Will Bumgarner and Briggs Brown
Online Editor and Staff Writer
The year was 1932; a late night of lavish celebrations quickly struck catastrophe. The heir of a prestigious family and former R.J.Reynolds High School student found dead. A missing gun, a bloody handprint, a broken window screen, and a claimed suicide left the night’s events unanswered.
Zachary Smith Reynolds was the youngest son of business tycoon and millionaire, Richard Joshua Reynolds. He was set to inherit the equivalent of 300 million US dollars today, which would have made him one of the wealthiest young men of his time. However, his life was mysteriously cut short, putting all eyes on those inside the home that night.
A team at the Reynolda House, led by Deputy Director Phil Archer, has spent the last 16 months compiling this research in order to create an exhibition now on display that allows visitors to ponder the unsolved story for themselves.
“About a year ago, we started putting out the requests to borrow things for [the exhibit],” Archer said. “Everything that you saw was built, all the cases and frames, walls, and so forth were built in-house. Around that time, I also started working with the animators to create the film.”
During his extensive years at Reynolda House, Archer has been a part of many creations that have made the museum what it is today.
“I started working here in August 1997, so I just had my 25th anniversary with the museum,” Archer said. “That was before we had changing exhibitions, so I started when it was really still the footprint of the family home. One of my really exciting projects was working with the architects, the builders, and all the contractors in adding that wing.”
The Smith and Libby exhibit is now residing in that part of the house, and has begun to attract quite a bit of local and national attention. It’s a tale thats been told in many ways over the years, through books, adaptations of shows and movies and a large sum of articles. The story all began with Smith’s infatuation with the famous American actress and socialite, Libby Holman.
“Smith was completely besotted by Libby to the extent that he followed her traveling plays, in his airplane, going from town to town,” Archer said. “He really was committed to winning her over. At the time she was called the most proposed-to woman in the world.”
Smith and Holman were only married for seven months before his passing, yet their relationship was quickly riddled with disagreements and envy.
“Her friends, including some very famous stage and film actors came down to Reyolda,” Archer said. “Smith started showing signs of jealousy. He was upset enough to go downtown and spend the night in a hotel away from her, and this was just a day or two before the shooting.”
Many guests at the party raised suspicion regarding interactions between Holman and Smith’s best friend and secretary Albert “Ab” Walker.
“The fact that there was a question about a kiss, and then the fact that there were a couple of hours that night where Libby is unaccounted for,” Archer said. “Those two things led people from 1932 to the present day to wonder about a relationship.”
Following the long night of festivities, Walker claimed Smith came to him and said he planned to end it all that night, before heading upstairs to his room.
“According to Libby, he threatened suicide to her on seven or eight occasions,” Archer said. “Smith not only said something like that but also produced a gun. So, if you take Ab at his word, he might not have thought that this night was any different from all the other times.”
However, the evidence from that night leans heavily against the potential of suicide. Not only was the angle of the bullet wound almost impossible to be self-inflicted, but the bullet hole’s location in the screen only makes sense if Smith was lying down, contradicting Holman’s testimony that she saw him standing above her with the gun. Additionally, the gun was nowhere to be found during the three searches of the scene, however, it mysteriously appeared in plain sight later that morning.
“There’s almost no way to hold a gun at that angle and have enough distance for there to be a powder burn on the skin, rather than a burn inside his skull,” Archer said. “Whether there was a tussle or an accident or what, it seems that another hand had to be involved in my mind because of that angle. It also certainly seems that there was a cover-up of some kind.”
After initially being deemed a suicide, a grand jury presented the indictment of first-degree murder against Holman and Walker. As the case began to draw national attention and the sides prepared their arguments, the case was hastily called off by Smith’s uncle, William Neal Reynolds, who was the head of the family at the time. He had all charges dropped and dismissed the situation.
“He called J. Edgar Hoover [the head of the FBI at the time] and Hoover sent a reputable agent down, who kind of followed behind the sheriff and did his own investigations and kept tabs on what the sheriff was doing with his investigation,” Archer said. “That agent apparently reported to Will Reynolds that there wasn’t any clear path to a conviction. Additionally, he now knows that his niece-in-law is pregnant and the idea of his great-nephew being born in prison would have been unbearable.”
In the years following, the Reynolds family rarely spoke of the tragedy. In 1965 they began to convert their family estate into a museum for art and education. After hiring Nicholas Bragg as their first Museum Director in 1970, Smith’s sister Nancy Reynolds requested he not speak of his death or incorporate it into the museum. Braggs remained true to this request as director, retiring in 1999, but the museum decided it was time to share the story with the community.
“It’s now ninety-one years since the incident happened, and the questions about it are still alive and the legacy in terms of the charitable foundations that started out of this story,” Archer said. “With all sympathy and understanding for her feelings. It’s a story that belongs to many other people as well. I wanted with this exhibition, for the people’s curiosity about it, to be rewarded with actual facts and not with silence, that would make people feel guilty about asking in the first place.”
For over three years the decision of Smith’s estate went back in forth in the courts. In 1936, The family finally proposed a compromise to the North Carolina Supreme Court, bringing The Z Smith Reynolds Foundation closer to fruition.
The siblings received one-quarter of his estate which they placed in trust for the people of North Carolina,” former Executive director of the Foundation, Tom Lambeth said. “When his Uncle Will died he also left his estate to the Foundation created by that trust.”
The impact The Z Smith Reynolds Foundation continues a legacy of philanthropy by the Reynolds Family long after their prominence in this City has dwindled.
“Gifts amounting to around $200 million from the Foundation have been made to institutions in Winston-Salem,” Lambeth said. “The Foundation provided the money to bring Wake Forest University to the city and guarantees an annual contribution to Wake Forest that is around $2 million. Members of the family have served on local boards and been leaders of such efforts as bringing the School of the Arts to the city.”
Ninety years later Smith’s legacy still lives on through the charitable acts of others, resulting in countless pivotal actions that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise. It has transformed our city in more ways than people realize, however, many are still enthralled by the questions of the past and the tragic night that made this foundation possible.
“I have to say it’s just going to remain unanswered for good,” Archer said. “Ab contradicted himself in all those different ways, but he did say that there’s a secret from the night he’ll carry to his grave. And as far as that one statement goes, he told the truth, because he never did. He never did tell that story.”