Perpetrators of multiple killings
Within The Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive, there are several cases that will forever be linked, sharing a common perpetrator or group of perpetrators.
CRRJ does not wish to grant these individuals or their crimes undue attention, and is primarily concerned with shedding light on victims’ stories and their families, restoring to them the humanity that was taken from them during and often after their killing. In lifting up the victims’ stories, contained in the Digital Archive, we must name those who enacted or participated in these killings. In doing so, they perhaps may finally be held accountable, decades after these killings.
A complete history of anti-Black violence in the U.S. requires we make known those who, for decades, believed they could act with impunity and without retribution from the law.
Below are a series of timelines, detailing the histories of three prolific perpetrators, all police officers, involved in multiple killings across the three main decades covered by the Archive, 1930-1950s. These men are Detective William Grosch, Police Officer James A. Hale, and Sergeant Edward Touzet.
These are the incidents for which CRRJ could locate evidence and records of, but the true number of their victims remains unknown. Additionally, there are several other prolific perpetrators within these decades, but these three are highlighted here as prime examples of the crimes committed, some by law enforcement officers, secure in the knowledge that the Jim Crow system would afford them a degree a protection from prosecution.
More on each of these perpetrators and cases can be found in The Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive.
William Grosch, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1930s
William Grosch and his younger brother, John commanded respect from New Orleans law enforcers and attorneys and elicited fear from African American suspects, because their interrogations methods. After working as laborers, sailors, and longshoremen as teens, before serving in the Navy during World War I.
He joined the police department in 1928, serving first as a doorman and later working out of a motorcycle sidecar. Three years later William Grosch was appointed detective, 1 year after his brother became chief of detectives.
Both brothers were violent in their exaction of the law, but William Grosch earned a reputation for his methods, particularly in extracting confessions and punishing African American suspects. William Grosch beat suspects with a rubber hose, or took suspects on “the ride.” when they maintained their innocence, he handcuffed them and took them for a ride to a particular, isolated stretch of the Air-Line Highway, half a mile into neighboring Jefferson Parish, purportedly to search for evidence or locate witnesses. There Grosch and his partner staged mocked executions, intended to evoke images of lynchings.
Over the next decade, suspects filed at least eight brutality complaints against the detective, and Grosch killed six suspects, four of them African American. His long-time partner, Andrew Arnold, fatally shot two additional suspects.
He is said to have publicly bragged of his cruel tactics.
The Grosch brothers set the tone and standard for police interrogation methods in New Orleans during the 1930s and early 1940s.
James Albert Hale, Birmingham, Alabama, 1940s
Edward Touzet, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1950s
About the Archive
The Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive houses case files and documents for more than 1,000 cases of racial homicides in the Jim Crow South. Co-founded by Melissa Nobles, professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Margaret Burnham, CRRJ director and professor of law at Northeastern, these uncovered stories highlight how violence affected lives, defined legal rights and shaped politics between 1930 and 1954.
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