The graves

In early February 1968, Murton ordered excavations on the grounds of the Cummins prison farm. Three bodies were uncovered before the excavation was halted, although 15 to 25 depressions were clearly visible and Murton's inmate informant told him that as many as 200 bodies had been buried there. Clearly not coincidentally, the number of prisoners listed as "escapees" since 1915 was reported as "more than 200."[3]

According to the informant, Reuben Johnson, most of the men had been killed after refusing extortion demands from the "trustie" guards. Their deaths were either falsely recorded as successful escapes; or recorded as deaths, but under false pretenses. Johnson, a lifer, gave details of murders and burials on the prison grounds dating back for decades, including a mass murder of about 20 inmates around Labor Day of 1940. Johnson was backed up by at least one other inmate, James Wilson. Wilson also asserted that returning escapees were routinely murdered.[3]

[edit] Fired to end exposureThe Rockefeller administration, though not directly implicated in crimes which took place before 1967, was deeply embarrassed by the national attention drawn to the brutality Murton revealed. Claims were made that the bodies must have been from a nearby potters field, a cemetery for the poor. However, as Time magazine noted in February 1968, the cemetery in question was over a mile away from where Murton found the bodies, at least one of which was positively identified as prisoner Joe Jackson, buried by Reuben Johnson on Christmas Eve, 1946.[3]

The skeletons were turned over to another arm of state government, the University of Arkansas Medical Center. At the time, Governor Rockefeller stated his intention to withhold details of the investigation from the public until the Arkansas state police issued a report of their findings, incorporating the University's results. Rockefeller was quoted nationwide when he said that there could be no point in "washing dirty linen for weeks on end as each body is dug up."[3]

Murton's agitation eventually disrupted the Rockefeller administration to the extent that not only was he fired two months after the bodies were exhumed, he was told he had 24 hours to get out of the state, or be arrested for grave-robbing — a charge with a sentence of 21 years, under Arkansas law at that time. He left.[5][6]

Murton was dismissed in early spring, 1968, less than a year after his 1967 hire. Governor Rockefeller claimed that Murton's excavations had become a "sideshow."[1] The governor halted the excavations after the first three bodies were found. The official report by the Rockefeller administration, written by the Arkansas state police, took the position that the bodies must have been from the paupers' cemetery[1]— although the cemetery was a mile away from where the bodies were located.[3]