Topsy and Surrounds
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 Photo Info
Posted By:
Date Posted: Jul 12, 2009
Description: This is the bridge I grew up going across until they built the new one. There has been MANY a PICTURE made on here too.
Date Taken: Jul 12, 2009
Place Taken: Topsy
Owner: Joe Daryl Luna
File Name: Topsy_Bridge.jpg   - Photo HTML
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Read what others had to say:

Ann Tyler - Jul 12,2009   Viewers  | Reply
    I have a picture of my Dad setting on the top of this bridge before him and Mother married she always teased him about showing out and being so daring is what cause her to marry him.
Mother never liked this bridge after she had started to work in Hohenwald one morning and found a woman beside the road of fa ways right at the bridge and someone had killed her by carving her up.All the good memories she had in her courting days along with a lot of her friends this were there favorite place to hang out was over shadowed with this bad experience she saw. 		    
  
Alva Warren Westland - Jul 12,2009   Viewers  | Reply
    All of the Topsy kids loved this bridge. As you all remember, the water would flood the side of bridge and bottoms even cutting into the road on I guess the north side but could not rise up to the road on side of the big curve near Mr Obie Duncan place. The water was so high it was slapping through the bridge slats and Bill Luna and 'others' walked out to the middle of the bridge. God had to be watching over us, we did such stupid things. When I first started driving I was so afraid to drive across it.

Shirley, I have a new email address update on this site. 		    
  
Patsy Burch - Sep 14,2019   Viewers  | Reply
    Alva, This is the only memory I have of Topsy Bridge.     
  
Patsy Burch - Sep 14,2019   Viewers  | Reply
    I didn't read all the postings before I commented..I meant I only remember the bridge looking like this picture.     
  
Shirley DuPont - Jul 13,2009   Viewers  | Reply
    Yes, I remember that also. My uncle, Dick Mathis was the first to find her.. He had nightmares from that time on.     
  
Joyce Landers - Jul 15,2009   Viewers  | Reply
    Does anyone remember who she was and if they found out who did it? I've had some bad years in between and have forgot.JL

p.s. this is the bridge mothers brother (Vaughn Bunch) jumped off of leading to his stomach being bursted and having to leave the church choir because of pain and died later that evening.(1932) 		    
  
Sammye Lawson - Jul 23,2009   Viewers  | Reply
    The killing did something to all of us who was connected to it in any way. Just no words to describe the horror of this murder. I came across a newspaper article recently about the next murder the man intended to commit and it tells about he first one. I'll type it out.

Lewis County Man Arrested; Placed Under $135,000 Bond (Lewis Co. Herald)

A Lewis County resident was arrested Friday and charged with burglary, kidnapping and rape after allegedly entering a Hohenwald residence and abducting a 23-year-old divorcee and later raping her. She fled from the truck in Hampshire after reportedly persuading him to get her a solf drink, and woke a Hampshire couple who returned her to Hohenwald. She was turned over to City Policeman Loyd Curtis and Dexter Frazier who called Lewis County sheriff G. Y. Bennett.

Bennett said a subsequent investigation led to the arrest of Hallie Joe Newton who was charged with the above and also the unsolved 27 month old murder of Patricia Baggett. Mrs Baggett's mutilated body was found at the Buffalo River Bridge at Topsy on October 25, 1973.

A bond hearing was held Monday before General Sessions Judge D. D. Humphreys Jr. Newton is in Lewis County Jail after being unable to post bond set at $50,000 on the murder charge, $50,000 on the rape charge, $25,000 on the kidnap charge and $10,000 on the burglary charge for a total of $135,000.00. A preliminary hearing has been set for Friday at 10 a.m. Sheriff Bennett said.

Bennett said the incident involving Newton Thursday took place about 10:30 p. m. 'The 23 year-0ld victim of rape was staying with a brother,' Bennett said. 'The wife of the victim's brother left to take the brother to work and left the victim at home with their three-year-old daughter.

'The wife was going to be gone about 15 minutes so the front door of the house was left open,' Bennett said.

Bennett said Newton apparantly was sitting across the street from the victim's house in his truck when the couple left home and after watching the two people leave the house, Newton got out of his truck and went inside the victim's house. 'He just walked in and forced the victim to get into his 1964 pickup truck,' Bennett said. 'He didn't bother the child and he apparently wasn't carrying a pistol.'

Newton was arrested about 6 p. m. Friday at an abandoned house on Little Swan Creek.

Assisting Sheriff Bennett in the investigation and arrent were Chief Deputy Kenny Mash, Deputy Ed Gray, TBI Agents Richard Wright adn Tom Whitlach, Officer Terry Cherry, Troopers Bobby Wilson and Paul Hedge of Tennessee Highway Patrol and Wayne County Sheriff Guy Davis.

(I remember at the trial it came out that he told this woman about killing the fist woman and that he was going to do the same thing to her. Seems everyone who saw the body on the Topsy road felt they were the first to find her. I've heard of several first. People were on there way to work and saw it, terrible. This man has been out of jail for several years and was living in Hohenwald. I don't know if he is still here or not. There were all sorts of tales about Patricia until Newton was arrested. Turned out, he was a brother of a woman who had been baby sitting the murdered victim's children and that is where he had seen her.) 		    
  
Shirley DuPont - Jul 23,2009   Viewers  | Reply
    Uncle Dick had to be at work at Lewis Products at 4:00 a.m. and had stopped by grandpa's ( who lived abot a mile on the other sise of the bridge} and had coffee before heading on to work. It made him so sick, he couldn't go in a couple of days after that.     
  
Joyce Landers - Jul 24,2009   Viewers  | Reply
    Thank you Sammye. JL     
  
Alva Warren Westland - Jul 24,2009   Viewers  | Reply
    Yes Sammye, thank you. We moved to Michigan 1966. I remember family telling us about this and another murder on or near the Topsy road later in years. I could not believe something like this could happen in the area I had lived for so many years. I know all around there had to be scared. Now days, seems we hear of these things daily. How sad!
Is the old bridge still standing beyond the newer one? 		    
  
Ann Tyler - Jul 25,2009   Viewers  | Reply
    Alva, I remember someone telling me they dynamited the old bridge and blew it up. it no longer there no sign of it they but the new one right in the place where the old one was. AT     
  
Shirley DuPont - Jul 27,2009   Viewers  | Reply
    Ann, The new bridge was moved to the right {coming from Hohenwald} of the old one. When you come off the hill the old one was straight ahead and the new one has a little curve in it. Where they put in the canoes to the left is where the old bridge stood. Thought I'd clairfy that. I'm soo sorry if I sounded like a KNOW IT ALL... Please forgive me... I didn't mean to come off like that. Love Ya! Danny Dale {Susie's son} and I were just talking last Thursday, wishing we had ALL the OLD FOLKS that used to live in Topsy back.. That was the GOOD OLE DAYS and we didn't really kow it..     
  
Alva Warren Westland - Jul 27,2009   Viewers  | Reply
    That is what I was thinking about the bridge too. I thought one trip to TN Lanell, mother and I drove down to the canoe place and saw the old bridge. Was it a campgorund also? Amen to the GOOD OLE DAYS     
  
Boyce Edwards Morris/Fayette Co - Jul 27,2009   Viewers  | Reply
    Shirley, Shortly after moving back to Tennessee from Calif., my family camped on the river under the bridge. I don't know if it was open or not. I never saw anyone drive across it. A Mr. Riley owned the land and had to pass his house to get to it. I think we rented canoes from him, too. I think it was 1979 or 1980. My husband's son came from Calif. for a week and he had a ball floating the Buffalo. I think there were about 20 of us on that camping trip and and maybe 4 or 5 canoes. I know my brother said that he and my dad would walk from Flatwoods to Topsy across the bridge to visit with Maude Ricketts Brown ( my dad's first cousin). It seems like a long way to walk. Wonder how far it would be. Boyce     
  
Ann Tyler - Jul 27,2009   Viewers  | Reply
    No offence taken, I think I did here where they made some adjustment to the Hohenwald side of the Bridge by moving it and making it wider but the Waynesboro side stayed very much where it was ,Guess the only way to be sure is go to Waynesboro and look at the blue print on Bridges. I think I remember seeing some pictures that were made when all that was going on I am sure it was documented.
Wayne Co. has been good about preservation of History, I am so grateful ,because I have been gone for 52 years and the last 12 years not been back that much. AT 		    
  
Shirley DuPont - Jul 28,2009   Viewers  | Reply
    Ann, As you're coming fromTopsy toward the bridge it makes a kinda sharp left.. If you could go straight in the trees and bushes, that's where the old one was located. It was several feet to the right {Coming from Topsy} from the new bridge.. Maybe someone can back me up on this... I remember using that bridge every week going to Papa Dabbs' until the new one was opened.     
  
Ann Tyler - Jul 25,2009   Viewers  | Reply
    Sammye, can't say my mom was the first to see her but remember her telling me that she turned around and went back to Rita and Obie Duncan to get them to call the shireff thay lived just around the curve a little ways from where it happen. and they went back with her. Mom always left home about 5: 45 A.M. to go to Hohenwald to work. I just know it made all of us afraid for our loveone who still lived down in Topsy.AT     
  
Anne Whitehead Archer - Jul 25,2009   Viewers  | Reply
    Sammy; thank you for that informative post. I do remember hearing about this at the time it happened; but at that time I was in Nashville, working two & sometimes three jobs at a time, and had no vehicle so I seldom got to come home to visit my mother, so don't remember hearing about the trial, although I am sure there was an account in the Tennessean. My sister Martha had told me about the woman and how she escaped from him in Hampshire.. I think the couple who helped her out was someone whom I had known at some point...Anyway, if I am not mistaken this man's sister and her spouse were loggers and my sister was acquainted with them.
It is a very scary story and I wonder how the woman who was violated and treated so horribly fared afterward..
How in blue blazes did this man ever get out of prison and does anyone know if he is still around? IF he is he should be registered as a Sex offender.
awa 		    
  
Sammye Lawson - Jul 26,2009   Viewers  | Reply
    This was such a horrible thing, it was something that seems most of us just didn't talk much about. I have never heard anything about the woman this man raped. The man was out of prison between 11 and 12 years ago. My mother died 11 years, 2 months ago. When she was living with me, very ill, the home health ladies were coming every day to see her, the last time late in the afternoon. Their office was in the old Evans house past the Siegel plant. They had learned the man was out of prison and living on one of the side streets near that plant and not far from their office. They were afraid to go alone to check out after they left here so they made sure that two were going to be going to the office. That is the last I heard from him. Seems he was living in a trailer at that time. I don't understand how he ever got out to walk the streets again.

I found another article out of a Kingsport newspaper and it says the killer was a 'junk dealer and a logger.' 		    
  
Anne Whitehead Archer - Jul 28,2009   Viewers  | Reply
    Sammie:
I looked this dude up in white pages and there was a listing for Centerville, TN; but I would have to pay to get more info so didn't...
It seems to me like the fact that he got out of prison was why Martha & I were talking about this case... It has been a few years since we did so my memory is rusty... I'm going to talk w/ Martha again when I next go down and stay a few days w/ her. Her memory is intact even more than mine, most of the time. 		    
  
Sammye Lawson - Jul 28,2009   Viewers  | Reply
    Thanks for looking into this, Anne. I would like to hear what Martha remembers about it. I don't remember his trial and I wonder about it. I feel for the man's family. No fault of their own but they were pulled into this mess. I know it has had to be hard on them all these years.     
  
Joyce Tuverson - Sep 17,2019   Viewers  | Reply
    I don't remember this conversation, but I sure remember this bridge! My daughter was scared of bridges (especially those stock
bridges), and both of my children and my husband hated going across this bridge. One time, we were on our way to our family farm, and those runners across the bridge was very wet and slick! My husband wasn't used to driving on the bridge, and the tires slipped off of the runner. My daughter was screaming, my son was younger, and he was scared. I told my husband to let me out, while he got the car straight. I walked the rest of the way, and met up with hubby just before the steep curve, close to Mr Clarence Edwards place. Since my family doesn't live on Moccasin any more, I hardly ever go that way now. Several years ago somebody said that the only reason that the sharp curve was there was because the Edwards family wouldn't let the road be built across their farm! Has anyone heard about this, or is this true? That was a dangerous curve, but that old bridge had a lot of memories for several generations. 		    
  
Joe Luna - Nov 19,2023   Viewers  | Reply
    I took this picture in 1979 having heard a new bridge was on the way     


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