and its litigation became an important part of current law that places constraints on police procedure and interrogation.
This script, however, is an injustice of attribution. Such a charge does not rival the false accusation of murder, but it shows the lengths of obfuscation that The Big Story writers sometimes did to get a headline, especially if it was a Pulitzer journalist whose fictional presence could get better publicity. Goodwin was an esteemed reporter for the Atlanta Journal and received a Pulitzer Prize in 1948. At the end of this broadcast he, via the usual “telegram” that was read but written by the scriptwriter, usually without consultation to the featured reporter “Incidentally I was fortunate enough to win a Pulitzer Prize for tonight's Big Story.” That is not true. Goodwin won the Award for his reporting about voter fraud in Telfair County, Georgia. The result of the 1946 voting resulted in the strange event of Georgia having three men claiming to be the new governor and seeking to be officially sworn to the office in January 1947. The event is still talked about in political history, and it was Goodwin’s steadfast reporting for the Atlanta Journal that uncovered votes by the dead and most comically, that the false votes were cast in alphabetical order! It led to significant changes to voter law in Georgia.
The Journal did cover the events that this Big Story episode is about, the tragic and still unsolved brutal murder of Margaret Refoule. Goodwin may have been part of the coverage team, but no bylines of his can be found for direct coverage of this story. Many of the voting scandal reports in the Journal have his byline. Interestingly, Big Story honoree Keeler McCartney of the Atlanta Constitution has many bylined stories about this murder. Like many reporters, Goodwin might not have liked this situation, but in dealing with The Big Story the word in the business was that the “fictionalization” process was out of their control, and that included inaccuracy. Therefore, we really do not know who the Atlanta Journal reporters were assigned to this story.
The murder is tragic, made even more so by the troubles the family had while they were living in Europe. Margaret Alston was from an Atlanta socialite family, and was sent to France in the 1930s to study art at the Sorbonne. It was there she met art teacher Paul Refoule. They fell in love and he followed her back to Atlanta where they were married in 1937. They returned to Paris. In 1939, they returned to Atlanta to visit the Alston family with their infant son, Jon. They went back to Paris and would not be able to return to the States for over five years. She was not allowed into France unless she renounced her US citizenship, which she reluctantly did. Paul went into the French Army. Unfortunately, he was captured by the Nazis at Dunkirk, and sent to camps in Germany and Poland. She did not know where he was or even if he was still alive. She and Jon went to live with Paul’s parents, a prominent family in the town of Orleans. As the German army marched through France, she lost touch with her family as international mail service was severely disrupted in the country. In December 1944, Paul escaped from the camp in Poland and returned home. They were able to get back to Atlanta in August 1945 to start a new life and put the events of the war behind them. Paul began teaching art once more, and was commissioned for some wall murals in homes and business locations. They started renovating a home together. That home was near Peachtree Creek, where Margaret’s body would be found on May 14, 1947. She had been strangled.
The police focused on Paul once they learned he had an affair with a student at the university where hw was teaching. He had an airtight alibi for his whereabouts during the time of murder. The police were relentless in their treatment of him. Their sole focus on him, as events would play out, resulted in their bungling of the investigation, and the killer never being identified or brought to justice.
Their treatment of Paul is summarized in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (Volume 39, Issue 4, 1949) in an article about abusive police interrogations by Charles Corcoran:
In the Refoule case, a French citizen, suspected of having murdered his wife, had been four times taken from his home at unusual hours by the defendant police officers of Atlanta, Georgia, and secretly questioned for periods of eighteen to thirty-one hours. The first three arrests were made without a warrant. On the fourth occasion a warrant was exhibited which charged him with sodomy, but before he was finally, and for the first time, put in the county jail he was detained for eighteen further hours of questioning, including subjection to seven lie-detector tests.
Paul was cleared of the charges, eventually, but the story took an even more tragic turn. He became severely ill, undergoing operations for hernia and a kidney stone. He contracted pneumonia, and his inability to recover from that led to the discovery of lung cancer. One of his lungs was removed in an attempt to save him. He died in mid-February, 1948, less than a year after his wife was killed. Margaret’s mother, and his, who traveled for France to be at his bedside, were there when he passed away. His remains were interred in Orleans, France.
It was Paul’s desire that Jon be returned to France and raised by his parents. The Altons, however, stepped in and raised him in Georgia, taking full guardianship of him. The Alstons removed him from the house that Paul and Margaret were renovating. The Alstons used their local social standing and did their best to isolate him from the terrible events. They changed his name to Jon Paul Alston to further separate him from the events and to give him a name that people would associate with them and not the crime. The kept his life private, preventing crime writers and other sensationalists from exploiting him. Their guidance led to a strong education at Atlanta’s Emory University where he became known as a scholar. He moved to Texas and taught at Texas A&M and became a well-known expert in sociology, especially in international relations. He authored over 100 academic articles and ten books. One of his most important ones was American Samurai, published in 1986. It was written at the time when there was significant interest in Japanese manufacturing and organizational practices. Alston brought his sociological perspective to how cultural norms are reflected in such practices and how American companies can have right expectations in the implementation of innovative policies and business structures. It was a highly influential book at that time. He retired from his professorship in 2005 and was awarded with Professor Emeritus status. He is still involved with the Texas A&M community.
George Goodwin died in 2015, at age 97. He was remembered fondly for his years of determined investigative reporting. After he left journalism in the early 1950s, he entered public relations and took a lead in many civic initiatives, especially for the economic development of Atlanta.