It was just after 10 a.m. when a woman dressed in a nightgown knocked at the Mathis house next door to hers on Montgomery’s Gilmer Avenue. Her appearance was alarming because, in 1943, people weren’t seen in public in their nightclothes.

What the woman said was more shocking: “Come quick, Mr. Mathis. Dave is bleeding to death.”

The attractive redhead at the door was Kathryn Lawrence Holloway, who had married local insurance agent David A. Holloway eight short months before and moved into the beautiful Tudor-style home on Gilmer.

The July 12 edition of The Montgomery Advertiser would report what Peyton Mathis saw when he entered the Holloway home: “The whole room, he said, was spattered with blood. The bed was drenched with it, he said, and the former insurance man’s body bore the marks of countless blows. It was covered, he said, with bruises and abrasions from his knees to his forehead.”

The same article quoted then-Coroner M.B. Kirkpatrick: “It was a plain case of murder. This man was mercilessly beaten to death.” The weapon – the long, wooden handle of a feather duster – was found in a closet in the house with blood and hair on it. Kirkpatrick counted more than 150 wounds on the body.

But who killed Dave Holloway?

The so-called “feather duster murder” bears similarities to the infamous case of Lizzie Borden, who was acquitted of murdering her father and stepmother with an ax in 1892:

• Both Lizzie and Kathryn Holloway were the only known people in the house with the victim/s at the time of the murders.
• Both women had red hair.
• In both cases, the murders were brutal and extremely bloody but neither Lizzie nor Kathryn Holloway had blood on her clothes when she went for help.
• Both women were the only suspects in the crimes.
• Both women were acquitted.
• No one else was ever accused or tried in either murder case.

The trial of Kathryn Holloway

Kathryn Lawrence Holloway – also spelled “Catherine” and “Katherine” in various newspaper accounts – married 55-year-old David Holloway in November 1942. People remarked on the age difference: Kathryn was reported as being 33 years old in numerous early accounts of the murder, but she was determined at trial to be 41 years old. She was described repeatedly as an “attractive” or “comely” redhead but no photos of her appeared in newspaper accounts that were readily searchable online.

The trial was covered by one of Alabama’s first female crime reporters, who would become a beloved storyteller and author of Alabama legends and lore: the late Kathryn Tucker Windham. Under her maiden name, Kathryn Tucker, she wrote stories about the trial for The Alabama Journal, a Montgomery newspaper in the 1940s.

In Windham’s memoir, “Odd-Egg Editor,” she wrote: “The most sensational murder I covered for the Journal was what was commonly referred to as ‘the feather duster murder case.’ I was on vacation when Dave A. Holloway, widely known Montgomery insurance salesman and businessman, was found murdered in his Gilmer Avenue home but I returned in time to cover the trial of his wife, Kathryn Lawrence Holloway, who was charged with the crime.”

Crimes were handled differently then: Based on her statements, Mrs. Holloway was charged and placed in jail to await her fate, but the trial was scheduled within only a few days rather than the years often required today.

“The trial was held on July 21 and July 22, 1943, only ten days after Holloway’s battered, bloody, nude body was found on the sleeping porch of his home,” Windham wrote in her 2006 memoir.

Sensibilities were also different in 1943 and Windham did not publish the sordid details of Kathryn Holloway’s testimony for her reading audience. “Because of the extremely personal and sordid nature of the testimony, the courtroom was cleared of spectators during part of the time she was on the stand,” she wrote in her book. “I was permitted to stay and listen.”

According to the 2000 book by Wesley Phillip Newton, “Montgomery in the Good War: Portrait of a Southern City,” the testimony included Kathryn Holloway’s accusations that her “drunken” husband physically abused her.

Windham didn’t report the details in the paper but wrote in her book: “It was an ugly story the red-haired defendant told, yet she told it convincingly with a touch of dignity. At times she appeared embarrassed and lowered her eyes as she told of the happenings at the Holloway home the night of July 10 and the early morning hours of July 11.”

In her book, however, Windham quoted some of Kathryn Holloway’s testimony: “‘He threw me on the floor and jabbed me with the stick,’ she told the jury. The couple tussled over possession of the stick until she finally gained possession of it and hit him several times. The battle for the stick continued, with brief lulls in the action, both upstairs and down, the defendant testified…”

Some facts of the case reported in newspapers at the time:

Kathryn Holloway had recently filed for divorce and the couple was living separately at the time of the murder. She was living in a home on Alabama Street but came to spend the night on Gilmer Avenue at the request of her husband.

“Stained” and torn men’s pajamas were found inside the house and admitted into evidence, although the type of stain was never confirmed. Also found at the scene were, “a nightgown bearing dark spots, a stained bathrobe, stained stockings and stained bath cloth and towel.”

Kathryn Holloway gave two statements upon her arrest, but neither was admitted at trial. She testified that although she and her husband did fight, he was fine when she saw him last on the night of July 10. Windham reported Holloway’s testimony in a July 22 article in the Journal: “’He was standing in the door between the dressing room and the sleeping porch when I left,’ she said. ‘There was no blood anywhere.’”

Windham then described the suspect’s response when her defense attorney asked if she’d killed her husband. “‘I did not,’ she replied in a firm steady voice. She looked directly into the eyes of the 12 men who would decide her fate,” Windham wrote.

Kathryn Holloway testified that after their fight, she left the house at the request of her husband to pick up some of her clothes from the house on Alabama Street. When she returned to Gilmer Avenue, she went straight upstairs to bed and never looked on the downstairs sleeping porch.

The next morning, she testified, she came downstairs and found her husband bleeding.

Windham wrote in her memoir: “…she went downstairs, where she found Holloway lying in bed on the sleeping porch with blood coming from his nose. She tried to wash the blood away, she recounted, and she begged her husband to speak to her. When he failed to respond, she ran next door, still in her night dress, for help.”

In Holloway’s testimony, she said: “I think he came to his death by hemorrhage but I don’t know how he met death.”

But Montgomery Chief of Detectives Paul Rapport had been quoted in a July 12, 1943, article in the Montgomery Advertiser: “‘None of the wounds was enough to kill a man,’ Chief Rapport said, ‘but there were enough of them to kill a mule.’” Police Chief Ralph King also told the newspaper that someone had made an attempt to clean up some of the blood.

The jury deliberated for 95 minutes before acquitting her. Windham wrote that she was “pale and expressionless” but that spectators “burst into applause.” The former Mrs. Holloway reportedly moved to Florida where her family lived but her fate is unclear.

A July 28 article in the Montgomery Advertiser reported that Dave Holloway’s daughters, one married and one a minor, where the sole beneficiaries of his will. Kathryn Holloway received nothing. More than 80 years later, the case remains unsolved.