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Serial Killer Dies In Prison At Age 89

William J. Pierce Jr., the notorious serial killer convicted of murder by a Jeff Davis County jury in 1971, died at the end of May at the Georgia Diagnostics Center in Jackson. At 89 years of age, he outlived most of the law enforcement officers in three states who investigated his string of murders.
For young residents of Jeff Davis County, the name William J. Pierce Jr. probably isn’t recognizable.
But for older residents, the name is well known for being perhaps the most infamous murderer every convicted in Jeff Davis County. And Inside Detective magazine, in 1971, called Pierce “one of the most cold-blooded mass murderers in the annals of Southern Crime . . . .”
Pierce served 49 years in prison after being found guilty of murders in Jeff Davis, Appling, Toombs and Treutlen counties.
On March 19, 1971, a Jeff Davis County grand jury indicted Pierce, a 39-year-old Emanuel County man, for the murder of Mrs. Homer (Helen) Hutchinson Wilcox whose body was found earlier that month after she disappeared from her country store on the Snipesville Highway Jan. 22, 1971.
The indictment was one of several murder charges against Pierce, an ex-convict who had been paroled in May, 1970.
He was also indicted for the murders of Mrs. Vivian Sutton Miles, 60, who was shot to death during a robbery at her store near Baxley Jan. 28, 1971, and Mrs. Lacy Thigpen, 51, of Treutlen County who was shot at her store near Soperton Jan. 12, 1971.
The first case for which Pierce was found guilty was the death of Mrs. Miles. The trial was held in Wayne County after a judge approved a change of venue motion to move the trial out of Appling County.
Then-Jeff Davis Sheriff Mark Hall told the Ledger that Pierce led him and other investigators to the body of Mrs. Wilcox, who was the second of the three known January, 1971, murders.
Sheriff Hall said that Pierce told investigators he was looking for places to rob and drove through Roper and Snipesville before finding Mrs. Wilcox’s store which was isolated enough to rob.
In the death of Mrs. Miles in Appling County, a bread deliveryman surprised Pierce at the store and was shot at twice by Pierce but escaped uninjured. He made a positive identification of Pierce after Pierce’s March 5, 1971, arrest in Emanuel County for parole violation.
A Toombs County Grand Jury later indicted Pierce for the Dec. 20, 1970, murder of Joe M. Fletcher, 59, a Vidalia service station operator.
The Sheriff of Sumter County, S.C., signed a warrant accusing Pierce of killing 13-year-old Margaret (Peg) Cuttino, daughter of South Carolina State Representative James Cuttino of Sumter.
Pierce was also a suspect in the slaying of Kathy Jo Anderson, 17, of Lexington, S.C. whose body was found Feb. 17, 1971, in a shallow grave near Edmund, S.C.
Additionally, Pierce was indicted for the murder of 19-year-old Ann Goodwin of North Augusta, S.C., who was fatally shot July 14, 1970, while babysitting.
By June, two other murder indictments sprang up, for the deaths of Virginia Main, 20, in Gastonia, N.C., in July, 1970, and James Sires, 40, in Beaufort, S.C., in August, 1970.
Eventually Pierce was indicted for the murders of nine people, was the chief suspect in a half dozen other slayings and was indicted in connection with two other armed robberies — in Sylvania and Statesboro — and the beating of a service station operator in Sylvania.
In the Miles murder in Appling County, Pierce had hit Mrs. Miles’ young granddaughter on the head and left her for dead, but she recovered.
Homer Wilcox, now deceased, told a reporter in 1971 that he remembered Pierce coming into his wife’s store while he was a member of a prison road crew, about two months before he was paroled.
“He wanted some cigarettes and I gave them to him,” he said. “I wouldn’t take his money. I said, ‘No sir, I want to give this to you.’ I gave him a dollar out of the cash register and told him, ‘I know this ain’t much.’ I told him to stop back when he got out if he needed anything.”
“He stopped back …,” Wilcox said, his voice breaking.
Upon his parole in May, 1970, Pierce had been serving a 10-20 year prison sentence for arson, burglary, attempted escape and receiving stolen goods. He was released by the State Parole Board, reportedly on a 2-1 vote, despite a prison psychologist describing him as “dangerous” because of an “unstable personality.” Psychologists had warned that Pierce was possibly sociopathic and should be considered dangerous.
While he behaved himself for six months after his release, he was unable to hold onto the various jobs he tried during that time, he eventually became unemployed. And in need of money.
He found isolated country stores to be easy targets. And he meant to leave no witnesses.
During his trials in Jesup and Hazlehurst, he proclaimed he was innocent and the confessions he had given were coerced by investigators.
But four juries were not convinced by Pierce’s claims and found him guilty of murder. With four life sentences to serve, prosecutors involved with the other murders chose not to seek additional convictions.
Pierce has outlived the sheriffs and many of the investigators who worked his cases almost five decades ago.

4 Comments

  1. Brian L Speir on July 12, 2021 at 9:25 pm

    I worked as a Correctional Officer at Hancock State Prison @ Sparta, GA from Feb. 1996-June 1999. I supervised William Pierce while assigned as a dormitory officer. He was very friendly and obeyed all instructions from me. He liked telling his story and always maintained that he was innocent. I didn’t know what to believe because, after all, he was an inmate, not to be trusted.

    • Ron Ranew on October 13, 2022 at 5:41 pm

      You can bet William Pierce would have cut your throat in a second if he thought it would benefit him and he could get away with it. I know of a man in my prison that every officer thought he was a great inmate. One day 2 F.B.I. agents
      called him to the Lt’s Office. When he showed up they told him he was under arrest. He laughed and said he was already in prison.
      That was when they told him these were new charges, 8 counts of first degree pre-mediated murder. He smiled and said ” I don’t know who your snitch is, but he is a good one. You got them all”

  2. D. S. on July 19, 2021 at 10:47 pm

    I knew one of his alleged victims, Virginia Mains from NC. We always wondered if he was her real killer since it never came to trial and Pierce’s connection to Virginia’s murder was based on his confession to a True Crime magazine journalist.

    • Fletcher Spearman on May 22, 2022 at 3:28 pm

      I was an inmate at Hancock State Prison from 1995 to 2003. I knew Mr. Pierce and knew him as a very friendly person. Never talked about his charges. What I remember is Co being busted for bringing drugs in. Also remember running on yard with Wayne Williams. Remember thinking…there was no way this little guy threw a body over a bridge.

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