Murder In The Doll Haus Private Case

CASE FILE No. 4: Odessa “Mama Dess” Pettiway
Liberty County, Georgia, 1934

The charge: Causing the death of Harlan Voss, a white landowner and creditor, “by conjure and by poison.”

What the record says:
Voss held the notes on nearly every Black family’s farm along Pettiway Road. In the spring of 1934 he moved to foreclose on the land of Dess’s neighbor, a widow with four children. According to police, three days later, Dess was seen at Voss’s front gate at dusk, kneeling. Neighbors later swore she buried something there because they had known that she do roots, although neigbors reported never seeing Mama Dess there. Voss sickened that week with a swelling in his throat and was dead before the next Sunday. The sheriff arrested Dess the same night. Her trial lasted one afternoon.

What the community said:
Dess denied the gate and she said she’d always done her work the way her grandmother taught her. The county doctor who ruled Voss’s death “unnatural” was Voss’s brother-in-law. Half the county had the same throat fever that spring. And in the same year, two other Black landowners on that road lost their farms, with no one accused.

What was never explained:
Voss’s housekeeper, who was never called to testify, told her church years later that he’d been poisoned & experienceing weird dreams of Mama Dess. Although, she said he’d been eating from the same pot as the rest of the house.

The question:
Did Dess’s work reach Harlan Voss, or did the county need someone to blame, and who better than a Black woman who could be called a witch? The record says one thing. The people who knew her said another.

Dess sereved no time. The Case Remains unsolved.