The Bizarre and Murderous Life of Sue Logue

If you’ve never heard this story, then this is going to blow you away. This has so many twists and turns to it. Essentially, a mule kicking and killing a calf led to a war where eight people were killed, and it also led to the first woman getting the electric chair, death by electrocution, in the state of South Carolina. It even involves a South Carolina Senator by the name of Strom Thurmond. It’s a very weird story, and I’m going to tell you about that.

Sue Strom was born in 1896. She was the youngest of three children, and she grew up on a farm, taking care of the animals, riding horses, you know, that type of life. And around 1914, she married Judge William S. Logue’s son, Wallace Logue.

Now, Wallace also had a brother named George, and she and her brother-in-law over time started having an affair together. Wallace was always busy. He would be out on a lumber tract, wasn’t around for days and days at a time, whereas George, her brother-in-law, was on the farm all the time, so they saw each other a lot. And it got to the point where people would even ask, you know, which brother is she actually married to?

And Sue’s mother-in-law was concerned about this, so she asked Sue.

It was like trying to get her away from the farm so they’re not seeing each other too much. And she said she wanted to be a teacher.

Sue only had an elementary level education, but fortunately for her, Sue’s father-in-law was a judge and a trustee for the Edgefield school district, and he got her a job at the Meeting Street School. This is not that school. This was called the Tompkins School, and I believe this is the second school that she worked at. I think it’s safe to say that someone used this as a home, but this started out as a school.

So as she was a teacher, she attended these teaching assemblies, and she met a teacher, Strom Thurmond, who would move on to be a governor and a senator for many, many years. They hit it off. They actually had an affair. He was not married at the time, but she was basically three-timing.

Now, during all this, a couple named Davis and Cornelia Timberman moved into the farm next door, and they actually had a little general store, a store that’s still here today. The building still exists, the store is obviously long gone, but there were some issues, some bad blood between these two families. I don’t really know exactly what was going on, but that all came to a head when the Timbermans’ mule went into the Logue Family Farm area and kicked a calf and killed the calf.

Now, at first, Wallace Logue demanded twenty dollars for the calf. Davis Timberman said,

“Yeah, that’s fine, I’ll give you twenty dollars,”

And then shortly after that, Wallace showed up at the general store demanding forty dollars for that calf. That’s about eight hundred and seventy-five dollars in 2024 money. This is the old general store where that happened. That’s one of the good things about the South, is things don’t change too often, you know? Old buildings remain a lot of times, and here it is. That was the front entrance to the general store.

So Wallace Logue walked in through this door, demanded not twenty dollars now, but forty dollars for that dead calf. Timberman refused to pay that much. There was a heated argument, and Wallace picked up an axe handle from the store rack and started beating Timberman with it. Timberman managed to get behind the counter, grabbed his pistol, and shot him—shot Wallace Logue dead in the store.

So Timberman closed up his shop. He went to the police, he reported what happened. The police came, they did an investigation, and he was arrested. It went through the courts, and he was found not guilty, acquitted on grounds of self-defense. And this enraged Sue Logue, who vowed to kill him.

So Sue and George end up hiring a man named Fred Dorn, and so they said,

“You’re hired, we want you to kill this guy named Davis Timberman.”

And so not long after that, a hired farmhand, a worker on the Timberman farm, is shot and killed—a single rifle shot. It’s believed that it was a failed attempt to shoot Timberman, possibly a case of mistaken identity. It’s also believed that it was Sue, George, and Fred Dorn, although, yes, nothing has been proven; they were never brought in for questioning.

So Sue and George drive up to Spartanburg to see Joe Frank Jr., who’s George’s nephew, the police officer. They told Joe Frank that they were willing to pay somebody five hundred dollars to kill Davis Timmerman, which is about one thousand dollars in 2024 money, and he put them in contact with some shady guy named Clarence Bagwell.

So September of 1941, Joe Frank Jr. purchased a handgun—a thirty-eight—from a pawn shop and borrowed a car from a friend at a dealership, picked up Clarence Bagwell, and made their way up to the Timberman store. They pulled up to the store. Clarence Bagwell got out, went inside, and asked Davis Timberman for a pack of cigarettes. And while Timberman was turned around, Bagwell pulled out his thirty-eight and fired five shots, killing him instantly.

They probably would have gotten away with it, except Clarence Bagwell was kind of a heavy drinker, and while at the bar one night, he was bragging to either his girlfriend or just some random girl at the bar about how he was just paid five hundred dollars to kill another man. And she obviously was horrified by this and went straight to the police.

Not long after this, Bagwell was brought in for questioning. He eventually admitted everything, implicating Joe Frank Jr. as well. So then Joe Frank Jr. was brought in, and he spilled the guts about the entire murder plot.

So November 16th, 1941, Sheriff Boyd Allen, who is Sue Logue’s first cousin, along with Deputy Doc Clark, headed up to George and Sue’s farm. Apparently, they must have been tipped off that the cops were coming, because Sue, George, and Fred Dorn were barricaded inside the house, and there was a massive shootout. Sheriff Allen is shot dead. Deputy Clark is badly wounded, but manages to shoot Fred Dorn. Unfortunately, he dies the next day as well—Fred Dorn.

Now, that following morning, the Logues are holed up in the house. The local people caught wind of all this. They were tired of all this going on, so they had surrounded the house along with police. There was a major standoff.

Right about that time, Strom Thurmond was just getting out of church. Now, at this point, he’s a resident judge. He hears about this, and he makes his way up to the farm. He walks right past the police and enters the house through the back door. He convinced Sue and George to surrender, come out peacefully, which they do.

Yeah, you can see here, he was a teacher and athletic coach in the twenties, he was a judge. So you can see here, South Carolina Senator 1933 to 1938—he was a circuit court judge 1938 to 1942. So during that time, he was a judge, would into World War II, and this was right around when he walked her to the death chambers.

So the story goes that Strom met her at the penitentiary. They were kissing and hugging the entire time, and some have even said that there was actually some sexual action going on while she was on her way. So you could say—some people could say that she was the only woman to have sex on her way to the electric chair, on the way to her death sentence. Um, how this isn’t a movie, I don’t know. I mean, I just feel like in this day and age, they’re running out of ideas for movies. Imagine this movie.

So January 15th, 1943, Sue, George, and Clarence Bagwell are all executed by way of the electric chair. That leaves Joe Frank Jr. Logue, who was also sentenced to death, basically right on the eleventh hour. For some reason, the governor—Governor Johnston—changed his sentence to life imprisonment, where he worked training bloodhounds for the next thirty-seven years and was released in 1960.

So not far away from the Strom Thurmond grave and that cemetery is this one, just across town basically, and this is where the Logues are buried. Oh, that’s ironic. A lot of Stuarts here. You go, this is the family plot. Look at that. It always makes it so much more real when you see this. And George is over here, and this was her father-in-law that got her the job teaching.

This is an infant grave right next to Wallace and Sue, and somebody obviously cares for it; they put flowers there. But his mother—their mother—died in forty-nine, so she was well aware of everything going on. In fact, she outlived them all. It’s crazy. There was nobody left, oh, unless there’s family members that are still alive today. But just an unbelievable story, just to think about how crazy things can get especially when you’re heated over something. But it’s just crazy that just a mule kick really can cause at least seven, but possibly eight people to die. That’s what happens when tempers flare.