Article by: Bella Bownds
Foreword by Fred Berner Jr.
When I first started teaching at Utopia School my students told me that the school was haunted by someone who died in a fire at the old school building after murdering someone. I assumed it was just a legend because just about every small town has similar legends about ghosts and past events. However, I was surprised when I attended a tour of Jones Cemetery last year, and I found out the story was true. There were a few details that I heard were different.
On April the 12th, 1926, events occurred in Utopia that the newspaper headlines called “The Night of Horrors” and “The Night of Terror”. The night began with citizens seeing the school building was on fire. At the time, Utopia had· no fire department or any type of fire fighting equipment so the townsfolk had no way to fight such a large fire and could only watch the building burn.
As the school burned news spread that someone had been shot and that the murderer was on the loose. The news spread through the community that Maizelle Jones had been shot and she identified Jimmy Calvert as the shooter before she died at only 26 years of age. According to newspaper accounts, Calvert, aged 45 was a deaf-mute who was the janitor at the Utopia School and also a cousin of Mrs. Jones. Once it was known that Calvert was the shooter, a posse was formed to search and capture Calvert. The posse surrounded the Calvert home thinking he could have possibly returned home after first starting the fire before he shot Mrs. Jones. According to a newspaper account, the posse surrounded and determined that Jones was inside because the door was locked and Calvert’s mother had left the doors unlocked once she heard about the murder and left the house. One of the members of the posse knew how to enter the house, and once inside they found Calvert with a gunshot wound to his chest and his lips stained by a black liquid but he was still alive. It was determined that Calvert took the poison, which was iodide, then shot himself. Calvert told witnesses that he had first started the fire at the school, then went to the Jones house and shot Maizelle but did not reveal why he killed her.
There was lots of speculation amongst the townspeople about exactly why Calvert killed Mrs. Jones. Many said that they believed that Calvert had feelings for her and she spurned his advances which enraged him to where he killed her. Others said that they thought he was going to the house to kill Bill Jones, Maizelle’s husband, or both of them. Mr. Jones was out for a short while at a neighbor’s house and Maizelle was at home with her five children, who witnessed the shooting. There were other theories for why Calvert killed Maizelle, but the truth will never be known. No one from that time is still living.
It was for sure that the murder was premeditated because of an account by Miss Minnie Storms who was the school’s third and fourth-grade teacher. She stated that on the afternoon of the fire and murder, she pulled a vanity out of her desk and powdered her nose. Calvert told her that the vanity was too pretty to just leave in her desk and that “something might happen to it.” She responded that “nothing was going to happen to it” then went home. The next day, someone at the scene of the fire found the vanity on the ground away from the building, indicating that Calvert had taken the time to remove it from the school before setting the fire.
Since the deaths of Maizelle and Calvert, there have been rumors of hauntings related to their demise. There is an account from someone who bought the house where the murder occurred that suggests that the house might be haunted. The owner provided the house to a young couple who were employed by them as ranch hands. The young couple showed up at the main house and informed their employers that they were leaving. The owner said she asked the couple and that the wife looked at her really funny. She responded, “Well, the rocking keeps the baby awake at night. It’s hard for us to get any sleep. Besides, every time I hang a mirror on the wall in the living room, it falls off in the night.”
The owner stated that she later moved into the house and left after only two weeks. She stated that the second day she was there, she found the mirror on the floor leaning against the wall and that it was on the wall the night before. She then hung the mirror with a sturdier nail and hung it back up. She said “The next morning it was on the floor, smashed to bits. Looked like somebody hit it with a sledgehammer and I never heard a sound.” She didn’t think the young couple were making up stories as an excuse to leave, and she moved out shortly thereafter.
Teachers in the old school building have reported that they have heard lockers slamming when in the building in the evening or on weekends. Others have reported they hear voices in the corridors and also clocks that fly off the wall. Others have said you can hear the sound of basketballs being dribbled in the old gym even though no one else is in the gym Could these be the spirits of the two involved in the horrible tragedy almost one hundred years ago trying to make their presence known?
BELOW ARE ARTICLES FROM SEVERAL TEXAS NEWSPAPERS CONCERNING THE MURDER
